Saturday, October 28, 2023

Carving Night 2023

Carving Night was a blast.  I ended up taking absolutely no photos during because I set my phone down and my costume had NO POCKETS! (A serious oversight). So I had to depend on the kindness of other people smart enough to take some good shots.  

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Caverns of time

Side project.  I've been trying to figure out what to do with the big window.  I had gotten some led strip lights and wasn't sure what to actually do with them-- they were on sale for cheap and originally I had intended to put them at the bottom of the stalagmites. Didn't work out,  buuut, I was scrolling pinterest and found a guy who did silhouettes in his window with foam core and lights taped behind.  And a white background.  

So ignoring the fact that it was 2 in the morning, I gathered cardboard and the lights and my exactly knife.  I cut out spooky eyes I borrowed from zombie pumpkin Jack o lantern stencils, then taped the led strip lights up and down the cave silhouettes I cut out of a cardboard box.  

Next was to hang them in the window and figure out a light I liked.  Might have to play with it a bit, but the rainbow fade looks kind of cool.  

Going batty

So this year's theme is a bat cave.  Not like batman. I've had to explain that more than once.  More like vampire lair vibes. It partly centered around what I'm giving out this year-- homemade plush bats.  

Slightly insane, no argument.  Especially when you consider that I'm making about 200 of them.  🤦‍♀️

But they've been turning out cute.  And I'm also giving out a spider ring and fruit snacks (bat food 😆). I'm going for an adopt-a-bat feel. 

Mom and Sam have been great in helping me turn and stuff the bats.  And I'm down to sewing up the last 60 or so. They've got little loops so they can hang.  My original idea was to hang them up on the porch and have the kids pick them. But with how quickly they tend to get in and out,  I think I'm going to go with these little cellophane bags with black stripes that look like a little cave.  Sam suggested adding little names on them, beanie baby style.  We'll see...

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Halloween 2022

Halloween night 2022!

Lots of cute moments from the night.  Sam had a little boy come up and embrace her in the shark costume with a pure love that was adorable.  I had a girl tell me she remembered the Harry Potter theme from when she was a young kid but had been too nervous to come up to the house and regretted it ever since.  Several veteran teenagers who come back every year and remember each theme fondly.  Just some very kind compliments on the house--very sweet. 


Thursday, October 27, 2022

Halloween 2022 theme: Underwater theme

 So this year's theme is going to be....Pirates!  and mermaids!  And deep sea monsters!  This is partly due to reusing some props that I made for the summer reading program at the library--"Oceans of Possibilities" themed.  I made 2 large anglerfish mouths, a few eels, and lots of seaweed kelp.  I also was able to get my hands on several of the coral reefs made out of pool noodles made by some crafty coworkers.  Here's a link to the builds for those.  

As for the front yard, I initially decided to try to make a raft with a few pirates being lured into the depths by a skelly mermaid.  That evolved a bit into a half a pirate ship being attacked by a kraken.  I made 3 tentacles out of pipe insulation duct taped together around a pvc pipe that went over a rebar.  I cut up some pipe insulation rings to stick on for suckers, and then spray painted one side white.  I put wire in the tops so that they could be a bit manipulated.  

The head was basically a cardboard box that I added strips of cardboard to to make it a bit more oval/head like, then wrapped it again with the red duct tape that I used on the tentacles.  I got some giant eyes from the dollar tree and taped those on to two of the sides.  


A trip to savers got me the clothes for pirates, and I dressed them up to be rather swashbuckling.  One of them I set up to be attacking the kraken, and the other I eventually set up to be fishing and catching a skeleton anglerfish--one of the new halloween toys I picked up for this year.  He lights up, but not on a timer, so he'll go on for Halloween, but I want to save the battery.