Thread: Attention "North Carolina Haunters"!

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Well Jan. 3rd we finally held our Halloween Xmas Party & what a good time we had! This party was for Forum members that are going to form the North Carolina Haunters Prop building group! It was suppose to be held Dec. 13th but I got behind with things because of these on going health issues so I asked the group if it would be ok to postpone the party till after New Years & they said yes!

It was such fun meeting Forum members in person & it was suggested that each member bring along a prop or 2 to show to the gang! We had a number of things to look at & I had left my scary scene from the contest all in tack in my garage!

Group members brought along their families so we had quite a lively time!

WE started with munch food......cheese & jalepena's, guacomole, salsa's, taquita's, chili poppers and my homemade pico de gallo. I also set out chips & dip, & several other types of munchies.

We waited till everyone arrived and visited a bit before we started the dinner. The dinner consisted of a baked ham with tator salad & baked beans or a mexican platter which we made up in the kitchen. It was a beef burrito smothered with your choice of homemade red chili or green pork chili & topped off with gobs of cheese we then melted in the microwave. Next added to the plate was a helping of mexican rice, a scoop of refried beans, a taco, & a portion of sliced lettuce & chopped tomatoes.

Desserts consisted of my homemade cream pies....chocolate, peanut butter, banana & coconut cream. Plus cherry, german chocolate & lemon cheesecake.

After the meal we started our meeting to decide when we will start to meet, how often we are going to try to meet, and what we want to build. So we are starting in March & will be starting with tombstones.

Attendees were: Daveinthegrave & family, Mr. & Mrs. Spookineer, Legend of the Wood, JCG106 & family, my neighbors who have the little guy that works with us for Halloween & Joe , Jer & me!

What a great time we all had & look forward to getting together in the future.

Some of the members that had planned on being at the party on the 13th were not able to make it on the 3rd but we look forward to meeting them at future get togethers.

After the meeting we had members show the props they brought ....Legend of the Wood is a pretty new member on our Halloween Forum here but what a great guy he is and a talent for building. He brought along a lifesize coffin!!! He also makes these really neat corpse skulls that look so real I could not believe it!
He also brought what I guess you would call a scone, its a black plaque that holds a candle in it & he had mounted a battery operated candlelight in it...very cool. He also brought some tombstones, one having his Haunt Logo on it. He & his girlfriend are getting ready to launch a site which will have info on it about where haunts can be found so we look forward to that starting up.

DaveintheGrave brought this crazy crawling skeleton that I hope he will offer to teach us to make. The body was made out of paper mache & he had some contraption on it that made this thing crawl across the floor. I envisioned it in my haunted hallway with a strobe on it, the kids would freak out!lol He also brought along these eyes that light up & you use them in the bushes. He had mentioned that he use to make them & sell them on EBAY so for anyone interested you might want to take a look at these.

The families were sent thru the Scary Scene in my garage after they toured the xmas decorations in the house, then they got shipped down to the basement for our party. My house had so many decorations upstairs there was no room to sit & eat so we partied in my candy kitchen.

Before everyone left we lined the kids up with candy bags at the candy case & each of the kids got a bag of my chocolates to take home. I forgot to send the candy I had for each family home with them so I have to get that to them this next week.

I also got some unsuspecting gifts!lol Really this was a shock.....the JCG106 family put one of thier goul twins up for adoption & thought I would make a good parent.......I'm not sure how to tell you guys what this THING is but for sure I'll get a pic of it this week for ya to see. We named him Halloween Homer!

Daveinthegrave left me a skeleton head that can be used for our project with him this next month & a delicious box of Cookies!

Spookineer brought a shopping bag of delicious wines & he sent me a pc. of styrofoam & today sent over a lifesize skeleton. I was so surprised with all these nice things from these folks!

I can only say as a hostess what a wonderful group of people they all were, very nice families. I so look forward to them all meeting here in March. Our neighbor has offered to let us use his big workshop in march just incase Mother Nature acts up cause my garage is jam packed & with all these new plans of online & in person building groups I have an idea its gonna get worse!!


the Muffster

My Dear "Still Lost in NC"

I'm so sorry its taken me this long to respond to your entry there but I was off the board for a bit with all the preparations for this party we just had. I'm so sorry we did not get together before now cause we sure would have loved having you join us!

YA know ya see a lot of people on the Forum who do not have a lot of TOT's & we all try to keep them motivated to keep putting up their decorations & hopefully people will come. Sometimes its hard to do all the work & no one comes to appreciate it. My philosophy is to just keep banging away with the decorations & sooner or later they are gonna take notice.

