I think someday

we might actually get to see most of the haunt from the Extreme Home Makeover show.  Looks like they are releasing it piece by piece.

Here is the latest installment from ABC from the Nightmare Factory makeover.   I really cannot tell you guys what a great experience that was, so glad we got to be a part of it.

Are any of us in this clip...unlikely.  We were so busy, we learned from the first time the camera crew came by that if you got "unlucky" enough to be used for the filming, you basically sat there painting the same area for 10 minutes. So when ever I saw the lights camera lights and heard the crew coming, I made sure I ducked out of sight :D

Anyway, there were a lot of volunteers there much more photogenic than me that did the opposite and ran to the camera crew every time they appeared - fine with me :)

Latest clip

If you want to see our handiwork in person, head on up to the West Coast Haunters Convention - Ed and the kids are going to open the haunt one night in May.  We will be there to talk about the process and you just have to see it to believe it.

It is a little late

...but because I have been sick and not able to get husband a proper birthday presnet (I mean aside from being married to the frog queen :D)

Here is your cake :) Between you and I, this song will never get old :)

So exactly when is Portal 2 coming out? April?!??!? :D

I think that fly I ate was bad

Sorry - frog queen has been ill for a while.   I promise to be back next week :)

Just for fun

I typed in "ghost" and "frog" into Google.

Did you know there was such thing as a ghost frog?

Now you do.

Kinda cute too.

Still do not want a real one.  It would just end up being cat food/toy - just like every thing in my house.  This picture suits me fine.

If you were looking for a reason

to go to HAuNTcon (besides it being awesome) - we have it.  For all our fans that say they would love to work with the Davis Graveyard, here is your chance.  Yes, boys and girls, you can spend a whole day working with us  to create a cemetery.

We are one of the featured Monday workshops this year at HAuNTcon!!!  Woohoo!

How did we let Leonard talk us into this :D

We will also be teaching a session on foam texturing as well as teaching two make and take classes (oh, and coordinating the make and take classes)....and I am doing some print work for the convention.

See, there is a reason I have gone a missing from the blog as of late.

Check out this link for more information on the class and to sign up.

So who is going to HAuNTcon this year?  I would love to meet up with you!

The winner is

Amethyst and Lilypads!

She wins the cool coaster that I trekked all the way from Boscastle Cornwall!

I have some new things to offer up in the next few days.  Stop back by.

Haunters DVD set update

Husband and I (mostly husband) are working on the Home Haunters DVD set, and yes,the deadline was Tuesday, but if you get it in soon.....maybe next week, we should be able to get you on the set.  Just go to the site and upload the video - just to be sure email hosts@davisgraveyard.com to let us know it is there.

When we are done and we have pressed the last set to send to the duplicator, we will change the "video" page from the submission information to the video ordering information.  If you see that on the video page.  It is too late to submit.

Thanks to everyone, we are at over 60 videos.  Here I was thinking that I was going to call this over :)

Anyway, that being the case anyone that has the skill and the time to help with redesigning that site I would greatly appreciate it.  I hate designing logos.....my least favorite thing to do and as far as the site goes....I am more of a print person than a web person. As you can easily tell from the Davis Graveyard site :D

Help me! Cause this image is just not working.......



Anyway, email me at chris@davisgraveyard.com.

What? Has it been like a week

since I posted an LOLcat?  Too long!

I cannot resist the zombie ones.....especially this one with a cute orange tabby.  ahhhhhhhhh....

St Just, Cornwall, UK

paid off when we were at St. Just in Cornwall.

We were visiting the lovely (and I do mean absolutely lovely) norman church - it is down by the water (when the tide is in) and there are these lovely little paths that lead to grottos and a ancient pool.....definitely worth the trip.  If you are in Cornwall find your way there, trust me it is beautiful.

So as come up to the church I can see a graveyard around it and one going up the hill.....but we are headed into the the church.  Now I want to be respectful, we are with a tour group and not just say....."hey, I am going to just pop outside and check out the graveyard, I am sure the church is lovely, but....."

I could already tell that the tour guide was a little surprised and maybe a bit put out (and could not understand) my (our) obsession with every graveyard we saw :D  So I did not want to alienate myself any further by rushing off on my own :) 

So I went in the church - which like I said is quite lovely and very old, just like many of the other churches I had see that week....nothing wrong with it .......but to me the real beauty was outside in the surrounding gardens and the overgrown cemetery.

