This year’s Wienold Backyard Fall Fest was an enormous success. By our guestimation we had somewhere around 65 people throughout the afternoon and at one point I counted 18 cars across the front yard. That’s about 90% attendance from our invite list and that was after exercising our rain date.
We had:
- Ziplining – of course…. Ryder’s birthday this year was a huge hit and the zipper could be heard all afternoon.
- Pumpkin painting – Kris found some styrofoam pumpkins (already painted orange) for a dollar and we set up tables where the kids could paint them and take them home.
- Cookie decorating – sugar cookies and decorating supplies were supplied at another craft table.
- The Trick-or-Treat Trail – where we had the kids wander through the forest to find buckets we had tied to trees with candy, stickers, crafts, etc.
Hay Rides – My efforts outside the yard paid off. I moved the boats from beside the house so I could do complete loops around the property. So kids piled into the trailer and went off a ride through forest – complete with ghouls and goblins hanging from the trees.- Backyard games – we got all our lawn games out for folks to enjoy and surprisingly, some were really used. The only thing missing was corn hole, for some reason we don’t have a set yet… next year
- Moonbounce – as always, kids are drawn to moon bounces. We’ve had a small one for a couple years now and that thing has paid dividends.
The party was scheduled for afternoon between meals but we offered lots of snacks and drinks even for the adults among us. While the rains certainly left an impact and a slightly muddier yard that we would have preferred, it didn’t seem to slow anyone down.
Ryder was an amazing host and showed everyone the ropes… where to go what to do, how to zip line etc. When the afternoon finally wrapped up, he collapsed like a pile of wet sailing line onto the couch.
In all that effort of setting up and then keeping everyone’s glasses filled and hay rides running, we were entirely remiss on taking photos, so hopefully I can find a few taken by guests throughout the day.