Frog on the Pumpkin

husband.....here is your cake! :D

Friday! Not only is the new Hauntcast out....they have a cool new website (which I believe our friend and fellow haunter Guy over at House Bloodthorn has something to do with :) ) that you have to check out, but best of all.....I know, how can this possibly be any better?.....our good friends Tina " The Baroness " and Tim "The Barron" Reuwsaat are the featured home haunters who run Darkwing Manor are featured in this episode!! Yeah!!! We loves them!!! Husband and I were fortunate to meet these local (well in the same state) haunters in Denver when we were attending (our first) Hauntcon (Like I keep saying, this is one of the best reasons to go to Hauntcon !) Funny how you travel all the way to another state to meet someone in your own back yard. :D We were in line to get into an haunt and we overheard someone say "Ashland". Our ears perk up...we know Ashland, it is a town in Southern Oregon that we visit a couple times a year for the Shakespeare Festiv...

get into trouble. I rarely talk about this, but being queen of the frogs can be a real pain in the arse. I don't know if you are aware of this, but most frogs can be right gits, especially the giant ones. One of my particular problem children the actually "Frog King" - he likes to call himself that, but he is no king....I am not sharing this ruling title with anyone :D And yes, I would also like to know where he got that crown, I better go check the hold...if there is anything missing...... :D Anyway, looks like he is busy terrorizing East Sussex, guess I should go over there and sort him out. Hold one everyone....I will be there in November. Yes, that was the frog queen being completely silly again!!! :D Seriously, check out this cool blog Monsters in Real Places , that had the cool picture that inspired my little whimsy blog post (picture by Matty Long ). The post of Dom , the pumpkin is my second favorite. Lots of talented people out there, definitely check it out. ...

finds made even better by Toph ! I could not believe my luck when I walked into my local thrift store and found this old church bulletin board. A cork board with a little cross carved in the top....and I turn my garage/shop into a church each October and this would be a perfect party decoration...even as is. Then the immensely talented Toph got a hold of it and made it perfection. Of course, I would have painted it black, but leave it to any of the guys to find any excuse to use fire! :D (Can't say I blame him!) He took a blow torch to it to scorch it black and make all the finish peel off! Oh, it is a thing of beauty. And they he removed the cork board and replaced with latex "skin" and then made some cool writing on paper that was aged and stained with blood*. Instead of thumb tacks, we found cool looking old small nails. This stays up in the shop most of the year, we will take it down about April to replace it with the large dry erase to board (our project/shopping li...

we actually told Leonard (which we did last night) that we were not going before I told the world that this year Husband and I are skipping Hauntcon .....and almost all the other conventions (we were going to try to visit Midwest Haunters Convention this year and we had scheduled to visit Rocky Mountain Haunters again.) What? Is the frog queen getting out of haunting? LOL! No, we actually have a good reason....at least we think it is a good reason. We are going back to the UK for three weeks! Leaving right after we take the yard down the first weekend in November. So all my money and vacation time are going to that trip in November. The plan so far is to spend a few days in Edinburgh (my home someday) and then on to the west coast of Scotland (over by Glasgow ) for a week in a castle called Castle Law , then after that we are down to Cornwall (around Penzance ) and a few days in Bath (another beautiful city that we both love) before we fly home. While we are there I will go on as man...

the wonderful and immensely talented Ghoul Friday , I decided to reclaim some ugly orange pumpkin lights and make them work for indoor decor. Because she is more talented than I, she did all this cool detail aging stuff and made them look perfect with a few subtle touches. Genius. Me, not so much so, when it comes to the frog queen, you might have noticed that almost every item that makes its way out into the shop; I paint black. What can I say, I am one dimensional that way :) Then I took some dark gray paint and dry brushed it...then when that was dry, I took a lighter gray color and did the same. Viola! An otherwise boring and tacky pumpkin light has been rescued and made useful and creepy. As far as I am concerned...big improvement...but then that is my general feeling about black and gray paint :D

been working on plans for the graveyard for 2010 - yep, this is gonna be good. :)

I know where it lives.....bring your sling shots and your pellet guns - we are off to save Halloween. :D the ememy

talk about myself enough on this blog :) you can head on over the The Drunken Severed Head blog....he interviewed me the other day and just posted it on his blog. He has a great blog that I always enjoy visiting, check it out....the interview was a lot of fun, it is always great to talk with other bloggers and he asked some great questions. Thanks! Now, back to prop building...who am I kidding....I am still playing Plants vs. Zombies :D

now :) I can now post from my new phone!! And you all thought I posted lot before :)

now :) I can now post from my new phone!! And you all thought I posted lot before :)

