Halloween Town

I can't believe how much I LOVE Halloween. I'm not sure exactly what it is but everything about Halloween is awesome-the scary movies, decorating the house with creepy stuff and parties. Heather gets a little miffed that "Fall" decorating in the house gets jipped a little bit because we go from summer to Fall (only for a few weeks) then...Halloween. Our house transforms into Halloween Town about the last week of September (Heather is really pushing for me to not do a thing until October but it's so hard to wait). Each year some things change with the decor (mostly the outside stuff) just because it's so fun to switch it around a bit. I will give the quick run down of everything. First of all you have to set the mood with creepy lighting (I like green and black lights the best), add a Halloween sound effects that plays outdoors, then you definitely have to have a graveyard of some kind (this year we had a dead dude crawling out of the ground), a strobe light is a must and finally I am very proud to say that the 2 newest members of the Halloween gang are: the "Ghost Lady" and...the "Butler".

The Butler has a funny background story that I have to write about. Back when Kate was about a year old I stepped into Walmart and saw the "Butler". It was one of those moments of not even thinking about it, grabbing him and walking directly to the front register for purchase. When Heather saw me at the register checking out with him, she looked at him, then looked at me and we had a short conversation about how this was going to give Kate nightmares for the rest of her life. A few miutes later I was pushing my new purchase directly to the Returns section to give him back to Walmart. I thought I would give Kate a few years to get used to the Halloween house, then I'd re-purchase the Butler. Little did I know that he'd be so hard to find a few years later...sheesh! Walmart no longer carried the Butler and he was no where to be found online. I checked last year and found a few online...for $400!!!??? Yikes....well, I took a while coming to grips with the fact that I may never own the Butler. This year, about a month ago I was determined to seek him out once again. I checked again online, found a few listed from $400 to $500, then low and behold...there was one listed...for 80 bucks!!! I hurriedly entered all of the important information and pushed the "purchase" button...and waited about 10 days for his arrival. Yeah, it's a little crazy and Heather thinks I've lost my mind, but he's sooo cool....and Kate loves him. When I brought him home I didn't tell anyone that I had him and I set him up in the front room and called for Kate to come in. She ran in and screamed, then laughed, then gave him a big hug. You see, I've been talking about the Butler with my kids ever since I first bought him and they were just as excited as I was to get him back. I'm very proud of the "Ghost Lady" too. I was in Savers and saw that they were selling those styrofoam womens heads and I thought...perfect! I bought it for 2 bucks and grabbed about 6 white kitchen garbage bags and tore them up somewhat, then I attached those together and created a creepy dress. The best part is this, I had a dumb little ghost that would move left and right on a 25 foot cord that I wasn't sure what to do with...until now. I tore apart the cheesy ghost and mounted the motor in the Ghost Lady's head so that now she can fly around the graveyard. In fact, I liked how it turned out so much that I bought another head and am making another one for the front of the house. Here's the tour:

This is right inside the back door and it creeps out the preschool kids everyday they come.

Heather bid on and won the "bride and groom" skeletons that you see here at a Relief Society service auction because she knew I would love them-she was right. It's hard to see but the groom has a hand tied silk bow tie-too cool.

We have this kid size skeleton sitting on one of the old nursery chairs from the rock chapel that was given to us...the preschoolers like this one a lot too.

Meet...the "Butler"

He's too cool



This is in our front window. The main scary lady actually has a face on the other side of her head as well to face outdoors at night. See the pictures and video (coming soon) below to check out the night scene.



This is "Samara" from "The Ring" coming out of the ground in the graveyard which I moved to the side of our house this year.

Ok, here she is...the "Ghost Lady" that I'm so proud of. The cool thing is that she has a voice activated motor that makes her slowly "float" left and right at night.

Here she is closer up

The gate at the entrance of the graveyard

Almost forgot about this phantom-he's "flying" by our front door thanks to a hot dog roaster being placed in our flag holder.

This is our front window at night