Halloween // This year's decorations

Mornin' all

I have always gone as over the top as possible for Halloween, but took a break from it when my kids were younger, but now that they're 6 and 7 and excited for Halloween like I am, I started getting back into hefty decorating. My wife decorates for Christmas November 1st, so the agreement was that I could start Halloween in August. Not arguing with that logic.

Last year we had a chainlink fence put in over the summer and took down the black iron-looking fence the previous owners had gotten from Home Depot. I saved enough sections of it to circle the entire front yard, so last year was a cemetery. My plan is to do a different theme each year, and then circle back around every so often, improving on an old set-up. So the graveyard will come back eventually with some improvements.

But this year, I wanted to do a haunted pumpkin patch idea. Something about the dried corn stalks last year inspired me to want to do it, so I was going to get some of those, some hay bales, and several pumpkins. Some fake, some real, and just get the front yard set up with it.

My question to all of you, is what other ideas I should throw in? Or if you've seen something done well like this, what was it like? As I said, I'm going to gradually build on each theme I do, so this year won't be too over-the-top, just whatever ideas we can get that I can afford. There's a shop somewhat nearby that has awesome animatronics that I'll be going to check out (he had some last year that fit this theme well), but that will probably be the only expensive part of this I do. I think the reason I like the idea of this theme for this year is that it doesn't seem like there's much I could do in terms of spending too much money. Seems like it'll be a nice and cheap option to prepare for next year.

​

Edit for clarification: I decorate Halloween for horror as much as possible. Nothing to overly terrify neighborhood kids or anything like that, but definitely more on the scary side than not.