Oooh , shinny! But it is actually more glittery and sparkly. (I have the glitter all over the house to prove it!) Anyway, here it is the Home Haunters Association First Place Home Haunt of the Year Award! Ooooohhhh .....no, you can't touch it, back away, mine! :D (Sorry frog queen is feeling silly today.) Thanks to all of you that helped us win this! Could not have done it without the help of the blog community - thanks! :) Wow, I am a bad person....because you know, right now.....what I want to do is......(deep breath)....take this picture and email to to that Kate person at Willamette Week :D LOL !

of an era. (Well, sort of.) Many of you haunters may know this, but for those of you that don't, let me tell you the sad situation that is happening. " Propmaster " Paul Venturella moved to California, into a gated community .....with an neighborhood association with rules and stuff, and we all know what that means....likely no Halloween decorations :( Not only does Propmaster have one of the most extensive prop sites on the web, he has been haunting his yard in Salt Lake City for years, if you have seen the Haunters DVDs you have seen the camera he has by his front door for his jumping prop that scares the beejeeses out of everyone (we love that, nothing like watching grown men scream to warm your heart!), then he is the driving force behind Rocky Mountain Haunters (husband and I have traveled to Salt Lake to be part of their events) and he is also the creator of all those Haunters Video DVDs -he has been creating them for the last 11 years....for free! Yep, he is a real...

so much more fun if I had these. Thanks to my friend the lovely and very talented (and she loves our graveyard....we like her) Margie Boulé for tipping me off to these great knitting patterns at Kris Knits for Halloween dish/wash cloths. I see these and think....maybe I should learn to knit, making these would be so cool.....then I stop laughing and come back to reality. Like I need another hobby! :D Check out the Kris Knits link for more details, she has a great blog and sells the patterns and they are really reasonable . If you are a knitter, this is a project for you.

disagreeing (which always happens when I switch into "crazy mode") and I blame it on Pumpkinrot :D He posted a picture from the new Thirteen ride, and we both had to learn more. To some people, finding that the ride was in the UK might have been disappointing, but not to me! I am headed over there in November - so I think, sweet!!! - we are going!! It turns out not to be that easy.....our trip will take us to Scotland, because we that is my home (well, at least in my mind), and then we are going to head down to the west country Bath, Cornwall and Wales. So will be at both the top (area) and the bottom of the lovely island....and wouldn't you know it? The park is just about in the middle. *&%$!!!! Husband says no way, it will waste a whole day, but I am looking at train schedules to see how I can get there from Bath (which is a bit of a trek)....I have seen the Roman Baths, Stonehenge and the chalk hills several times, and they are stunning, and I highly recommend th...

but the damn game ate it. Okay, I have a problem with this Plants vs. Zombies game. It has gotten a bit harder and a bit frustrating...but that has not stopped me from spending way too much time playing (and also playing Majong the cool touch screen computer....but that is another story.) Anyway, because I am the nice type of person that likes to share her misery (and I LOVE this game), I am going to give away a copy of this game on my blog. So if you want to your very own time wasting, endlessly entertaining game...now is the time to win it....you have time now...I mean Hallwoeen is 9 months away. :D And to make it that much more cool....there is even a pumpkin (jack o'lantern) as one of the plants. He is a hard shell that you can put your plants in that make it harder (not imposssible) for the zombies to eat. Is that not uber cool?! I love this game! Leave a comment on this post and I will draw a winner next Wednesday, February 24. Good luck everyone!

a bad mood, I might as well bring this up. (my self loathing kicks into high gear whenever I have to spend time with my family :D ) As I have posted before not everyone likes the Davis Graveyard display or me for that matter, but that is cool, everyone is entitled to their opinion - just like I am entitled to mine :D Is this not the most wonderful world! :) So to show it is not all sunshine and roses here at the graveyard (or my case tombstones and skeletons), I will share with you a not so flattering review from last October from one of the larger free publications in our area. :( To be fair, and all things being what they are, I know that my display is not very interesting for people from about early teens to early 20's - we are too family friendly and not scary and thus uninteresting to the bulk of that age group, which is the primary haunted house attendees. This is one of the main reasons, husband and I have no aspiration to create a haunted attraction. I really have no desir...