So, I am itching to get outside and when we do he heads up this walkway - which I can tell leads back to where we are parked.....but I absolutely cannot resist the stairs in front of me that lead up through the graveyard.

I figure this, if I can keep within hearing distance of the tour guide, I should be good.  So off I go.  Husband knows better than to stop me - I think he decided to stay with the group just so they did not leave without me.

Thanks to husband for making the video for me.  And I am playing with the YouTube annotation feature....so humor me :)

Best snow fort ever

Hee! This is awesome.  I wish it would snow at my house now!!

Click here for more pictures.

I apologize, I forgot about this giveaway

I promised to give away a silly little coaster from Boscastle Cornwall - Home of the Museum of Witchcraft, which was unfortunately closed (I did have hubby take my picture in front of the place) when I arrived last November.  I thought some of you that know of or know the town and the museum might want one.  Just another frog queen folly.

Since I was so late on getting this out I am going to repost the drawing.  Everyone that already posted to the original post is automatically entered, but I am opening it up until midnight Friday, February 18 for anyone else that wants a touristy bit from Boscastle.

Just make a comment on this post and you will be entered.  Enjoy!

Does anyone know?

Did all the Norse churches in Cornwall get built from the plans?  Was there a kit you ordered for a catalog?  Did they get a discount for buying supplies in bulk?  :D

Just being silly....they are lovely churches, really.  They just kinda look the same, lovely, but similar.  The really neat thing about touring just about all of the countryside in Cornwall, you can always tell when you are coming up on a town....cause you can see the church tower :)  And where there is a church in Cornwall, I learned that there is also a pub right across the way.  Suits me right down to the ground!

May I present St Keverne's church in Helston.

Notice the pub, just there to the left, the red building...just staggering distance from the church :)

Ringing the bells.  

and of course.....there is the graveyard.

Notice the bricked up windows in the background.

Maybe putting a fence around it was not the best idea....did someone lose the key to the gate, or was this a really unpopular person in town :)

Really love this idea for memorials, tombstones -what a great way to hid something....a wall of plaques.

Never get tired of Celtic crosses

While I have been busy

working on HAuNTcon stuff, husband has been busy also......and devious.  Last night he created this JibJab card called

Married Men of the Davis Graveyard

If I was irratated that he was "playing" while I was working that was gone the instant I saw this :)

Not even remotely

Halloween related.

But I wanted to feature a clever gift that I got from a colleague/friend for Xmas.  It is this cool notebook that features the letter "C" on the cover (C for Chris) and the inside between the blank pages for writing it has random pages from books and old ledgers and the front even has one of those old school library index cards.  Very cool I love it.  And let me apologize for my dreadful pictures - I took them in a hurry and have been meaning to retake them for this post.....but if I wait for that, this post would have never happened :D 

He has a Etsy shop "Paper Lunchbox" with all kinds of cool items - check it out.  He also has a blog "Musings from a Maniac Mind" where he recently talked about his run in with the California Milk Board in regards to one of his pieces.

Now that I have written this....I have found a way to tie this to Halloween/Davis Graveyard.....this clever man is the one that wrote the bios of the crew and the about us section of our website.  Wow, I even impressed myself on that one.

Anyway - check out his Etsy store and get yourself some cool vintage stuff.  I particularly love the Dictionary Definitions and because husband and I both love old circus stuff we love the Backyard Circus set.

One of the things that is distracting me

these days is helping out with HAuNtcon.  Looks like Husband and I went and got ourselves "involved" - so busy, busy, busy.  That said join us at HAuNTcon this year in Louisville.  And take care of this great Valentines Day offer.

If you ask me, nothing says I love you like HAuNTcon tickets :D

 SHOW THEM YOU "SCARE"

Surprise your Sweetheart, Family and Friends with a

FULL WEEKEND REGISTRATION TICKET to HAuNTcon 2011

Special Early Bird Prices are still available; Save BIG today!

http://2011hauntcon.ticketleap.com/early-bird-discounts/

We're going to be in Louisville, Kentucky -- April 27-May 3, 2011

Check the HAuNTcon website for event updates...they're just around the corner!

http://www.hauntcon.com/

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY from the HAuNTcon Family!

See, I even used a pink font....that is real dedication to this even from the " pink hatin'" frog queen :D

knock, knock, anyone home

Sorry to be gone missing.  Just super busy......here is a LOLcat to entertain you until I get back.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We learned a long time ago

that it is much easier to use fake skeletons and bodies for the yard.

