Weather and waiting

January and into February, weather had been dry as a bone.

So, we decided might as well get started if Mother Nature wasn’t going to give us water.

A lot of things swiftly got finalized.

The design, fire bowl, and placement first:

The stones for our circle:

And even the flagstone choices for around the pit.

So began the cleanup, saying goodbye to many items from the past, moving towards the future.

Bridge of Death

However, as soon as we got the first stones up…

We’ve been inundated with soggy weather, with another weekend of wet coming up. So, the waiting continues…

The Plan.

With the house remodel being finished, it’s time to start looking to the yard.

One of the harder things with expanding the house was losing back yard. We spent most the summer cleaning up refuse from the remodel, and it was time to start thinking of what we want in the yard.

I always wanted a path between the gardens, and all the way around the house. We needed a patio. And we wanted a nice fire pit area.

So, we began looking for fire pit area ideas, and really fell in love with the idea of these standing stone ones.

 

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No, I can’t recreate any one of those, but it does give a direction we can look towards.

Seeing what we had to work with, we first marked off a new patio area.

And then the fire pit circle (we don’t think it will end up this large, but giving plenty of room to play with depending on what stones we can find)

So, with such a big project in place, Halloween once again is going to take a little bit of a back seat. But, that doesn’t mean I’m not finding interesting little tidbits to draw inspiration from.

The Harvest is forming.

First light this morning.

From 2010 Buildup

As you can tell I had already been at it for some time…

A pumpkin creeper body, waiting for a head.

From 2010 Buildup
From 2010 Buildup

Couple more hanging off the fence.

From 2010 Buildup
From 2010 Buildup

So, day’s end.

Front back together, and torches posted.

From 2010 Buildup

I got this panicked moment when I realized that, with the gazebo broken this year, I had no way to get the chords across the path. Raven grass is my answer. I planted this stuff specifically for use on Halloweens, but hadn’t planed on using it this year. I’ll tie the tops of it I have posted to either side of the fence there to make an arch, and presto, chord up and over. (In about 2-3 years, I’ll have LOTS of this grass)

From 2010 Buildup

I’m not a HUGE fan of the scarecrows, but it’s the clothes I could find in short order. (mostly cast aways from my son)

From 2010 Buildup
From 2010 Buildup

‘The orchard’ area. I’ve decided we’ll hang some lanterns and spray some webs in these trees.

From 2010 Buildup

Fred on his spit.

From 2010 Buildup

Fred seems to get better with age…(now 3 years old)

From 2010 Buildup

The fence creepers. I was out fiddling, trying to get them on after dark. Torches lit to see what I was doing, and get a feel for things. A car was stopped in the street watching as I plugged these in and I just hear a “holy crap that’s cool” waft out from the window.

From 2010 Buildup
From 2010 Buildup
From 2010 Buildup

The pumpkinhead scarecrow to honor the picture that started all this.

From 2010 Buildup

Sorry it’s blurry, but I’m using the point and shoot sans tripod. Testing the battery tea lights I bought. Should work great.

From 2010 Buildup

Even the crappy ‘crows look half decent in the dim torchlight.

From 2010 Buildup

Ideas….always ideas…

One thing about me is I’m always on the look out for some new ideas.

My wife and I were out shopping a couple weeks back, and I ran into this…thing…in a really oddball store. (yes, couple weeks, it was on my wife’s camera and took me a while to pilfer it.)

From 2010 Buildup

Now I knew instantly there had to be some way to incorporate something with that same feeling into Halloween. I also studied it’s rather interesting construction, appearing to be simply rope wound over a form with a wooden mask and shells glued into place. (and a price tag of a few thousand)

I snapped the pic and moved on, not dwelling on the idea.

Then, a few nights ago something strange happened. I was sitting here watching South Pacific. (yes, the musical) And, there came on a scene with something rather not at all like the statue above. And somehow, the vision here, mixed with my initial ideas on that statue, and some cutesy stuff one of the neighbors does, and the three have jumbled around in my addled brain to produce this rather interesting idea. IF the weather ever clears up for a length of time, I’ll show it to you as it’s just plain too hard to explain at the moment.

On the Stele front, after the weather tried to mess up our last update, we managed to save the panels, but weather has really delayed the continuation of the effort.

I did manage to get the panels attached to one of the Stele, however.

From 2010 Buildup

With any luck I’ll get the second attached, and we’ll be able to start on the fronts. I need LOTS more paper to make into mache, however…