Happy Haunts Materializing at Home – Halloween 2023

For years our house has been known around the neighborhood as “The Harry Potter House”…. years of collecting and cultivating our Harry Potter collectibles made for a pretty impressive display and we’d developed a reputation. But this year Lowes was selling the Silas Crump animatronic and I impulsively bought the thing without even thinking how this would upend our Halloween decorating. We got him home, set him up in the kitchen and then came to the very real conclusion that we would have to change EVERYTHING. Silas already put me over $200 in the hole this Halloween, how would I be able to pull this off?

If I was going to have a Silas Crump in my front yard, I needed – nay, I insisted that Madame Leota would make an appearance. Go big or go home right? What’s more debt? 🤷‍♀️ I did a little research and found some great tips on YouTube and the above video is the end result. Madame Leota turned out AWESOME. I was super proud of her and she will definitely be back in 2024.

We added a few more Haunted Mansion touches including the classic bat stanchions and some singing pumpkins. Jack Skellington, albiet a lesser expensive non-animatronic version and Zero showed up too. Michaela wanted in on the fun and got herself some Haunted Mansion duds.

Next year I hope to add a skeleton or two… maybe some more ambiance in the form of additional set pieces. All in all, we are pretty stoked about how this year’s decor turned out!