A sneak-Peek

I've decided, dear readers, that since you've been so tolerant of my delays between posts, I would share a sneak peek of the work I've been doing on the book I mentioned. The text and picture are both rough drafts from the book, in a section about forts. This particular fort is called the Pallet Palace. I'd love to hear any feedback you have, since this is a rough draft. Follow the break to read the page. Thanks for sticking with me, Readers!

The Haunt: Finale!

     Okay, dear readers, the Haunted Library is finally over! So, as promised, I'm doing one more post about it, looking back on what I would (and likely will) do differently next year. Now, you may have heard the phrase "pics, or it didn't happen," as it turns out, none of us remembered this, so we have no proof that we ever performed this haunt. I have a few phone pictures of a few props being built, which I will put on a page HERE with the maze, but without pictures of everything installed in the library, I'll excuse your skepticism. As for the video I mentioned, It exists, but is really just five minutes of black with occasional flickers of faces and light. it's pretty lousy, so I've decided not to put it up.
     Now for the good news. On Friday, we put the haunted house up starting at about ten am, and finishing at about 5:10 pm. With a total of four actors in the haunt, we managed to scare the daylights out of a total of 378 guests, and earned as many dollars for the library to buy books with! Or, in other words, the Haunt was a huge success! While we didn't manage to get everything working that we wanted to, we put together enough of a haunt that people were going through more than once, and had a fantastic time.

Room #5: The Pumpkin Patch

As the Guests exit the forest, they make a hard left turn into the pumpkin patch, but not before a Giant's Shadow pounces across a wall to their right, standing ten feet tall, and chasing them into the pumpkin patch.
First, the guests pass through a gate, fashioned to look like a large jack-o-lantern, and as they walk through it's mouth, they find themselves in a graveyard, overgrown with pumpkins. There's a stone wall running along one side, with small pumpkins resting on top. And a scarecrow waits at the end of the path with a bowl of candy for the guests.

This room, obviously, is where the giant pumpkin from my earlier post will be living, with a giant candle inside of it. all made out of cardboard. This room is much brighter and more playful than the others, mostly orange and green throughout the room.
The scarecrow will be an actor, who can decide to scare children if he wants to. The biggest isssue of this room is building pumpkins. See, with our budget of approximately $1, buying a bunch of pumpkins and carving them into jack-o-lanterns is out of the question. So, we've made a few pumpkins  in three dimensions out of cardboard,and we're in the process of creating a few groups of pumpkins in two-dimensions. The tombstones are made out of foam I already had, and have cut into stones.
It's a simple room, with a lot of building to create a well-dressed scene. A lot of this has to be built in the space, which makes this room a bit of a challenge, since we have about four hours (Hopefully we'll get more time) in the space to set up.
Now that I've filled you in on how everything should look, I'll be filling you in on how some of it is being built, and hopefully, I'll end with a video walk-through on Saturday.

Room #4: The Forest.

Okay, readers, let me level with you, this post took so long to get to you because two days ago, I almost changed this room. Let me tell you why. This room is a big u-turn shape designed to look like a haunted forest. A large group of trees encircle the guests, and arch their branches high overhead, where an owl looms, and several crows grumble, caw, and crack-wise. Meanwhile, guests are hit with a mysterious gust of wind, and something lurks just beyond the trees.
As you can see on the MAP the forest is one of the larger areas in the haunt. The downside of that is, that room will require a lot of scenery, and I honestly (still) have concerns about us getting enough trees in there to make it spooky. Originally, we were going to make the trees out of butcher paper, and create faces on them, like the trees from the "Wizard of Oz". Here's the issue with that: Each of those trees would need some sort of solid structure running from toe to tip, and to be honest, I'm on too tight of a budget to purchase lumber to brace the insides. So, I decided to cut the entire scene from the haunt, and asked my family for other suggestions. Then my old man decided that he had found the plan to build the forest, and help himself out as well, the old coot. So, we tore down old branches from our mulberry tree in the back yard, and he's taken it on himself to turn those branches into trees. Hopefully, he knows what he's doing.
Meanwhile, I've got to make sure that the rest of this forest is spooky!
There will be at least one person in the forest to do some old-fashioned scaring, and to try some other tricks as well. Firstly, I've modified an Airzooka to sit on a solid base, and be fired remotely with a cord. Which means I can hide the airzooka in a bush somewhere, and not let guests know where the gust of wind has come from.
Meanwhile, overhead, a pair of crows are sitting in some branches, cawing and making a few jokes. It's a simple matter of a couple of cardboard silhouettes and some decent sound design, which is being handled by y brother.
Then, they turn the corner, under a spooky moon  and and actor either lurks in the forest, or leaps out at the guests, depending on the age and bravado of the guests. In all likelihood, this is probably me in a simple costume. Then, they turn one last corner into the last room of the haunt.

