Frog on the Pumpkin

in the graveyard garden... Blaze Climbing Rose China Doll mini rose Lavender Weeping Golden Chain Tree ?? English style rose Star Jasmine Tree (blooms the last weekend in May every year...that is why I got the camera out, to take pictures of this tree.) Mr. Lincoln - a classic red rose, one of my favorites Princess Diana Rose (I need to find this one a new home in yard, she is getting choke out by some daises!) I should know the name of this one....ah, no, not coming to me Lace Leaf Hydrangea - loves his new shadier home on the back fence of the cutting garden. Thought this was Queen Elizabeth but the color is too dusty rose, not pink....going to have someone research this one for me. I purchase a dozen Iris' a couple years back....thought they all died, safe to say, don't know the name of this one either...

A sort of friend.... more a friend of some good friends. She would know me...if you reminder her that we are those crazy Davis Graveyard and that I actually know " Making Plans for Nigel " (?? I hear you say....long story, we were playing charades), more importantly; we are friends of Floyd and Marc. BTW- she has the cutest mom, who LOVES Halloween!! This song is funny.......and she is as funny in person as this song. We love her sense of humor!!! I present to you this BRILLIANT song from Courtney, who is a writer and the host of the syndicated LIVE Wire! (on NPR ) ....you might relate, if not, you know someone who fits this description....and now you have song to play in your head while they/you are trolling the clubs/bars :) We love her, she makes us laugh!!! So I thought I would share :) I present to you, my fellow bloggers..... Whore Phase :) ONLY LISTEN TO THIS SONG IF YOU HAVE SENSE OF HUMOR!!!! You normal people have been warned!!! Thanks to Me Smash for the reminder...

listening to Hauntcast . You are a loser...oh, wait, what I meant to say is .....then you should. Not just because husband and I are currently featured in the latest po dcast . How cool is that!! Despite us being on there, the show is freakin ' awesome! It makes me laugh out loud so much that I cannot listen to it at work (I tried - once!) I would really like to, just to make work bearable....wait, likely not even that would make my job anything other than depressing :) And if you leave a cool message on the Bone Phone ( hee hee , "bone" phone - yes, I can be quite juvenile) you have a chance to win a messenger bag with a embroidered Davis Graveyard logo on it....full of other goodies, like a travel mug, pens....maybe some foam skulls, some foam tombstone accents, and what ever elese is lying around the shop.....we will keep packing it full until the bag can hold no more!! The whole Hauntcast thing reminds me of Hauntcon .....I was pleasantly surprised by how many haun...

start another blog? As of late, I have been very conflicted about this blog. I am not those great people that scour the web looking for fantastic things to share with you.....again, I wish I was. I just blog from the Frog Queen (of Halloween's) point of view :) And, I do, censor myself. I hardly say "fuck" on this blog, but when I am working on Halloween stuff....yeah, well, I have a bit of potty mouth! (Husband, who I now know reads this, is LAUGHING his ass off at the "bit" part of that comment!) I recently stopped posting anything about my work. More like therapy for me and boring for the rest of you. I mean, even if I can be funny about it, it just seems self indulgent. I sometimes envy you that fill out those clever questionnaires that revel more to me. I just feel silly talking about myself..... You don’t have to tell me, my cat (Dorie) is cute, and my garden can be quite beautiful and I can find a quirky thing here and there but they really have nothing t...

want want WANT....one of these cool new fog chillers from Froggy's Fog . It is a modified subzero freezer. It is $799 before shipping!! (and that is the cheap one!!!) Ah, a bit out of my budget right now. BTW - I talked with Chris at Hauntcon and don't for a minute think that you can just by a $300 freezer, paint it black, and drill a hole in the bottom to vent the fog out. They already tried that. Nope. You will hit the freon tubing. Froggy's had a custom freezer made with an area on the bottom corner that has no freon tubing. The custom built freezer is what increases the price. Chris said that they really wanted to to hit the $300 - $400 price point, and were disappointed that they could not make it work. But they are happy with this new chiller. I just picked up some more Swamp Juice (the best fog EVER!) I am going to save my pennies (and dimes and nickels) so I can get a chiller next year!!

