Into the woods we go...

 Welcome to Over the Top Holidays! I will be documenting some of the crazy ideas I have had, built and used for Halloween and Christmas. I am actually late in getting his started as I began work on the new additions to our Halloween set up 3 weeks ago. I plan on making extensive use of pictures, notes, etc to document what I can and give you an idea of how we created what you will see as well as how we plan to use them and finally the finished displays. 

While our Christmas light display tends to be more traditional, if somewhat large, Halloween is where I have been able to go nuts. What started out small has morphed into a pirate's graveyard in the front yard with a ghost and spiders in the side yard. Inside is crazy too as it transforms into a mad wizards lair in time for our annual Halloween party for our kids friends... that is when I drive my wife nuts by replacing almost every lightbulb in the house with blacklight bulbs...

For this year, we decided to go over the top with Halloween. We are adding, in no particular order a mast with crow's nest, a wrecked row boat, a couple of coffins coming out of the ground, an outhouse with skeletal hand coming out of the door with interior lights and a fog machine, and finally, the part I am most excited about, a ship's cannon with a timed fog machine built in...

Here are a few images from last year's build:

So on my next post I will cover the build of the mast. It will be mostly written with pics of the almost final product. Unfortunately I forgot to take progress pictures...