F is for Fence Plans

Welcome to Day 6 of the Blogging A-Z April Challenge, 2013!  Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be posting here, and the posts will be in alphabetical order!  This blog is all about my love of Halloween.    I'm not into gore, so don't expect to see a lot of that.  I love exploring cemeteries, so several of those will be featured, as well as props I have made and other ideas I've admired on the Halloween Forum and Haunt Forum and Pinterest.

For some shameless self-promotion, I have 2 other blogs in the challenge, too.  Check them out!

Random Ramblings - lives up to its name.  Totally random.
The Life of Lisa - health & weight loss related

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Fence Plans - for the past 2 years I have had issues with trick-or-treating kids attempting to take the shortest route to the candy bucket in my driveway.  I know I could solve all this by simply removing temptation by taking the bucket down closer to the road, but a lot of people enjoy walking up the driveway and looking at the cemetery.  Let me illustrate with my awesome drawing with Microsoft Paint.....

The little monsters kids will either try to cut across my neighbor's entire yard from her driveway (she never comes outside and sure as hell does not have her light on for Tot!!) or cut across the ditch.  But either way - they attempt to go thru the middle of the cemetery.   If I had a hard time in broad daylight seeing all the extension cords under the leaves (and I knew their general location), then these oblivious kids shuffling thru the leaves in the dark sure won't see the cords.  I could only imagine someone tripping over a cord or a spotlight & getting hurt or blowing all the breakers in my house and/or breaking something.  

2 years ago I only yelled at one kid.  I thought it was a fluke.  Last year, 3 different times, a herd of kids tried to do this.  What got me is that all 3 groups had adults with them.  And apparently said adults did not mind when I yelled STOP - TURN AROUND - GO BACK TO THE ROAD & USE THE DRIVEWAY at the kids.   I did explain I didn't want anyone to trip & get hurt so they could understand.  

Anyhoooo, Now I mean business.  A fence.  I know that the cemetery probably won't be as spread out as much as it has been in the past, but I'll worry about that closer to set-up.

 Here are some ideas from the wonderful talented peeps on the Halloween Forum

Nice!  

1x2" wood strips & PVC & fancy finials.

This one is 7' tall - a bit much, but I like the columns.

I love the overall look here - I can't pull off the totally overgrown look in my front yard, but I like the fence looks substantial, but is open enough not to block the view from the road.   I just realized I've talked to the guy who made this - his haunt is only a few miles from mine!   As I read further, this is also made of 1x2" wood strips and PVC pipe for the verticals and the arch.  

This one is awesome that it's made out of old pallets.  Very cost effective.  And the business right in front of my work has mountains of pallets & I already know they don't mind if I take some!

I like that this one is airy, too. The gateway is cool for the cemetery name.  All I have now is a sign that I stood in front of a tree, but it broke in one of the lovely windstorms we had last October. 

This is another quick & easy option.  These stakes come in 15 or 18 foot rolls and are about 2 feet tall from Lowe's or Home Depot.  

Decisions, decisions.  

I also have several boxes of orange rope lights that I got on clearance last year that I could string across the top of the fence if needed.  There are no streetlights on our street, so it gets pretty dark at night.  This would ensure EVERYONE could see the fence and maybe give a neat orange-y glow to the scene.

And here is your cliff-hanger!  You'll have to come back in a few months and see what I've decided upon!!!