When I drove up to

the castle I knew it was the one I wanted to rent. Yes, it was lovelier and more modern (on the inside) than the other castle I had seen earlier that day, but that was not the reason....it was primarily the fact that literally in the front yard of Dairse Castle in the Fife region of Scotland (a 50 minutes north of Edinburgh) is a graveyard and a deconsecrated Catholic church.

Is that not perfect?

We decided to rent a castle and invite our friends and family (some that had attended our very small wedding) to join us to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We knew that this would likely be the only time that many of them would get to travel to the UK - so we thought we would make it extra special. :)

Since I would be spending Halloween in Scotland that year (we lent our props to a local haunt) and not setting up (much) of the yard, this was the place to be! We confirmed our reservation on the spot, can you see why?






















More pictures to follow!

Comments

  1. Johnny ThunderMarch 15, 2010 at 10:37 AM

    Beautiful photos of a stunning location and structure.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Blair @ Reasonably SwankyMarch 15, 2010 at 10:38 AM

    Wow, it's beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  3. RotMarch 15, 2010 at 12:13 PM

    Sweet lord that's just amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mike C.March 15, 2010 at 1:29 PM

    So gorgeous, so chilling and warm at once... so very Scotland.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pam MorrisMarch 15, 2010 at 3:04 PM

    gorgeous! I'm so jealous! Scotland is one of my most favorite places!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMarch 15, 2010 at 9:32 PM

    Just stunning.... I love ever single shot... thanks so much for showing us!

    ReplyDelete
  7. RueMarch 15, 2010 at 10:17 PM

    Holy crap - I'd have rented that castle on the spot too! I'd probably camp out in the graveyard if not for those chilly Scottish nights!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy National Donut Day from the Davis Graveyard

Image
Harold the Gravedigger squinted through the pre-dawn mist. A low, guttural groan echoed through the Davis Graveyard, sending a shiver down his spine. Not the usual mournful sighs of the restless dead, no. This was a sound more…sugary. More…sprinkled. Harold gripped his shovel tighter. The rumors had begun a week ago – whispers of a giant, sentient donut rolling through the cemetery at night, leaving a trail of sticky frosting and disembodied sprinkles in its wake. Tonight, he'd finally catch the culprit red-handed (or, should he say, red-glazed?). As the groan grew louder, a monstrous shape lumbered out of the fog. It was a donut, alright, but colossal. Its glazed surface shimmered under the moonlight, studded with malevolent chocolate chips and a single, menacing gumball eye. A chorus of disembodied moans rose from the disturbed graves as the donut flattened several headstones with an indifferent squish. Harold, adrenaline coursing through him, charged. "Hey, sprinkle-brained...
Read more

Going to the Chapel

Image
...and we're gonna get..... no life during the summer. :) (We are almost done with the Chapel, in fact, if all goes well, most of it goes up tonight. But I have not been documenting it here.  So I am going to retrospectively show you through the chapel build.) After a few years of planning, we finally decided to sell the abbey and build a chapel. The plan is that this will be easier to put together than the abbey has been.  The abbey took an entire weekend, a scissor lift and an army of people to set up.  This new chapel should go up in a few hours. This is the SketchUp plan. Front view from SketchUP Here is the real chapel that we modeled it after. Ardgowan Chapel in Scotland Yeah, we decided to phone it in this year :D
Read more

Match Columns

When we decided to put our display up at Clackamas County 'Scare'grounds this October, we knew if we wanted to take the demons and the metal Cemetery sign from our columns, we would need to make columns to match the real ones on our driveway. We had to use a full wood frame to make this as heavy as possible because the metal frame that goes over the arch it has some weight and we did not want it to topple forward.  There is a lip of wood at the top that is not foam covered, that is where the demons will slide down onto, similar to our current set up. We drew out the grout lines for 4x6 bricks (average size) with a T-square to keep square, then used a Dremel trio on the pink foam.  We used our Demand Durarasp and a wire brush to make the grain. We use PL glue to glue the sheets to the boards and used wood blocks and strips screw into the wood at the grout lines to hold the glue for 24 hours to set. We needed to add an extra layer of bricks (to match our fence) that we just glue...
Read more