Viewing 19 - 27 out of 67 Blogs.

<< First  < Previous | Page:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next >  Last >>

yeah Yeah yeah... Happy Thanks giving to you too!

So I got that out of my system. Now on with the rest of my rantings!

I still have some halloween decor outside that I haven't had time or felt like bringing back in. I also have been in the garage twice after we stashed most Halloween decor in there at the end of the Halloween evening. Both times were yesterday and involved opening up the door, dropping a bag or two right behind the door and closing it.

Needlesly to say, the garage is one bigg frigging mess that needs cleaning. However, I haven't been in the mood for it yet. It's getting colder outside, the little one has been wanting some more attention lately and work has been pretty demanding. Some other big little things have happened in our family life that have taken my mind off of halloween and cleaning up from it a bit.

At least I got my slideshow of pictures converted into a nice DV-AVI of 470MB+ and uploaded it to Propmasters FTP site for inclusion on his DVD set I don't think I'll submit to the Halloween-L site, just because of how they puked out Propmaster from the creative DVD making process right after his first submission announcements went out. Not to mention the coupe these individuals tried to make on Howl2000 by making false claims.

Oh yeah, I showed off the video at the CalHaunts NorCal chapter November meeting at PerfessorEvil's place last weekend. Sterling and I had a blast. I was amazed that Sterling actually sat in my lap watching the videos and slideshows and actually requested more to be shown!

Anyways, time to go take a shower before the little one wakes up.

Rant you later!

-Yaron.

I've finally gotten around uploading 750+ pictures to my daughters website (http://www.sterlingyvette.com/) as well as modifying my simple halloween pages on my own website to include my 2006 yard haunt pictures.

Check these pages out on http://mov.dx.cx/halloween/ and click on the 'Sungonneth Cemetery 2006' picture link.

Let me know what you think of the pictures.

-Yaron.

Time to make my Halloween 2006 recap blog tonight. Warning: a long boring post lies ahead of this sentence...

First of all I want to say that my planning abilities for this years Halloween sucked @55! Next year it really should be better. I hate dealing with the stress and because of it bitch at everyone in my surroundings as a cause. They do not deserve that at all. So, like my wife announced to me: next year everything should be ready on September 1st. I agree.

I ended up getting everything set up just after 6pm on the 31st. Minus the top of the columns and minus the gate that was supposed to go between the columns. Forgot to setup my 4 out of 6 bluckies, forgot to use the rubber rats and bats. Didn't have the speakers to hookup the MP3 player to for ambient sound. So I just had my thunder track out and connected to my T&L machine. Had forgotten that I needed a splitter to split one channel from RCA to dual-channel 3.5mm jack plug, so I had to do with a non-delayed left-right thunder track and use the headphone AND line out of the CD diskman...

The columns are a simple plain gray and a stupid rectangular looking trim at the bottom. This has to change for next year, imho it looked absolutely awfull. Also, there are several cracks that need to be filled and I don't like the 'oversized' box look they have now. Also the positioning needs some work. I used the right column as intersection of the fence which meant the column stood on the lawn and a pop up sprinkler. This made it lean over like the leaning tower of Pisa: not a good sight, especially if I want that side of the gate to be closed. I think it should not be the intersection that replaces a fence post, but instead be connected using a connecting fence piece with one or two poles from a corner fence post.

The flood lights were not giving me the desired effect. Even though the red makes nice dark shadows of anything that is darker colored and not too far away from the flood itself, I was aiming at casting huge shadows on the house. Red floods just don't seem to do that. I probably should have reversed the colors: green or blue where there were red floods now and red where there were greens.

The fence pieces themselfs looked pretty darned good. Had people fooled in thinking they were genuine rod iron fence pieces. Ofcourse they were PVC. I am glad I ordered the finials from decorativeiron.com, even though I had to widen the inside of each finial a bit for them to fit over the 1/2 inch PVC pipe ends. The fence posts were absolute last minute items: I used 4 feet long 2x2's. I drilled a hole in it and pounded a piece of rebar in it. Then the post was pounded into place. The fence was attached using 14 gauge wire I had laying around: drilled a hole in the two fence 2x1 end's and holes at the same height through the 2x2 fence post. Simply stringing the wire through held everything in place. Even though it was effective, this needs improvement. An eye and hook mechanism or something similar is being considered for even faster setup and breakdown next year and being more sturdy. Same goes for the way the fence pieces are currently held together: everything is hot glued. Either a more thorough glue job needs to be done or I need to use a nail gun to more securely fasten the PVC pipe to the 2x1's. The finials need to be glued or nailed on as well, instead of being held on by friction and gravity.

