Maple Grove Cemetery Masquerade Ball 2016

I finally got my video for the Masquerade ball together - hope you enjoy!

That didn't go as well as planned......

I'm sure those will be my famous last words!

Last year was great - it took the hubby & I about 6 1/2 hours to get the cemetery down and put away.  This year?  It took the majority of 2 days to put stuff away and it kicked our butts.  

And I'm still not done.   

Sunday afternoon.  

I haven't touched the yard at all - and look!  No leaves to rake yet!

That damn tree is barely changing color.  At least the one off to the left is yellow. 

Starting from the beginning.  We waited until Sunday to start tear-down.  The next door neighbor asked if we'd keep it up until after her grandkids' birthday party / costume she was having (and invited us to) Saturday.  I'm still not sure why, since as far as I know, nobody came over to see it.  But anyhoo.  We had a pretty good time.  We just went over after dark for the bonfire and to have a few beverages.  

Saturday during the day, Randy & one of his buddies took advantage of the skeletons being out to run some wire in that back corner.  I moved all of the Christmas & empty Halloween totes out onto the patio so they had more room.  Pretty sure that was mistake #1.   I did get a lot of indoor stuff packed up, since the totes were handy.

 

It's a family reunion!  

Minus the three that never made it off the patio. 

Sunday we got up and had breakfast, then ran to Sears to pick up a new garage door opener.  Ya know, since the garage had room to move around in it, why not?  The totes were all still out on the patio.  He fought with that while I took down the cemetery.  By the end of the day, the headstones were all in the shed.  The blowmolds were in the shed on the back of the garage (don't get me started on that damn thing!! We had some mice that made a huge smelly freakin' mess, not fun.) And the skeletons were hung in their corner of the garage. 

Just hangin' out. 

btw, this is how I hang them.  I learned this after one almost got decapitated by hanging from his string attached to the top of the skull. 

A loop around the tailbone, a half hitch under the ribs and another above the ribs.  It helps distribute the weight of the skeleton more evenly.  And the twine is easy to remove & reuse. 

So this is what we were left with Monday.  It doesn't look as bad as it felt. 

Randy & I had both taken off work.  But we didn't get outside until after noonish.  It was chilly & foggy so we preferred to go get some breakfast, then relax for a while until it warmed up.  

The extension cord rat's nest.  

 We had a casualty.  He was in pretty bad shape anyway.  His right arm is broken in 2 places and his legs weren't attached well to begin with.  Instead of putting those long bolts thru the ball of the femur where a hole was for them, they were splitting the seam in the plastic.  I was just going to toss him, since I clearly had enough for the cemetery.  But I ended up keeping his upper half.  I think maybe next year he can hang out of the coffin or something. 

 Lights & stuff. 

So, the patio is cleared off and we just need to put away the furniture & hose and we'll be ready for winter.

But the inside of the house?  It still looks like a hallownado hit!  I have each of those totes labelled so I was able to take one inside and easily just look for the items listed and pack them away.  But for some reason, I still have a lot of loose stuff around!  Ugh.  

As we cleaned up the mouse contributions, I took the Christmas blowmolds out so the H'ween ones can go into the shed first.  I staged them near the house so I can clean them up before we put the hose away.  I was going to do that today, but right after I got home from voting, it started to rain so they're still chilling out there.

They gave Randy a heart attack, tho.  That's our bedroom window right there and he was lying on the bed watching TV, when he heard scratching on the screen!  Even one of the cats heard and was staring in horror at the window!  Not sure what it could have been, unless they wanted to come in and watch TV, too!

 

Maybe it would just be easier to move?

Post- Halloween Round Up

So another Countdown to Halloween is in the rear-view mirror.  I managed to post most of the days, but I didn't get to visit other blogs as much as I'd like to. But once things start to slow down, I'll be checking them out!

I'm kind of sad that I'm leaving the cemetery up until Sunday - normally I would have been out at the crack of dawn (after a trip to Tim Horton's, of course) on November 1 and had the whole thing gone by late afternoon.  Tuesday was a fantastic day here, too.  Sunny & mid 70s!  Crazy!  Last year it took the hubby & I a total of about 6 1/2 hours to get it taken down and put away.  But we're leaving it up for the next door neighbor's party this Saturday.  Since she asked nicely and invited us to the party, I couldn't really say no. 

I may put some caution tape up along the driveway to discourage explorers.  Like I've seen a couple other people post...the display is meant to be seen from the road.  Even the driveway is less than ideal.  Once you get up in there, it loses its magic.  You're blinded from the spotlights - there's extension cards & rebar & wood dowels & zipties everywhere.  It's ugly and really not safe.  

Soo - Halloween!  It was a great night!  It was cool but we had NO wind or rain this year!  I think we had around 60 kids this year - a decent amount more than the last couple years!  Tons of adorable little ones.  But my favorite costume has to be one a teenage girl had on - full cosplay unicorn!  It was beautiful!  And an older boy came up with a zipper-face.  I've watched tutorials and I know he put some effort into that!  It's where you have a zipper down the middle of your face and it's partially unzipped to show "raw" meat inside it.  Gross but still very cool!

I saw lots of people taking pictures, which makes me happy.  I didn't think to tell them to put them on Facebook and tag me in them!  Actually advertising my social media is still new this year and I forgot. Maybe next year I'll make some sort of photo op, maybe with the coffin?  That could be fun!   Duly noted in my trusty notebook. 

Since I had to work on the 1st, the only clearance sales I hit were on my way home from work.  There's a Spirit around the corner from work, so I stopped in there, hoping to score another flame light.  Nope.  I was surprised at how much stuff was still there!  

But this is all I got. 

A couple jars for candles to put in the cemetery next year.  

A cauldron coffee mug & a snazzy apron. 

I also got this cool charm bracelet. 

I stopped in Lowe's, hoping they still had some of those ceramic trees with the 'flames' inside like my JOL by the sign.  They didn't have much of anything.  

Target was a wee bit better.  Their H'ween section was insane.  Most of the stuff was already piled in shopping carts, except the candy & costumes still on the shelves.  I had seen these metal claw serving forks before and liked them, but couldn't justify full price for them (I think they were $12).  I saw one by itself on a table and the other a couple rows over.  So I grabbed them, even tho they clearly didn't have a price on them.  The lovely girl at the register didn't even bat an eye - she said I'll let you have them for whatever the socks ring up for.  So I got them for $1.50!  Woohoo!

I also got another box of pumpkin spice Life cereal.  That stuff is SO GOOD!  

So I'm going to be getting the inside stuff put away.  I'll take pictures before I do, since I didn't do many indoor decor posts.  And I'm going to work on a video, but I don't know how well that will turn out since my camera is an asshole and doesn't always like to focus.  And my phone doesn't like the dark.  Sheesh.