or yard keeping in this instance. I am going through my unposted blog entries and cleaning house. This is picture of a wisteria ( Chinese , which wraps counter clockwise) vine that I am growing up and through a flowering cherry tree that is dying. The idea is that the vines will take over the tree and use the soon to be dead tree for support. I planted this 4 years ago...I thought the tree would be dead by now...(maybe Belldandy came by :) ? (Sorry for the obscure manga reference :) Anyway, the vines did not wrap as well as I would like, so I think I am going to plant a few additional Japanese versions (they wrap clockwise) an see if I can increase the vines along the base of the tree. I hope they like each other...maybe I should consult the big gardening book before I plant some :) My next idea is to create some faces out of resin or something that can withstand time and the outdoor conditions and place them on the larger base of the tree and have the vines grow around them, sort ...

writing non Halloween related posts. Here is Dorie, my crazy cat, being crazy. There are 3 soft,fluffy, newly-washed cat beds and a larger chair in that room to sleep on....but husband's "in" basket makes the perfect bed??? How can that be comfortable?

Esty purchases. Although not Halloween related.....still pretty cool! Here is the latest item I purchased from the lovely Diane at Good Mourning, Glory ! She even did a great job wrapping it. I had to be very careful unwrapping it to take the picture so that I could put in back together. Here is the link to her shop if you want - I mean, need, and you do need, to buy something lovely from her. It is a present for my mom for her birthday.

cat picture!!! I finally got this fantastic picture that I won from Designs by CK framed. It is a Halloween cat(s) picture that goes quite nicely on my wall of cat pictures!! I now have two Halloween type cat pictures. The other is a black and white close up of a cat's face that is titled "Boo" that I got in Edinburgh a few years ago. But this new one is my favorite!!! It has a spider....exactly how I like my spiders.....fake...or if they must be real, dead and pressed under glass is fine with me too :) I see lots of space that still needs more pictures. (It's a hall way, so I had a hard time getting a good picture of both walls) I think I need to go Esty shopping! :)

death, wine and Music Man. Took our annual trip to Ashland Oregon, home of the world famous " Oregon Shakespeare Festival " and a LOT of wineries! Saw four plays this weekend and three of them had, in one way or the other, a strong theme - death. Death and the King's Horseman - Nigerian play about how the British and the African cultures did not understand each other. Brilliant play. Dead Man's Cell Phone - Sara Ruhl play - I have seen all three of her plays, this being my least favorite....which is saying something if you ready my review of (her version of) Eurydice . Then the murder filled - Macbeth (pictured). What is not to like! I believe it is the shortest of his plays, lots of death and blood and bodies and just some of the worst people you could ever meet. Actually, scarier than many of the haunted houses I have seen. This version was quite dark and bloody, and there were bodies all over the apron of the stage - Macbeth's severed head displayed atop a...

that I have to take these letters off my gate every year.....husband will not let me have them welded to the gate.... I know - I agree with all of you....I don't see the problem..... :) They currently attach to the gate each October with rare-earth magnets; he won't admit it...but I think he wants it that way so that he could have an excuse to buy and use some... ...actually, rare-earth magnets are pretty cool. They are very strong, and they can take a chuck out of your finger when you are attaching them if you are not careful. And I did not paint the lettering....that rust is natural, not faux ....so there is that issue of keeping your shots updated if you happen to cut yourself. Small, tiny, boring details. Anyway....I brought this up, because, I am not getting my way again.....and I am not happy. Wait, I know how the welder works. Seriously, how hard can this be? :D