Room # 3: The Cave

Not a photograph of MY cave, but how cool would that be, right?

    So, after our intrepid adventurers are spewed out of  a magical vortex, they find themselves inside a dark and intimidating cavern. The first chamber of the cavern plays with their imagination, as something tickles across their faces, and something else pops beneath their feet. Is this cave filled with bugs?
 Actually, both of these are pretty classic haunted house tricks. The first portion of the cave uses darkness to convince the guests that something more is happening, when really, they're walking on a bit of bubble wrap, and string  is tickling their face. Classic.

The Second Chamber of the cavern is a mysterious room filled with mirrors. the room will have four mirrors arranged in an array, lit only with blacklight. On each mirror will be a different ghost, which glows under the blacklight. Everything in the room will be covered in heavy cobwebs, hinting at what's to come.
The inside of the cave itself will mostly be black plastic, forming an uncomfortably low ceiling. Kids will be fine, but parents my have to duck, creating discomfort. I know that sounds like a bad thing, but creating unpleasant atmosphere is half of what a haunted house is about. A building full of people jumping out is startling, but it isn't scary. To create fear, there needs to be buildup, and claustrophobia is a simple fear to play off of.

The third chamber of the cavern is through a black curtain. the ceiling opens up here, but only to make room for a giant black widow, standing across the top of the pathway! The spider stands above the guests, rocking back and forth above their heads, as it's children hang from the walls.
The spider itself is going to be made primarily from chicken wire on a frame,, and wrapped with paper mache. (my goodness, I am using so much paper mache!) The real trick of the spider is that the guests are walking at that time between two bookshelves that are already in the library. Each bookcase is about four feet high, and will serve as a resting place for four of the spider's legs, so that the spider stands directly above the path. The lurching motion of the spider is created by a modification of the "Flying Crank Ghost". This link doesn't go to a how-to, unfortunately, they're harder to find than I remember. Leave A comment If you'd like a more in-depth explanation, and I'll write a post about it
 I'm using the same mechanism, but modifying it to  use only two points, and rocking the body back and forth. I may also attach the spider's front two legs to the crank, to add more motion to the scene.
One concern I have with this spider is that it may be actually too scary. for example, I am horrified by giant spiders The movie "Eight Legged Freaks" is technically a comedy, but if i watch that movie, I don't sleep. Maybe I'm just a wiener, but I am pretty nervous about scarring children. We'll see.

The Seance

Okay, I mentioned that I would be doing more in-depth walkthroughs of each room, and talk about some of the effects and techniques I am planning on using in each. Here, dear readers, is the first.

---------------------------------------------->Spoiler Alert<----------------------------------------------

(I realize very few people reading will actually be visiting the haunted house, but spoilers matter!)

First of all, there is the line. We're doing a rope leading to a large, stone entryway made out of Styrofoam and fabric. The reason for that is to lock out any light, and to allow "Lurch" to gather tickets from guests. One of the problems with our space is that we only have access through one door. Because of this, people will have to criss-cross through the seance room, and out the door. The entryway allows us to hold groups back while other groups exit. The seance allowed us a nice excuse for them, plot-wise to be returning through a room, something you normally don't do in a haunted house. In the seance room, guests will encounter a gypsy woman (played by my sister, Rian) who is swirling around a crystal ball. Overhead, a chandelier swings ominously, and there are pillar candles all around. The room (hopefully) is hung with rich tapestries, and feels heavy with magic.

The candles, obviously, can't be holding a real flame, and I sure as heck don't have the budget to purchase led candles for the amount I am looking for. So, sacrificing a candle-like flicker, I designed a little trick to make lots of pillar candle clusters for pretty cheap. The idea is to use cardboard tubes to fake the body of the candles, glue them into bundles, and hollow out the bottom of the bundle, and place a single low-voltage lightbulb in there. the light glows up through the now-disguised tube, and nobody's the wiser!

Since the seance doesn't have much spooking going along with it, I thought I'd pair it with the next area, the Ghost's Warning! This room comes from another awkwardness about the room. the third area, the vortex, is set up to be a straight shot down to the back of the room, so that guests work their way forward after that. But to get to the starting point of the vortex, they first had to travel behind the librarian's desk, a short hallway, without much room to manuver. It left us without much space to do any tricks, except on top of the desk, which had to be isolated, to keep them from messing with things. What My brother came up with was spooky warning from a ghost, behind a wall of white plastic. There's a plastic available that's semi-transparent, almost milky, that should work well for this. We're planning on doing a Pepper's Ghost Using the library computer and a pane of glass to project an effect in front of a life cast of my brother's face to create the illusion that the face is on fire, and murmuring warnings to turn back. 

Overhead, we're putting a our-foot fluorescent light with a shade on it. The shade will be punctured a billion or so times to scatter small dots of light across the area, without really brightening it much.

