Halloween ....'hood style

Halloween in the 'hood was a success. I was thrilled to be a part of it this year (having had to work til 9:00pm last year and missing it all). Preparations began early afternoon (and in retrospect, we should have gotten up and had an even earlier start). We began with an array of old clothes and a full basket of old flyers and proceeded to stuff them to assemble our "friends" for the evening:

In between stuffing and carving, Chris had to stop at Buy-Rite to pick up a few supplies; he landed home with this mask. Fortunately I did see him coming up the walkway - had I not, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that he would have scared the bejubus out of me. I can never get him to pose nicely for a picture for me...but given an opportunity for a pose such as this, he's more than willing:

All fun aside, we got back to work. After stuffing, we had some carving to do, including carving enough out of one pumpkin to fit Christopher's ol' pumpkin head:

I even got my own hands dirty:

A perfect fit:
And the final product! We added a bit of "stuffing" to the inside of the coveralls to make Chris look less 'real' to aid in successful spooking:

And a look at the patio - Peter Pumpkinhead looks on - our carved pumpkins set up, and a few stray legs come out of nowhere:
I had to grab the token self-pic. I donned the popular 'fro wig:

This is one of our 'friends'. He'd been there for a while...cobwebs had formed:

I decided the 'fro wasn't scary enough, so opted for a different one. This is actually a mullet put on backwards to hide as much of my face as possible:

So of course I make Chris pose for another token self-pic:

A few night shots:



We set up to be posing as still as our stuffed counterparts, hoping to cause confusion as to which one of the bodies was real, and which was not. Who would believe anyone would put a real freaking pumpkin on their head? Chris was golden. I draped a blanket over my legs, and sat with my head turned downward to ensure the hair fell all in my face. Of course, we also had scary music playing in the background, which was controlled by a remote switch, so some times it was deathly quiet, and sometimes a scream, perhaps even a chainsaw could be heard. One by one the little hoodlet goblins came up - most expecting something, as in previous years, some outright refusing to go to "that house" as they walked by. We made sure to not scare the younger ones, but the older guys - well, they were fair game ;). One guy made his friend come up with him, but he wouldn't come close to me for his candy. He asked his friend (who'd already come up for his) to get his candy for him. His friend refused, and he said, "I'm gonna piss my pants...", to which Chris, nor I could maintain composure, and our laughing gave ourselves away.

After the children's curfew we cleaned up the carnage for another year and settled in with some popcorn and watched a few scary movies. I hope you all enjoyed a safe and happy Halloween!