Projects

Jun192019

Project Halloween Butters and Dragons

Seems like an odd time to be pulling out a Halloween post don’t ya’ think?  Truth be told, we were celebrating my friend in haunt’s (Brad’s) 30 year service anniversary at work and the topic of Halloween came up – which to be honest isn’t that odd as we are often talking about Halloween – a year long holiday for the two of us.  Brad is working on building a CNC machine which I am hoping is ready before too long.  I have big plans for that thing hehehe.  Anyway, all that talk about Halloween reminded me I still had some 2018 Halloween posts I had not gotten to.  So, tonight I bring you the annual Halloween pumpkin carving for 2018.

Halloween Pumpkin 2018

Only 7 month’s late, but what the hell that’s nothing compared to the backlog of wildlife pictures I need to get through.  After the yeoman work of putting on the Annual Halloween Haunted Trail event (link here) at the beginning of October, it always seems a bit of a letdown when the actual Day of Haunt comes around.  Last year we opted to drive around to check out the worthy displays in the surrounding local towns.  When we got back I was truly inspired and went to work on getting the final carving done on the foam pumpkin.

Halloween Pumpkin 2018

Hit the jump to see some progress shots.

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Jan272019

January, the New October

It may be white and fluffy on the outside, but it’s full on orange inside at Intrigued.  If you have spent any time on this blog you should be keenly aware that Halloween is a special holiday around here.  In fact, it is pretty much a year round activity.  We spend our off months preparing for the Annual Haunted Trail of Tears so we are ready for the big event.  I say that in jest, because we are never really ready for it as every year is a mad scramble to get all the projects wrapped up, the multi-day trail build  and then the extended weeks of effort to get it all packed back away.  All that work for a single night of spook with friends and family.  One of my traditions is to carve the annual pumpkin on Halloween night.  The party is actually at the beginning of the month, so usually I just finishing up the hard work and looking for some relaxing fun to put a bow on another year.  Last year I almost go there, but I opted for a theme that took me a LOT longer than intended.

Pumpkin Carving Halloween 2018

Hit the jump to read some details about the carve!

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Dec312018

Haunted Trail of Tears 2018 – Tear Down

Well, it has finally come, the grains of sands are just about finished falling for this year and the giant blog clock is just about to turn to year … wait for it .. wait for it .. TWELVE.  So many years, so many words, so many photographs and still enjoying every minute of it.  Well, maybe not those times when I am up against the wall trying to get the blog quota in before the turn of the month.  I haven’t finalize plans for the New Year yet (do not like to rush into that due to my absolute commitment to fulfilling whatever resolutions I come up with), but it feels at this point the blogs will be once again a mainstay in 2019.  As likely the last post of 2018, decided to close out the Halloween posts.  So far I covered the prep and two posts on the trail itself.  Only thing left is to talk about the tear down.  The way this usually works, is it takes a couple of weeks to get it all prepped, another 3 or 4 days to get it set up and then excruciatingly tiring hours to get it all hauled back up the hill once all the guests have left for the night. This year it went a little different thanks to the rain that started falling as the party was winding down.  We had to take the final pictures during the rain (thankfully the tree canopy kept us fairly dry).  By the time everyone left, the rain was coming down too hard to get the vehicles down and up the now very muddy hill.  Only thing I could do was put on the rain coat, turn off all the props, remove the sensor batteries and haul up a few of the smaller electronic decorations I didn’t want expose to the night of rain.  That took over an hour to do that resulting in one rain soaked Bri.

Haunted Trail of Tears 2018 - Tear Down

Hit the jump to see a few more shots from the tear down.

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Dec292018

Nightmare After Christmas – Pt 2 of 2

We are on our way back from a short trip to Tunica Mississippi for some birding and gambling.  Birding absolutely sucked and gambling wasn’t that much better.  Tunica has gone way down since our last visit there over a decade ago.  There were at least 3 or 4 casinos completely closed down and the ones remaining are definitely on the decline.  We won’t be planning a return visit.  We hit the Wapanocca National Wildlife Refuge in hopes of getting another Bobcat or finding that Cougar we located last time, but missed getting a picture of – struck out on both counts and a lot of the refuge was closed for migration or hunting.  Luckily we had a fun time at the Memphis Zoo so it wasn’t a total waste.  The good news is I can finish the Halloween post I started from the casino a few nights back,.  Yep, gonna take you on the rest of the trail so turn off all the lights and lock the doors – it’s the spooking hour.

Let’s start where we left off last time which brings us to the smoldering groundbreaker.  Ron gave me this item as a gift last year.  It jerks randomly while emitting wailing sounds and lights up.  It is set up for a fogger to enhance the effects, but we didn’t have one to spare this year – picked up a couple more at end of season sales this year, so look for that addition next year.

Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Think I bought  this hanging lady at last year’s clearance sale,.  She lights up and has eerie sayings implying it was your fault she was left hanging on that tree.  A lot of people missed this particular decoration this year due to it being somewhat hidden on a side of the tree.,

Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Hit the jump to see more sights from this year’s Haunted Trail of Tears.

