Welcome my fellow bloggers to a frog queen folly I like to call "meet the Halloween/horror obsessed blogger" - and I mean that in the nicest way :)
This is opportunity for you to learn more about your favorite Halloween"ish" bloggers and me to get more information from them without making it look like the stalker that I am.
So, my first victim, I mean volunteer is The Captain ...aka Jason. I know we have all been dying to chat with you and find out what makes a normal human being become obsessed with Halloween?
There are a whole lot of other holidays, why the obsession with Halloween decorating?
I’ve loved Halloween since I was a kid. I blame err no I mean contribute most of my love of the holiday to my childhood neighbors the Kutchs. They would always have really cool parties on Halloween. All of us kids would decorate the yard with webs in this big walnut tree and make dummies out of old clothes and last year’s masks.
(I’m not in this picture but the walnut tree is. Loria Kutch is the leprechaun, my sister Danielle is rocking the awesome home-sewn Rainbow Bright costume, I don’t remember what my little brother Nick is in the foreground, something with a cape I’m sure.)
(That is actually the first pumpkin I designed from scratch and carved all by myself. It’s an owl, that’d be why it’s in a tree.)
But it was their dad Ron, and his friend Mike that really made the whole thing magical. Ron and Mike would carve tons of pumpkins, 20-30 pumpkins. No simple jack-o-lanterns either, these were highly detailed faces of devils, creatures, and whatever the popular cartoon characters of that year happened to be.
This was the late 70’s and there wasn’t any pattern books to buy, no Internet to download patterns from, and no fancy carving tool kits like they make now. They were using anything that would work as a good carving tool, clay shaping tool, razors, I don’t even really know. Their pumpkins were the first time I ever saw the technique of shaving different depths on the pumpkin to get different colors.
They had a long driveway that went back between two houses, so it was like walking down a gauntlet of Halloween to get to the house. I remember one year when I was older (young teen) I stayed in the yard to scare people. I wore big clothes like one of the dummies and this awesome monster mask I had for years. The jeans I was wearing had rips in them so I stuff the holes with wadded up newspaper so people would think I was a dummy. I laid up against the big walnut tree and would move my head or foot just a little when people weren’t quite looking at me. “Did that thing just more?” or “I thought I saw him move!” and “whose in there?!” But I would just sit still and try not to laugh; I was back behind a rope so people couldn’t touch me.
I have always carved a pumpkin or gone out dressed up on Halloween as an adult. Since we bought our first house about six years ago Halloween has gotten bigger and bigger for us. I am fully obsessed with Halloween, not a day goes by were I’m not thinking about Halloween in some form or fashion.
How long have you been haunting?
I helped as a kid at the Kutch’s house, and we lived next door to them for about ten years until we moved to Oregon. Halloween 2010 will be the fifth year at my own home that I would call it a haunt.
What was the first prop you ever made?
Wow, that’s a hard question the 70’s is a long time and a lot of abusive living ago. I would have to say a dummy for the yard at the Kutch’s house. Overalls, flannel shirt, work gloves, and a mask stuffed with news paper sitting on an old sharpening wheel with a real scythe.
(That’s me sitting down, on the right.)
In my current yard it would be a dummy we named “Chet” after a hated neighbor. He was made of a rubber head, one rubber hand, one rubber foot all connected to a piece of wood and a frame of chicken wire, then wrapped with the cotton batting from an old quilt. We slapped some cheap webs and spiders on him and tossed him up in a super cheesy 15 foot spider web. It was a bad as it sounds.
Tell us your favorite thing about haunting?
We don’t get a lot of trick r’ treaters at our house, 25 is the most we’ve ever had. But, I love it when the little kids walk down the driveway and they fixate on that one prop that they are scared of or worried about. They walk towards us for the candy but never take their eyes off that one prop that for some reason stands out to them as “the one that’s gonna get me”.
I’d be a liar if I didn’t mention all the compliments I get from strangers and friends at work. I also like being know as “that house”, I try very hard to be “that house”. If you haunt, you know what I mean.
What prop are you the most proud of?
That’s another hard question because it’s always changing. Each year my zombies get more detailed and I get better at creating them, so every year I have new favorites. I guess from last year’s batch I would say the Captain is my favorite.
At our Halloween party everyone was talking pictures with him out in the yard. I also like the first female zombie we ever made, her name is Candy and she has real human hair. She just has a really natural looking pose and she gets a lot of compliments from people.
