Halloween 2009 prop making has offically started!

Our friend Dan carved 2 coffin cruiser tombstones for us this weekend so we mounted backs, shaped and painted them.

These were supposed to be done last October but we didn't get to them. We wanted to get them done before car show season this year.

We are teaching Skeleton Cage making at FFNW this summer so I wanted to practice making one to take notes on what I am going to have to prep for. Also tried a new finishing technique. Using Great Stuff foam insulation we covered the aluminum bar and then painted it with flat black spray paint.

Hauntcon Costume Ball

Here is the photo they took of us for this years costume ball. There was a photo stand as you entered the ball and everyone got a copy of their photo during the evening. Wish we had copies of some of the other costumes.

Another Great HAuNTcon!

We just got back from our trip to Milwaukee, WI to attend another Haunted Attraction National Tradeshow & Convention.

There was so much to do and people to meet we don't even know where to begin. We saw tons of really good haunted houses. We attended a fantastic costume ball. We gave a seminar on building your own 3-axis bucky skull. We attended some very good educational seminars. We spent an entire day watching the Bad Boys Scenic design group build a Crypt scene in a day with a little help from us once in awhile. We stayed up way too late in a few hospitality suites. We sampled the local Wisconsin food. We are tired but fired up about halloweeen now that we are back.

Had a great time

on the Pre-Show tour. Off to another haunt tonight!

We will post more tomorrow.

We are off

We are headed to Hautcon for a week. We are doing the whole show, from the Pre-show tour to the the one day seminar on Monday from Bad Boys Scenic Design.

Should be fun as always! We will try to post while we are there.

Happy Haunting!

We have a merchandise store

After a few weeks of checking out Cafe Press and a few of it's competitors we decided to use Zazzle.com for our shirts and other stuff we can put our logo and photos on. One of the main reasons was we wanted to be able to put our logo on the back of black shirts. Something Cafe Press doesn't do. We also need a site that had lots of its shirt styles in black as well as some other intereting items like cups, mouse pads, magnets etc.

You can check out the store here http://www.zazzle.com/DavisGraveyard

We also updated our products page with a like to the store as well as links to our photo books that we buy through MyPublisher.com. As always our products page has the last 3 years worth of DVD's we have put together with footage and extras from each year.

http://www.davisgraveyard.com/products.htm

Zazzle even has a skateboard you can customize! We might make this available one of these days?

We have been published again!

Our second Haunted Attraction Magazine article came out this month. This one is about our video head effect that we presented in several seminars last year.

View Article

The 2008 Awards are here

Came home Friday night to box blocking my back entry way.....what could it be? :)

We open it up and find that it is the awards from Ghost Ride for the 2008 Haunters Videos.

They are very cool, shinny gold skulls. Reminiscent of the classic Golden Bucky Awards.

I will design and order the plaques for them on Monday and they should be ready in plenty of time to get out to the winners as soon as they are chosen.

Big thanks to Micheal at Ghost Ride for giving us a great deal on the awards. We have updated the Haunters Video Awards website. Works better and we have listed the volunteer judges for 2008 - big thanks to them too!!!

Theme to Halloween

Working on the "Easter egg" that we put on our haunt DVD each year is always a last minute idea that usually comes together quite nicely. This year, no exception.

We figured out the footage no problem, made some edits and then we had to find the music. We wanted something different than we normally use (although we love Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana) this year, as with our haunt video, we threw caution to the wind about copyright. Working often with artists, that is very hard for me to do. I am pretty anal about only using things that I have the rights to....I have this funny allergic reaction to lawsuits (some bad past life experiences.)

But, this year, with the home haunt, I finally gave in to husbands request to "loosen up." One of my favorite things husband did was create the "Ode to Halloween" video of our cat Hal (Halloween Cat.) The Ma Rainey song "Black Cat" is perfect, I like obscure songs that are under the radar - and that song is a good contrast to what we normally use.

