Thread: What I've learned from previous years

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With everyone starting to step up a gear for their halloween haunt, I thought it was time to start this thread to highlight the pitfall or triumphs that the rest of us can take note of

So to get the ball rolling here are two of my "lessons learned"

1. Whilst it looks great to let the grass grow in your front yard to give your cemetery a real unkempt look it has a downside. The first year I did this, then spent many an hour working on a skeleton ground breaker and carefully crafting the hands. When I put the it in place the grass covered the hands. So now I am careful not to let the grass grow too long so that my props can be seen clearly!

2. Last year was my first year to have columns as part of my display. Part of the feature was four dollar Tree gargoyles on top of each column, one on each corner. The overall effect was pretty good. So after Halloween, I moved the columns to the back yard where they were stored outside because of lack of storage, but I thought this would be OK.... Wrong!!

About 2 months later went out in the back yard and wanted to relocated the columns to another part of the yard. To my dismay, a couple of the gargoyles had disintegrated, and crumbled away, and two more were showing sign of deterioration. So I had to remove them from the columns which was not so easy as I had used gorilla glue to glue them on. I salvaged the rest of the gargoyles but now have four holes on the tops of the columns where the styrofoam came away.

Hopefully the lessons learned will be a lesson for you all

So ... who wants to share their lessons learned ?

Forgot to add a positive lesson to my post

I found that if I needed a small piece of duct tape, it wasn't so easy to tear off from the roll. So I came up with this idea...

I bought a second roll of duct tape, and cut around the roll at the center of the tape. This gives me two rolls of duct tape at half the width of normal size and more convenient for the smaller projects.

TIP: You do not have to cut all the way through the whole roll, just use one side at a time. Once you start, the tape will tear down the center because of the tape on the other side

That's a great tip regarding the duct tape -- Ill have to try that.

Let's see . . . lessons learned (thinking . . . more thinking)

have I learned anything yet?

1. Get your Halloween stuff out early and make sure everything works. Nothing like finding out at the last minute you don't have the right floods or bulbs have burned out.

2. It is never too early to program your LOR sequence.

3. It is never too early to start buying candy for the onslaught of ToTs. The secret is, don't open the bags too early!!

4. When using a latex spray gun to paint a large prop -- please remember to move the cars out of the driveway and make sure they're not down wind of the sprayer!

5. Always label your storage bins with their contents each season. By the time you're checking your supplies, you will have forgotton half of what's in every bin. And if there's "that one thing" you're looking for, it will be in the last of the dozen bins you look through.

6. A five year old will change her mind every week when asked what she wants to be for Halloween -- so don't start asking until October. (June is way too early)

7. Chances are your mother-in-law will not see the humor in putting her name on a tombstone in your graveyard.

lmao @ #7 !!!!

never put too many things next to eachother

always have electricial cords if u have alot of lights and such

1) It's never too early to start on prop making. This year will not be very spectacular as I had too much happen lately to work on props. So, I'm having to reuse a lot of props and they are mostly ones that need work *SIGH*.

2) If you change your theme each year. Make sure that you do any totally new props first and then reskin the old one later. That way you've got two sets of props in case your grand scheme doesn't come off. If I had done what I originally planned, (deskining in December in preparation for reskinning later), I would have not enough props to even do anything at this point and would have to skip this year.

3) Alwyas search for sounds early. There's nothing like the last minute scramble to put together your soundtracks for your Awesome props.

4) If at all possible, Set up your lighting early (like now). It's one of the most important aspects and can be the most frustrating last minute. You can always reposition. But, if you find that you've misplaced a flood light or an extension cord, It's best to find out now.

5) You can never have too many speakers and amps.

6) Test your moving props now. Dig them out of storage and test them this weekend.

7) Check all your props soon and see what needs touch up paint. Don't paint them yet (more damage will likely come). But, you can watch for sales that way.

8) Seal your paper mache well and spray it with something to repel animals. I used paper mache to patch a corner of our columns that had gotten beat up and sealed it like I normally would. Came out the next morning to find rabbits munching on the corner.

That's all I can think of for now.

1) Remember...it's going to be dark! No need to go TOTALLY overboard (moderately overboard is OK) detailing the heck out a prop when you have a bunch of other things to get to. No one will notice the detail in the dark except you. (I'm completely guilty of this, but can't help it!)

2) Don't be surprised if everything you thought you anchored so well is blown over by a freak Kansas windstorm the Sunday before Halloween.

3) If you live on a corner, don't block the view at the intersection!!

1. Don't forget to take out batteries at the END of the season.
2. Don't forget to buy the batteries.
3. Yes--buy the PVC pipe-cutters!!! Your hacksaw isn't nearly as good.
4. Who took the scissors??!!! I'm chaining them to my wrist this year.
5. For those of you with a sprinkler system for your lawns, don't forget to turn 'em off.
6. When setting up a graveyard scene on a lawn, or anything else that requires you to tramp thru your lawn, and a large dog lives with you, don't forget to pick up the...uhh... landmines before you do that tramping.

LOL!!

Those are some excellent tips! I always forget to take the batteries out.

1) I f you have a large display with many things to set up, pull everything out a day or two early and make a plan of where you want everything to go.

2) If you have motion activated animatronics and live on an intersection of a busy street make sure traffuc can't set off your prop, you can burn out the prop and cause accidents.