Category: pumpkins

Final thoughts on 2014.

Every year, I like to sit down and analyze what worked, and what didn’t.

This particular year, it was just a minor miracle we were able to do it at all. However, analyzing the new additions:

“The Orchard”, so coined in 2010 was a night and day improvement over the 2010 concept, but still not quite where I’d like it.

One teenager stopped to ask me at the entrance. “What is this, Mr Jones?”

It’s a rare treat to be compared to the nigh perfection that is Pumpkinrot’s works. Alas, I hadn’t watched Mr Jones until this past Saturday. I can kinda see where the teen was coming from in a very broad sense, both works meaning to imply something mystical being set up with the bones and sticks.

The Orchard was one of the few successes, and I’m determined to make it return in 2015, with more proper attention than we were able to give it this year.

Jim.

Jim was another project I started years ago and never finished. Representing my first foray into animation, I’m left unsure whether I will return to animation or not. When he was working it was a marvelous, almost magical thing. A neighbor girl on the 29th went down that corn tunnel (her brother stopping at the gate), encountered Jim, and come running right back out. It remains one of the funnier things of the year.

However, I believe in an attempt to figure out how it was working, someone went fiddling at some point during the party on the 30th, and Jim took a dive. By the time I found him, it was in such a state I knew repair would be impossible with the time and resources I had available. So, a half-working Jim was on for Halloween night. Don’t know whether I’m just not going to put out future animatronics till after the party, or just stick to static.

Jim did look ominous just sitting there waiting for someone to trigger his motion sensor.

The coffins.

They really weren’t my thing to begin with. They got me through a rough time, though, and kept me busy.

Missed opportunity to do up a whole old west graveyard with wooden crosses. Didn’t even cross my mind till it was too late. (I keep seeing the scene with Ned on display outside the bar from Unforgiven when I look at this. Poor Ned.”) Not a bad idea for a whole theme, really. Just, not my thing. They sold about 10 minutes after posting them…which was kind of the point of building them in the first place.

So, where does that leave us?

Well, I’m strongly considering a fresh start for 2015. Return to the most basic elements from 2010. Full on Harvest theme.

I also discovered my city has started a scarecrow contest. I think I might just have to follow a bit of Pumpkinrot’s example, and enter such a contest. I don’t know what won, but I only saw a bunch of smiling stuffed happiness on display. Can’t allow that to stand unchecked. Last time I went looking to make a scarecrow, I stumbled on the Chimera.

Now, how do I take my style there and translate it to a more traditional ‘scarecrow’ form?

Announcing the 5th annual Harvest Party.

It’s on, once again!

I’m very pleased to announce the 5th annual Harvest Party!

October 30th, 5:30 PM.

Come help put your own stamp on our festivities by helping to carve the 100+ pumpkins that have become our signature over the last few years will be cleaned and ready for your to carve.

Or, leave the mess at our house and bring your own pumpkins to carve and take back home. We have child safe pumpkin carving knives perfect for little hands.

Dinner and carving will start at 5:30, lighting preview will continue at dusk with hot chocolate and doughnuts.

The Pumpkin Gate, a retrospective guide.

I guess some pics of what I have always called ‘the fence’ have been getting passed around Pinterest lately, and I’ve fielded a few emails on how it is done. Indeed, it’s one of the things that garners many comments from the people in the neighborhood as well.

I don’t know that I’d go so far as to make a step by step how-to, but it’s a good time to take a little retrospective journey on what has been called “the pumpkin gate”.

Now, don’t laugh…the gate was truly originally created in 2007, and they aren’t the best, I know. At the time, I wanted a totem made of pumpkin faces, and we made an elaborate paper mache and monster mud set of towers to serve as “the entrance”.

From An UnOrthOdOx Halloween

See, I’ve always considered the front yard to be a transition, a staircase scene. Moving from the ordinary into my world. The gate, therefore has always been the “entrance” in my mind, despite the fact that the bridge serves the traditional view of the word.

