Happy Middle-of-August!

Also known as 2 weeks til my birthday!  

It's been a minute since I've been on ye ol' blog, what have we been up to?

I finished my Creek E. Bonez headstone!  It's pretty big, so I think I'll just lean it against the house, instead of figuring out a way to keep it upright out in the yard.

 I was going to write a post detailing how I made it, but I think anyone could figure it out.
Pose & glue skeleton with liquid nails to plywood board.  I had to add a foot or so piece to this 4 foot board since the skeleton was taller than I remembered. Slap a coat of exterior paint over the whole thing to seal it.  I got a nice poo brown from the oops paint shelf at Lowe's.  Coat #1 of DryLok.  Coat #2 of DryLok I dabbed on with a paint brush to fill in the brushstrokes.  2 coats of the perfect shade of exterior matte gray, also from the oops paint shelf.   Drybrush black over the bones.  Add a little acid green and call it done!

This is my memorial for my Jack-a-poo that crossed the Rainbow Bridge back in February.  It's going to be weird setting up the cemetery this year without him.  He'd been out there with me "helping" every year since I started Maple Grove in 2008.  

I'll put this toward the back of the cemetery & backlight it so there's hopefully a halo effect around it.

Here is my puppy boy last year, watching me work on some project.  

He went downhill (heart disease, etc) soon after Halloween.  

So last weekend we went to the Cheeseburger Festival in Caseville with Spouse, my Mom & Sister #1.  And Chuck, of course!  

Mmmmm cheeseburgers!  I had the "Cristo" which was made with french toast as the bun & topped with Swiss cheese, Canadian bacon & a dusting of powdered sugar and maple syrup to dip into.  (swoon!).  Spouse & sister had the "Porky" burger with pulled pork, cheddar & BBQ sauce.  Mom had a plain boring burger since she (gasp!) doesn't like cheese.  Later Spouse & I shared a burger on greasy buttery garlic bread, topped with Swiss & cheddar & bacon. The huge patty was cooked in a pie pan, so we got a wedge of burger.

 One of the sister's friends has a camper right up along Lake Huron, so we stopped in to visit & go swimming.

 

So I hadn't planned on really buying much this season, but ya know...things happen.  Of course I said that before I saw any of the offerings out in stores. 

Yes - I scored one of these puppies from Michaels!  They'd barely had anything else on the shelves when I saw they had them in stock at a nearby store. 

I got 2 sets of these skeleton hands & the "iguana" below from Oriental Trading.  

Speaking of (please excuse how my brain works!) I'd ordered some M&Ms from O.T. and they arrived looking like someone sat on them for a while in a warm room, so I got a refund and these instead.   The pink & blue M&Ms had been for a gender reveal party because I'm gonna be a Grandma!  

The grandson will be making his arrival around Christmastime. 

During the ultrasound, he looked right at us & it lit up the lens of his eye - creeeeepy! 

So I also stopped into Big Lots last night and was happy to find their "haunted" CB radio.  I'd seen a picture that someone posted but didn't see it on their website, so I thought I'd imagined it.  Nope! Since it's the closest I'll get to a ham radio, we'll just have to pretend.  My witch shack may be a ham shack in the cemetery this year!

 I was on the HalloweenForum today and I was reading the thread about Joann Fabrics and someone posted about a pig & chicken skeleton, but then said they weren't on the website anymore.  Maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago they weren't but they were today and both were available nearby!  I was just going to get the pig, but I really like the chicken a lot more than I expected!

So it looks like it'll be less gypsy-flavored in the cemetery this year and more farmyard!
And I love it!