# 2018 Gettin' serious!



## pirate_lady (Jul 30, 2019)

I've always loved Halloween but never lived anywhere where I had a yard / place to decorate or any trick-or-treaters (high rise, condo community, apartment), but 5 years ago I moved into a neighborhood where I have a yard, some neighbors who do some decorating and about 200 kids that come thru (small number who live in the neighborhood and lots of peripheral apartment communities and probably kids who get driven in). My first year here, I had no idea the number of kids - I put up a couple carved pumpkins and 5-6 bags of candy. Holy cow! I had to sneak out 2x over the course of the night to pick up more candy! It was one of the most stressful nights of my life! LMAO! Barely any time even for a bathroom break.

The next 2 years I either hid or went out w/ friends to just get away because the stress of that first year was so bad!

Then last year, I started finding some really cool ideas for things to make on Pinterest. I put together 3 "faceless ghouls" and a bunch of store-bought props w/ some lighting.

Here's some of the fun - as you can see it's crazy dark, and as you can hear, lots of people!






I didn't realize just how dark my street gets after sundown, so two things I came away from the experience with - I need better lighting, and 2) I noticed several people stopped to take selfies w/ my ghouls, so I wanted to come up w/ some things that were selfie-worth!

This year, while sleeping in one weekend morning when it got really hot out (I live in Phoenix), my partially awake mind randomly came up w/ the idea of doing a skeleton pirate scene in the front yard. And thus the hunt began for ideas / how-tos and all things pirate. Thus I found hauntforum!

This year the scene will include:
- turning my carport into a pirate ship (from the side) with pirate captain at the helm w/ projected storm / waves against the back wall
- part of the ship (my front porch) will have a drunk pirate skeleton in a tub w/ continuous "rum" pour (great examples found here!) and 2nd skeleton dancing around w/ a rum bottle and gun
- island (in the front yard, around my weeping willow) w/ 2 skeleton pirates and a treasure chest - haven't decided if it will be them fighting each other w/ swords out, or digging up the treasure chest
- some sharks circling the island (in the yard), maybe a skeleton "ground breaker" but in the shark's mouth
- giant kraken / octopus tentacles reaching up from the "depths" of my driveway to wrap around the ship

Really excited to do this, but concerns are 1) cost for all of it; 2) time to put it all together (biggest issue is it's 110F here - can't do anything outside) and 3) where to store it all on November 1.

Anyway, i've spent probably 20 hours perusing this site for ideas so far, and will continue. Love all the great ideas and just the passion people have for the creepy!

3 months to Halloween!


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## SCEYEDOC (Aug 12, 2007)

Glad to see another newbie being bit by the Halloween bug! Perusing this site can be addictive, but you will definitely get some great ideas. Members of this site are extremely creative and motivated. I have borrowed an idea or two myself from these talented souls. Glad to hear about your upcoming pirate theme. I am sure the kids will love it and you will have fun building it.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

Welcome to the forum, and sounds like you're off to a good start as far as ideas go.

A yard display can always develop over the years, so a budget friendly (and stress friendly:jol approach is to start small and add something new each year. The most ambitious parts of your pirate plan are making giant tentacles and turning your carport into a pirate ship. Those could be a challenge to complete in three months, so you might consider targeting the other three scenes first for this year and then start planning the larger projects early next year (yes, haunters do start planning and building well before Halloween).


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## Hairazor (Mar 13, 2012)

Your plans sound great, will look forward to seeing the results


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## jud (Jul 30, 2016)

I'm so happy to have a new member to the haunt! This forum is the BEST thing I've found for idea's, thoughts and instructions, if you get stuck with your project, and by the way, you'll find that Halloween projects begin in November for next year... LOL! Welcome!


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## pirate_lady (Jul 30, 2019)

SCEYEDOC said:


> Glad to see another newbie being bit by the Halloween bug! Perusing this site can be addictive, but you will definitely get some great ideas. Members of this site are extremely creative and motivated. I have borrowed an idea or two myself from these talented souls. Glad to hear about your upcoming pirate theme. I am sure the kids will love it and you will have fun building it.


The hardest part is fighting the urge to "try" so many of the cool ideas here! The fact that I found the water pump for the drunk skeleton guy is a big enough accomplishment for this non-handyman type person!


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## yeloowtang (Aug 7, 2012)

welcome , your haunt sounds like a fun project  and it got me thinking about a fun thing you might want to try LOL
when you mentioned that island and treasure chest, sharks.. depending on the yard of course, I was thinking about either buying or making simple train like tracks to lay down in a huge oval and have a battery vehicle run the tracks with a foam (light weight) shark fin :-D would look like sharks waiting for a new meal.. a quick little animation to bring it all to life..


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## pirate_lady (Jul 30, 2019)

I like that idea! A little more mechanical that I'm up for this year. Once I got started building the various props, I decided to commit to doing the "octopus tenticles" and an "octopus head" out of chicken wire, and had some pool noodles left over and decided to make a really large scale shark while I was at it (actually just the shark head w/ the mouth open) who will be making like he's ready to eat a smaller shark head that is in the process of eating a skeleton (one of those "ground breaker" skeletons w/ no torso and just head, arms & legs sticking out of the ground). The biggest thing will be lighting because all of these pieces will be dark with big teeth (that I'll be painting w/ glow-in-the-dark paint).

Mostly I want to keep a bit of a funny / cartoon aspect to this so it's not actually scary - I've got way too many little kids who come to the door to really want to go to a full gross-out factor.


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