The Countdown to the Nightmare Before Christmas Begins

It’s begun! The countdown to the most wonderful time of the year! Halloween! At our house, as you’ll see, it’s a pretty big deal, but first a little background.

 

Pictured here are The Girl, and The Hubs, circa 2010. As you can see, they are engaged in a quite serious pinkie swear, the result of a couple of years of begging and pleading by The Girl and regular promises from The Hubs. You see, for years all she wanted was a rather elaborate “staging” of The Nightmare Before Christmas for our Halloween decorations. Mind you, we’ve always gone all out for Halloween, but never with a theme and never quite to this extent.

The Hubs, and our whole family have been involved in community theatre for several years. The Hubs is a techie, working back stage, building sets, I costume and the kids ham it up on stage. We have a lot of fun and we’ve put in a lot of hours doing it, and THAT is what lead to the pinkie swear moment. Her question, why couldn’t dad put a little time into building a wonderful set for US? Good question isn’t it? Sometimes we get too busy doing for others and forget to do for our own in the same magnitude. Well, she wasn’t having any more of THAT!

So, last year we were able to build a few pieces. 

 

Of course we had to have a Jack Skellington

 

The remodel of our bathroom last year provided just what we needed for Lock, Shock, and Barrel! 

 

We got a start on the Mayor of Halloween Town.

 

Complete with two faces. He’s due to get a body this year!

 

Even our pup Ernie got into the act as Zero!

This year we plan to build more and no one is more excited than The Girl!

 

First up! The Nightmare Before Christmas Countdown Clock of course! This was a Father/Daughter project. The Hubs sawed and cut and The Girl did all of the art work!

Here’s what we bought to make the clock:

 

We picked up the 16″ wood round at Menard’s for $7 and the wreath was purchased from the local Goodwill for $5. We were immediately informed that we were not going to use those numbers. We really should have known. The bat was purchased for his wings to make the “hands” of the clock. It was clear those weren’t going to work either, but The Hubs saved the day with the band saw. 🙂

The Hubs set to work at the saw while The Girl prepped and painted.

 

We had some pre-painted bead board downstairs that The Hubs used to make the sign and the number tags. That saved us time and paint.

 

 

The Hubs made the base from scraps of the MDF board he used in the front room for the window seat, fastened together with sheet metal screws to give the appearance of rivits.

 

 

Once everything was painted and prepared, we attached the base with metal straps, and fixed the wreath in place to the face with some small black screws.

The number tags were hung on screws with heads slightly smaller than the hole in the tag. This way they can be easily changed out. The girl gleefully pointed out that daddy cut enough of them that we could do a 365-day countdown to Halloween if we wanted. And I think she does!

 

 

Everything got a nice spraying of clear coat and voila! It’s finished! I think it looks pretty nice too! We will put a small spot on it to illuminate it at night.

 

It’s our goal to put up or build on something every day until Halloween. Can’t wait to see it all done! Let the countdown begin!