We had already high jacked Christopher Walken for the video (not literally, take a lesson from Suicide Kings and never kidnap Mr. Walken), so when it came to score this year's Easter egg, we grabbed the theme from Halloween and the Shamrock jingle from the Halloween III movie and made this video.




It is very silly, but we made ourselves laugh, and that is the important part. It is like our video this year, made for us instead of worrying about awards and what the rest of the world thinks :)

I think I need to apply that philosophy to my yard. :)

Haunter's DVDs shipping soon!

The 2008 Haunters DVD collection is schedule to ship later this month. It is a real treat and an inspiration to see fellow haunt enthusiasts from all over the country submit their videos. This year there are Gathering photos and videos (groups of haunters that get together by region) and lots of how two videos. Should be great way to spend a few evenings....or a weekend.

Order yours today!

Finally!

We did it. We have 90% of the Halloween props put away (thanks Dan for helping with the mud men!) Except for a few things that need to be repaired and a pile of party decorations that need containers, all of the props are upstairs and stored until fall.

We have noticed that we are running out of room :)

Look! We can now get a least one car in the garage!!

A transplanted Rose

You will never guess who moved to the Northwest! Seriously, I screamed at my desk when I found out what happened to one of our favorite yard haunts - ever!

Ms. Rose, the famous Rose Manor haunt. Winner of the 2005 Yard Haunt of the Year award!

I don't know all the details, but it appears her owners couldn't keep her and needed to find her a home. The lucky new owners are House Bloodthorn. They seem to appreciate their new found treasure and we are glad to see she is in good hands and not forgotten.

Check out their blog and find out about this great new haunt. If you like The Davis Graveyard, you are going to love this haunt. Jeff and I always have a hard time getting out and seeing other haunts, but we are going to have to make an exception this year and get ourselves out that way this October.

Join us in welcoming Rose to the Northwest (where we have the best yard haunts!) :)

We survived

The funny thing about us is that we can pull this whole yard display off and the many events that surround it without wanting to kill each other, at least not that we would say to each other. :)

But when it comes time to make the video, oh my goodness! I thought our marriage surviving a major (down to the studs) kitchen remodel would be the worst of it, oh, no, that was child's play.

So after about of month of back and forth and back again, we are very close to having the 2008 DVD done. We spent most of Saturday just working on the Easter Egg. A part we always love when we are done, but the making process is a big relationship tester. (check out 2008's Ode to Halloween - our adopted stray, I mean what else to you call a cat that shows up in October?)

I think this video is our best yet. The 2008 shows the yard from setup to take down (a very sad day indeed.) And the best part is that husband found a unique soundtrack.

I come home from work and he tells me that he has found something that I will love or absolutely hate. I love it. It is perfect. It is Christopher Walken reciting The Raven. What, I ask you could be better? (besides Vincent Prices version which is about 2 minutes longer and we were already at 8 minutes.)

I was as happy as can be. I told him that like he said, people will like it or hate it - can't please everyone. Check it out when you get a chance. Better yet, buy the DVD set from Propmaster when they become available later this month!!!

2008 Videos on YouTube

We have uploaded our 2008 videos on YouTube

• 2008 Yard Video
• 2008 Year in Pictures
• Coachman video (our new big prop for 2008)
• 2008 Graveyard dancers (check out their new costumes!)
• Open House footage (news coverage 2008)
• 2008 haunt conventions (we were out and about in 2008)
• Tombstone class

Find all of our videos on the blog to the right. Happy Haunting.

We will have a 2008 DVD with more footage and a surprise or two available in late February. Check back for details.

Halloween Art

We recently had some of our halloween pictures that our wonderful friend Marci took this past year blown up and framed. We decided to put them above the new TV where we had some empty space on the wall. They look rather nice if do say so ourselves!

A reaper in the snow

Back in December we lent one of our Reapers out for a friends surprise birthday party at someones home. We left him at their home over the holidays and during the big "DEEP FREEZE of 2008" they took some pictures of him. At first it was picturesque but after the 5th day of snow he became a cone-head.

