When you're decorating
for Halloween this year, there are tons of great options for your yard and home. If you like going big on your decorations
then you can easily go out and pick up the biggest and brightest inflatable and light-up decorations complete with spooky
lights and sounds and pack your yard with them.
But anyone can go out and buy
decorations. If you want to put a personal touch on your decorations, then here's your chance to go all out and let your creative
side run loose like Frankenstein's monster on a rampage!
When you build them yourself,
you're guaranteed to have awesome, one of a kind decorations you won't find in a neighbor's yard or home because they can't
be bought in a store or online.
A good place to start when choosing
what kind of decorations that you want to have for your home is to pick a uniting theme for your yard's design. One option
is to go for a haunted graveyard filled with gravestones and skeletons or maybe a spooky castle surrounded by a “moat”
and scary creatures.
What you decide to do with your
yard is up to you, but choosing a theme early will help you pick out what you want to build for your yard and also decide
what you want to do with it and how you want it to be set up.
One important aspect to consider
is “zoning” your yard with string/twine and stakes, tape, or some other kind of dividing material to map out your
yard's display. This will keep you from going overboard and making too many decorations or underfilling your space and leaving
empty spaces or gaps while also helping you to visualize the finished project as you complete the pieces.
The next, and often most difficult
and time consuming step, is to actually put together the actual decorations. Make sure that you provide yourself with ample
time to assemble the materials and actually put together your decorations You don't want to find yourself putting anything
but the finishing touches on your yard on the last few days before Halloween because you didn't allot yourself enough time
to prepare.
Keeping checklists of what you've
purchased for supplies and what is/isn't built as well as what's currently being worked on are absolute essentials to completing
your project on time. They say that planning is 9/10 of the job and, the more decorations you need to put together, the more
planning you'll have to do to make sure it all comes together on time.
The last and arguably most important
step in building your yard display is -- well, actually building it! If you've followed your own checklists and timetables,
then you should be well prepared to actually assemble the display. But here's some things to consider as you're putting it together:
Is everything put together
properly without damage? This is one of the reasons you'll want to go over your lists before and during assembly.
If anything is missing pieces or has become damaged in storage (especially possible if you finish some of your decorations
early and have to keep them in a garage or storage unit until you're ready) then you need to decide whether or not it can
be repaired or if you need to set it aside for next year.
If you've saved yourself time
by finishing early and have the supplies then go ahead and finish or fix it, but don't risk missing the chance to properly
set up your display over a minor piece that can maybe even be fixed after you've finished setting up and added later.
Is the display centered/zoned
properly/looking good from all intended angles? This is one of the most difficult parts of setting up your display.
You know exactly how you want it to look and you know exactly how it looks in your head, but the reality may not always live
up to expectations. You need to be prepared to shift either the design or what you've pictured based on your available spacing
and how things ended up as their finished projects.
Will it blow a fuse?
Lighting is absolutely key to any kind of display and if you're a big Christmas decorator then you're likely no stranger to
checking your power consumption every step of the way.
Halloween may be a little less
light intensive, but it's still important to make sure any lit or animated parts of your your display won't trip a switch
or blow a fuse partway through the night. The right amount of dark looks great in a display, but if that part of your display
is intended to be lit then you might have a little problem.
The key concepts behind putting
together your perfect yard display are deciding on a theme, planning out your design, properly assembling the decorations
and the yard itself, and finally checking and double checking whether everything works properly...
If you can manage to properly
balance all these tasks then you're well on your way to putting together the best Halloween display on your street, block,
or even your whole neighborhood!
