We're in the double digits!!

It's been WAY too long since I posted last!  On my other blog I'd have a "coffee chat" to get caught up but this little ghostie is pretty appropriate.  

It's not like I have been really BUSYor anything! 

OMG - can you believe it's only 99 days to Halloween?!?!?!!

This has been one seriously crazy year so far.  I ended up being off work for a total of 2 1/2 months.  That was a weird time.  But I'm sure a lot of people felt / feel that way!

Let's be random, shall we?

Chuck on the first day of spring....

I'm kind of peeved that the deer have been eating everything in my yard!  My little cherry tree has all the ends of the lower branches chewed off.  They also got hold of my rose out in the yard and have been keeping it trimmed back (and not blooming - grr)

We ended up cutting out & painting a total of 13 new headstones and repainting all the rest so they are matchy.  I haven't done any "aging" on them yet.  I have a variety of spray paints to use for that.    

On a whim, I posted a pic of my old foam headstones on the Motor City Haunt Club page to see if anyone wanted them and I was surprised at the interest!  The first girl who answered was over within an hour to pick them all up.   She seemed really happy to get them, so that's awesome!

Of course Rusty had to do his quality control check on the stones I brought inside overnight so glue could dry. 

I really think the "his" & "hers" are my new favorites.  I saw a picture of a headstone from a real cemetery that was a similar shape and had to make these.  That's why my last post said I cut out 11 new ones but now I have 13.  And I still have a 2x4 sheet of plywood that I haven't used!

First fire of the season!

S'mores & beer

On the first day of summer, we went kayaking again!  My sister and I met up with my niece & one of her friends who asked if Chuck was coming with me again.  Of course!  Then I had to stop at the dollar store and see what kind of swim stuff I could find for him.  This inflatable vest & goggles were perfect! 

This little guy was fun to visit with but the snapper the size of a hubcap I saw was NOT anyone I wanted to get close to!  So if I couldn't see the bottom (there were a lot of weeds along the channel) I wasn't letting anything dangle in the water! 

Chuck's first time swimming!

When I heard our favorite little donut place was opened again, we had to go get some.  Daddy's Doughnuts in Utica, MI are the best!  They have a maple bacon 'breakfast' donut that's amazing.

I was out training in Millington, MI with my search & rescue team recently and looked up some cemeteries that were close to the park.  I found this "little guy" in one of them.  I haven't had a chance to do any research on any of the cemeteries yet.

I also learned that I'm not the only taphophile on the team!  I was grabbing my bag out of the back of my car after training while chatting with a couple of teammates getting in the next car.  I mentioned where I was going and they said they like to explore cemeteries, too!    They told me about a couple that I need to go check out.

After all that time off, I didn't get to explore many cemeteries like I wanted.  I wanted to check out Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit but Spouse didn't want me going down where the biggest plague outbreak was at, so I still haven't gone there yet. Not sure why I didn't head north!

The 4th of July was kind of calm!  No parades or anything, but we had a BBQ at my sister's house and watched all her neighbors lighting off fireworks. 

One of the projects we got done was finally painting the storage area across the back of our garage.  We tore up the nasty carpet and replaced the doors 2 summers ago after this fun little incident....

This side of the shed is where I keep my blowmolds and you can see the coffin down on the bottom shelf.  The other side is where the a/patio furniture and now the cemetery shack are stored.

When the Spouse is babysitting BabyBoy, he likes to turn on PBS kids and I almost fell off the couch when I saw the ad for this !  Some of the shows were cute.  We'll ignore the fact that they're now having Christmas in July...

We had a hybrid Wilderness First Aid class for the SAR team and after 12 hours of Zoom classes, we had to meet up to do the hands-on part of the class.  I spent the night at my sister's house the night before so we could ride together.  Then on the way home, the GPS took us right past this cool store in Lapeer called Past Tense.  Which I've posted about before - the whole upstairs of the building is all Halloween stuff, and a window with a pentagram on it!  

I ended up getting my mermaid skeleton!  It looks a lot smaller than 30 inches here, but that's what it is.   It'll go nicely is with the new headstone I made with an anchor on it.

Halloween goodies are starting to show up on store websites!  

I saw people on Facebook going crazy over this supposed 12' skeleton at Home Depot but I think its the perspective of the picture makes it look bigger than it is, since the only skeleton on the site is 5 feet tall. 

   And WTF!  $130????????

This is the same one that's been $30 in the past!  

And look at what their reasoning behind the price gouge is...  Sheesh.

So lets see.....

 Secret Reaper sign ups are happening over at the Halloween Forum! That's always a fun time.  I will be participating as usual.  It's going to be tough coming up with my likes list since I can't think of anything that I need and I haven't seen anything that I really want yet.  But the excitement of getting an unknown gift always brings me back!

So that's all I got for now!  I'll get some cemetery posts up soon and since we're at 99 days, that means the Countdown to Halloween will be soon, too!