It all started in 2021 with a simple wolf animatronic on my yard for Halloween! I’m not sure what clicked that year, but ever since, I’ve been a DIY prop builder, creating elaborate holiday displays at my house for mostly Christmas and Halloween, but also I’m a little over the top with other holidays like St. Pats, Easter and the 4th of July! My yard and house are rather small, but we manage to design a pretty crazy and fun display in such a small area!

I started mostly using old playhouses. I would repaint them and decorate them and try to create a mini village in the yard. Kids loved that and it was a rather easy way to make props and repurpose our playhouses! I used the same playhouses year after year for many holidays! When we'd have a walk through display, the kids loved peaking inside them and checking out all the little details. Within the past year, I’ve gotten rid of many of them and try to mostly build more life size facades and props but I like to throw in a little playhouse here and there still! It’s so fun to decorate and paint them!

For the past 2 years, we’ve been in touch with producers from The Great Christmas Light Fight on ABC, who were trying to recruit us to be a contestant on their show! They were impressed by our small yard being able to make such a big impact and our handmade props and creativity. This past year, we were set to be a contestant, but then got word the network was not renewing the show in 2026, when our show would air! We were a bit disappointed because we wanted to win that $50k, but we were some what also relieved, as the contest would have taken a ton of time and money, with no guarantee we would win against the other, big time talented competitors. We do wish the Halloween Fright Fight show was still on air because we feel like we would have had a good shot at that one!

We usually try to switch the themes each year, just to change things up, so we often do not keep all of the same props year after year. We wind up throwing a lot out. A lot we try to source from FB Marketplace and giveaway pages to keep costs down as much as possible. We wind up selling props and throwing away a lot of the handmade things, unfortunately. There is just not enough room to store it all. We did get a storage unit this past year!! We packed a big 10x 15 unit with JUST our holiday decorations!

I usually start thinking about Halloween around June. This year, I got a bit behind because in June or July, I thought we were going to be on that Christmas Light Fight show, so we decided to forget Halloween bc they wanted to film for the Christmas show in November (as early as Nov.1st!!) so we started building Christmas props a bit but then when we were told the show was a no-go, we decided to switch back to Halloween and begin our props!!

In August, I started to source some things and draft up my ideas on paper. We decided on Pirates as a theme, because we actually did pirates 2 years ago and it was a big hit. Not scary for kids and fun to build the ship and all. I began by slowly buying things for the pirates display. The first thing I got was pool noodles for the tentacles, which were a bit of a pain to make. It was my second time making them and they take hours and hours and layers of paint. They were probably my least favorite prop to make. LOL. This past summer, I took a few short car rides to pick up random things I found on Marketplace. I got vintage shutters and windows (used for bait shop) and an oar, a 100 year old throne chair for the Captains Quarters, some sconces, an old trunk for the treasure chest and I also took a trip to Good Will to get clothes and some other decor items for the pirates and Captains Quarters. I got free pallet cubes that we used to hold up the facade and I used one to make a bait shop! I try to find as many free or cheap items as possible so I’m often searching Marketplace

I already had some of the walls that I used for the facade. I used them 3 times now. Once, for a castle we made in 2024 for Halloween. The castle was probably my favorite. I used foam boards from Lowes and then I got some fake stone 12 x 12 adhesive panels off Temu. They hold up nicely in the rain! The walls were rather light weight but held up so great. We decided to reuse them that Christmas and made a Christmas Village! I repainted the walls, added more walls, cut holes in them and totally re did the display but reused the same walls! This Halloween, I used the walls once again! I painted them, took doors off them and made them into windows, added some new walls etc. The hardest part is framing out each wall because I had to add wood to the front and back, just like a frame, so that the walls were sturdy and can attach to each other. Wood is also needed horizontally on the back of each wall for stability.

A lot of visitors will ask me how long it takes to put this up. It took us approximately 12 days to get most of the display up. We are still building some of it as I type! But for the most part, almost 2 weeks. Also, it took my husband only about 2 weeks to build this ship from scratch!! He doesn’t mind working at the last minute and under pressure! Me, on the other hand, I like to start my props very early (July) because I work on them a little at a time during the summertime. Usually I go out for even 10-20 min to work on something. There’s a lot of props for me to build and I’m also making shades at the same time, so I like to squeeze it in whenever I can and start early in the summer! Thankfully, my husband is usually very on board with my plans and is also extremely handy. Many of the ideas are his and he usually works off my initial ideas and makes the ideas even better! We work very well as a creative, builder team!

Last Halloween, we had about 2000 trick or treaters! Yes, 2000!!!! It was crazy but fun! we live at the end of a street that is almost like out of a movie for trick or treating. They close off the street, have DJs and block parties and a ton of people trick or treating! we are at the end of that road, so we get a lot of people, in addition, our house is often on IG and other pages for a great house to go see in NJ, so from the tags, we get a lot of visitors and publicity!

Some of our props are store bought, but many are handmade. I built and also installed almost all of the facade myself. The build was mostly fun, but at times extremely grueling and labor intensive. I’ve worked out a lot in my life but my body felt almost like when I ran a marathon a few times! it’s crazy how the physical labor of building can feel pretty draining! Just reaching up painting or drilling . I guess the body is not used to some of the positions, so it can feel rather tough. But I kept pushing through bc I just love the end result. I had the worst drawings/plans for the display, but the outcome was rather on point and the measurements were fairly accurate because everything lined up just like I had imagined. It’s so fun to see my ideas come to life. I guess that is really why I do it. I like the challenge and to see if I can create what I had imagined. I love to see people enjoying what we created here and the smiles on kid’s faces. It’s really all worth it in the end. It’s never about being better than anyone else or competing to be the best display (we don’t even have a competition here) but rather just doing it mostly for myself as a challenge/goal, for my kids, and for the community, because I know they really appreciate it and like it.

We don’t plan to do Christmas this year bc we need a break and it is too time consuming being this close to Halloween. But maybe in the future, we will switch it up and only do Christmas! Who knows!?

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