The fence posts were also too high compared to the height of the fence pieces themselfs. Ofcourse I had the posts cut at 4 feet because they come in 8 feet lengths. The wife was kind enough to actually get them at Lowes for me and have them cut, so it was easiest to tell her to cut them in half aka 4 feet. The last minute black spray paint job was fast (2 minutes) and looked pretty good. Attaching the skulls I bought last year at Wallmart with a dallop of hot glue was exactly what I expected. Not bad for 97 cent styrofoam skulls.

The fog chiller worked well throughout the night. Somehow I forgot to actually raise the ice shelf (I had all the connector pieces available) a few inches. So now I had 20lbs of ice on a shelf that was a bit too low so fog would have to sit in the upper part of the chiller a bit longer before exitting the chiller. I'm unsure how this affected the working of the chiller. After like just one hour I suddenly ran out of ice, then with a 20lbs ice run refill I lasted the rest of the night: weird! Same with the fog juice: ran out of first complete tank in under an hour, then next tank lasted close to 3 hours. During ice run I bought some emergency pints of fog juice to ensure I would have enough in case the under one hour per tank ratio would continue. The entry hole of the chiller needs some work: now when the fogger is not on, fog will seep out from there. I wonder if a piece of straight tube will prevent that from happening. Also, still the ice-turned-to-water problem needs to be adressed. After I ran out of ice I had to empty the chiller by tipping it over. Either a pump or a valve need to be installed for easier more continous operation.

I loved the three caged mr thrifties from Big!Lots. They hung overhead in the driveway just beyond the two columns. Last minute strobe created the lighting for them. Next year however I'd like to have red LED spots lighting them instead or a more powerfull strobe at a very low frequency, something like smaller than 1Hz. I bet most people didn't even notice them this year.

Tombstones: absolutely loved them, especially the Celtic cross. However, perhaps next year less words and funny texts on stones, more serious content and groundbreakers/zombie bluckies added around them to more get that pumpkinrot type feeling. Most people did not even read the text on the stones anyways, so make it all ambiance instead of pure and direct entertainment elements would not hurt.

My grim reaper costume did scare at least one TOT from reaching the door, so I guess it was a success. The entire setup itself had a few younger kids think twice before entering the yard. One batgirl dressed girl had to finish her TOT round first before returning and having the guts to get to the glow bracelets and the candy. She deserved getting some reward :)

All in all, despite some disappointments I had a blast. No absolute count of the amount of TOTs we had but it was comparable to last year: 50-60 total. We even had some hit and runs: minivan pulls up, kid (and sometimes a parent) comes out, trick-or-treats and quickly back into the car....

-Yaron .

Just a quick entry with more details to come later.

Had a blast last night after a stressfull start: gates not finished, columns hastily 'finished' and setup completed around 6:15.

We had about 50 ToTs or so (didn't really count) and some good comments. Especially from folks living around us.

The fence fooled a bunch of people thinking it was real. I guess the finials really helped :)

Check my gallery for (7 so far) pictures of the big night.

Next year, my wife says I should be ready by september 1st. I have to agree. I don't wanna stress this much anymore.

As announced earlier: more later...

-Yaron.

yesterday, we went to a Halloween party of a friend of ours. Stacey in her poodle 50's/60's poofie dress, my friend Bug as one of the blues brothers, Sterling in her little princess outfit (she refused to wear her clowns costume :(... I wore my grim reaper costume.

We all had a blast. The little one was running around like a crazy girl playing with all the other kids: dancing, screaming, running etc.

Bug, Stacey and I were talking booze and 'Dutchie' quirks with the others.

We were home by 10 or so. Way past Sterlings bed time... Ofcourse she still woke up at 8am (technically 9am). She definately is on a daylight routine: when it's light out there, it's wake up time... Lets see if she is in the mood to "help" paint today.

-Yaron.

Okay, it's sunday and I'm still not ready yet. I had hoped to be able to set stuff up yesterday... Hopefully by the end of today I will be able to setup my fence.

I have painted all fence pieces in black (thumb and index fingers are numb of depressing the spray can nozzles) and I am currently working on making the finials wide enough to fit over the PVC ends. I have finished 4 sections with finials and I must say that they look absolutely great.

