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Jan112020

Hang Fire

Christmas is officially over and the New Year festivities have calmed down.  That can only mean one thing around here at Intrigued – yep stress time as we only have about 9 months to get prepped for this year’s Haunted Halloween Trail.  Already looking tight and worried we will once again be scrambling to get all the new decorations built and the haunt layout planned in time.  To help get me in the mood figured it was finally time to get a post out on a decoration I built for the 2018 trail.

Haunted Halloween Trail 2019

I already walked you through the witch construction (link here) – those made their appearance back on the 2017 trail.  The initial scene just had a cauldron sitting on the ground in the middle of the circle.  Had an idea to kick it up a bit for the 2018 version.  A cauldron isn’t going to get too hot if it is just sitting on the ground… what to do … what to do… oh yeah, let’s add some fire (append your own Tim the Tool Man grunts).  Getting the cauldron off the ground was pretty easy – thankfully because I left that design to the very end.  Ron and I were busy finishing up the final decoration prep the night before the main event.  After a quick build of the Nightwing stand – if I remember correctly that was around midnight (link here) – looked down at the to-do list and remembered the cauldron stand.  Happened to look over and noticed a bunch of 3/8″ grey PVC conduit laying against the garage wall.  Problem solved.  Grabbed three pieces and some twine and went about connecting them at one end.  Finished if off with three more lines to hold the cauldron.  Patted myself on the back when I remembered I had adjustable eyehook connectors laying around from a previous build.  Hooked those on the end of the support strings and then connected to the cauldron in the three newly drilled holes.  In case it didn’t click, the adjustable hooks allowed me to get the cauldron leveled without playing games trying to get the strings tied evenly.

Hit the jump to see how the fire prop was constructed.

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Oct182016

Posies Be A Bulking – Pt 1

I swear this last month has lasted at least three months!  Since middle of September, I’ve ran three half marathons, held our annual Halloween party, finished like 8 posts, made it through a crap load of work on my real job and now trying to get some badly needed rest which consists of me hiking up and down mountains.  Since November seems like it is never going to get here, decided to break out some of the Halloween posts early this year.  Let’s start on the decorations front.  Remember those Posies from last year (link here).  Well, this year they are getting an upgrade.

2016 Posey Upgrade
Although these have not been put together yet, you can definitely tell they’ve been put on a weight training regimen… and they kind of got gendered.  Focus in on the one on the far right.  It took a bit to get the process all figured out and that one is the result of finally getting everything right.  The other two I’ll talk about as a memory points for me and as a cautionary tale for those of you interested in trying this out for yourself.  Starting at the beginning, the key element in the new Posey configuration is this.
2016 Posey Upgrade
Hit the jump to get details on the latest of the Posey improvement projects.

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Oct252011

Gold at the Dollar Store, Halloween Party Pt 3

And then there were 4.  I figured I’d just close out the Halloween Party Series with a final post of decorations on the cheap.  I didn’t want to keep in you suspense from the last post.  Believe that?  I didn’t think so.  Actually, I am relying on images that were preloaded on our Smugmug site due to some web access limitations we are fighting through at the moment.  Since all the decoration pictures were uploaded at once, I can simply reference those rather than fighting any new image uploads.  Hopefully concentrating on this post will help take my mind off the Cardinals’ second blown game of the series.

As mentioned previously, we originally went to the Dollar Store to find specific materials for our Halloween Party Haunted Trail (link here).  The pumpkins mentioned in that previous post were a bonus find.  What I was really looking for was some round looking objects that were made of glass or plastic that was roughly 6 inches in diameter.  That was pretty much the entire description we were heading in with.  Oh, and it needed to deflect or reflect light in some manner.  “Should you choose to accept this mission …”  After the euphoria of the foam pumpkin find had fallen off we started down each of the aisles trying to find something that fit the bill.  This resulted in 20 minutes of “Nopes” until halfway down the glass and candle aisle.  Right there on the top shelf was the perfect item.

It is actually pretty heavy glass similar to what you would put on a ceiling fan light except it has a flattened bottom. I have no idea what the real purpose is, but this was going to be a nice add to my Halloween decorations … if it worked out as planned. Since this was an unproven idea, we went with 4 of them – each for a very respectable $1.00. Going this route made the decision on which of the two ways to go on the design. If they were plastic, I was going to cut out shapes and put a candle in them to help light the path. Glass as the base resulted in the second option to simply paint the globes. A quick stop at Home Depot was needed to get some paint. After a lengthy discussion with the paint clerk, it was decided that the Rustoleum Multi-Purpose Orange Gloss would work best on the glass. There isn’t enough time to go into details on my checkout experience, but it is worth mentioning I had to go through nearly the same process to buy spray paint as you do Psuedophedrine.

Hit the jump to see how this and an another Halloween decoration turned out

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