Frog on the Pumpkin

husband and I are such geeks....one of our favorite Halloween issues is the Nuts and Volts Halloween issue....it came in the mail the other day! Wooooohooo!!! There is a cool article on making a talking t-shirt....just the thing you need for that last minute costume :) My favorite is how to make your own Van De Graaff generator......I so want one of these!  My favorite part of this article was all the safety caveats.....like "NEVER" in all upper case....yes, NEVER hook up capacitors to the generator if anyone plans to touch it....yeah.  NEVER about sums that up. And this month featured our friend John Williams from EFX-TEK - we are working with him and Kasey at Vixen to use the new HC-8 to control the driver this year.....more details on that to follow.  We are still waiting for ours to show up in the mail.....darn, Jon Barrowman moving to Tennessee and slowing down the shipments of EFX-TEK (he used to live in Nor Cal) has be...

on the ground. After three years we have finally completed Sleeping Beauty. She was never intended to be on the ground.....we just ran out of time. So this year - here she is. Mostly done....just needs a bit more painting.

of our family that looks similar to this..... BTW - my brother was unsuccessful at removing said demon from the (soon to be) Frog Queen.....as you know.

......I am so over her. Really. Husband and I were talking the other day watching some collecting show and I said to him... "I am so NOT nostaligic" "No, you are NOT " - he said without missing a beat. ....made me think....as I do often in my life.....does that make me a bad person? Wait...I am a bad person. Ha! Silly Frog Queen.... Wow, good to know I do not need to keep up appearances. The day that this display makes me some money...enough to rent a storage unit to store my nostalgia.....then the frog queen will changer her tune. I have already sold the church facade and ALL the mud men......what more do I have to do to prove that I do not attach myself....... ....well, I do, but I cannot really. I only have so much space to store this stuff. It is a LOT more than most of you, so complaining about space to most of you.....yeah, I hear ya! Anyway.....I sold "Beloved" - one of our first props insp...

I was happy to find my Mourner prop a new home . Not only is she not pretty......look at those dreadful tombstones...... She was our first upright statue....we made some big mistakes.....and as much as she was "okay" looking in the display, I really never "bonded" with her. That and her and Joan of Arc were always fighting.......I had to put them in seperate parts of the display to keep them from destroying each other.   Well, I cannot prove it, but when Joan - at that time "Angel" was close to Mourner - Mourner seem to always fall over. Likely because the angel whacked her over with her sword. I cannot tell you how many times we had to stand her back up.   Big lesson learned....do not put an unarmed prop next to one with a sword. That is why I can put Joan and Angel of Death close....they are both armed. I do not need all this drama.  Someone had to go. So, this year at West Coast Haunters Convention we took a bunch ...

with the LOLcats site....get used to it :D Actually - that robe is pretty scary looking....I believe I see pink flowers on it!!  NOOOOOOOO!!! 

but one of my old workmates has an Avon store and I am still on her list.  She sent me these cool pictures of their Halloween items. Two finer ring....even with spiders...cool! Spider Hoop Earrings Slippers!!!! Want the Haunted House pin! What the hell are these?!?!?  I am actually a bit scared.....I think I will have nightmares!!

This piece by artist Thom Heap is amazing.  He made it for and upcoming Harry Potter convention. Wait....there is going to be a Harry Potter convention ?  No one told me!!?!?!?

so, since I do not have a morner props in my yard anymore....cause I hated my old one so I sold it.....I mean  it was fine and all.....but we just never clicked....this was not the prop I was meant to make.... ...we are much happier now that we are seperated. :) So, since I cannot make a morner that I like, we thought we would teach a class on how to make them, to see if maybe that is the path I was supposed to be on...... ....you tell me.  Here are pictures of the 2012 Davis Graveyard Universtity Mourner Class... Yeah, I am not replacing this prop in the yard....I think teaching people how to do this one is the right path.....to replace her, I think we will make this:

trust me on this one.... Just in case you were wondering where I was.....I was only mostly dead. :D

are not as nerdy/geeky as I thought they were....really people - there is barely a room in our house (and shop) that does not have a computer or on internet connection. Jeff and I love gadgets....especially robots. ...yeah I am waiting for my maid robot from the Jetsons.....any day now. So when I made this post on Facebook. My Roomba did not come home last night.......I think it wanted to get out and see the world. I wish him well. I was hoping for some witting remarks....but that was not the case. Most comments where how sad everyone was.... .sad? What the....... They thought it was a pet. Okay, first of all, I may have two cats named Dorie and Mason, but I have made that very clear in earlier blog posts that I am not responsible for their names .  Love them as I do.....not anywhere near a name choice I would make. To no one's surprise, the cat we did name is Halloween Cat - "Hal" for short. No guesing who's cat that is. So who would think t...

while I was away I have been working on refining my office.  I had this made for the wall to the left of my desk......since husband uses my computer a lot.....he has no excuse for not understanding me....he has been officially warned.

....oh, you are just visiting :) We sold all of our mud men creatures to a local haunt this summer (to help finance the 2012 build - and I had had some of them for almost 10 years.....we were starting to get on each others nerves a bit.) But a few weekends ago we hosted a mud man class - we had seven students and they all did a great job over the weekend making their own monsters. We are making the Oregon yard haunting world Wal-Mart, Spirit store, and (insert other cheap wanna store here) free - one haunter at a time. As usual we had a great group of students who all brought their own special touch to the props. I was especially impress by the student who got creative when we told them that they will need clothes they are willing to destroy....tyvek suit....awesome! Go out into the world my minions and scare the people!! I am so proud of each one of you!!!