Those are the first two areas of the haunted house, visible on the MAP in red and orange. Tune in soon for a glimpse at room number three, The VORTEX! Dun Dun DUNNN!

Pumpkin Rising!

     So! Haunted House Update! The design for the haunted house has been through about a hundred re-drafts, but we've settled on a design, and I've gotten started on a few Props. Included In those props, in case you hadn't noticed, is a giant pumpkin, which I managed to make for the cost of glue. It's hard to get scale out of that picture, but it's about five feet tall, and made entirely out of cardboard from a dumpster next door. Anyway, I've gotten sidetracked, I decided that now that all the design is done, I'd talk with you lot about the challenges specific to this haunt, and how I'm working to handle them.

     First of all, a lot of haunted houses depend on gore to scare people. It's hit or miss, usually, since some people are completely grossed out by the blood, but a lot of people are desensitized to gore. Either way, it's not applicable here, because my haunted house is taking place on an elementary school campus. I'd never do blood with elementary kids, that's just wrong, and the principal of the school asked for us to avoid it anyway. I took that, and added a few more rules for myself:
1: No blood
2: Don't show any scenes of violence, that is, nothing in the haunt should involve humans hurting humans.
3: Spooky, not Scary

Those are the rules. As it turns out, those nix a LOT of classic haunted house gags. the problem I face is that I have an audience ranging in ages from five to ten. Anything I could do that would be genuinely scary to the fifth graders could permanently scar the kindergartners. Trust me, I had that happen to me at a fair. I still don't like using chainsaws... TANGENT! sorry. Because I'm aimed at a young group I had to go for spooky, in the style of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride. There will still be scares, but i'm making sure that none of the scares are outside of human judgement. Any time a big scare will happen, it'll be a classic jump out and yell "BOO!" That way, we can make sure not to scare any first-graders so bad that they wet themselves.

     So, with those rules In mind, I'm going to drop a room list on you all, and I'll go into greater depth on them over the next few days.

First, a seance, where a gypsy will greet our guests, and forsee a dangerous adventure in their future!

Secondly, a Warning from a mysterious ghost, the classic "Turn Back!"

Third, a swirling vortex, as visitors are thrown into a dangerous otherworld

fourth, a mysterious cave, where they will face haunted mirrors, and a Giant Black Widow

Fifth, a Haunted forest, with skeletal trees, talking crows, and something lurking in the distance...

sixth, a spooky pumpkin patch, complete with gravestones, and a scarecrow handing out candy.

then they are cast back into the seance room, where the gypsy congratulates them on their survival, and gives them the boot.

That's the narrative for the haunted house, nothing too scary, but there's more depth to it than there seems, and I'll be getting into that in a few upcoming posts.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

So, dear readers, here we are again, at an apologetic post about accidental hiatus. Actually, instead of that, I'll fill you in on a project I am working on as a commission.
I've been asked to assemble a haunted house for the fall festival at Little Lake Elementary school. Those of you who have been reading for awhile will remember that Little Lake is the school where my mum works as a librarian. So, okay, a commission is a bit of an exaggeration. Anyway, the haunted house will be a lot of fun, and I plan on filling you lot in on how things are going, and how to make some of the projects I'll be assembling.
Also going on at about this time, I have been hired to build the set for a musical called "Scrooge's Christmas". In this case, hired is not an exaggeration. I'm hoping that both of these projects will give me lots to share with you, and I imagine they will! Thanks for your patience, dear readers!

Hard wine!

I promise, this is not a post about collecting urine.

     Wednesday, after several months of neglect, I remembered about my wine! I took about twenty minutes siphoning the wine through a strainer, and gathered it up in one pot, and two bowls. In total, we ended up with seven and a half quarts of tangy, pungent wine!
     It tastes a lot like grapefruit still, but it's very dry, with a heavy dose of vapor behind it. My mother had about a half of a glass, and three hours later, she mentioned losing her buzz. Apparently, this stuff will knock you on your ass! I've personally only sipped at a few shotglasses full, but afterwards, I definitely breathed some hefty flames! Keep your ears open for my next wine-making project, the plan is to make about twice this amount out of oranges and fresh cranberries!

Random acts of generosity ( I hope)

     Okay, readers, here we go, getting back into the groove of sharing thoughts.
I had an idea earlier this year that I did not get the chance to act on, but I figured since the tap has been dry here for so long, I'd share the idea with you, and ask for your opinions on it.

