Halloween is almost here….almost!

Does anyone love Halloween more than I?  I’ll answer that for you.  NO!  I like Halloween better than Christmas, Easter, New Years, and Thanksgiving.  I like Halloween almost more than my kids, almost.  Every year we get the Halloween Village out.  Studio 56 makes the coolest villages.  I started my Halloween Village collection in the Fall of 2008.  I started with 4 or 5 pieces.  Since then, it has turned into a major event.  It’s a massive undertaking to get the village and all it’s pieces out of storage and set up.  From start to finish, it takes close to five days.  That’s not… here and there five days, it’s… I need your full undivided attention five days.  It starts out looking something like this:

This picture shows about half of the boxes.  Everything in this picture will be used, and then some!  If you go online at look at Studio 56 villages, you will find everything has to be bought accordingly.  They have their own power cord strips, adaptors, trees, down to their own leaves for decoration.  If I won the Powerball, I would go crazy with all their stuff.  (That would be 4th on my list, when I win.)  After all the boxes are brought in, we start unboxing the village pieces.  I don’t know what kind of schooling packing designers go to, however they are amazing!  Then comes the fun part of laying out the pieces, and getting some dimension to the village.  It looks something like this:

I believe all the pieces in the second photo have been retired.  We have the Laboratory, Frankensteins Bride, and the Railroad. The above picture is the final snapshot.  The village looks pretty neat when it is completed!

I set up the Village on two – 8′ tables, so this is just a small section of the completed village.  In this picture we have the Rickety Railroad, The Train to the Rickety Railroad, Hilda’s Witch Haunt, and The Candy Cauldron just to name a few.  We haven’t started this project yet, but are planning on starting this weekend.  Stay tuned to hear me bitch about it for a few days.

What are your Halloween traditions?  How old is to old to go trick or treating?  Do you pass out candy one at a time, or leave the bucket on the front porch?  Are you ready for fall?