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Dec252017

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone and Best Wishes for a New Year!

Just wanted to extend some holiday cheer from  my wife Linda, our boys (the poodles) and of course myself.  It has been an exciting year and looking forward to what the next has in store for us.  Hoping to get a few more posts in before the end of the year yet – need to pad those blog stats ha!  Stay tuned and most of all if you happen to be spending the season in the Midwest, stay warm.

Christmas 2017

… well that is what our tree looked like last night before we went to bed.  Raven woke us this morning and said a green Santa crawled through our fireplace and informed him “there’s a light on the tree that won’t light on one side. So I’m taking it home to my workshop, my dear puppy. I’ll fix it up there, then I’ll bring it back here.”  WHAAAAAaaattt!?!

Christmas 2017

RAVEN!!!!!!

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Nov212017

Project Give Myself a Hand

And then there were two.  That’s right, only two more Haunt tutorials left from our Trail of Tears Haunted Trail.

Project Hand Molding Halloween 2017

Today’s featured tutorial is how the above prop consumed my life for almost an entire year.  It was a well known joke last year that many of my Posey frames were sans hands.  Some of that was just running out of time before the big event and needing to get the Halloween props out on the trail as quick as possible.  To my credit, I did put empty gloves on a few but they admittedly looked pretty hokey.  Where I wanted to be this year was full on hands that not only looked like proper appendages, but were poseable.  As you can tell from the above picture, I was able to accomplish this of sorts.  Problem was it took me about a year to get through the process and ended up costing a lot more than I ever expected it to.  When all was done, I probably could have bought hands off the Internet and been money ahead (ummm no probably there).  The fun is in the journey and I can definitely say I learned a hell of a lot about the molding process.  It all started with this large box of Alja-Safe.  Definitely expensive (this 20lb box cost me ~$140), yet a lot of fun.

Project Hand Molding Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to see how this product comes into play and the rest of the process to make Posey hands.

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Jan102017

Except for that One with the Yellowy Eyes

I’m  in a bit of a clean up mode at the moment.  During the last couple of months of last year (wow, that seems so long ago as opposed to the reality of it being less than a month) the digital lab was working overtime trying to pop a number of items off the photo queue.  The thought of going 3 years behind was too much to take so gave it a scouts try to give me some buffer.  This meant there were a lot of posts prepped with all the shots worthy of posting from the processing blitz – all put in draft mode just waiting for the special day when they get the call to the big league.

Osprey on our Texas Birding Trip November 2013

Unfortunately, my prep work exceeded my publishing capability leaving me a basket full of potential posts.  Most of these were results of the Texas trip we took back in November 2013.  It is time to flush those out of the system or I am going to do something stupid like forget they are there – a total waste of the all the effort to get them to this point. So, as a step in the right direction, here is one of those drafts.
Osprey on our Texas Birding Trip November 2013

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of this killer.

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Nov162016

I Needz Yur Ankles

It’s the middle of November and I’m finally getting back to the Halloween 2016 posts.  I’m not so much slow as I am currently overwhelmed with projects.  All those things I put off to focus on the Halloween Trail are coming back for revenge.  Most of my time has been spent on wiring up the new garage in preparation for the required inspection – at this point pretty sure I’ve donated about a pint of blood on that project but still better than being electrocuted so fingers staying crossed as I finish that effort.  Maybe I’ll give a quick post on that in the future, especially since this will be the new home for all my outdoor decorations.  Speaking of which …
Halloween decoration 2016 - animated crawler

If you already check out the Haunted Trail 2016 walk through (link here), you probably already noticed this decoration.  This was one of the new additions this year and happens to be one of the new animated decorations – that’s right, the ANIMATED DECORATIONS that made it out on the trail this year.  Most of this year was spent trying to learn and experiment on how to bring another level of scare to the trail.  This, of course, didn’t exactly win the heart of my wife who had to put up with the build phases strewn about her basement many many months before October.

Granted most of that time was spent on another decoration that will be making its way to the blog in the not too distant future.  This decoration .. well, the base of it was constructed a week or so before Halloween, but it wasn’t finished until the night before.  The fact it actually worked and looked halfway decent is a small miracle due to the fact it was completed on serious sleep deprivation.  Let’s take a look under the covers.

Halloween decoration 2016 - animated crawler

Hit the jump to learn how this animated prop was put together.

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Sep232016

Gobbling Up My Time

Greetings everyone!  We are at the end of Summer now which translates to a mixture of sadness and stress.  Sadness in the sense that like every year I wonder where in the hell all the time went.  Each year my objectives list get longer and longer yet every year it seems like a huge struggle to get anywhere close to getting through the list.  It is this time of the year it really hits home because the finality of the limited number of days until Christmas is a blunt object trauma to the head.  The stress part comes knowing there is only one week left before our annual Halloween party.  The goal is to give our guests the best possible experience I can and by standards better than the year before.  Upping the game this year, we are adding more electronics into the show which means huge assistance from my EE/Physics/genius/cat friendly/birding brother Ron.  As I type he is busy building new heat sensors for my decorations.  While he is doing that, I am in a full throttle battle with my basement and other tasks that need to be completed before then.  It is really quite the epic battle every year to get all the decorations stuff done while getting the house prepped for guests.  A labor of love at a cost of sleep deprivation.  Add in this month’s blog quota and you have one groggy Bri.  That, however, has never been sufficient excuse to let my blog readers down so on to the meat.

Turkeys shot on Texas trip in November 2013

Today’s featured feathered friend is the American Turkey.  Due to the time compression, pretty much locked into whatever images I already have processed.  Thank god I worked up a ton of shots from our Texas trip we took back in November 2013.  Hmmm 1, 2, holy crap I’m almost a solid three years behind now.  Cleansing breath, cleansing breath, breath in, breath out ahhhhh… much better.  Note, I find it quite amusing that Ron is now experiencing the joys of a backlog now that he has started his bird blogging (shhhhh don’t say anything, it’s my decoration work that is probably the cause of his delays).   I’ll give credit to Linda for spotting this specific group of Turkeys while driving in a park.  They were just meandering around enjoying the beautiful day like the rest of us

Turkeys shot on Texas trip in November 2013

Hit the jump to see a few more pictures

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