I'll meet you at the cemetry gates

So, I started decorating on the last weekend of September, thank the ghouls I started early because last weekend there was a lot of rain. The first two pictures is the fence I made all by myself. Some of the pictures will show you some of the creations that I previously blogged about, you'll get to see the finished products now. As you enter my cemetery, note the smoke machines and strobe lights are not up yet, they will be on the weekend of Halloween.

Now, I will take you from the porch in the front of my house and into the dead end cemetery...

We've only just begun...
and so it begins... (real black light - purchased at Home Depot) the ones you get at the halloween stores are just purple lights (FYI). Also my favorite and one of my very first halloween decorations is the Crypt Keeper my mom got me many years ago.

Here's the potion jars... with flash
and without flash under black light! (use tonic water for the glowing effect). My spirit ball witch... she's a funny one!
Another potion jar and my cauldron.


My front door.


Dylan's costume from last year, mannequin head and body I made out of chicken wire!

This is my halloween boyfriend, he doesn't have a name other than "my boyfriend", he no longer is scaring the pants off my friend, Kim. haaaaa
The walkway...

You will now enter the cemetery... ps: those are not orbs from the cemetery, it's just a lil rain.
with flash!


don't fear the reaper



with flash!
without flash!

Tim's part in decorating was adding and inserting this shovel ;)


Not sure why my skeletons are all drunk in the graveyard...

the pumpkin king!
another one of my faves... the candelabra with flicker bulbs. One has bats the other a witch.



my North Carolina ceramic pumpkin my mom got me. I had two some devil child stole the other





Oddly enough... the only decorations in my house.
This last picture is for Tim (inside joke, because we're pranksters.... he scared me 2x this morning. So while he was taking a shower I threw cold water over the curtain. heeeee
24 more days till Halloween!!!!

Tombstones!!!

This weekend started off pretty dull... the weather wasn't really great, my broom otherwise known as the 61 Falcon was acting ghoulishly evil. So I pulled out paint and started to touch up my walls, doors and boarders. Also take a shot at that glazing project. Well the touchup paint is NOT the same color as my walls and the glazing/faux project kinda went on a sour note because I just wasn't too crazy about it. It looks great from afar but I'm just not sure I want my entire living room looking like that.

So what does Madame Jen do next? She goes back into the garage to put away the paint cans and finds herself staring at (what I thought was 6 boxes) 8 containers of Halloween decor. I took everything down and went through them all. I forgot that I had got some stuff on clearance last year. I had several masks that will work perfect on those mannequin heads! My big ghoul, Dylan's costume from last year is going to be perfect to put to use on my zombie. Oh and my best witch Mandi was on the phone with me, she says I'm a hoarder because I only found 6 bags of moss left over from last year. *cackles* (note to self, you do not need anymore moss for at least 3 years)

Ok so below (and forgive me for uploading these pictures backwards) are the tombstones. As you can see I started off with several tombstones I got at the Dollar Tree, some moss, plastic bugs, and those sticks I steal from my neighbors lawns that come from Scotts lawn service. I used my glue gun to stick the lawn stick onto the back of my tombstone. Remember if your glue gun is hot temp do not put the hot glue on your styrofoam tombstones! Put the glue on your stick and wait a few seconds then place on tombstone. You might want to apply some pressure to ensure it sticks. Remember the reason I use these sticks is because the sticks that come with the tombstones do not do very good in the wind. These sticks I use are perfect and they do not come out of the ground due to high wind and are strong enough to keep them up.

Next, I just play around with the moss. I always like to put some along the bottom. Therefore you do not really see the end of the tombstone touching your grass. It kind of hides it and makes it realistic looking, great effect! I also like to place some green moss into the nooks and crannies on the tombstone and sometimes along the top/sides. I use green moss for the bottom and occasionally I'll use some spanish moss at the top. Just use your glue gun and place wherever...

Last, but not least plastic bugs.... I use spiders, rats, flies, etc.. I didn't use the purple ones only because they don't look that real. I took a close up of the spider on the one tombstone. With my glue gun I made a web effect around the spider. By doing that I just touched the tip of the glue gun to the points and slowly dragged over the glue "string". No need to pull the trigger. Just bring the gun back and forth and down and touch.

The two tombstones shown at the top were bought on clearance last year. They are about 2x bigger than the Dollar Tree ones, I added some larger spiders and a black crow I purchased at the Dollar Tree to them.

Of course that's not ALL I did this weekend.... there's plenty more where this came from! I worked on some creepy jars, worked on my zombie and played with some skulls. Coming soon....

60 more days till Samhain!