Thats how it went for me.....the school bus goes past my house so thats how I got started. Moved in this neighborhood 4 1/2 yrs. ago & neighbors said there are no tot's. Since I decorate mainly for myself I put it all up anyway and that 1st yr. we had 140 kids & those kids told me .........we watched you everyday we went by putting up all the decorations & we told the other kids in school. This last season I had 375 people come through.......so the answer to your question about is there Halloween in NC is YES!!! I say build it & they will come!

Trust me I was the weirdo in my neighborhood too. BUT now the others are starting to add a little more each year! All it takes is one weirdo like us to decorate & in some cases it may take longer but ya got keep the spirit alive & sooner or later they are gonna come!

I try to make my display so that they just can't wait till halloween night to come to the door.

This group of people here that are getting together well I am the peeon because their displays are way more elaborate than mine cause they are way more advanced builders. I sincerely hope you will join us. MAIN piece of advice is........Ya gotta put your stuff up no matter how many TOT's come. The kids will start talking about you in school & then it should start to come together. I'm sorry I have to go up & look at your utube video to see what you have there.

Think you would be interested in joining our group?

Muffy

PS I looked at your skeletons & they are terrific so I see I am a peeon with you too!!lol I just wanted to mention that amongst the people at the party everybody had large numbers of TOT's with one exception & that was Spookineer but he has just moved here from California & did not get up all his decorations cause they were still getting situated in the new house around Oct. .

I hope you will take the time to come meet the group & with the fact that you are a DJ.....boy you could really put on a show at your place!!

Great advice.. (( you sure your not a Psychologist )) LOL.... Thanks for the encouragement... I'll try it again, hopefully this year.. Jobs are laying off people left & right so I'll see how it looks for me by October.. I'm being laidoff starting Monday 19th about 135 of us are being let go.. (( ROLLERCOATER OF LIFE )) i guess.. and with the Part time DJ, well people don't have the extra money to spend on frivolous stuff these days.. most just want a nice small Wedding, Anniversary, Birthday and thats all.. BUT anyhow.. (( enough of the DEBBIEDOWNER )) stuff...!!! Lets get those PROPS in motion people....!! No money for Trick or Treat candy but lots of props..LOL... I'll be in touch..
Thanks Muffy,

Kevin...

Muffy,

Sorry that I have not posted before now. I have been locked down with launching my new site (http://www.homehauntersassociation.com). It come online this week and we have started to get interest in the site with 5 registered home haunts and 5 vendor affiliates on board. We have also stood up a Home Haunters Forum and a Prop Swap Classified board.

I encourage everyone to go out and visit us. Register your Home Haunt, take a look at the affiliates, and use the links to shop around. Also, don't forget about the forum, I have posted my projects there and also are starting to get some professional involvement.

LegendoftheWood

Kevin ...congratulations on the launch, not an easy thing to do. I wish you the best of luck & for sure I'll be visiting!

Muffy

North Carolina Haunters members please be sure to visit fellow haunter LegendoftheWood's web site, the link is in message #94 just above here. Please be sure to register your haunt there so we can give people we talk too a place to go to look up where haunts are here in our neck of the woods!

Also our "Make & Take" is coming up in March as Spookineer mentioned we need to pick a weekend so lets try & get that done. Get together will be ...."Our Style of Tombstones"....I hope each of you bring samples of your style of tombstone as we see in the site haunts that everyone makes them differently. For those of us attending that have never made tombstones it would be nice if we could make a list of materials that would be used in making these. Also if any of you have witches jars & bottles made I ask if you could bring along some samples for ME (lol) to see,I'm going to work on my jars & bottles so I'm looking for ideas.

As usual families are invited to attend & for those of you that did not make our first get together this meetup will also be here at our place. Look forward to seeing more of your smiling faces!!

the Muffster

Greetings Haunters,

The North Carolina Haunters Group finished its season with the last Make & Take being in August 2009. We had the best turn out ever. There was so many props to see it was hard to remeber them all.

We are always looking for new members to join our group, we're an easy bunch to get along with!lol

Our next get together is after the holidays, its the social gathering of the year, we just eat, show a couple of props each, eat, talk about how our halloween night went, eat. Its for the family so bring them along. For new members if you would like to check us out please feel free to contact me & I'll get you an invite. All you have to bring is a hearty appetite.

the Muffster

party date: Jan. 2nd
Linwood , NC