Thread: I need ideas for covered front porch

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I am new to this site and I am looking for suggestions or ideas for my covered front porch.

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(don't mind my daughter she thought her makeup was too scary so she wiped it all off LOL)
This was last year, just to give and idea of the space. It was actually scarier for little kids than it looks in the picture. All the webbing was black light reflective and I replaced my porch light with a real black light, it turned out pretty cool I think. I tried to make it look like a spider den with two large spiders. Some small children would not even come on the porch and a few even cried. So this year I can't really do that again. But I still want to do something. I am doing a graveyard scene in my front yard with crows, rats and last years spiders. We are going to make a couple of coffins and hopefully a skeleton pop up on one of the head stones. I am also going to see if I can make a scary grim reaper I just found the plans yesterday. I also have a fogger and I just found out how to make a chiller! So I am excited about this year.

So any suggestions would be great.

here i'll help you with your photos

http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w...rent=009-2.jpg

Welcome HappyHalloweenie! I thought your porch looked pretty good with all the spider webbing and such and can imagine it glowed nicely under the blacklights. I do know what you mean about feeling bad that the little ones cried and wouldn't even come up to your house. I experienced the same thing two years ago and have been thinking of ways to make the yard accessible for the little ones while still trying to give the bigger ones something scarier. We're not alone as a lot of neighborhoods have young tots ToTing so am sure others will have good suggestions as to what they've done. Your porch and front of house look like you have a decent amount of space to work with so that's good. I've got workmen showing up in a few minutes so will think about your house and try to come back with a few ideas.

I thought the idea was to make them cry

Hey,

I had a similar problem last year with some younger TOT's. My wife would walk to the street and give out the candy to the smaller children. We would tell the children that the spooky guys were to keep bad people away and that they looked scary but were really nice. We'd ask them if they were a bad person and inevitably they would say no and we would respond that the scary guys would be their friend. We'd then encourage them to come up and see the props.
The bonus is: We get to keep the haunt the way we want it, a few younger children find their courage and everyone gets candy. The down side is my wife had to babysit a few kids at the curb while their parents came to look at props.

I agree Blumpkin, but... *LOL* I have to cater to some scaredy cats m'self.

Halloweenie, what we have done is we have a PVC graveyard fence around the front lawn/graveyard scene. Rather than capping all the PVC what we do is we make lollipop (DumDums to be exact) ghosts with Kleenex, a bit of string and a marker and stick them in the PVC. My daughter and I call out the door often during the night letting people know to take the lost spirits home with them. We have great luck and fun with this, so even if they are too afraid to come to the door, they still get some candy.

You could do a carnival them like a lot of us. Enclose the porch for the really scary stuff and put one of those "You must be this tall for this ride" signs to filter out the little ones. Happy pumpkins on the outside of porch, satanic clowns on the inside.

You know I was just thinking about this. I dont have any kids so these things escape me but if I were a parent it would be a nice courtesy if haunts a had a rating system simular to the movies. Mine would be rated "PG-13" this year. I would have no problem giving mom and dad a heads up.

Like doto said, we used to just walk out off the porch and to the sidewalk if there were really little ones who were too scared to come up to the porch. Most of the time, the parents were able to coax them a bit closer for some candy.

We never did anything too gore-y for our yard haunt just for this reason...want to make it fun for all ages, but keep it spooky for the brave kids. Some kids are just super scardy-cats, though. Keep up the good work!

In fact I may post a sign that says rated PG-13. I need to look up the guidlines for rating. I think the parents might appreciate that.