Halloween Candy 2026

After much thought and debate regarding what candy we were going to give out this Halloween, we decided to stick with full sized Kit-Kat bars as the primary treat along with some Haribo gummy candy snack sized bags as bonus treats. We also got a variety bag of fun sized candy for "emergency reserves", just in case we get swamped with trick-or-treaters. While our highest count over the past 16 years in this neighborhood was ~ 142 in 2024, we typically average around 100. And since we can't simply turn off the front porch lights if we run out of candy with our annual Halloween night haunt, better to have too much candy than not enough. 36 count boxes of full sized Kit-Kat bars were on sale recently for $25.98 at BJ's Wholesale Club. Comes out to 72 cents/bar which in this day and age was too good a deal to pass up. Many grocery stores are currently selling a single full sized Kit-Kat bar for $1.99! Plus kids really seam to love getting the full sized Kit-Kat bars.

Home Depot Halloween 2026

2026 Haunt Lighting

Put together this year's haunt light stringers which will go up on the house towards the end of September. Purple, green, and lime facetted LED C9 bulbs will create a nice ambient color palette for the haunt but will also help advertise our haunt from afar on Halloween night since not everyone on our street gets into the spirit of things. We wish our neighborhood was more like the one in Clinton Township, Michigan.

IRON SMOKE PUMPKIN PIE WHISKEY

Mrs. Haunted Eve went to Iron Smoke Distillery last night to see a band perform and bought herself and Mr. Haunted Eve Iron Smoke Pumpkin Pie Whiskey T-shirts because they just scream "Halloween". Iron Smoke Distillery has thrown some fun Halloween parties over the years, but we're typically too busy with Halloween haunt preparations to be able to attend.

CREEPY TWINS AT MICHAELS

FRANKENSTEIN'S BRIDE UNBOXED

Roughly a year after purchasing the Bride of Frankenstein prop from Home Depot online, we finally unboxed and started to assemble it. The size of the prop's base stand was surprisingly larger than anticipated and its rear triangular support created a conundrum regarding being able to open our front storm door with the porch barricade prop in place. The solution was to move the barricade off the porch itself and place it on some additional 8" x 16" concrete pavers on top of the 16" square pavers we typically reserve for jack-o'-lanterns. Conundrum solved! The Bride's head is rather impressive looking. Online we assumed it was molded plastic, but it appears to be a silicone mask over a solid head form. We say "silicone" because it doesn't have the latex mask smell and feels more flexible than vinyl masks. If you have ever looked into quality pro sculpted silicone horror masks, you know they run $600 and up, so this makes the Home Depot Bride prop a real bargain. We do not intend to use the animatronic features or the light up eyes on this prop. Realism is what we're aiming for with this year's haunt theme, and the Bride's eyes look very real as is. We don't want to make the prop look cheesy!

2026 Aedicula Headstone Prop Progress

Got the new aedicula painted yesterday and installed the permanent decorative corbels and appliques on it today. Just needs its final antiquing coat. We combined what was left of our Cape Cod Gray Behr Textured DeckOver paint with what was left over of our Quartz Stone Behr Exterior flat paint for the base color on this aedicula. It's currently a very light gray, but once the watered down exterior flat black paint is applied for the antiquing coat, it will be a darker gray and will look more like granite/marble in appearance.