The Totems would serve this purpose for several years, marking that barrier, in my mind at least, where people stepped across the threshold.

From Halloween 07

Between heavy rain on Halloween 2009, and a couple storms that destroyed pretty much everything I had for the yard in summer of 2010, Halloween 2010 was looking like a very bad year. But, spurred by some people who were calling a “Harvest” theme boring, “People just put up nothing but some pumpkins and corn stalks and call it good”. I was bound and determined that by damn, I was going to make nothing but corn stalks and pumpkins cool. I think my remaining decorating budget for 2010 was all of $100. Of that, $60 went to buying pumpkins (of which I got about 70!), and the rest to various lights and such. What transpired has been our basis ever since.

From The Harvest

And, the foundation for the pumpkin gate was set in 2010. Not in it’s present form, but the seeds. I had gotten the idea of a pumpkin creeper from Skull and Bones in my head (sadly, the site is no longer around or I’d link here), and while I had seen several versions made out of mache or foam or other, I had known of no one that had tried to make one out of real pumpkins, so I did. Initial tests on bifurcating pumpkins showed promising results.

From 2010 Buildup

So, with no budget, and wanting to make some creeper monsters, I turned to scrap EMT, and bent them into little forms. These weren’t the big stalking creepers others had built, but with a couple well placed limbs little crawling creepers were born in 2010.

From The Harvest
From The Harvest

It was almost an afterthought in 2011 to take those creeper forms and wire them to the fence.

From 2011 buildup
From 2011 buildup

Testing it out early 2011, in the dark, in a rush, some random car driving by just as I hit the switch and turned them on shouted “that is so awesome”.

From 2011 buildup

Today, the conduit is basically a permanent addition to the fence, just waiting to receive new pumpkins.

From Buildup 14
From Buildup 14

C7 lights are used to light our bifurcated pumpkins, a hole drilled into the back to fit both the lights and the pumpkin. The pumpkins are simply balanced on those conduit, and the pipe shoved from the back all the way into the wall of the pumpkin on the other side.

I’ve found the best way to utilize the fence is to fill the chain link with filling so the gate becomes something of a visual barrier as well. The bright pumpkin light bathing the front, with darkness beyond. I end up using our Raven grass, the same that makes the arch (and lets me run power up over the walking path safely), just the leaves and ones too small for the actual arch.

When coupled with the corn tunnel, which prevents light pollution from the sides, it became my favorite entrance to date. That darkness just beyond is really NOT as dark as it appears from the outside, but this was the tripping point for many little ones NOT ready to take that step over the threshold.

From Halloween 2013

Corn and pumpkins…”boring”.

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Categorized as pumpkins

Gardening and strange sights.

Been rather quiet recently. A lot of behind the scenes stuff, mostly just stressing over the pumpkins.

Figured starting seeds should have been easy, heck they practically exploded like weeds in the garden last year as volunteers. But, I wanted specialty varieties, so we’ve been killing all those and trying to start seeds.

Direct sowing seeds didn’t work last year, so we got a window box seed starter kit, threw a bunch in…nothing.

Added some grow lights to make it a more controlled environment and started a second batch…4 sprouts out of 25 seeds.

So, it started the line of suggestions. Scoring the seeds, floating seeds to see if they are viable or not, soaking prior to planting, and the old wet paper towel in a baggie.

That paper towel/baggie combo is MOST effective, I must say. A day later, most the seeds sprouted. transferring them over to the little pots, another 2 days, and they had fully broken through.

Near 100% germination after a couple more days, and so we tranplanted a ton of pumpkins into the garden this week.

However, I’ve had to leave the tending of the little pumpkins in the hands of my boys, as I’m on the road.

Didn’t expect to run into this in the middle of nowhere.

Image source.

Will try to stop and get some more comprehensive pics on the way back through, I was heading the wrong direction with no good place to turn around/stop.