We have started working on some new additions for the 2016 holiday decorating season.
Because the “photo op” was incredibly fun last Christmas, he is adding one for Halloween this year as well.
I kept watching the book of face to find pictures, but I never spotted any. Yet there were “new footprints” by the Santa photo booth several times daily, and we did spot it in use many different times.
While new outdoor Christmas decorations are easy to find, Thanksgiving is always giving us a challenge to find new outdoor decorations. From what we can see, the more common practice is to go directly from Halloween to Christmas in outdoor decorations. We take down the outside Halloween display when we close our Trick-or-Treat for the night, and then on the next available day, we put up Thanksgiving for November. We do not light the Christmas decorations until after the turkey is eaten, but it does take the entire month of November to get them all set up! We actually begin setting up all of the Christmas lights as soon as we turn on the turkey lights!
Since it is so hard for us to find the Thanksgiving decorations to fit our theme, I have been talking for several years about the need to paint one.
This is finally the year to begin that project!
We primed the wood on both sides to help protect it from the weather. Outside décor in North Dakota needs to stand up to the elements!
From a single 4×8 sheet of plywood, we were able to make two Thanksgiving-themed characters. If we made them any smaller than that, they would not be easily visible for people driving past. Anything larger than that would be too heavy for me to maneuver for the painting — I seem to spend as much time picking it up and moving it as I do actually painting. I have to keep turning it, or else I would be putting my arm into wet paint.
After he cut it out, I was able to start painting!
I am not a speedy painter, but I am enjoying the process!
As it is an outdoor decoration, it requires using exterior paint. So I paint a bit here and I paint a bit there and then I have to let it dry. While this might not be the world’s largest paint-by-number project, it is certainly the biggest one that **I** have ever attempted!