The cemetery columns are nearing completion too. I have all base foam attached to them, only trim and top to be added. Two patches of faux bricks were routed. Oh, did I mention before: Gorilla Glue rocks? Gorilla Glue rocks!

Today will be paint day for the tombstones and probably the brick parts of the columns. With some luck the gates will be finished too (with painting tomorrow in daylight)

At least one more run to Lowe's today: fence posts, some rebar and two more 'hinge' plates.

From the looks of it I will make it in time for the actual day. Next year we'll setup a few days or a week before the big day :) This is only my second year and hence a 'building big things' year.

-Yaron.

Yesterday afternoon was a good one: got the frames of my cemetery columns up. Ofcourse after I put the first one together it was all crooked. My brand new Black and Decker circular saw's 0 degree point was not 100% 0 degrees. In fact I had to mod it a little bit with my Dremel to make sure it could reach true 0 degrees.

The second column is waaaaay more straight now thanks to straight angled cuts on my 2x2's :)

I also spray primer painted my scythe staff in a rust brown... Doesn't look good colorwise, so I think I'll stick to making it black today.

Hopefully I can also get the columns sheeted with 1.5 inch styrofoam and trims created and attached. Then the rest of the week will be for carving out the brick parts so give it that old look and making the gates.

Also, this coming week will be paint week... Black spray paint galore!

-Yaron.

PS: I love the fact that my wife has been spoiling me with power tools this last year. Having an abundance of tools really speeds things up: 2 cordless drills and a 110V drill working together saves time swapping bits or doing hard manual labour.

So we have two siamese cats who are 16 years old. They are brothers, litter mates.

Tonight when making dinner, Sterling opens the screen of the front door and all of a sudden a little white siamese kitten walks in. Straight to our cats food dishes and starts eating.

I was like: wooohoo, trouble at Sungonnet Cemetery! So since this cat was obviously someones cat and seemed to know her way around the apartment. So she must have sneaked out from some of our neighbors house. My wife, Stacey, she started asking around to see if anyone was missing a cat. While she was doing that, our cats were not impressed: they were hissing and had poofed up tails. I could see a nice little cat fight start. SO I grab my cat (Pooh Bear, nicknamed Bubbah) and bring him to our bed where high and dry Staceys cat 'mo-mo' is looking at the kitten from a safe distance. I put Bubbah next to mo-mo and he starts hissing at his brother (the idiot), and ofcourse Mo-Mo hisses back. I scuff Bubbah and he starts growling. I'm like: Dude!@! He's your brother, not the kitten. Your brother is brown/black, the kitten is white with black socks.... Dude!

Stacey comes home and tells me that the kittens name is 'Cloe' and found the owners. So we bring the kitten back, but our two cats are still scared in their house. It seems they are still blaming each other for the new cat showing up. You can see them looking and blaming each other: "It was your fault! It is always your fault! Why did you allow this to happen?!? We were almost replaced by a young kitten. Stop acting so dumb. They might really replace us one day..."

I think that's funny :) Pooh-Bear has been in and next to my lap all evening being love-dovey.... He hardly is. He normally is iritatingly parading over your lap.... I guess he needs reassuring...

Anyways, back to the order of the day: 12 fence pieces assembled and ready for painting. Decorative Iron is shipping my finials (ordered 100 "safety ball tip" and 100 "fleur de lis" plastic finials) which probably arrive late next week. Just in time...

The scythe was assembled as well: 5 foot 3/4 inch PVC pipe, with the tip hollowed out a bit more so the original scythe screw top attachment would fit snuggly in there. Hot glued it shut and it now looks like the top and the PVC were made for each other. used two Ts for the handles. One at fore arm length from the non blade side. And at the non-blade side the second T. Both got a piece of pipe in them as well to make handles (5 inch at middle T and two 2 inch pieces at the non-blade end T). Used the hot glue gun to shut the pipe openings and give them a nice rounded cap. Talk about glue abuse... Tomorrow I'll spray primer and brown paint on it. The Scythe will then be done!

-Yaron.

Well, I got my little behind in gear and was Henry Fording it for my fence: drilled all holes left to be drilled and cut all PVC that needed to be cut. Assembled 5 pieces so I now have 8 completed sections ready for painting. Also I have 3 more sections ready for sanding, assembling and painting. All this in just under 2 hours...

This was a productive evening. Off to bed, to get some shut eye.

-Yaron.

<< First  < Previous | Page:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next >  Last >>