Shall Not Forget

I'll be back with regular H'ween content soon!

Over halfway there!

Hey, peeps!  It's been pretty quiet, Halloween-wise around here. 

That doesn't mean the thoughts aren't churning, tho. 

I stopped at Lowe's to get a couple pieces of plywood for a total of 9 new headstones that are in the works.  I had to repurpose the big 2'x4' sheet first.

Close-up

This stood out on the front stoop for 4 or 5 days.

Is the true halfway point April 30?  May 1?  or May 2 which is exactly half of 365?

Eh - it's in there somewhere!

April 22 was an in person Motor City Haunt Club meeting. 

One of the guys has a display with life-size dinosaurs (which I'd love to take the grandkids to see!) and brought in the inner workings so we could see how it works.  This little motor turned the large fiberglass dinosaur head fairly quickly and it was easily 7 feet tall.  Very smooth. 

A couple samples of "fire" which are actually small foggers. 

This is a micro-fogger that he brought in to share - Coke can for scale.  

It sent out a amazing burst of heavy fog! 

So going back to my 9 new headstones.  

I took a 2'x2' sheet of plywood and cut 6 small 8"x12" slabs out of it and rounded their tops.  They're going to be filler stones for the cemetery.  I haven't decided if they are going to have actual names, or just initials on them.  

The next 2'x2' sheet is destined to be the memorial stone for the Spawn's car that just wore out and was hauled off out of our driveway to the local junkyard.  I'm pretty excited to see how this turns out - the giant circle is such a fun shape!  Since her car was a Cadillac, it's going to have the emblem on there somewhere. 

So the last 2 are going to be made out of the 2'x4' sheet.  A part is going to be dedicated to my car that got wrecked shortly before H'ween last year (thanks to an 18 year old kid who didn't notice a red light and 10 or so vehicles stopped at it - the last being me)  I will be coming up with a funky shape.  And it'll be red with a Saturn emblem on it somewhere. 

 The other, bigger part of the sheet will be the final and most elaborate stone.  I'm going to make my first non-static prop!  I've already gotten a reindeer motor, which is a fixed speed motor with an arm that rotates.  I'm going to make a skeleton pop up from behind the stone.  I thought this would be a somewhat easy thing, but besides figuring out how to attach everything, I have to decide if I'm going to use the little 1/2 skeleton shown above that's behind the Halfway to Halloween sign?  Or a separate skull & hands holding onto the stone?   

I'm sort of leaning towards the little 1/2 skeleton because he's super light and could pop up farther.  But I have a glow-in-the-dark skull & hands ordered and on the way.  So I'll need to see how big/heavy the skull is.    Glad I still have some time!

Anyhoo - the wood blanks will be painted to somewhat match the rest of the stones in the cemetery.  That means multiple coats of exterior house paint and DryLok.  Conduit hangers will be screwed on the backs so they slide easily over rebar out in the lawn.  They're not as "realistic" as some I've seen but they make me happy!   

Random monstrous-looking bush