| 2008 & 2009 Project Plans |
| Projects 2008 - 2009 |
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| Plans for the 2009 season started right after Halloween 2008. People enjoyed coming in the house so much that I knew we had to do MORE!!! It will be a hard year to squeeze in a lot of extra time to work on Halloween stuff due to the "Collins Chocolates" candy business getting started. I know we will be busy as bees with that too but lets see what we can get done! |
| The main thing seems to be getting the cemetery started and to see how much we can get done. Since there will be a whole lot going on for Halloween 2008 the cemetery most likely will not be entirely completed till the 2010 season. We have a rather large yard so there may be more sections built for the 2009 season but for the 2008we are starting off with a 24x16 foot area. The exact location is still being discussed due to the fact that we have so many kids run across the yards here so having cords all over the lawn may not be the best thing. In this section are the cemetery fence instructions and pictures. I looked at a lot of fences in the Halloween sites, thank you to all of you for so many ideas. We decided to build our fence sections 5 feet high and 8 feet long. |
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| Click on the Links Below for Project We are Working On for 2009! |
| The pillars I have always been in love with are on the site "Raven Manor". Yesterday (9/25/07) one of these pillars got all the plywood attached to its skeletal wood frame>>>>HOLY COW are these things huge and the builders have not even attached the top sections yet. I know the kids are gonna just love these! 2009 - Will be attaching lights, attaching the arch & will age the pillars. |
| Last week we went (9/15/07)ahead and cut out one pattern set of tombstones for our cemetery. These are not very big tombstones but for this year they will get us by. We have another set to be cut yet and it has some larger pieces. These will all be painted grey and then we'll see how much time we have to do some additional things to them. The game plan for next year is to really focus on some large stones that are well done. So many ideas here on the net! 2008 - wooden tombstones got stenciled 2009 - well I bought all kinds of toold to start making styrofoam tombstones, look like we will get 3 done this season. |
| 2009 Season |
| Yesterday (9/25/07) the framework got built for this project. This project was just added a few days ago but looks like it would make a wonderful addition to our Witches Candy Cave! This project did not get done for 2008 so it will be completed for the 2009 season. |
| There were only two of these projects that got done for 2008. Most of the projects in this link will be for the 20089season. There are witches bottles, tin cans & jars, creepy caramel apples, rotten cotten candy, more fake foods & some little projects. |
| There will be a number of PVC figures made for the 2009 season. Most of our old props were just made with 2x4's and xmas tree stands. The below projects of the Collins Witch & The Collins Vampire were our 1st PVC props and were made for the 2008 season. |
| This will be a new project for the 2010 season. |
| This room has been a part of our haunt since we started letting kids in the house in 2006. We try to improve and add on to it each year and this year we will be completing the job of labeling all the jars & bottles and getting them fancied up. The kids really do love this table and they never seem to get enough time here to really look at everything that is on the table. The adults seem to be fascinated by it too! We hope to get the garage organized this summer so as to move the "Spell & Potion" room out in the garage along with a Gypsy Fortune Tent. Then the Dining room will become the Vampire Parlor for 2010. |
| This project was done for the 2007 season and looked just wonderful in our front window at night. Would like to figure out where to hang a few more of these in the Manor. |
| In 2008 Halloween Forum had a coffin building contest that we had won . This is the instructions for that coffin. 2009 - hope to get some material in the coffin, a pillow & hopefully a body! |
| For the 2009 season we will be adding 6 monks to the outdoor cemetery. |
| The Wulitzer Organ has finally been located in our garage & will make its journey into the house for the 2009 season! I hope to add some pipes & make a background for it. |
| Projects for 2010 |
| Larry of Halloween Forum sponsored a contest called "The Scary Scene" in 2008. The contest started in July & we had to have our scenes ready for judging by mid August. Even tho I did not think we could enter the contest due to the fact that we were going to put our scray scene in the garage & it was gonna take at least 2 months to clean the garage to make room. So I never entered the contest to start with. Also we were having 95 - 100 degree days & it was ridiculous to work in that garage. But Jerry rose to the occasion & to my astonishment he got half the garage cleaned in about 3 days. We had lost a lot of time thinking we were not going to do this so I was afraid it was to late .....but....cylonfrogqueen talked me into trying to pull it off. SO just a few days before the contest deadline was up we went ahead & entered our project. Day by day I composed a story based around a story that was true about the Butcher, he lived very close to where I grew up so that made the story more interesting. Day by day we would work on the main project & then set up props to help the story along. We set up a cemetery out back on the neighbors wooded property & shot pictures of that & of Jerry walking thru the woods with a meat cleavor. He looked good cause in real life he was a butcher & meat cutter. We had live actors in our scene & ran into a problem at the last minute, we needed a KID!! So in the truck we got & went driving down the street to see who of the neighbors had a kid we could borrow for the photo shoot. Needless to say we made the deadline. For us there was 2 different objectives to this contest. Jerry was trying to win & I was just wanting to enter so we could get the garage done & it would be done for halloween....one more thing out of the way. Well imagine the shock when our fellow haunters voted our Scary Scene as the winner! It was great to be voted for by peers whos work you so admire. Made us feel like we finally arrived especially because 2 months prior to that we won the coffin contest. Seemed the only way to get Jerry to get things done was for him to think he was competing. It was funny but thanks to all who voted for us. |