A Fright to Remember!

Happy ghouls!

This year for Halloween, little man decided that instead of trick or treating, he wanted to put on spooky costumes and scare other kids in their quest for candy. So, for the first time, we decided to decorate our house to eerie advantage, pose as ghouls, and see what kinds of scares we could cook up at Chez Bradshaw.

I'd never decorated the outside of the house for Halloween much (though the inside is Halloween to the hilt). Typically, I put out mums, pumpkins, and a fall wreath that could last us from September until after Thanksgiving. But THIS year . . .

First, we put up a graveyard in the front yard (those fun styrofoam graves - some of them were sizable!), and then we hung some ghouls from the porch and bushes. We put a black wreath on the door and switched the bulbs in the porch lights from a warm golden to a cold blue.

After that, we got a spooky projection of a glowing skull, which we splattered across the garage door. And lastly, for the show stopper, hubs got another projector and a really cool Halloween DVD to go with it. He hung some transparent cloth up between two trees behind our "graveyard" and threw that projection (which was skeletons digging out of their own graves) up onto the cloth. Then, we draped everything liberally with spiderwebs.

It look soooo good!

Our spooky trio . . . 

For costumes, I dressed as a floaty ghost, and I held a glowing bowl full of candy. Hubs dressed quite convincingly as the Grim Reaper, and Clay was a small ghoul. When Halloween came, we rushed home, wolfed down some chili that had been bubbling in the crock pot, and set the scene. (My dad was able to come over and spend Halloween with us this year. I was really glad he was there, because trick or treaters started arriving before we were ready! He handed candy out to our earliest guests and kept us company throughout the night.)

As darkness fell, kids were out in full force, and our spooky house was a huge hit! Everyone loved the projections and our costumes (though a couple of the smaller kids made their moms come and get their candy from me), and Clay jump scared one poor little Rubix cube so much that he dropped his Reese's!

All in all, a great night! WHAT will we get up to NEXT year? ;-)