Family's love of Halloween on display in front yard

MOSES LAKE — It starts small, with maybe a few witches who failed flight training and cratered in the front yard. Then all of a sudden a chorus of ghosts shows up. And the skeleton of a dog, kept in a cage. And then the dude who literally loses his head, right outside the front door.

Jaymee Welch and her mother, Christy, really love Halloween, and the yard of their house on Bong Loop north of Moses Lake shows it.

“My mom and I have always liked the spooky and magical,” Jaymee said. They’ve always been into witches, ghouls and goblins. “And also the candy,” she said.

So each October the Welch family frontyard is transformed into a playground for ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties.

“We do it every year, no matter where we live,” Welch said.

“Every year it’s different,” she said. Christy and Jaymee surf social media to find new ideas they want to incorporate. Sometimes they buy ready-made decorations.

“Some of it we DIY ourselves. There’s a lot of DIY. I think it makes it better,” Welch said.

The cages with pretend heads and animal skeletons are an example, put together with purchased and thrifted props and thrifted baskets. They’re always on the lookout for new ideas.

“We try to put some thought into it,” Jaymee said. Some years, there’s a theme for the entire yard, other years it’s broken into sections, each with its own theme.

The Welches tweak the design even as they fill the yard. “We just slowly add something, one day at a time. We come up with the ideas and we have to figure it out,” Jaymee said.

“You put something out, you find something else and have to reshuffle,” she explained. “Everything has been moved about five times already.”

One decoration that comes out every year is the flying dragon projected on the garage. And “Headless Harry is always here,” Welch said. Headless Harry literally takes off his head – he’s remotely activated. His upper half was purchased, while Christy and Jaymee fashioned his lower half from a pair of old jeans.

“We try to make it interactive as well, for the kids,” Jaymee said. Along with Headless Harry, a witch greets kids and cackles as they approach the front door.

Decorating the yard sometimes turns into a community project. One year there was a fairy garden, and items mysteriously turned up there all month. “We just had people drop stuff off in the fairy garden. We have people add to our decor for us,” Welch said.

But there’s a fine line between inviting and frightening, and the Welches try to stay on the inviting side. “We don’t want to make this so scary no one wants to come,” Jaymee said. The yard is set up so parents can bring their kids to the sidewalk for a picture.

Jaymee and Christy wanted to put on a show for 2020; Christy is the arts and crafts chair for the Grant County Fair, which was canceled this year. “We wanted to make it extra big this year, since we didn’t have the fair,” Jaymee said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached at [email protected].