Have you ever tried to dig up a grave.  Not easy.  Especially an old one....you know the ones you need to get skeletons out of....the fresher graves are for the bodies.....everyone knows that :) 

Every time I see someone on TV dig up a 50year old grave with a shovel I roll my eyes....really?  You managed to do that by yourself....without a backhoe. 

Don't believe you.

And a skeleton....yeah, they don't stay all connected the way I like them....a pile o'bones is not nearly as scary as a skeleton all connected with those wires and rods and stuff. 

And corpses without the right refigeration rot way to fast.....and are frickin heavy!

Anyway, where was I going with this?

Yeah, we all know that you can get your skeletons over at the Hauntcast site (remember to subscribe it you have not already!)  Chris has some great deals for you there....but body forms or mannequins, they are a bit spendy and I have to say in our experience, it is hard to find the perfect body :D

But we may have solved that problem.  Thanks to this link from the famous Leonard Pickel (Hauntcon/D.O.A.) I present you with this site called Roxy Display - they make bodies!  Not just a male, female, kid body form set.....a whole family of body forms.....literally....you can order this family as a set.

The have hard bodies and soft flexible bodies and realistic bodies and inflatable bodies....not that kind - that is another link.

Sweet, we want to make a new TOT this year and did not want the bod to be exactly the same.  This is perfect.  We will just order a smaller child.

That sounded kinda creepy didn't it?

We will just order a smaller child body form.  Yeah, that sounds better.

Anyway - great bodies at great prices......you gotta love that.

Now put your shovels down, and with a few clicks of your mouse......you can give some body a home.

Wanna read some ghost stories?

Then head on over to my friend Courtney's blog - Haunt Jaunts.  I told the tale of my not-so-great ghost tour in Edinburgh last trip and I am also giving away some ghost story books that I got while I was over there!  Lots of fun, be sure to check it out.

Happy Haunting

Hello square one,

we meet again.

We are starting over. Completely.

No, not the whole yard.....just the church (Westerman Abbey) - I say "just" the church like it is just a small prop in the yard.

This is big.

Very, very big.

I know I am as stunned as all of you.....actually typing it out for the blog is a very scary thing to do.  It is more real now.  I told you all, so I have to do it.

At the moment, we are still in the planning stages.  I think our next step is to build the scale model and see what supplies we are going to need. 

Oh, you have your hand up, do you have a question?

"Why I am getting rid of probably one of the largest props in any home haunt?"

The answer is in the question.

It is bit cumbersome to put up.  We had an accident taking it down one year and this year while taking it down the 14' pieces of lumber we damaged (just years of wear and being out in the rain) - the only safe way to put it back up is to rebuild the frame.....and if I have to go to that much trouble.....I am building what I really wanted all along.

A ruined abbey.  Like Hollyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.

So Westerman Abbey will now be a ruin just like most of the other abbeys in the UK.

Ruins. (thanks Henry)

This last trip really got me thinking that if I could have anything....I rather have ruins.  But how to make ruins that will cover the shop.

We are going to use force perspective and build the structure closer to the street.  It does not have to be as tall that way.  

Like most things, solving one problem, causes others. 

How to stand it up since it will not be anchored to the shop and if I move it forward, won't you see the shop when you are not standing directly in front of it?

We are standing it up by building it as a long rectangle frame that we will anchor with 55 gallon containers full of water.

The rectangle frame we are building will go down the side of the driveway to obscure the view from the street angle.

That is the plan anyway.

If anyone can pull this off it is our crew.  After all, we are quite a talented group of artists :)

.......so anyone want a 3-story church facade? :D

What? He was mocking me

Hal and the driver (skull) have never really gotten along.

Poor driver, no wonder he his constantly in repair mode. :D

Merry Imbolc

Everyone.  I celebrate in the frog queen style of course :)

Any excuse to light the skull on fire is a good day in my book!

I have been missing

a bit because....there is a LOT going on the Davis Graveyard side that I have not mentioned.  Nothing really earth shattering.  Just the frog queen is a little distracted and feeling a bit displaced, or really just unable to settle :D

It does not help when husband posts these kind of posts on his blog.  I wish I had his clarity of mind.  How in the world does he see that?   I wish I could settle and be happy and decide or be comfortable with what is.

So that reminds me I have this perfect idea for the title of my next blog post......

"Well hello there square one, nice to see you again"

Yeah, 2011 is gonna be kinda "interesting" :D