10th Anniversary Home Haunt DVD Collection

It is not too late. Propmaster is still looking for submissions for the 2008 yard haunt DVDs! Even if all you send is some photos - find a way to scan them and email them to Propmaster. It is a lot of fun to see all the other haunts and you cannot beat the rush you get when you come across your own haunt on the DVDs!!


It does not cost anything to submit and don't worry that your haunt is not good enough. We all love Halloween and enjoy seeing everyone's work. Even if you just put out a few pumpkins and some lights. Join the fun!

We have renamed the Haunt X Awards (formerly the Golden Buckys) to the Haunter Video Awards. The award categories are the same as last year: Best Yard Haunt, Best Indoor Haunt, Best Party Haunt and Best Novice Haunt.

They call him "Mortimer"

The mud man that we raffled off for Portland Center Stage was homeless for a bit before someone rescued him.

It started like this, some close friends of ours that just purchased a condo, but are fans of our stuff and the theater, purchased some raffle tickets "just to help us out" not expecting to win. We even joked about how funny it would be if they did win.

It was, actually, kinda funny when she came to me and said - they won. I thought she was kidding me at first. Ha, ha, very funny....oh, you did? "I don't want it" she says, "should I have them draw again?"

Before I can say, "sure" - someone pops out of her office and says why don't you have people bid on it and the highest bidder wins, that way you make more money for the theater. She is my cohort in fundraising for my work, so I was not surprised that she came up with that idea.

What I was surprised in is that she wanted it.....she made the highest offer. So he now has a home in suburban Vancouver.

We deliver it to her house and the family loves him, they named him "Mortimer" - the only complaint came from her 3 year old daughter who thought he would be softer when she tried to hug him. She tried to hug a mud man....I love this kid.

I hear that she still says "hi" to him almost every morning. :)

Candle Jars full of snow!

Here are some candle jars after the snowfall.

Tombstones in the snow

Chris setup some tombstones in the backyard as the snow started to fall the 2nd time. This is what they looked like after a day.

Now that is snow!

Ok, so we thought it was cool when it first snowed and we took some fun pictures. And Calvin and Hobbes do look cool with a bit of snow around them but this was too much. They don't look so cool when you can barely see them!

Snow at the Davis'

Some pictures of the house during the recent snowfall.

Spider gates

Standing Stones

Snow on the skull candles

Snow on the gargoyle

Snow on a rose

Skelingos

I know, a little bit of snow and us NW people get all stupid.

It SNOWED!

We always like it when it snows when we have the Calvin and Hobbes stuff up. The snowmen look so much better in snow.

We were in the Umbrella Parade

Milwaukie does a small umbrella parade as a prelude to lighting the city hall Christmas tree. People decorate their umbrellas and march along the street towards the city hall. The HS Band performed and people sang carols. Chris' mom joined us along with some of our friends and their kids. We wore our Halloween hats and coats and decorated our black umbrellas. We had fun.

Frog (fog) Juice

Changed fog juice this year. Went to place my usual order at the Froggy's Fog Juice vendor table at HAuntCon last year and they introduced me to "swamp juice" - I used to get their standard product, which is way better than that crap they sell retail.

He said it would hang to the ground better and was much thicker. I worried a bit about that since I am on a very busy street and the day my display causes an accident, that will be my last year.

We used it this year and it was perfect. Along with the new fog chiller (when working) did a great job of keeping the fog low and rolling down the hill - creepy! Oh, that is when the timer for the fog machine worked :) I think we have that problem solved now too. (It is always something:)

The extra added bonus - that was noticed by a few people was the Sinister Scents fog juice additive. We mix Gothic and Rainforest together to get our graveyard smell.

All good, except for Froggy's - because the fog was so good, I only used half of what I usually do. So I won't need to buy any this year. But I have to stop by and talk to Adam and Chris about Washington Cabernet's...and frogs of course.

Details, details, details.