2010 Halloween Party

We hosted our first Halloween party in our new home last night. Strange creatures were seen lurking both inside and out. This character took up residence in one of the bathrooms.

Our human skeleton was Pistol Pete, a sheriff who met an untimely end decided to stick around for awhile longer. His guns came in handy to shoot at overgrown spiders.

Rodents, some alive, some not, spiders and bats were plentiful and that was just inside the house. Brooms would follow our guests around the house and if you were not careful, disturbing spells would follow you into the kitchen.

Some very strange characters were observed on the walls.

Spirits included a Black Cloud Cocktail, Witches Brew and Hot Apple Cider.

Our guests munched on bloody brains.....

Mummy babies....

Spider Eggs.......

and other ghoulish items.

Our guests are seen enjoying a brief respite from the bats, although they were standing right under the bloody cleavers, scissors and saws.

The bloody utensils can be seen in the background.

A good time was had by all!

Pies and Pumpkins

Yesterday Susan and I carved pumpkins. I did mine just for fun. Susan created hers for the pumpkin carving contest today at work. They are also having a pie contest today so Susan made a Mexican Chocolate Pecan pie.

It is a shame you can't post smells on the blog. Well, on second thought it is a good thing, but you should have been here when the pies were in the oven!

Aren't these adorable? Susan carved Tigger and mine is the ghost and graveyard. The dogs were intrigued indeed.

Beware Flying Witches

She had apparently been drinking too much witches brew before taking flight. So far, we haven't seen any flying monkeys, but I bet they are close by.

Bones Poster

This was my final exercise in my Photoshop class. Our task was to create a poster for a movie or TV show. I am not ready for this class to end. I learned so much about the software, but I know we just brushed the surface of what this program can do.

At any rate, I am now taking Flash. This should be interesting, because I can't draw!

Haunted House

Susan and I took this "Haunted House" to North Star Lodge this morning. I knew it would never survive the trip sitting on the floor of the car by itself so I took Susan to work so she could hold it.

I saw this idea in a book and thought it was so cute. We did not put the trees in place until it was safely at work and we broke one even doing that. Oh well, the trees work just as well as bushes.

Susan will have a harder time trying to get the people at work to eat the house than I did making it. I love Halloween!

View from the Cliff

This morning I went exploring and found the road that runs along the top of the cliff behind our house. From North Wenas you turn onto Reitmeier Lane. This road starts out as a nice paved two lane road and then it shrinks down to one lane and by the time you are above our house it is very small indeed but it is still paved. It must be nice.

The next time I go up there I will include the rest of the back yard and the garden shed.

Paint and Gravel

Our contractor has been building our garden shed for a couple of weeks. He is building this for us as a side job so he can only work on it a couple of nights a week, weather permitting. The first step was to build the frame for the floor.

Next he put in the floor and built the frame for the ramp.

Several steps went by before I got back out with the camera. Now the siding is on, the roof is ready for the shingles, and the door and windows are framed.

The roof, siding, windows and door are installed.

The next step is to paint the outside to match the house, put a non-skid surface on the ramp and place gravel around the base.

Back to School

If you follow our blog on a regular basis, you have probably noticed that the number of posts have slowed down just a bit. I started school in September and as a result my free time has decreased, but I am having so much fun! My first class in the Multimedia Arts Program is Photoshop Basics. This is an amazing program and we are just scratching the surface of what it can do. I want to share just two of the assignments we have had so far in the class. The first photo of the red mini cooper is what we started with.

The assignment was to select the car and remove it from its background. Then we tinted the windows, created a second car, re-sized it and painted it blue.

Not bad for a newbie.
For the next assignment, we started with this old barn. Our job was to create a bar that did not yet exist so that the owner could show potential investors how the property would look when the project was completed.

Notice the new sky? We also fixed the holes in the roof, added windows and signs, painted the barn, added a parking lot, bikes, and truck and people.

The hardest part for me so far has been creating shadows on objects and making them look realistic. I am really bad at this, which explains why you don't see any shadows from the tree in the parking lot. It actually looks more realistic without the shadows than with the shadows I tried to create. I have one more lesson in Photoshop and after the final exam I move on to Flash. I will continue to post examples of what I am learning.

Central Washington Fair

Last night we went to the Central Washington Fair. The theme this year is Get Happy and I loved the 2010 Fair mascot - a smiling cow! While Mom and Susan were at a cooking show Dad and I walked around and looked at all the old automobiles and farm equipment. This is a 1930 Ford Model A pickup with a 4-cylinder engine. Notice the gas cap up by the windshield? Back then, gas got to the engine using gravity, which worked pretty well unless you had to go up a long hill.

This is an orchard sprayer built in 1920.

The agriculture building is one of our favorite stops at the fair.

Selah's grange dislay was very colorful.

The prize winning pumpkin weighed in at 420 pounds.

I really like the happy pigs in this grange display.

We had a good time walking through the animal barns. I got to pet one of the draft horses. He weighed 2600 pounds! The professional photo display was awesome, as always. Now we can look forward to next year.

Prosser Street Fair

Mom and Dad are here visiting before driving down to Arizona and last weekend we all went down to Prosser for the annual street fair. The event goes with the hot air balloon rally, but we were not there when the balloons were in the air.

It was extremely hot on Saturday afternoon, but a beautiful day.

We didn't buy hardly anything at the booths and believe it or not, we didn't even walk down the row of food booths.

In addition to the craft booths they held a street painting competition. There were so many paintings that I only captured the ones we liked the best.

This was a great one featuring the local wine business.

I love these 3D ones. It felt like we would fall right into a hole in the street.

A great flying lesson.

Next year I would like to go back and see the balloons lift off first thing in the morning.