for another LOLcat picture. This one reminds me of one of the most original and scariest things I saw this Hauntcon . Terror on the Fox had a little girl's room with dolls, toys and the usual. There is this little girl was sitting on the bed pointing to this picture of a clown saying that she was afraid of the clown, that is was coming to get her. It was not some crazy clown painted room with bright neon colors or scary circus music. Just a normal little girls room. Ah, how sweet..... That was until a clown suddenly comes out of the middle of the bed and pulls the girl screaming down into the bed - gone. Damn, that was good! Yeah, the only thing that would have made that creepier, is if the clown had been a spider . shudder

to go to Chicago is for the Halloween Art Exhibit . We meet Scott Jackson the producer (and a talented artist) of the event when we were at Hauntcon. He had a booth area set up with a sample of work from many very talented artists. Upon talking to him, we found that this is the 10th year of the exhibit. They have a great site you can check out all the great artists that are part of this event. They have a membership that gets you all kinds of goodies and helps support the events. One cool thing was to get to see a print version of the famous and much loved Deanna Morton as Lily Munster poster. It was used in a poster for the event a few years back. It is an amazing photo. Very cool, she does Lily very well. :) He said that they are always looking for artists, so if any of you out there are looking for a place to display your Halloween themed art. Contact him through the website . We plan on referring a couple of our friends over there. Hope someday to see the exhibit.....but it is i...

that come back from my memories.....like one October day when someone came up to me and asked me if this was a real graveyard. Happens all the time, that is the most common question we get on the display is "are those tombstones real?" The first thing I say is.....:) Yep, I carved them out of stone myself Then, I laugh, answer their questions and maybe have them grab a FAQ sheet from the display. But this time was different. This time, these people meant it. The did not speak much English, but I came to understand why they asked about the graveyard being real. It seems there were they are from, the family is buried in the yard of the home. Since they could not read everything on the tombstones to know that were are fake. They genuinely wanted to know. Is this graveyard real. Flattered as I was, it made me think. I do this every October for fun and the entertain myself, and I do know that I am making a realistic (kinda) graveyard from my perspective. I know that there are fami...

have a Davis Graveyard logo'd Messenger bag or fleece vest or button down shirt I am trying to pick something to give away on Hauntcast . I am leaning toward the messenger bag, we love ours.

I was right. (Back to Hauntcon reminiscing) We drove about 45 minutes to this place, Round Lake, I believe and pulled up to a miniature golf place, off to the side of the sign I saw a simple "Haunted House" sign with an arrow pointing left. Oh, boy, this should be fun :) Not only was this a miniature golf course, they also had an arcade section, a pizza parlor and a bowling alley....next to the bar, and...in a building behind it....you guessed it. A haunted house. Or something that resembled a haunted house. We were all hungry so we opted to have pizza first...or something that resembled pizza :) Lucky for us, the pizza dining area was right next to the bar. You might be thinking to yourself....wow. she mentions a lot of drinking at Hauntcon . Not near as much as actually goes on :) There is a reason that classes do not start until 10:00 am on Sunday :) Back to....eating first was a mistake, because the second bus arrived and decided to walk through the haunt first. So, when...

is Ghoul Friday! You win a Voodoo Doll straight from New Orleans !! Email me with your mailing address and I will get it right out to. Thanks for reading everyone! More prizes to follow!!! Cheers!

more than Tori Amos. Crap! I just found out that Tori will be in town on July 11, that is the weekend of Frightfest Northwest. We are hosting the event! The dance is that night…..there is NO way I can sneak away to see it. Halloween on one side Tori on the on the other. :( I have seen her over 30 times, so I guess missing one show will not be the end of the world (but pretty close ;) . . . . it is Halloween related after all. Now if Kate Bush* was playing …..forget Frightfest Northwest – husband would have to handle it on his own :) *husband has been warned that I would mortgage the house to fly where ever in the world if she ever announces a concert tour again.

day in my yard. Here are some pictures of what is blooming....or just looking particularly interesting to me today :)

Since I was blogging about Roslin Cemetery, I thought I would share the other pictures I took at the graveyard that day. First is another angle of the angel monument. It was up against a wall in the front of the cemetery. It looks like someone was keeping the verge trimmed to show the statue. You can see what is left of the cross behind it. I imagine it was (more) amazing at one time. Someday, I want to build an angel prop like this :)

copies of the last three years of the Davis Graveyard DVDs? (cause I have a closet full :) ) I was trying to think of something to offer Hauntcast as a giveaway on their show, and I was coming up with nothing that I think a haunter would want. The Mitchell's gave away one of their books....I don't have anything near that cool :( I want to offer them to Hauntcast as a giveaway on their show....but, honestly, we have sold, maybe a dozen (total) over the years, so I cannot imagine that anyone would want a set. I do have some Davis Graveyard coffee mugs.....and I probably could come up with a shirt or something if I dug through the basement. But really? Does anyone want one???!?! I think I will contact some vendor friends and see if they will donate a prize or two.

what you cannot have. That does not explain why I dreamed last night about a place I have never seen? Last night I dreamed I was walking through this castle on holiday - I have never been there. I wanted to go to this castle. This is Roslin Castle (yes, that is the correct spelling)....far less famous then it's much smaller sister, Roslin ( Rosslyn ) Chapel. The last time I was in Scotland we went to Roslin Chapel. Funny, we love Edinburgh and have been many times, and never visited the castle or chapel until our last trip.....I have to say, mostly because of the book. As amazing as the chapel ( truly ) was (is) I have to say that I am still haunted by the fact that is is as close to the castle outside the chapel that I could get. It was closed to the public when we were there. So I stood, on an overcast Sunday, in a picturesque glen outside of Edinburgh , looking out from a beautiful graveyard outside of the chapel viewing these ruins. As absolutely amazing as Roslin ( Ros...

I have a new addition to my frog family! I got a very cool Halloween frog from a fellow blogger. How thoughtful! The Halloween themed frogs are the favorite in my collection. This one is perfect! Thanks Dracaena !

with saying something nice . When they teach you to be a manager, one of the things they tell you to do when you have something negative/unpleasant to say, start with a compliment. So when taking about the haunts we visited at Hauntcon, I will start with my favorite surprise. Monster Mayhem First off, marketing being my life, I cannot tell you how impressed I was with their website, well, not the actual website, that is a bit under developed :) But their welcome screen had (has) a special message for us Hauntcon attendees. How cool is that - talk about attention to detail! I would give the staff person that came up with that idea a cookie! :) Now.... I have to say, that the cynical Frog Queen was out in full force when we drove up to the pizza place/bar that the bus stopped in front of. Not another one of these (cheap and unoriginal) haunts! When I got inside it seems my suspicions were confirmed...this did not look promising. Maybe this scary bar is actually the haunt? :) After our pi...

Halloween. Which I love to do (as you know from reading this blog.) So why am I a bit nervous about talking the Chris for Hauntcast tonight with husband? Normally, whether you want me to our not, I can go on and on and on about The Davis Graveyard to anyone.... living....or dead . Even if you appear not to be interested, I will keep talking about it. So why does doing an interview with a very great guy like Chris Baker make my stomach do flip flops? Well, lets see if he can work the same magic with the upcoming interview as he did with the last one. Oh, yes, I have to let Husband talk a bit too :) Wish me luck!

up for writing about Hauntcon right now. How about another giveaway. Sort of Hautcon related as that I picked this item up at the last Hauntcon preshow tour in New Orleans ('08). I went straight for the Voodoo store as soon as I got off the tour bus. Wait, oh, yeah, I did get distracted by the daiquiri shop on the way there, but after that....straight to the Voodoo store! The Frog Queen has her priorities :) That's right! Out of the people that post one my blog between now and Sunday night, I will draw a winner for your very own Voodoo Doll, pins and all!! I mean, we all know you have a neighbor that does not love your display that you want to ......ah, I think I will stop there :)