Frog on the Pumpkin

well, not my actual brother....ah, family....let's just not go there. :D Anyway, I am talking about one of my blog brothers.....Max over at The Drunken Severed Head. The frog queen is a TDSH fan for many reasons, my favorite is his sense of humor...anyone that reads this blog knows the frog queen can be a bit silly. Okay a lot silly. And his sense of humor suits me down to the ground. If you have not visited his blog you should....he talks about all kinds of horror related stuff, always interesting and very supportive of other bloggers, that is the second favorite reason I like him. I do have a point to my post, and that is that he needs your help to win some really cool Rondo awards. He is nominated for blogger of the year and a writing award for a great article he wrote that you can check out here. If you have not voted for the awards yet, do me a favor and help him out. You do not have to vote for all the categories, just these two, it is just this easy. He is nominated in categ...

possibly be up to? Here is my latest folly in progress. LOL! Any guesses?

working on something else....like getting back to that book we are supposed to be writing :) We have finished the 2009 Davis Graveyard DVD. We create them each year as a thank you to all our helpers and the dance team. Every year we make a few extra copies and put them for sale on our website. We always have lots of extras, but this year, despite the purposeful lack of TV media content, for the first time, we have filled the disk. When ever I wonder what it is that we do all year, just have to pop this disk in the DVD player and go.....yeah, I forgot we did that, oh and that too! Anyway, I will give one away here on the blog, I will even throw in a Davis Graveyard t-shirt. Just leave a comment on this post and I will draw a winner next Monday. I also have them for sale in the Davis Graveyard store along with the last four years. (I will have special pricing for anyone that wants to buy all four...wow, you must be really bored.) I have been asked a few times about the classes, we do ta...

be the best link I have ever found. There is a Mausolea & Monuments Trust in the UK!!!! Some of you look confused :) There is a trust that registers all the monuments and mausoleums in the UK and Ireland....and they have pictures and backgrounds of all most all of them!!!! All different types and conditions from almost new to ruins!! Talk about inspiration! I should be sleeping....but I have spent the last few hours looking at pictures. Not only do they have picture, a full history on most of them, some quite noteworthy, some sad...my favorite story so far is the man that build his own outside the church yard, whitewashed it when he was alive, but when he died the vicar was so upset that it was outside the church yard that no one else could be buried there. The is another that is in the middle of of a golf course :D Warning, you might want to stay away from this site.....very addicting :) Here are some of my favorites : Beard - lovely, I admire the high pitched roof Butterfield ...

neither of us are very patient people. This is very evident in husbands latest attempt to help complete one of my Frog Queen follies - the Luminary. Our latest project for 2010, is updating the luminary. After reviewing my collection of luminary pictures it is apparent that the one thing wrong with it is that the candles need to be in votives . So since all our attempts at cutting glass did not work....and I cannot seem to find a glass artist that is willing to do trade for Halloween decorations :) Jeff said he would cast them in plastic (resin.) We took one of my favorite ones, the one I thought looked more "church like" and made a mold. This way he could cast it with a hole in the bottom to allow the LED lights to be placed inside the candles. That was the easy part. Then husband got some clear plastic resin from TAP and some red coloring to make me 48 votive holders. We have worked with resin a bit...my brother has a quite a bit and we know that it really does not like th...

to Inchbuie (a cemetery on an island in the river) in Killin Scotland. It is the burial ground/cemetery for the McNab clan. You have to have permission to get in, which involved getting a key from the visitors center that has been closed every time I have been there. Likely something about the off season (we usually travel in November.) Here is frog queen fancying her self a clever photographer. I thought it looked cool! And I am, just in case some of you thought I was in fact a picture of a Frog on a Pumpkin :) This is one of the only pictures that I can find on the web for this cemetery. Now I really want to visit. Not sure if we are planning to head to Loch Tay on this visit, but if we can I am going to see if I can arrange to get in. I researched it a bit and it seems that the key and time limit - you only have 30 minutes to return the key, are partly to keep you from causing much harm and that there are ruins to a castle, old kirk an mausoleum that are in bad shape and v...

the graveyard better, because on this last trip I only took these two photos of the famous St. Andrews Golf Course. The first one is the course, somewhere around the 18 th hole I believe. The other picture is of the old club house. Very nice. And more famous than the graveyard for some reason...... :D

on purpose :D I ordered a Gruesome Easter Egg from Shadow Farm and you will never guess what was in the box.....never, nope, not a chance...... "I bet he put a spider in the box?" - wow that came from about five people all at once :D LOL! Yes, there was a rather large spider in the box....creeped me out big time! (Thanks Dave!) I had to have husband take it out of the box for me. (Shudder) I purchased one the other day, because I believe that all my "drawing" karma was used up a few years ago when I won 6 cases of wine! I have my own special Easter (Ostra) party each year, but this year I am skipping the party (scheduling conflict) so I thought I would buy myself something different, but equally unconventional to make me smile. Here it is, my very own Gruesome Easter Egg :) Very creepy.....I love it. If you want one of your very own, it is not too late to enter his drawing (you get an egg and a piece of art from his collection - see site for details) or purchase one...

of St. Andrews Cathedral Cemetery.......we could do this for days......but I will stop for now. Maybe next week I will add some more. If all was perfect in my world I would have you all on the next plane to Scotland and we would all enjoy a Frog Queen guided tour of this amazing place. Thanks to all of you who humor me on my obsession with this graveyard. I promise to move on...to my favorite (yes this is only my second) soon enough. Until then....more St. Andrews for now.