....and yes, going to the white cliffs of Dover to dump the spider over the cliffs it also seems, completely reasonable to me. :D Husband is not afraid of spiders like me.....but I don't know if even he would grab a huge spider!! (shudder)

wasn't it....I only posted the first part...I wonder how many of you went to find the next two :D Well, for those that didn't here is the next part (my FAVORITE PART)......and yes, I too would sell my house if a Category 2 spider went missing in my house. "For the love of god please buy m-y h-o-u-s-e-!!....." I just about bust a gut at that part every time I see it!!!! And for those of you that actually get the Adam and the Ants reference....well, that is just an added bonus!!! The man is a genius!

even though sadly this ride (The Haunted Inn) was destroyed in a fire just a few weeks ago (I knew I should have posted it sooner.) It was the last ride left in the original park. Is that not sad? I am remembering why I stopped posting these a while back :) Pleasureland in Southport , UK was open in 1912 and closed in 2006. (It opened again in 2008 and 2009 for a bit, but then closed again.) What I love about this park is it looks like it had, two, count them boys and girls, two haunted rides!!! . The second ride was called the Ghost Train.

Yes, the spiders are back on the masthead. The other day when I was at a meeting...one of those things that are distracting me from my very important blog :D, and as I am looking at the person speaking, I see it....a small spider is crawling down my bangs onto my face. (I am screaming like a banshee on the inside!) I am in a big room full of people so I don't want to jump up and scream and do my spider dance...well, actually, that is exactly what I want to do....but I don't because I really don't want to distract anyone from the meeting so that we can just get it over and done with :D So I just jump a bit and brush the spider off my face. Afterward at dinner I tell husband what happened. He laughs and says he was wondering what I was doing over there! Looked like you were going to have a fit or something! :D Actually I was quite proud of how I handled that, you have no idea the amount of restraint it took not to scream! Anyway, I have posted this before but it has been a wh...

Sorry everyone.....I usually have lots of post written and at times like this when I am super busy at both work and home, I can just put the blog on auto pilot - not so much this week :) Oh, and there is that damn Plants vs. Zombies game...while the zombies were trying to eat my brains, the game was eating my life!!! Bare with me, I have a three day weekend coming up and I promise to get back to blogging (I have soooo many things to tell you!!) . . . I mean you all want to see what the Home Haunters Association first place award looks like, right? :D

time wondering how I was going to be able to tie this blog post into something scary/Halloween/Davis Graveyard ish - cause I know that it may not seem like it, but almost every post does...very loosely mind you, but they do. I don't have marketing awards for nothing :D Anyway, I finally thought of what it could be. One of the scariest things I know...I mean seriously makes my skin crawl and start to feel dizzy (and generally irratates the crap out of me) . . . it is. . . . my full name. Christine (shudder) - worst name (for me) in the universe right? :D I look at that name as an almost unforgivable mistake on my parents part. When I met husband he quickly corrected the situation and started calling me Chris (I then promptly killed that Christine person and buried her the yard :D) ....it has taken years for my family to stop calling me "that name" - they still do on occasion, and I am not sure if it is just the name or the fact that it is that "family" thing.......

would watch the super bowl (yes, I know I purposefully did not capitalize to truly convey my complete lack of enthusiasm for the whole thing.) One of the commercials for Dockers will be using my favorite Ren Faire/Novelty group the Poxy Boggards . They are hysterical, their tag line is a "drinking group with a singing problem". Not for the faint of heart - a good portion of their songs are hard R/X rated/and are heavily centered around drinking - so if you click these links make sure you are not at work or and your kids are not around. I will not even play some of their stuff at my Halloween party - not good for mixed company - I mean husband's dad is there! Seriously, don't even for a moment kid yourselves that "oh, my kids can handle this" - no, no they cannot, and that is brought to point by a very funny song that they start their Ren Faire shows* with a song called "A Warning" aka We say F*ck! (A lot, and that is not even close to the worst of ...

I found this awesome....and I do mean awesome cake over on the talented Boo Spooky's blog . Her current post is about some stunning cakes - you really need to check it out , they are not to be missed. But anyway, of course I liked this one. Zombie noms! Is that not me?! I didn't think I could find anything better than a frog cake....but this is it! Like I said to her "I want this for my birthday cake!!!" WANT big time!

You can win yourself a very, very cool one if you hop on over the ShellHawk's Nest blog and enter. She is working on a new art form (actually just a new form of pottery) and she is giving away one of her latest creations to one lucky winner! Head on over there and leave a comment to get yourself in the drawing......wait, why am I doing this? I want to win that pumpkin :D

about awards, I am ready to pass on the cool new award I got from Geoff over at Enter the Man Cave. This award goes to all of you that comment frequently on this blog. I always appreciate comments, let's bloggers know that there is indeed, someone out there listening :) Thank you. I tried to grab everyone that has posted on my blog....recently at least a couple time. Focus on the word "try" people, cause I am sure I have forgotten someone - I am hoping that because these awards make the rounds.....one of these people will correct my error and make sure you get this cool award! I am purposely leaving off three people that should be on this list - Carl at ILHM, Wiec? at when is evil cool and MJ at My Two Yens Worth......because I don't want to give them an award :D LOL!!! - they already got the award from Geoff already. So, guys, consider this your backup copy :) Andrew Green - from the always fun and interesting Who Wants Taters Blog (I love that title!) Arcane - fro...

and other days you do :) So at work we got a couple of cool awards for our fantastic Marketing schemes! Woohoo! Yes, our marketing team is just that good :) They are now in the box in the back with the other awards....really, you think I would move the frogs out of the way to make room for the awards? Think again my friends, think again. :D So, when you win a bunch of awards from the outside world, the powers that be here on the inside think that I should be getting one of those "you are doing a great job" type awards. Oooooh, shinny! These awards all have names...or reasons why the person gets the award. My award* was titled "resisting generic" - The whole room about busted up in laughter. Believe it or not (I know this is a stretch) but the frog queen has a reputation for being a bit unconventional :D Everyone thought it was perfect....except for maybe my boss :) I think she feels I "resist generic" a bit too much for her taste :D I am famous for rollin...

zombies on my lawn.....and especially none getting in my house and eating my (alleged) brain!!! So imagine my glee when I found out about the game Plants Vs. Zombies over a The Spooky Brew . She had a link to the theme song ....which is almost as good as my current favorite - Portal theme song. Check it out. It is FUNNY! After that download the game Plants Vs. Zombies from Popcap games. Gardening will never be so fun. While we are talking about gardening (one of the other loves of the frog queen) you need to go over and check out the new site The Haunted Gardens . Yours truly is co-op blogging with a few other lovely and equally creepy obsessed people to talk about gardening and our flair for the dark and spooky. I am doing a major remodel to one of my garden areas this spring and you can follow my progress on this blog. One of my major changes is the permanent addition of the a skeleton (which you will see in the masthead on the new blog) and a scarecrow as garden art to my vegetable ...

out the basement, I thought I would finally get my act together and do something about all the lovely awards you nice people have sent my way......so, one Picasa web album creation and small change to the blog and we have a way to display the awards. You will see them on the left....thanks to all of you for the awards. I really appreciate it, and all your great blogs. That being said, we are back to the frog queen shilling for another of my favorite blogs Enter the Main Cave . What more can I say.....great guy, great blog and extremely supportive of other bloggers . Check it out, you will love it. Thanks to my friend Geoff for giving me my latest award. Best Blogger Comments Award Thanks man, I love commenting on your blog! Thanks for the support. I am supposed to nominate other bloggers ......and I thought about it for long time last night and I am still not sure what to do. It brought to mind an interview I read from a performer I like and she said "the reason she does not ...

to light the skull candles on the patio :) And tonight is the perfect time to light the darkness with skull candles. ....don't you wish you were spending Imbolc at the Graveyard? Oh and I made some yummy potato soup. Awfully traditional for the frog queen.....but sometimes traditional is good. Makes me smile. Happy Imbolc everyone!

going to do the happy dance?" husband asks me on Saturday as we are packing stuff to take to donate. I hesitate.....What if they won't take it all.....and I have bring it back? I think about it for a second, I don't want to jinx this.....it is important to me. I look at his truck and the back of my car. both are completely full of stuff we have been accumulating for close to 20 years that are on their way to be donated. And I say, "as soon as we get back and they have taken everything...every last item." Returning from the trip I pull into the driveway first, and as husband is pulling into the driveway I hopped out of my car and did a "happy dance". I see him laughing in the car and hope he is paying attention enough not to drive through the closed garage door :D It is like a large weight has been lifted off my shoulders. But it did cause another problem. . .. I found things in the basement.....more things I really need to get rid of. :) That said, husb...