Bayview Pumpkin Pavilion ~ 2022

Happy Halloween Everybody! I am so happy to have some photos to share with you from the Bayview Pumpkin Pavilion! Mom and I went to this event a little over a week ago and I was saving the pics for Halloween. You might remember that this event involves the display of many carved pumpkins, as well as some awesome sculptures. I have to start with what is maybe my favorite photo from that night.

Get ready for a whole troop of zombies. Check out the eyes on this one!

This one looks like kind of a dancer. Maybe I'm thinking of the Thriller video.

Quite the glittery, shimmering zombie here. That paint gives a nice slimy effect.

Eek! Those teeth. I wonder if the sculptor used actual false teeth on these.

A nice follow-up to these zombies is the creepy cemetery we can assume they just crawled out of.

You're going to see several photos from this area, because I couldn't get enough of the up-lit green on these tombstones and skeletons. My favorite Halloween decorations are usually up-lit and involving lots of shadows.

YOLO!

I really liked the texture on this one.

I recognize that Dollar Tree skull. :)

This ghoulish specter was behind one of the windows of a building in the park.

She would sink down slowly and then spring up really fast.

You might remember these two from a few years ago. They're... OK, I'm not sure really. My interpretation is that these creatures are part human, part pumpkin.

I think actual glass eyes were used on these. It was so freaky when the light glimmered off them. They really appeared to be making eye contact.

Does this guy remind you of that creepy cab driver in Ghostbusters? When I saw that movie as a kid, the freakiest part to me was the zombie cab driver. Or rotten skeleton ghost man, or whatever he was. This one was "driving" a parked truck.

This will give you an idea of the general scene. There were many jack-o-lanterns on display and above us were strings of party lights. All of this made for an old fashioned and fun atmosphere.

This is the event's logo in what I assume was black light paint.

There were wonderfully up-lit skeletons and bones in the trees. I didn't even catch them for some time. Mom looked up and noticed these guys. 

If any of you are big fans of The Lost Boys, maybe you too will be reminded of the end of the movie when you look at this.

Look at that sassy skeleton to the side!

What my eyes first saw this as was a scarab, but on closer view it was a skull flanked by jawbones. 

There was a band playing, although they were on break when I took this picture. As you can see, they had a Nightmare Before Christmas set-up going.

Now to the pumpkins! Don't they look great with those intense blue lights? I especially like this photo because of the adorable kid in the skeleton outfit. That expression on her face is so sweet.

This photo is serving as my computer wallpaper right now.

I LOVE this carving! It looks like the guts are dripping. How careful did the carver have to be to cut around everything but these very thin lines? One slip of the knife and those details would be gone! 

This pumpkin is serving as my phone's background.

I was impressed by this sun carving too. Not only thin lines but that layered cutting. You know, where someone kind of shaves off a layer of pumpkin so the light glows through. 

This guy might be my favorite. He's up there anyway. Sinister! I can almost hear its evil pumpkin laughter. 

I hadn't seen this inflatable before. There's a lot going on with this spooky tree.

Every year, there are some lit-up jellyfish near the entrance/exit. 

See the fiberoptics? 

I realized this year that the jellyfish are made from lampshades, which you can see pretty clearly in this picture.

This pumpkin creature was standing in a yard near the park. Isn't he something? I'm so impressed by this creation. 

This nicely designed skull and plant combo was in the same yard.

This is a view from another nearby house. I really liked what they had going on with that skull under the porch light. That's an idea to tuck away. 

Well, there you have it! I really had a good time looking around and documenting all this creepy glowing goodness. I hope you all have a very Happy Halloween, however you end up celebrating! 🎃

A resting place for miniature villains

This year I finally got around to creating a mini cemetery! That's something I've been talking about doing for years. I think what kept me from starting was deciding on the materials to work with. I've seen some great little tombstones made from paper and wrapped around candles. That's maybe something to try in the future, but for now I decided to work with what you'd think would have been an obvious material: stones.

I found these little inspirations on a trip to the lake on my birthday. So that's a little over a month ago. Once the idea struck, I really got rolling with finding the perfect stones. Here they are, before being "inscribed".