these are a bit sparkly for the frog queen.....and is that pink you see? Yes, in fact it is. And no, it is not for me....it is for husband :D Wouldn't he look lovely in that crown-thingy? Just kidding...man I hope he doesn't read this post! These are actually items that I purchased over at Mystic2Awesome as gifts for friends and family. Although you would not know it by looking at him...the skull has become a bit attached to that lovely flowing crown-thingy. I caught him staring at himself in the mirror again. (sigh) (I am starting to think he might be a cross dresser (just like our coachman) - If I catch him at the M.A.C. counter at Macy's them I will be certain :D) That said.... changing out the Etsy link on my site....if you want lovely, lovely things (and who doesn't?), check out her shop.

cathedral cemetery pictures. I will keep it short this time and just ask you.....have you ever seen anything so amazing? Can you see why I just love this place? :)

Is in St. Andrews Scotland. I never pass up the opportunity to visit this city or graveyard. Outside of Edinburgh, this is my favorite city in Scotland. The cathedral cemetery is a very large cemetery that was one the site of the largest cathedral in Scotland. And if you ever visit you will be amazed just looking at the site of the ruins it is almost impossible to believe that there was a church that size right there on the coast. You can read the history of the church here, but the short version is that it fell like many other cathedrals and kirks during the reformation and most of the stones from the church were used to build the surrounding buildings. Today, it is a massive cemetery and quite unique. You can still see some of the walls from the inside of the cathedral in the graveyard. There is even a small part of what was the original church (St. Rule) still on the grounds, that church dates back to the 12 th century. When you visit today, you can find open graves that ...

real scary? Seriously, that is wrong on so many levels!! Excuse me, I suddenly feel very, very ill! :D

Davis Graveyard University (thanks to our friend Cory for the idea for the name!) This year we are holding four (at least) classes at the house and teaching one seminar at Frightfest NW and possibly two at the West Coast Haunters Convention. Along with working on stuff for the yard this year.....crazy, why yes we are :D Thanks to everyone who completed the survey to help us decide what classes you wanted us to teach. This year we are going to two of our ever popular Tombstone class. You get to make your very own tombstone right at the graveyard. The most requested class was molding and casting. Husband and I have worked it out where we can teach you to make a mold in a weekend. It will be 6 hour day on Saturday and a 4 hour day on Sunday. Along with an overview of the basics, when you are done you will have made a mold of a skull and poured a foam version. The next class is corpsing . There are lots of ways of corpsing a skeleton, we are going to teach you our version. We are going ...

day of the year for me. It is my company's Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting for those of you lucky enough not to have any idea what I am talking about is a nightmare the involves, in my case: Among the staff and shareholders, there are the Board of Directors, members of various committees, AVPs (assistant vice presidents), the VPs, the Senior VPs, those Chief "type people" Chief Communications Officer, Chief Information Officer...etc. You know all the important people that could easily have me fired with the blink of an eye, in the event that any part of this event goes wrong :D So everything has to be 1,000,000% perfect I farm out the creation of the Annual Report...so that is just art directing, but the other documents and signage and stuff I have the pleasure of creating...and this year (due to budget cuts) I got to create a video presentation. And as I said, that was not a fun project. After all that, it was really hard to imagine that the whole ordeal could get wor...

a fairly steep hill towards the river behind Dairsie Castle and make your way through the undergrowth you will be be happy to discover these ruins. It appears that long ago there must have been a house below the castle. Not much left, but an awesome find the just same....I had to resist the temptation to take a piece of the rock wall home with me :D One of the coolest discoveries on the trip!

Or... The Story of How Hal Almost Died . The other night when husband is working on my video and our videos for the DVDs and Pinnacle is starting to give him grief, and it is late.....so he (and I) are a bit stressed. Hal, who seems to be a bit unhappy that he is not the center of attention, hops up on top of husbands brand new computer where he can be directly in our line of sight, and .... shuts off the computer! Yes, the power button is on the top of the computer....when he jumped up there, he just put his little paw on it and, poof, power is off, just like that. I can see the look of horror on his face as he realizes that the file was likely not saved. Husband cannot believe it....he looks at the computer, tests the power button, to confirm that yes, Hal did in fact just reboot the computer. He was, let's say...just a little "unhappy". :) I grabbed Hal off the top of the computer, as fast as I could......... to make sure that he lived to see another Halloween. That w...

to Dairse Castle . See, I was not kidding when I said that the church and the graveyard were in the front yard!! Just imagine the frog queen and husband pulling up to these gates.....mind you we are deciding on which castle to rent for our anniversary? I can tell you that right here, where this picture was taken is where I was 100% sure where we were staying on our holiday :D (Ali is right, you can rent it!) Here is the picture of the castle from up the driveway, past the graveyard and church...actually this is Scotland....I think I should be calling it a kirk, right? Who would not want to rent this castle? Actually, the owner said that there are many people that will not rent it for the exact reason that we love it....they do not want a graveyard that close to where they will be staying. I guess graveyards are not for everyone? :D This castle was a restoration project - they will sit down over a cup of tea and tell you all about it - just ask :) They have a few pictures in the second ...