First, the super spoopy nighttime video with awesome music. This is for the competition I enter (and lose) every year. Someday.

And the multitude of lessons learned for moving forward with haunting, decor, and art:

• I can still bang out most of a haunt in a couple days, but feel better working a little at a time.
• I cannot do large scale papier mache anymore because of carpal tunnel. Boo. I'll miss it.
• I cannot force my body to work through pain without causing more pain. Wait to be better.
• There are people in my life who will refuse to compliment whatever I do, and their opinion cannot define mine.
• There are people I've never met before who will say very nice things about my work.
• It doesn't matter if the trick or treaters know the source material or not, they respond to a cohesive aesthetic and spooky imagery.
• The black and white haunt aesthetic works for me.
• So does popping in some color with lights or a small motif, like the papier mache bats or metallic-lined lanterns.
• Graveyards are always spoopy on Halloween.
• Practicing your art technique works, as people who haven't seen your work in a while will say very nice things about where your abilities are now.
• I love Halloween and no one can stop me from celebrating.
• I helped turn a neighborhood with no real Halloween spirit into a multi-block radius with really colorful and creative decorating choices. There aren't a lot of new families around here; it's the old families embracing the spirit.
• Students are always impressed when their teachers can spit out hot rhymes.
• I will never try to memorize any fast-paced rap song, especially an Epic Rap Battle, less than 48 hours before an event. Freestyle is not my greatest skill and I had to use it quite a bit to cover for blanking out at the Halloween assembly performances.

Next year's theme is going to be Tim Burton animation. I was going to do that this year, but I knew I did not have enough time to produce enough tombstones for the full Nightmare Before Christmas effect with the spiraling hill. I need probably another 20 stones, so basically double the amount I made/rebuilt this year for the full effect. It's a lot of yard and that's the front half. The back half is going to be the town in Nightmare and the opposite side of the walkway is going to be Oogie Boogie's lair. Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie characters will be sprinkled throughout.

I hope you had a happy Halloween. It's all about having fun.