Halloween 2014 Recap

First an apology for not keeping up with my blog... October came and went fast!  The setting up of Shingle Creek Manor on the 30th and the daytime of the 31st was more physically demanding than I remember it being, although admittedly I am getting older. I also think there was some  laziness during the month. Actually, I'm sure there was. Although I was somewhat active on Facebook, the blog just plain suffered from neglect.

Shingle Creek Manor 2014

 As for Halloween, we exceeded our expectations a little for the number of trick or treaters, roughly 120 children and 50 or 60 adults. The antique double decker tour bus visited us again. It didn't park in front of our house this year though so I didn't get any photos. I think every year 25 or 30 visitors have come into our development on that tourist bus. Next year I have to find out who owns it and who the people are.

To be honest I had drawn a line in the sand of 100 visitors this year or we would be scaling back to a few Jack-O-Lanterns for 2015. With the exception of an hour or two from my son on setup day, it is literally Belinda and I building, setting up and tearing down. It is a tremendous amount of work for two people. As much as I still enjoy it, I have to evaluate whether it has value to our visitors and whether the number of them is worth the effort and money. We received so many compliments from the children and adults this year though, that if we hadn't achieved the 100 , 2015 would still see Shingle Creek Manor resume.

Belinda dressed as "Niethra", the Voodoo summoner of evil. The kids loved her! I had more than few tell me how scary the old woman in the graveyard was. Of course I had to respond with feigned ignorance of any idea who they could be talking about. "Pennies shaken in a can" such a simple but effective startle scare! Who would have thought? Idea borrowed from the Halloween Horror Night people from previous year's street characters. It sure beats "boo!"

This was also the first year for full sized candy bars instead of bags of candy. Not sure if it's better but it's less work! Like I said, there was a lot of "lazy" for the month. They seemed to go over real well with the children and even a couple of adults with a chocolate habit.

We kept everything up for a second night but it got very cold. After spending time talking with some visitors I took very few photos. I hope to compile what few we took and post them to our Shingle Creek Manor Flickr account in the next couple days. I doubt I have enough for a video this year. A little bummed about that.

"The Book Keeper"

Even though our largest and most time consuming prop was a new statue called "The Book Keeper", by far the most popular prop was a video of a moving portrait set up in a fake frame in front of the mausoleum. Enough so that more video and projection are high on our list of priorities next year for sure! We actually lost some potential trick or treaters at the entry to our sidewalk because of that thing!

We hope everyone had a great Halloween! We had a great time but always find things to improve on for next year.Will be posting a bit until about Thanksgiving when the craziness of Christmas really gets cranked up and very little between then and the New Year. Time to catch up on my blog reading!