Pre-Haunt Outdoor Lighting

We decided to decorate with "normal" Halloween lighting for now and will switch over to the creepy carnival themed colored lights for the haunt at the end of October.

Stolloween's 2020 Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge

If you're not familiar with Stolloween, it is the namesake of artist Scott A. Stoll's fantastic papier mache Halloween creations. For the 2020 Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge, he created a "Haunted Mine Dragon Lair" scene using materials and props from Home Depot. But his artistry with paper plays into the scene with how he created the mine shaft entry and the realistic depth of field. For details on how it was all done: https://blog.homedepot.com/haunted-mine-dragon-lair-scene/

Contactless Trick-Or-Treat Goodie Bag Table

We tested out the front porch trick-or-treat table/barricade to make sure it sat level and didn't need any adjustments before attaching the front fabric panels, and it's good to go. On Halloween night we will place several plastic jugs filled with water on the bottom shelf of the table to weigh it down. The porch is going to be decorated to look like a fortune teller tent, so the table will be a part of it and will blend in nicely. As of this moment, the governor of NY has stated that he would not ban trick-or-treating on Halloween, but stated he would share advice/guidelines for it. Parents.com has an article with some guidelines as well for trick-or-treating this year, and the treat bags on a table in front of your door akin to curbside pickup from a restaurant is one of their suggestions as well. Parents.com also shared this clever DIY treat delivery system as well, a "Candy Slider", but that one requires gravity, and we're a single story ranch. No matter what we're putting up our haunt for Halloween and will be photographing it to share with you all afterwords just like any other year.

ToxicToons Limited "Octoboo" Halloween Designs

Plugging our favorite Halloween/Horror artist. It's important to help support independent artists during these pandemic times. Go to: ToxicToons.com to pre-order these limited edition shirts and shop for other Halloween gifts and goodies.

Updated Carnival Ticket Booth Lighting

Back in 2016, we had used incandescent clear G30 bulbs for the ticket booth prop, but this year in order to continue with the same red, yellow, blue color theme as the haunt's gutter light stringers, we needed new colored bulbs. The G30 incandescent colored bulbs appear to be being phased out now and what are still available cost almost as much as the G20 LED versions, so decided to give the G20 LED bulbs a try and are happy with the results. Acrylic versus glass, and cool to the touch, plus use 86% less electricity than the incandescent version.

Netflix's Hubie Halloween Drops October 7th

The Smell Of Fear Candles

Plugging our new favorite candle shop: The Smell of Fear Candles makes horror inspired natural wax blend candles that are just "out of this world" fantastic smelling. We learned of the candle shop from a fellow blogger's post earlier this summer (many thanks to Lady M's Haunted Parlor) and have purchased numerous candles for ourselves and as gifts over the past couple of months. We think it's important to help support small independent shops and artists during these pandemic times. 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheSmellofFear