Why I Oughta...

A few nights ago, we packed the kids into the van and headed west.  To Carol Stream to be precise. The reason?  To go make our annual visit to the Canyon Trail Cemetery.   Here's my post from 2014 when I think we went for the first time (and I made Richard Christie reference?!?) and here's my post from last fall . You can get all the details - including the address - about the Canyon Trail Cemetery from their Facebook page here .   The place is pretty awesome.  Tons of pneumatic animatronics and lots of sounds and lights and movement.  Things jump out at you and make all sorts of racket.  The Babe did some screaming.  The King of the Ball Tossers kept his distance.  You can see him in this photo below.  Well past the fence and even standing in the parkway.  He wasn't too sure of the 'scary skellies' as he calls them. Here's the big Pumpkin King that they have 'around the corner'.  Always a big hit with us every year.  He rises out of the g

This morning, we hit up the local Menards to look over their Christmas stuff and I was surprised that A LOT of it was already gone.  Totally picked over.  Like...almost ALL of the inflatables were gone.  And most of the blowmolds.  I guess that's what happens when you put it out in October? But, there were a bunch of different of these Tinsel-y cloth decorations.  This one above is a pretty cute Santa.  He's 110 bucks, though!  So, he didn't end up in our cart.  This seems to be an emerging place of compromise in the great Christmas decorations battle.  Not as crazy as a huge inflatable but a little bit of personality.  The prices on these things will likely come down in the next few years like they've done on inflatables and when it does?  We'll pounce!

With just a little over a week until Halloween, it appears that some happy haunts have take over our place recently . Those photos - of The Babe and The Bird - were created as "Spirit Photographs" at Memento Mori outside of the Haunted Mansion in the Magic Kingdom .  They're lenticular images that they create on the spot.  We had the girls sit down for the photos early one morning (I think it was right at like 10 am when that part of the park opens) and within 10 minutes, the "Sprit Photos" appear at the register. They're now sitting on the ledge as you head down the stairs - right next to the photos of my nieces/nephew.

On Saturday, I wrote about how we went to Menards to check out the Halloween stuff , but on that trip there was a stand-out piece that is worthy of a separate post.  It is this HUGE inflatable animated light-up Halloween dragon. Check out the video below to see it in action, but here are the details as I gathered:  it has wings that move back and forth, it's belly glows with a fire-y glow, the eyes light up red and it makes some noises of some sort.  (Pay no attention to the 'Monster Mash' you hear in the video, that came from some other inflatable!) It is $199.99 right now on sale.  I didn't buy it (we bought a different inflatable that I'll post about later), but wondering if someone I know out in Naperville will/should buy it.  Granddad loves a good inflatable, right?!?

I don't seem to have posted on our Front Yard Tree in 2012, but above is the photo (made #autoawesome by Google) of this year's tree. The full story is here in this post on our 2011 tree - which shows the sad state of snow last winter.  We're already ahead of last year's total it seems. Here's my  post from our 2009 tree . Here's my  post from our 2010 tree .   Here's my  post from our 2011 tree .

Speaking of Christmas Creep ...we got into a bit of it ourselves with a few purchases at a garage sale in our neighborhood last week. I couldn't pass this guy up and I think he'll go great amongst our collection of other vintage Santas in our holiday decor.  T he most recent example of one of these guys here .  And, here's another one with Spaghetti Trim . This one is old, but I'm not certain the exact date of manufacture.  As you can see below, it is a bank, but it also has a "Made in Japan" sticker on it, so that gives it some historical markers and places it amongst the rest of our collection. Pay no attention to the price tag on this one.  Every year we go to the Vintage Christmas show, we always pay quite a bit more for these ceramic guys, so I was thrilled to find a deal like this. I'll post about the rest of the stuff we bought, but after putting together a 'package deal', I think we paid less than even what they were asking here (

We were at Costco over the weekend and what did we find?  Christmas stuff was already out! Last year, I documented Christmas Creep all the way to August 30th and in 2012, it wasn't until the first week of September that I spotted the Christmas decor making an appearance. This year it was August 19th - almost two weeks ahead of schedule. Like I've said in the past...I'm not a Scrooge, so I don't mind these things.  But....I *do* feel bad for Thanksgiving.  Halloween has hired the right PR firm the past few years and has started to keep up with Christmas in terms of 'stuff'.  Thanksgiving on the other hand?  Not so much.

These two guys were the final pieces we picked up at the Vintage Christmas Fair.  They look great next to the Spaghetti Trim Santas and the little Christmas Tree girl . This piece has a couple of holes on the back and a large container, so I'm assuming it was a wall planter of some sort.  Will we be mounting them on the wall?  Not likely.  I think Nat will stuff them full of candy canes and they'll find a spot on top of the piano next to our other choir boys.