So part one of picking a material was done. The next and very crucial part of this project was choosing the names that would go on these stones. Well, I thought it would be fun to choose some names from works of fiction. I thought about characters from my favorite old horror movies, like putting "The Wolfman" or "Dracula" on the stones, but something just wasn't clicking for me with that. Then I thought about some favorite books, but the names just seemed too unrelated for me. Then ZIP! I thought about that favorite old show of mine from back in the day: Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Well, that show provided me with instant and seemingly endless inspiration. I had more names than I did stones with that! Perfect. I thought of my favorite villains from the show and decided their names would make up my cemetery.

If you know the Brother Septimus character, you'll appreciate the eye on his stone and that piece of potpourri that very much resembles an eye in front of it. I tried to think of a symbol that was representative of these characters. Like the lips for the beautiful Ms. Valenti, who was very into her cosmetics.

Or the snake that is slithering across Jake "The Snake" Desmond's stone. I went really mossy and funky with Dr. Vink's stone, because he seemed like he could have moss growing on him! And I ripped some fuzzy plant stuff apart to put in front of his grave. Because I thought he'd have an overgrown sort of resting place.

For those of you who haven't watched Are You Afraid of the Dark? many of the episodes are online. So if you're curious, you could google some of these names and either see the characters or watch the episodes. Or you could check out this page where someone has organized all the Are You Afraid of the Dark? villains in alphabetical order:

Villains Wiki: Are You Afraid of the Dark Villains

If you click on a name, you can read about the character. Just a note, there are spoilers about the episodes here.

OK, so I had some stones and I had some names. Next I had to figure out a way to hold my little cemetery in place. I lucked out in finding the last of these signs at Dollar Tree.

Like with my Ofrenda project, this sweet family sign can be flipped to become the perfect size box to hold a cemetery! As you'll see in a bit, I painted the sides of it a dark green.

This floral foam from Dollar Tree was perfect for holding the stones in place.

I just squished them in there and they stayed put.

Although the foam was green, I wanted some plant-like material over the top of it. I ended up purchasing the last bag of this green potpourri from Dollar Tree. It was dyed a greenish color in parts, looked like spooky plants, and was labeled as  having a "fall leaves" scent.

Well, let me tell you, it smelled like... I don't even know. Overbearing cologne combined with Pine Sol? The funk was released as soon as I opened the bag. I should have smelled it in the store. At least I learned from this that dry potpourri can survive being washed. I washed it many times with vinegar and baking soda and watched that green dye wash away a good bit. After a couple days of it airing out on the porch, I didn't smell a thing.

Now that it's scentless, I like it a lot. There were all kinds of awesome shapes in the mix. My favorites:

I thought this one would look good holding a fake eye:

I happened to have some spare eyes that had fallen out of the center of some flowers, so in they went with the rest of the potpourri. Looks like a crazy moss monster, doesn't it?

Turns out they glow in the dark too!

So, back to the cemetery, I was then good to go! Here it is, pieced together.

From the top:

I took some photos of it at night, from inside a closet. I was trying to get that spooky lighting going with the candle.

I imagined this candle as a cemetery gate.

Try and imagine walking through this cemetery at night (of course being in scale to it yourself). Maybe you're carrying a lantern to cast this little bit of light over the stones. Crunch, crunch go the leaves underfoot.

I  like the way that snake shows up in the candlelight.

Remember those miniature pumpkins I got in the After Halloween Haul? Well, here's why I wanted them so much!

Aren't they just the perfect size? I already had a miniature truck full of pumpkins, so I was playing around with my miniature truck and gnomes. Maybe they're dropping off some little pumpkins at the cemetery? Or maybe they planted those pumpkins in there?

I've had this gnome standing in the cemetery because he's holding a shovel. I'd darkened the eyes on my gnomes and this one's eyes went goofy. I thought that expression made sense for a gnome working in a cemetery like this one.

Even though I made this cemetery and the characters are fictional, I actually spooked myself with the finished product. These names mean something to me and the thought of these characters together in a cemetery, even miniature, dead, and not real is pretty eerie to me.