I am always planning and adjusting plans. I have ideas for next year before the current year is complete. I have ideas that I sit on till I can figure out how to create them or until I can afford them. I’m going to go a little different route this year and actually have some non-undead characters this year.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Everywhere! The Internet, movies, nature, TV, peoples trash on the side of the road. You see a pile of junk on the curb, I see potential prop parts. Most of my props are made from trash. Household stuff mostly, newspaper, paper towel rolls, old coat hangers, old clothes, cardboard, and plastic grocery bags. Every finger on every zombie except the first three zombies are made from cut up Mt. Dew 12 pack boxes.
My initial inspiration to make zombies came from finding the most wonderful website entirely by accident. I was looking for a skull pattern for a pumpkin and I came across pumpkinrot.com and I feel in love with Halloween all over again. I looked at every picture on his website at least twice that first night. I had questions! How did he do what he does? Was it paper mache’? How did he make those awesome teeth? So I wrote him an email and asked every so bluntly I’m sure, how did he do it? I never heard back anything from that email; I’m sure he gets that same sort of email all the time. So the hunt was on to figure out how I could make my own wonderful dark art. Then again mostly by accident I found spookyblue.com and his wonderful tutorials. I quickly realized that there are no rules to creating props and that I could take the methods I liked and add my own twist to them. I thanked both spooky blue and rot by email after I made my first three zombies, sent them a link to my video which also had a special thanks to both of them as well as to Ryan Wickstrand of ZombiePumpkins.com, and my wife Jen. Rot has featured my haunt twice on his blog PUMPKINROT.COM: What's Brewing (http://pumpkinrot.blogspot.com/) which to me is like getting nominated for an Oscar or a Grammy.
New ideas for 2010? Are you trying something you have never done before?
Oh yeah! I can’t say too much, but like I mentioned before I am including some non-undead characters this year. I want to work on my lighting a bit more this year. If funds allow I would like to build some sort of fencing so that I’ll feel a little better about setting up my props earlier then the day of.
Most valuable piece of advice you would give to a fellow haunter?
Don’t be afraid to do something. If you have an idea, just do it. If it doesn’t come out like you had it pictured in your mind, do it again differently next year. Be original. Haunting is its own art form so there is no wrong way to do something, if it works for you then do it.
Tell us your favorite yard haunt story.
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| (Checking my pretzels) |
I do almost all of the cooking at our house. I have loved to cook as long as I can remember. Growing up I was the oldest of three kids in a single parent household, so I learned to cook basic stuff to help my mom out when she got home from work.
In the seventh grade I took a cooking class with Mrs. Adams and loved it, the next year my best friend and I were both teachers’ aids for Mrs. Adams’s seventh grade cooking class as well as taking her advanced class.
If I have a recipe I can probably make it. I do bake a few goodies, but it’s the candy making you want to be around my house for.
At Christmas time I make Peanut Brittle, Fudge, Peanut Butter Fudge, Chocolate Covered Pretzels, Cashew Roca, Popcorn Balls, and sometimes if the humidity is low enough I’ll make Divinity for my Mom. I lost my Grandfather when I was in my early twenties, he always made tons of candy for everyone around the holidays, so I have taken up the tradition. The one day of the year I do absolutely no cooking (unless we fry a turkey) is Thanksgiving, that’s Jen’s big day and we have her Family over for dinner.
Should we move Halloween to the last Saturday in October?
No, we’ve be OK with it on the 31st all these years why should we change it now so a certain Halloween store can make a bigger profit because more people will party if it’s on a Saturday. I am not even going to mention the store, but I don’t shop there.
Do you carve pumpkins every year?
I use to, but now I use mostly fake pumpkins. Real pumpkins are so expensive in Florida, plus they seem to go bad quickly down here. I do have a 26 plant pumpkin patch growing in my backyard this year, so hopefully we will be carving both real and fake this year. A lot of fake this year, you’ll see.
Favorite TOT costume you have seen at your haunt?
I had a year where I carved a Freddy, a Jason, and a Michael Myers pumpkin. We had two kids probably about ten years old come to the house and when I opened the door they were doing the Freddy Vs. Jason face to face pose because they knew I was a fan. I stood out in the yard with them for a few minutes and they asked about the pumpkins and how I carved them. I was cool to see young fans dressed up as the classic monsters of “their” day.
