A fascination with spiders helped earn George Wyatt first place for the second year in the Youth category of the Civic Pride Committee’s second annual Halloween Decorating Contest.
“I feel pretty proud about it!” said the 11-year-old who is in the fifth grade at Edison Elementary School.
It took him and his mom, Faith Wyatt, three weeks to decorate their front yard at 841 N. Frederic St.
They have created a spider web scene on one side of the yard and two large spiders on a web on the porch. There is a graveyard covered in spider webs. New this year are an inflatable ghost on the front porch and a raven that talks.
George is so inspired having won the contest again that he plans to decorate his yard next year, he said. Down the road he would like to build a maze for people to walk through.
He is looking forward to being honored at the City Council meeting.
“It’s a great honor to be there,” he said.
He and his mom are planning to work together on decorating the yard for Christmas as well.
Tina Schaefer, at 1505 N. Valley St., won in the Residential category.
“It’s very exciting!” she said, adding that she almost started to cry when she found out she had won.
She loves to decorate for the holidays inside and outside her Burbank home. When she lived in Downey she won the city’s Christmas decorating contest three times, she said.
She started decorating for Halloween two weeks ago and she and her boyfriend Arnulso Padilla keep adding things. Her daughter Miranda Schaefer went with her to City Hall to fill out the contest form.
There is a graveyard filled with frightening scenes and creepy visuals. A car in the driveway has a ghoulish character at the steering wheel while a dummy dressed as a trick-or-treater is sprawled on top of the hood.
“The Residential winner had some nice 3-D effects with interesting choices of Halloween jack-o-lanterns,” said Civic Pride Committee President Robert Vincent.
Winning the Commercial category was Samuel’s Florist at 921 W. Olive Ave.
This is the second time Samuel’s won the Halloween contest, said owner Donna Smith.
What makes it fun is the theme comes from a gothic novel but the owner makes it a contest for people to guess which novel. The contest ends on Monday night. For more information, go to the store’s FaceBook page. Those who guess the right title will be entered in a drawing for a holiday bouquet.
For clues, there is a ghost looking in the window as well as a globe and pencils on the table.
“The whole secret guessing is figuring out who the woman is,” Smith said.
Employees Tacey Clover created the design and Veronica Gandara put all of the details into the design.
To view a list of all of the contestants that entered this year’s competition, visit burbankca.gov/civicpride.
