Sorry, no haunted house this year...

On Alyssa's birthday last year, my wife and I found out that we were going to have another baby (Bonner - born 6/22/08). I knew going in to this year that we would have our hands full so I decided to focus on fewer projects. If that wasn't enough, we also decided to buy a house in August. All of that combined meant that a large Halloween party was out of the question.

We do plan on a big party next year and I'm already itching to begin work on some new props.

I was able to build one large prop - the witch and cauldron:

Daytime

Nighttime

Additional pictures can be found here.

Here is a low quality mp3 of the cauldron / witch sounds that I use. If you are interested in a high quality version, contact me.

I took longer to work on this than I had anticipated but she is finally complete! I also had time to build her a shelf to hold her potions, books, etc.

Here are some pics of the cauldron that I made out of an old clothes dryer drum:

I'm working on my biggest Halloween project for the year, a witch stirring a cauldron. Tons of inspiration can be found here and here so I'm not going in to a huge 'how-to' for this.

This project is definitely the most complex and expensive one that I have attempted. When it's completed, it will have sound, head movement, stirring movement, fog and lights for the cauldron. Two wiper motors will provide movement and will be powered by a 450 watt computer power supply. Additionally, I plan on converting a strand of green Christmas lights from AC to DC so that my power supply will also power them.

The frame is modeled after the two examples mentioned above with few modifications. The biggest difference is that I'm using a wiper motor for the head movement. This may be a bit of overkill but it's the only motor that I have available. I still need to wrap the frame in chicken wire, clothe the witch, and attach the head and hands. I'm having trouble locating an affordable mask and hands, so that part is currently on hold.

My cauldron (not pictured), is an old clothes dryer drum. The bottom already has holes, so I shouldn't have problems mounting my wiper motor (for stirring) and feeding fog through the bottom. I've made handles out of styrofoam rings and wooden brackets to mount them. Once it's painted, I'll post a picture.