This Is Halloween

This year my Halloween was extra special. As my daughter was growing up we were busy with taking her from house to house or taking her to the town functions like Trunk or Treat, we never really had time to decorate and hand out our own candy. Then as my daughter got old enough to enjoy Halloween with friends I stayed at home with all the lights off to watch my favorite TV show, Ghost Hunters. This year I decided to record my favorite show and decorate for the first time since I was a kid.

My daughter's favorite movie is Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and she wanted some of the decorations to go by this theme. Since store bought decorations are so expensive and hard to store, we decided to make our own out of sheets of foam.

Robert and I spent an entire day hanging black plastic around the carport. Unfortunately we had to do this a week early since he would be deer hunting Halloween weekend. All week my daughter and I fought to keep the plastic up with the wind ripping through.

We started with making tombstones out of the foam. We used a store bought tombstone (lower left in picture) as a guide to cut the shapes we wanted. We printed out what we wanted on the front of the tombstones and cut it out of the foam by hand. We watered down some paint and drizzled it over the tops of the tombstones. Because foam is so light we glued PVC pipe to the backs so that they could be slipped over a steel rod pounded into the ground. I even draped a little spider web over some of the tombstones. The tombstones were probably my favorite part of the decorating and they showed up great under the black-light.

We decided we absolutely had to have an Oogie Boogie character and he had to be animated somehow. Searching the Internet I found where several people had created costumes for the animated Santa. My daughter and I quickly went to work and created an Oogie Boogie costume that fit perfectly over our Santa. We hooked up a stereo and placed the microphone near the speaker and now Oogie Boogie is animated. Oogie's roulette wheel is made of foam and is not animated.

Here is a video of Oogie Boogie in action before he was put outside.

Our next project was created some kind of entrance way for people to walk through into the carport. We found instructions on the Internet for creating one out of cardboard boxes. We chose this method because after Halloween we can fold it all up and store it flat. Strobe lights with sound were added after the archway was in place.

Next, my daughter and I, made a few of the main characters out of foam. This part of the project was a bit more detailed and made a really huge mess so we carved them outside. Instead of carving them out by hand, this time we used a Dremel tool to carve out most of the foam. After they were all carved out we finished them up with some paint and some spider web.

My daughter and I wanted ghosts in our cemetery and of course we wanted them animated as well. Robert and I found a ceiling fan at the Restore that worked perfectly. Robert added a dimmer switch to the fan so that we could adjust the speed of the ghosts as they circled the tombstones. As we were making the ghosts we decided that the character Zero (the dog) had to be included as an animation. He turned out kind of cute. These guys turned out so cool under the black-light.

Here is a video of the ghosts in action on Halloween night:

I didn't want the inside of the carport to look like an ordinary house so Robert and I made some boarded up windows with foam. I got to use some paints that had been sitting in the shop for who knows how long. All the different paints really made the foam look like wood.

After all the main parts of the haunted carport were finished and set up we started adding miscellaneous things to complete scariness. We had a blast with the strobe lights, black-lights, and the fake blood.

I had such an awesome Halloween this year. I enjoyed having so much time with my daughter making all the decorations and I also enjoyed having my mom up helping with the set up and just spending time together.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!