Earlier this summer, I picked up this vintage Christmas Tree Turner from my folks house as they were cleaning out their attic .  I knew we had this four-foot tinsel tree that we set up every year and figured it was going to be perfect use for the turner. I knew that it turns with no tree in it, but this is a 30+ year old motor.  Would it turn with a tree in the base?  You bet it would! (If you're reading this in your email and can't see the video below, you should click here to view the video on the site.)

How about my talented wife?!?  Thanks to her handy work, there's a pretty great Mickey the Mouse jackolantern on our front porch ready for the deluge of kids (and adults!) who are going up and down our block. Last year we had 269 individuals come to our door .  Will we top it this year?

The packaging on this guy at Costco says indoor/outdoor.  Being an outdoor-ready decoration is likely the only way I can get this past Nat.  We don't have a huge house and it already is busting at the seams with Christmas decorations.  So a life-size Santa Ho-Ho (as we call him) isn't going to be workable. But he would look really good in the backyard, wouldn't he?

Yesterday, we spent a few hours in the morning getting some of our Halloween decorations up in the yard and around the house.  Still plenty more hours left until we get our stuff set up. For the "Pumpkin Cemetery", I grabbed a few pieces of tongue-and-groove boards from the remnant rack at Menards and printed out the letters in a funky font.  Then I traced them on with pencil and painted the letters in black.  I threw on a few coats of polyurethane to seal it in and provide a little bit of weather-proofing. I picked up a little bit of edging fencing from Menards, too.  And stuck that in the ground. For the pumpkins, we debated between real and fake.  We ended up going with real.  Not sure if that is going to end up being wise in the long run, but only time will tell.  I painted on the eyes and mouths and then painted (with a pastry brush) a slurry of red pepper flakes and water all over them.  Before that water dried, I also sprinkled on a bunch of chili powder. You

This Santa face would look really great hanging off the top of the pavilion in our backyard, wouldn't it? I'm planning on adding another reindeer to our front yard blowmold collection this year, so maybe I'll splurge and get both.  

I took both of my girls to see the Menards Halloween display.  The Babe loved everything but the scary ghosts/witches while The Bird mostly just hung out in her car set. Here's the photo I took of The Babe just one year ago .  Can't believe how much she's grown!

Menards has their Lemax Halloween village back up this year with a few new additions including this Tombstone Quarry with skulls on a conveyor belt.

We made our way to the happiest place on earth this weekend - Menards - and found their entire Halloween display up and running.  One thing I noted is that they've expanded their blowmold collection.  It seemed like they downsized their inflatables at the same time. See those pumpkins on the second shelf?  The two on the right (grey and white) have a glitter on them. They're pretty neat.  The cute ghost on the bottom and the witch on the top are the same ones they had last year.  They did, however add some black lawn flamingos.  See them on the top right in the boxes? I still don't think we'll be getting any blowmolds this year, but I hope to add to our yard display, though!  Those details to come!

Yes, the calendar says June.  But, that doesn't mean we can't talk about Christmas, right?  Specifically this new addition to our Chrismas decor arsenal:  a vintage Christmas Tree Turner for our tinsel tree.  We were down at my folks place for Father's Day over the weekend and this box (along with the working tree) were recently discovered by my Dad as he was cleaning out the attic.  My folks weren't sure what they were going to do with it; maybe sell it on ebay or something? I plugged it in and it works perfectly.  Spins really nicely just like it did 40+ years ago when my parents used it in their house.  It is to be used with a tinsel tree that doesn't have lights on it because the lights would just get tangled in the base.  There's that auxillary plug at the bottom that my Dad tells me is for a "Color Wheel" that rotates different colors through a spotlight onto the tree.  I've looked for the Color Wheels, but they're like $50 on ebay, s

Here's our tree from 2010 .  It was a bit taller than this year's version.   We put it in the same spot, but made some other changes with the mantle behind it this year.

Nothing says Christmas like 6 shatter-proof (read plastic) golden owl ornaments from my gal Martha Stewart, right?  I'm a bit ashamed that I actually like these a bit.  If they weren't plastic, they likely would have ended up in my cart at Home Depot last week.

Yesterday, I posted a close-up of the scarecrows . I had help this year from the Babe (see here there straightening out the legs) so we got ambitious and built a third scarecrow to represent our family.  She loved taking the zip ties and was modeling my behavior of attaching the scarecrows to the posts.  She couldn't quite manage the ties, but was mostly sticking them in little crevices that she could find.  Pretty cute. Here's a photo of what they looked like in 2010 .  Looks like the husband and wife scarecrow swapped places this year.