     I have a chainlink fence, five feet high on all sides of my yard, and for the most part, it does its job well, keeping dogs in and unwanted guests out. However, the chainlink fails in one critical field: Privacy. So, we've been pondering for awhile here about what plant we could grow to cover our fence, and prettify the yard. Local ordinances won't let us replace it with a board fence (there goes the white-picket american dream). Anyway, my idea is this: Plant my front fence with hops and tomatoes. The I could use the hops to try my hand at microbrewing (which is on my to-do list). and as for the tomatoes, that's where the title of this post comes in. I'd like to post a sign that says "Free if you pick them" by the tomatoes, and smaller signs identifying the types of tomato. Tomatoes grow pretty fast, and while they don't fruit all year long, they would cover the fence for a good half of the year, longer if i tend to them well. I think it'd be interesting to see if the neighborhood (and any pedestrians walking by) would stop and pick tomatoes. Maybe I'd leave a pouch full of plastic grocery bags (recycled of course) hanging on the signpost.

     So, readers, what do you think? Is this idea something people would take an interest in? Would the neighbors enjoy the tomatoes, or are people too distrusting? Are there any other concerns I am overlooking? Let me know in the comments section!

Grapefruit!

     This week, I decided to take care of some of the grapefruit on my (overabundant) tree. So, with the help of my sister, I climbed up there, and filled a laundry hamper with grapefruit. Then, I promptly ran out of time for the day. Oops.
     The next day, I found an hour to myself, during which I juiced all of the grapefruit, and gathered two and a half gallons of juice, which you can see in the picture on the right. (sorry about the bad pictures, one of these days I'll get a camera, and dazzle you all.) Then I added the rest of the ingredients to the jug. Here's the recipe, for those of you playing along at home:

2.5 Gallons of grapefruit juice


4 pounds of cane sugar


1 cup fructose


1/8 cup grapefruit zest


     The only tricky ingredient is the fructose, which I got at Henry's market. Basically, it's fruit sugar, which I was using to make up for the extra sour fruit. I shook it all up, and tied a rag over the mouth of the jug to keep bugs out.
     Now, let me warn you all, this is an experiment! I didn't really follow a particular recipe. As it turns out, grapefruit wine recipes range from "use a hydrometer to gauge the acidity, aiming for a relative gravity of 1.25" to "mix juice and sugar in a jug, wait till it's wine and enjoy." As a simpler kinda guy, I'm going with a jug of juice and sugar.
     According to my dad, his dad used to make the best damn wine, and if I am to get this to work, I am going to need some raisins. Apparently, raisins help kick over the fermentation process and get the wine really liquoring up. I'll be adding those as soon as I can get some, about a handful.

    So, that's the latest adventure in kitchening here, I'll keep updating about this as it goes onward, And letting you all know if it turns into wine, or just a big fat jug of bad smells.

     Also, for those of you with a sweet-tooth, I took a bunch of the peels of the grapefruit and candied them! I peeled them with a vegetable peeler, boiled them four times in fresh water, to rinse out all of the bitterness, then boiled them a fifth time, with about two cups of sugar on them. I let them boil ligthely like that for about two hours, then put them on a hard boil to thicken up the sugar syrup. After it started to get pretty thick, i laed the peels out on a lined baking sheet, ad let them cool before shaking them up in sugar. Apparently, by the way, shaking them up in sugar was a bad idea. They're a bit too sweet for just about everyone, but the flavor is fantastic!
So, that's what I've been up to this past week, What about you? what sort of experiments have you done in your kitchens? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to hear from you!

The Sky Boom!

I realize that this picture is neither incredibly exciting, nor clear, and yes, that is definitely my thumb, but what you are looking at is an awesome rig I built for watering my garden, and I am going to teach you how to make one!

Imagine a crane that follows you around your garden, but instead of a cable for lifting weight, the crane has a hose attached to it that lets you water your entire garden without fighting the hose. That is the SkyCrane. last year, we put soaker hoses through the entire garden, one in each of the raised beds. Unfortunately, the soaker hoses decided that one year of soaking was enough, and that from now on they are Spraying, leaky hoses. Obviously, I needed to find an alternative, so I decided to run a hose and water my plants by hand. It would give me a chance to get in there and notice the plants individually, and since I already had a garden hose, it wasn't going to cost anything. Perfect!
Then I tried lugging the hose through the garden, around the corners, and getting snagged on just about everything. That wasn't going to work for me. It was about then that I invented (okay, maybe I stole the idea from a self-serve carwash, but it definitely has a cooler name now) the SKYCRANE! (yes, I know, the skycrane is a heavy-lifting helicopter, but my nephew thinks the name is cool, so we're going to go with it.)
SO! Here, essentially, is what the Skycrane is: a T-shaped boom made out of lightweight fence-pipe, a set of counterweights, and a hose wrapped to the end, all supported by a fence post on the edge of the garden. It was incredibly simple to make, taking only about twenty minutes to put together, and because I built it out of scrap from around the yard, it was completely free.

Since I am not entirely convinced that my description is concise enough for you, I present a very technical digram rendered in exquisite detail:

Hopefully that clears everything up, but if not, be sure to post any questions in the comments section, and I will answer them ASAP. Hope you like it!