Frog on the Pumpkin

My friend Jen took this picture for me last weekend when she was out at the pumpkin patch with her daughter. Tiny Frog on the Pumpkin! Happy frog queen dance!

get too many presents or skeletons....my friend Elyssa - minion extraordinaire - gave this to me the other day. The cats are just waiting to tear it back to all the little pieces from whence it came :) Thanks Elyssa!

I got a holiday gift from my friend Pam of the East Coast Haunters Club . She made me this very cool Halloween themed bracelet. It is made with a whole lot of safety pins and beads. It has all kinds of Halloween baubles on it...some of them even glow in the dark!!! How cool is that! Thanks Pam, you are the best!! (when she is not busy making the frog queen lovely jewelry, she is the main contact for Team Halloween - very cool lady!) I love it! Especially the little pumpkin. I just love pumpkins! Thanks Pam!

Here is the printed version of the Davis Graveyard party invitation. You have to be very special to get one of these. Actually, it is just hours and hours of your life sacrificed to building props for the graveyard....that's all :) Thanks (Becky and her sister Sara) so much to Oblation Papers & Press - for creating and printing our invitations. They look amazing. They make their own paper and use a letter press to hand print the invitations....they are just beautiful. Very intriguing stores, if you are in the area check them out.

he had seen everything. Men dragging a body into the garden. The whispers and frantic digging into the night. At his feet, the shallow grave, the promises of silence behind rehearsed alibis and then the muffled sound of screaming through the earth...the hasty retreat at the sound of wolves in the distance. Then silence....for a very, very long time. In the chill of the early morning the clouds parted, revealing the paschal moon and at once the trees rustled a forewarning her arrival. Hooded and dark, chanting under her breath, she unpacked candles, books, amulets, bones and thick red blood on the ground. Then, a handful of seeds, scattered over the body. Again, silence, deep hushed, silence. Silence so sound that he heard the quiet rumblings of the earth turning, as if thousands of worms were making for the surface after a rain. Thin boney fingers pushed through the earth, hauling the body from the grave. Suddenly the seeds, now understanding their purpose, grew with much ferociously...

We get a lot of questions when we are standing outside the Graveyard on nights when all the effects are running.....that is one of my favorites....and a surprisingly common question....from 6-10 year olds :D Okay people, the ghost effects in the Graveyard are good (puffs up feathers) but they are no where near that good :D My favorite answer to that is that real ghosts are too unreliable, so we make our own. :) Anyway, to dispel a bit of the magic, here is how the screen for the ghosts in the crypt goes together. We built a wood frame about 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Since this effect is projected from the back of the crypt, we use rear projection screen material from Rose brand to avoid a hot spot from the light in the projector. We store the screens in the basement to keep them safe (It gets hot in the upstairs of the shop in the summer) and then we unroll them - supervised by Hal, of course, and tape them with black gaffers tape to the wooden frame. I tack all the edges down and ...

complication that arises each year when we plan our party....what to feed the guest. Food I hear you say? Why yes, how clever of you. :) But what food? I have been through it all, made it myself (tried to cut my finger off, so that was the last year for that!), had a family member make it, hired a caterer, went to Costco and bought platters......this year we have a lot of people who own/know someone that owns/or works for a food distributor that have volunteered to help. Including some friends, of who one of them works for a meat distributor. She asks? "So what do you want to server everyone?" "Whatever you think is good. What is popular party food?" "No requests?" "Tofu? :D" "Oh, yeah, you are vegetarians.....sorry :D" "Yep, so what every you think is good works for us." So, part of the menu includes specialty deli meat, meatballs and little chicken cordon blue bite things. Oh, with all kinds of tasty dipping sauces! Got a ch...