Early October 2002

Added "picket fence" stakes to the back of my tombstones. Figured if I'm still using the styrofoam ones 5 years later that I'd bectter make it easier for me to stick them in the lawn. :) PIcked up a few things with a little extra spare cash, they're added to the purchases page. Anything above "t-shirts" in the list. :)

I pulled in the decorations from the porch, they're currently piled in a corner of the living room. Still need to dig out the banners and hang them up, that'll probably be this weekend.

Yay! After feeling like mashed potatoes for the last two weeks, I finally got off my rear and hung some lights up. :) Currently, "some" is the lights in the front picture windows, the cauldron and some flashing bats in one of the 1st floor side windows, and setting up the flaming skull in the foyer staring out at everyone. (Yea, I know, pictures of this year's goodies aren't up yet, they will be though...just not today...)

I got two replacement strings of C-9 red bulbs...I'll just transfer the bulbs from one string to another. The ones that I did have up are starting to look pretty crappy with the dye job coming off and all. I'll have to remember to take the bulbs out after xmas so that they don't start peeling.

Tomorrow I tackle the lawn and run my very messy collection of extension cords so that I can light things up.

You know that dreaded "Something Is Going To Go Wrong" feeling? Welp, I got two new strings of 25 big red bulbs so I could just replace the bulbs in the strings on the drainpipes.

Damn things must be made differently - only about 4 of them lit up between the two strings. *grumbles* But, I put them back in the original strings and they alllll light up. Now I can't decide whether I want to just hang these over the current set or replace the current set with the new set. :/

But the rest of my bushes are lit and the bushes are trimmed, so that's half the battle. :)

Woke up around 7am and got all the decorations laid out, ready to toss on the lawn when it warms up enough I won't turn into a popsicle. :) Started prepping food for tonight's party (the daughter - I'll call her Cordelia - of someone I know plus 3 of her friends). Worms on a bun, toxic waste punch, hairy eyeballs, and blood punch. I'm going to set up a recipie section so I don't have to go hunt them down next year.

I did a little more decorating indoors so it wouldn't be totally boring when the kids arrive. Started putting decorations out on the lawn around Noon - amazingly enough, because I had laid them out ahead of time, I was able to get them all up in about an hour, so when the local school did their costume parade, everything was all set up.

Cordelia and her friends didn't arrive until almost 5pm - turned out one of the guys they had to pick up lived out in Spencerport, so that added about an hour travel time - but were pleasantly surprised when I told them they could dig in to all the food. :)

TOT'ers started showing up around 5:30, pretty much as I expected, and I got a lot of local kids between then and 8pm. A few scattered bigger kids up until 9pm, when Cordelia and friends headed to their respective homes. After that, zilch. Bah, I have a ton of candy left over now. :(

4 November 2002

Of course, I forgot to get pictures ON Halloween so I had to set up this weekend and get pictures (and I'm sure I looked like an idiot setting everything back up again too, hehehe) and I still forgot to get a few angles. I also managed to snap one of my tombstones in half as I was stuffing it back in the ground. :( Ah well, good excuse as any to get new styrofoam over the next year and make replacement tombstones.

I did have the fog machine out this year, but got smoked out *again* everytime I set it off because of the way the wind was going - and I had it in a different location this year. Argh, I just can't win...

Most of these are night-shot mode pictures because by the time I got done it was too dark to get effective daylight shots. Each one links to the full-size image (which, depending on your screensize, may require scrolling sideways for the long horizontal ones.):

The full shot - all the decorations in one picture:

The tombstone set on the left-hand side:

The infamous "DOOM Torch":

The new skulls & cauldron thing (it has a silk flame thing, but the fan is weak enough it wasn't worth turning on in the continual breeze that night.):

My semi-famous front door window decorations - this year it was a flaming skull, in previous years it was just a skull with a red light or a plain non-lit skull - First the normal view, this is close to what the TOT'ers would see as they came up the steps:

And the night-shot mode view (so you can see all the details):