Halloween 2014: what worked

I'm not going to try and hide the fact that Halloween 2015 is brewing a bit in my mind. Right now the daydream space of my brain is primarily focused on the Disney trip, but thoughts of the display for this year are starting to creep in.

Halloween 2014 was a success overall. I mostly see things that need to be fixed when I look back at the pictures, but 2014 was a pretty significant improvement from 2013. What's important to me is to continue to improve from the year before (as long as my heart is still in it) and to learn new creative/technical skills along the way. 

Before jumping into the things that need improvement in a future post, I am going to review the things that went over really well:

The projector: The number 1 compliment from the trick or treaters. They LOVED the projected image of the ghost in the window. One kid mentioned how she made her parents stop every time they drove by the house to watch the ghost. Cooper also loved "goap" (ghost) and waved to her every night. It was impossible to photograph, but you can see a vague ghost-like shape in the window in this picture:

Mod-podged pumpkin stick dude: This was a very last-minute project. I saw a tutorial on Halloween Forums describing how to transform a regular foam pumpkin into a creepy one. I was so happy with the results that I ended up giving him a scarecrow like body. Or, as Greg put it, "turned him into a Blair-Witch looking motherf*cker." This dude had such a big visual impact that I plan on decapitating him, replacing the head with a larger foam pumpkin and making a few friends for him for 2015.

Spider egg sacs: These were fantastically easy and cheap to make. I made a dozen or so of them one night sitting on my couch with a hot glue gun while watching Netflix. I was worried they would blend in when they were hanging from the tree, but they were really noticeable and creepy.

Foam "boarded" windows: These were personally my favorite part of the display this year. They completely altered the look of the house in the daylight and looked pretty cool against the lights at night. Disclaimer: these were absolutely a pain in the ass to make. I am going to post a tutorial later (I took dozens of pictures of the process). I really do think they were worth the effort, but I am not a blogger who lies about things being "easy peasy."