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Dec272018

Nightmare After Christmas – Pt 1 of 2

Hope everyone had a safe and merry Christmas or related celebration!  Thought I would continue my end of year stat pad .,..err, I mean Haunted Trail of Tears recollection posts.  If you recall on Christmas Eve I pulled a Tim Burton and provided insights into what it takes to bring our annual Halloween event to life,  All that hard labor is for a relatively few hours of entertainment for our friends and family.  That and Linda says it satisfies my Halloween obsession for a couple of months, well at least weeks.  This lights out tour ended up being a large post.  To keep your browser’s image cache from burning up, I’ve decided to break this into two parts.  Probably will keep the dialog to a minimum and focus on the images we took after the guests had left and just before that damn rain let loose.  Flip the switch off on the moon and queue the scary music, it’s time for a haunting!

Our trail started with Paul’s new blow-up dragon.  As mentioned previously, it was too big and too new to subject it to the woods.  A perfect way to start, tame enough for the children yet still impressive to see in the blackness

Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Mr, Spider once again greets our guests as they begin the journey down to the bottoms

Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures from the first part of the trail.

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Nov062018

New Stones for the Haunted Graveyard

Welcome to the first installment of the Halloween 2018 Haunted Trail of Tears Project Posts.  For those of you not familiar with my “addiction” as my wife refers to it, we host an annual Halloween cookout.  One of the main elements of that cookout is a haunted trail we set up in through our woods.  It is quite the event and has grown to epic proportions over the years.  My friend in haunt Paul and I tend to go overboard on our favorite holiday.  You might get the impression this is something that is thrown together in a week or so near Halloween.  Truth is, this is a 364 day a year activity.  Paul and I are constantly working on new decorations for the trail throughout the year.  The day of the cookout is simply the time when all our friends get to see what we have been squirreled away in our labs building all year.   During the next couple of months I am hoping to go through some of my new builds for the trail.  Keeping with tradition, I will also be posting about the overall haunted trail so  you get a better feel for just how labor intensive this is.  One of my projects this year was to improve our grave yard with some new headstones.

Project Head Stones for Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

How scary is that!  Pretty happy with how my stones turned out this year and figured I’d walk you through all the steps it takes to get one err.. three of these babies ready for the trail.  From a materials perspective, the base of the stones are made out of 2″ foam insulation.  A 4×8 sheet of that stuff is ridiculously expensive for what it is (~$22/sheet depending on the quality you get).  Look for sales and the 11% off at Menards events to bring that price point down a bit.  You should be able to get a number of good sized tombstones out of a single sheet.  One sheet yielded 5 for me – one from last year – link here three intricate stones and then the second from the left is just an extra from the remaining piece (if you look close you can tell is was left over from cutting out the cross).

Project Head Stones for Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Hit the jump to see how this year’s stones were made!

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Dec242017

The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017 – Part 2: Soul Crusher

Well folks, today we officially close out the Halloween 2017 blog series.  I wanted to get this done before Christmas arrived and thanks to a quick check with the calendar it looks like I am coming just under the wire.  To be honest, there is a good reason for the delay thanks to trying to wrap up all the prep work on another series I’ll be introducing very soon – as a foreshadow, if you do not like birds you are going to be seriously disappointed.  I’ll try to break that up a bit with some other topics, but I am not going to pull punches on that – it is going to be hard uppercut of feathers coming your way.

Hope I didn’t scare you with that foreshadowing, because I’m saving the nightmares for THIS:

Scenes from the The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Yes folks, it is the second part of the legendary Trail of Tears Haunted Trail.  In the last post I took you through the first part of the trail (link here).  I purposely broke that post off at the point where the trail content delves deeper into hell.  Just in case you are new to the trail, my friend in haunt, Paul, and I set the trail up to be scarier the farther you go along the trail.  This gives parents and the faint of heart the opportunity to drop tail and head back for the safety of the house.  As with the previous post, I am going to let you enjoy the photos we took right before tear down (about 2am) rather than go into much detail.  Rain was coming fast preventing us from really taking the time to get the good low light camera out – luckily we were able to make a quick run through with the cell phone and capture what we could,.

My brother Ron got me the smoldering ghoul below.  It comes with a fogger attachment to give it a real burning effect.  I still need to pick up a fogger for next year, but it looked sufficiently creepy on its own!

Scenes from the The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Thanks Ron!

Scenes from the The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Hit the jump to see and read a bit about the rest of the props on the 2017 Trail of Tears Haunted Trail.

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Dec172017

The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017 – Part 1

Happy Halloween Everyone!  Oh, I seem to be a bit late on this one.  Let’s go with Nightmare before Christmas – yes, that seems much more appropriate.  I’ve taken you through all the new props and even walked you through the build process.  What I have not done is actually taken you through trail itself – well, at least give a glimpse of the experience.  There are too many decorations to take you through the entire trail, so just going to touch upon what we were able to capture before it was all tore down that night.  Thanks to everyone who contributed to the gallery.  We were so pressed for time this year that we didn’t get around to taking the camera through – next year hoping to have a 360 experience thanks to new technologies that are hitting the market.  Until then, we’ll go old school.  Not going to comment too much so enjoy the shots.