Your least favorite thing about decorating for Halloween?
Being paranoid that someone will screw with, steal, or damage my outside stuff. For inside decorations it would have to be packing it all away for another year.
One thing you would do in your haunt if money were no object.
That’s easy! Work on it all year instead of having a job! Oh and maybe hire a security guard so I wouldn’t have to worry about it. AND we are already looking for a hearse to fix up.
AND . . . . . . . .
:) I know how you feel....I could go on forever too. Thanks (thank you, thank you, thank you!)
Captain for helping out the Frog Queen. I hope everyone enjoyed my folly as much as I did. You are the best....and still one of my favorite bloggers.
So....who is next? Wouldn't you like to know :D ?
Cheese cloth is really fun to mud, I like they way it looks and it is easier to work with than I thought. It looks great on the body and the shoulders, but I can see now that the head will need few more layers to make it look like it is a shroud and not chain mail :D
who turned out the lights, and how come I cannot see my hand?
lately....so on my list of cool gifts I have been getting I need to mention this wonderful box of goodies from Mr. Macabre. If you have not checked out his blog, you need to go right now....don't worry I will wait. :D He makes some amazing props and has a great sense of humor....my type of person.
related to Halloween....unless you count that we do a Dr. Horrible sing along at our party. Yes, I am going to go with that. 
enough frog posts on this blog....for saying I am the Frog Queen you would think that I would post a frog or two now and again.
Fair enough, these dolls happen to be small skeletons. And I was not tarting them up (working on my UK references) up in skimpy clothes and driving her around in a pink car like Barbie. Although, them, like Barbie look like they could use a sandwich.
This is a Tiny Tim skeleton (about 12 inches tall) cloaked in fabric. Kinda looks like Joesph, and to and ex-catholic that is scary in its own way....but anyway. The fabric is too much for that small frame.
I think he has that backwards, but what is a girl to do when very cute minion gives her a present like this.
the yard. 
But I get a lot of questions about Beloved and the angel props. Well, making a small angel just did not sound like something I could do easily, I thought, what about just a ghost.
So Husband made a base for the body and we found by testing the theory with wet sheets that the body was not sturdy enough to stand on its own and the head was a bit wobbly, so he but a piece of rebar up the back and then we taped it at the waist and the neck to the rebar.
The hands were just pieces of chicken wire attached to the wrists. Since he will be holding a bear in one hand and a plastic pumpkin trick or treat bag in the other, I took a piece of fabric and wrapped it in plastic and a small piece of metal wrapped also and fit them in the hands. I will remove them when he is dry. When he is painted I will put the props in their place.
(I’m not in this picture but the walnut tree is. Loria Kutch is the leprechaun, my sister Danielle is rocking the awesome home-sewn Rainbow Bright costume, I don’t remember what my little brother Nick is in the foreground, something with a cape I’m sure.)
Wow, that’s a hard question the 70’s is a long time and a lot of abusive living ago. I would have to say a dummy for the yard at the Kutch’s house. Overalls, flannel shirt, work gloves, and a mask stuffed with news paper sitting on an old sharpening wheel with a real scythe. 
In my current yard it would be a dummy we named “Chet” after a hated neighbor. He was made of a rubber head, one rubber hand, one rubber foot all connected to a piece of wood and a frame of chicken wire, then wrapped with the cotton batting from an old quilt. We slapped some cheap webs and spiders on him and tossed him up in a super cheesy 15 foot spider web. It was a bad as it sounds.
That’s another hard question because it’s always changing. Each year my zombies get more detailed and I get better at creating them, so every year I have new favorites. I guess from last year’s batch I would say the Captain is my favorite. 
At our Halloween party everyone was talking pictures with him out in the yard. I also like the first female zombie we ever made, her name is Candy and she has real human hair. She just has a really natural looking pose and she gets a lot of compliments from people.
I had a year where I carved a Freddy, a Jason, and a Michael Myers pumpkin. We had two kids probably about ten years old come to the house and when I opened the door they were doing the Freddy Vs. Jason face to face pose because they knew I was a fan. I stood out in the yard with them for a few minutes and they asked about the pumpkins and how I carved them. I was cool to see young fans dressed up as the classic monsters of “their” day.
because I want to see how she pulls off a online costume contest! :D
Davis Graveyard Drive In. We call it that, even though you don't actually sit in your car....but you do have to drive to the house. :) FG logic is quite silly.
