Halloween Decorations

This is our first guy we made... his name is Jack.  We put newspaper in some old clothes and then zip tied him to a chair covered in a garbage bag. 

Amber always calls the kids we see at the store cousins or brothers or sisters.  We teased her and said her cousin Jack was here to see her.  She hadn't been around while we were creating him.  She came down stairs all excited and with big smiles and then saw Jack and was a bit upset and afraid.  She said, "I don't like Jack.  He isn't my cousin."  We thought it was funny, but she didn't see the humor.  She still isn't real fond of Jack, although today she said she thinks Jack is funny.

We moved Jack to the front porch by the door. 

Next was a mummy lady, we call her Spiderella.  She was formed in the image of Emily.  I layed Emily down on a cardboard and took wire and wired it to one side, then put the wire over Emily and then measured and cut the wire to wire to the other side after Emily got off the cardboard.  I think I will redo her next year.  I used a garbage bag over the wires to make the form, but I wanted to use cheese cloth and didn't have enough for it.  I think next year I will redo her.  After she was formed, we rolled her in spider webs and then added a few spiders to her.  She was kind of cool.

Last we put up a grave yard.  I bought some supplies at Home Depot and then spray painted them black.  When I spray paited them it made a giant blister on my finger... I guess it froze me.  It was uncomfortable for about 2 weeks at least. 

I added the skulls to the posts and then draped some spider webs over too.  I didn't put the grave stones out until Halloween, since I was afraid they would blow away.  The wind blows often here.

The girls helped with the cobwebs too.  They draped them over the rocks in the front.  We didn't really have anything to stick the cob webs too.  At our other house we had bushes and trees and our bricks and all that they stuck to really well.  We had some cob webs up from the beginning of the month.  Finally on the day of Halloween I had the idea to stick some wire here and there to stick the webs on.  That worked really well, and I added more cob webs. 

Now I just wish we would have gotten that fog machine we saw... although we didn't have the money to buy it.  And I wish we would have bought the skeletons too that I wanted... again that was a money issue.  I coudn't see spending $40 on decorations when the girls still didn't have costumes.  Maybe next year I will buy one of them.  I hope next year we have better decorations.  It is fun now because the girls really get into it.  Before Lauren was pretty scared of Halloween things, and she still is a bit but not as much.  Now the girls love to think, "we have the spookiest house on the street" even though maybe it isn't true.  I think they take pride in helping things look spooky. 

Now we have to figure out Christmas stuff... which will be REALLY hard since we have no trees bushes or anything like that to put lights on.  Maybe lights on the rocks?  I guess there is time to figure it all out.