Paul’s giant pumpkinhead towered over the start of the trail – remember, the trail gets scarier as you go.

Scenes from The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

New this year was the Minion blow-up.  I picked this up for Linda since she is always referencing their memes.

Scenes from The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Hit the jump to see the rest of the first half of the Trail of Tears!

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Nov242017

The Trail of Tears 2017 – The Prep

The decorations are all put away and all of this year’s Halloween prop tutorials have been written and published on the blog.  There is just one more thing to put a bow on this year’s Trail of Tears Haunted Trail – the walk through!  Oops, to be more accurate there are just three more things to do. The trail itself has grown so big that it takes two posts to get through it even covering just the highlights.  In addition, I like to add a behind the scenes post just to give a feel for what goes into this whole ordeal.  This is that very post.  Unlike last year (link here).  We really didn’t get a lot of pictures during the prep phase – mainly due to the fact we were incredibly busy trying to get everything ready to go.  Thankfully, my brother Ron, my friends in Haunt Paul and Brad along with another good friend Sung (not a haunter, but gracious enough to help us out in our time of need) all helped get this pulled off.  My help came the weekend before to get the props put together, batteries tested and inserted, the extension cords laid out on the trail and Ron completed all the heat sensor circuits for the new decorations.  Like last year, the basement was completely full of props by the time we got everything put together.  This included all the new Posey frames that needed to be dressed!  Linda was also insisting our mess (as she referred to it as) was out of the basement.  Didn’t exactly meet her goal, but thanks to everyone’s help, we moved 90% of the trail props to our staging area in the external garage – imagine an entire stall covered from front to back, left to right with Halloween props.  The one shot I did find from the garage on build day was late in the process and most of the items were already hauled out to the trail.

Behind the Scenes on the Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

One of the tasks that was delayed way too long was finishing up the Zombies.  Brad and I had talked a long time about what to do about properly lighting theses new props.  The lights were attached to the back, but without something for those beams to bounce off of, the glowing silhouette effect wouldn’t materialize.  One Idea was to put black sheeting behind them – attached to a PVC frame so they would free stand.  Our initial tests of this concept didn’t pan out as well as expected.   Brad came up with the idea to put silver (furnace) tape behind it and fold it out so it would extend past the cutouts and reflect the light that way.  He also taped up most of the first one until we ran out – had to drop by Home Depot to pick up a few more rolls that Ron and I put on less than two hours before the guests were scheduled to arrive (cutting it way to close).

Behind the Scenes on the Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Hit the jump to read more about how our annual haunted trail comes to be!

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Nov232017

Project: Gonna Need Therapy

If nothing else, you have to agree this blog hasn’t been home to cobwebs as of late.  I can now officially say this is the last of the Halloween Haunt 2017 tutorial posts.  It has been fun going back through the build process that has pretty much spanned and entire year starting soon after last year’s Haunted Trail was picked up and put away.  Today happens to be the day all the Halloween decorations are officially packed and stored away for this year.  If things go as planned I’ll start on a new set of props starting … wait for it … next week.  That cheer you just heard was from me, that equally loud groan came from Linda.

Before I get to the new ideas, better close out my signature piece from this year.  I first must give credit to Graves of the Groves for giving me the inspiration for this project.  I watched a video of his for a $20 Haunt project – a yearly competition where you submit your best decoration for under $20 dollars.  The link to his video for Hacked in the Box is here.  Now, I will say the $20 contest is a bit of exaggeration.  Things you already have or ability to re-purpose often do not get included in the cost.  If you do not have those same pieces laying around or do not have the skills to complete a specific element in the prop build you quickly find you are beyond the $20.  Now in this particular instance, I was so far beyond $20 bucks it isn’t funny – some of that due to design choices, some due to not having the patience/skill he has and well, quite frankly, a whole bunch of screw ups.  Let’s start with my concept.
Project Clown in Box - 2017 Haunted Trail Signature Addition

That is my drawing on my whiteboard after an idea session with my friend in haunt Brad (over lunch of course).  Pretty simple, box with a pole sticking out of it, some coil to look like a spring, a clown head on the top and a base that would allow a wiper motor to rotate the shaft in a circular manner.  Brad had the idea to put teeth on the lid.  You might also note the handle on the side – just kind of sitting there not doing a whole lot.  By the way, that wiper motor alone cost more than $20 on Monster Guts.  Now a shot of the final product out on the trail – yes, I have already enlisted the aid of a therapist.

Project Clown in Box - 2017 Haunted Trail Signature Addition

Hit the jump and I will take you through the build process.  Unless you are normal and hate clowns, in which case, you should probably cut and run about now.

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