October 13, 2009 Tonight I finished the haunted organ. The keys move very slowly as if they are being played by a ghost. It's so slow, however, that I wonder if people will even notice that it's animated. I also took some pictures of the cemetery gates with the new AC flicker bulbs installed and a picture of the spider that we built over the past weekend.

October 11, 2009 This weekend we got a lot done. We built a new clown, in dedication to our neighbor across the street who is freaked out by clowns. The clown is actually pointed directly to his house! We added a few more store-bought tombstones, worked on the lighting some more, installed the lightning effect machine that we built last year, and started decorating the witch shed. We've also added a new moving spider prop that we built on Sunday, but I have yet get pictures of that.

Send in the clown! This guy is new this year. We made him Saturday morning as a special "surprise" for our neighbor across the street who is freaked out by clowns. The clown is actually pointing at his house!		I found the perfect "perch" for the vulture.
		Coffin closed...
Coffin open...
	The clown is even creepier at night!
		I tried out some battery-powered flicker lights in the lanterns, but frankly, they suck. I have since replaced these with AC-powered flicker bulbs, but I haven't grabbed new pictures yet.

October 6, 2009 On October 6, we had a wind storm come through that knocked over the cemetery gates again. That triangle topper acts like a big wind sail! We fixed the damage and have reinforced the columns from behind.

Ugh. We had another wind storm on October 6 and the cemetery gate blew over again. Unfortunately the arch top acts like a giant wind sail.

The damage was slightly more significant this time. The ring on one of the lanterns actually broke off. I need to find somebody to weld it back on.

I've put the columns back up and this time I drove some wooden stakes into the ground as a temporary fix. Need to get some rebar and put some PVC tubes inside the columns.

October 4, 2009 This weekend we started putting out the gravestones, coffin, and gravedigger. We also started working on the lighting and we painted the witch shed and coffin.

We are trying to make cheap light baffles by using paint cup liners and painting them black. The stake lights are then inserted through the bottom of the cup like shown.

The witch shed was reinforced (you can kind of see the struts behind the shed).

This zombie from last year was reworked. His arms were redone and now he is holding a lighted electric lantern with a flicker bulb.

The witch shed has been painted. The spell stand fell over in this picture. Oops!

I started putting out some LED spots. I painted some paint try liners black to see if I could use them as light baffles. Seems to work okay.

The coffin has been painted. I reworked the mechanics inside at least 5 times now. I need a more powerful power supply!

September 21, 2009

Last night (the same day after we setup the cemetery gate and the witch shed), a huge storm came through with 50+ mph winds. As you can see from the following pictures, it blew stuff over and caused some minor damage. Minor damage was caused to both the shed and the gates.

September 20, 2009 This weekend we setup the witch shed, cemetery gate, and cemetery fence.

Witch shed and cemetery gate setup.