Halloween

(Michael) Let's take a step back in time and talk about our Halloween for 2012.  Those of you who have been following our blog know that we've had a mixed history with the holiday with everything from costume disasters to moldy pumpkins to the infamous stick blender finger.

This year we were asked to help with a spook alley for a double-ward Halloween party.  We knew that this wasn't going to be any old project considering that this just happens to be the most attended church event of the year (for some strange reason).

Our friend Allison rose to the challenge though, and pulled off both a spectacular spook alley as well as a not-so-spooky alley (for smaller children).

Here is a glimpse of the latter...

Our contribution here was the 6-foot inflatable pumpkin, which I was thrilled to use because there really aren't very times we can showcase it.

The scary spook alley was way too frightening for us to post on the blog (or maybe it was just too dark to film).  A lot of the work came from lining the walls and breaking off a path with plastic sheets and blankets.

Different couples were assigned sections with themes, and we got the graveyard portion.  If I remember correctly, I believe I had a lot of schoolwork around that time so I had to make the cardboard tree in the middle of the night.  It originally was supposed to be upright, but the fact that it's leaning adds to the ambiance...right?

The youth in our ward were in charge of the gravestones.

My favorite part was the fact that I got to sit in the back and control the fog machine.  It produced so much fog that Amanda was able to hide out and surprise people as they came by.

It was difficult to gauge how scary we should make it, but I think it turned out really well even if we had do a couple rescues for kids who got too scared in the middle and wouldn't go any further.  In fact we felt like the entire event was good enough to merit not having to do anything with pumpkins, candy, or costumes.