The Aches & Pains of Progress

What a weekend! My beautiful, patient, generous, and loving wife (did I mention she's beautiful?) allowed me a full weekend to work on Halloween stuff, so I got a lot done on Saturday and Sunday. We took the kids to our local homecoming football game Friday night, otherwise I would have been working on Halloween projects that night as well! I am sore as all get out today from climbing ladders and crawling around on my hands and knees (plus I evidently tweaked my right ankle at some point because it is real sore and stiff today), but such is the sacrifice one must make when spookifying one's house.

I got a good start on the garage haunt, even though there were some setbacks. It may not turn out exactly as I envisioned, but it should be pretty cool for the little ones to see, and trick-or-treaters to check out on Halloween night. I would say I'm about 40% done with it already, and the hardest part - building the walls - is nearly complete. There is more construction on props to be done, and I'm not sure where to go with that. The key is not to invest any money if at all possible, so I hate to have to go buy material at Home Depot. There is a house being constructed down the street, which is where I snatched the throwaway foam core for my four new tombstones, so I might have to take a walk down there and see what they have in their trash bin.

With the 'help' of my daughter, we got the Halloween fence up on Sunday afternoon. We actually worked well into the night doing touch-ups and last-minute quick fixes. It's not perfect by any means - I never did find the finials I was looking for and I refuse to spend $6.99 for a two-pack when I need a dozen of them! So I cannibalized a pack of skull Halloween lights and put those on top of the posts. They're only held on by velcro and I'm not sure how that will stand up to the elements, but we shall see.

On Sunday we also made our annual visit to Seakapp's Orchard to pick up some giant pumpkins and yummy caramel apples. The kids didn't exactly cooperate (our daughter made a friend and wanted to play in the hay-bale maze, and our son is a teething one-year-old), but overall it was an enjoyable day out. The weather was beautiful and we did manage to snap a few pictures while the kids were still in frame for two seconds. Related to that, apparently late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, our 12-foot-tall scarecrow 'Pumpkin Jack' made a jaunt over to the farmer's cornfield which is about a quarter of a mile from our house. He left a nice stack of cornstalks on our front stoop. My daughter claims to have heard him in the night, but I didn't hear a thing...

More updates and pictures coming soon. Only 31 more days!