Mutterings of a Mad Woman

Today I've been playing with the stove I snatched off the street. I need to finish the gift shop area, the party room and the kitchen this weekend so the rest of the week can be focused on the game room.

I thought I would share a quick glimpse of the oven with you. To create the illusion of fire, I have a simple LED rope light in the bottom of the oven. I put a metal cooling rack on top of that (even though the lights are LEDs, I still would rather not have the other material touching it), and piled wood and bones on top of that. Stay tuned for more!

I was enjoying a coffee this morning on my porch when I looked across the street and spotted this stove staring back at me.

Kitchen prop, the Halloween voice quickly whispered.

Everyone passing by, on foot or by car, was turning to look at the stove. I knew it wouldn't be there for long, so I quickly got dressed and went for a closer look.

My neighbour, who has lived in the house since the 60's, said the stove is left over from the previous owner who must have purchased it somewhere closer to 1940. It's been in their basement ever since and they decided it was time to finally get rid of it.

With the help of Yetch, the two of us carried it back to our property and into the back yard to be cleaned. First, I attacked it with the air compressor, just to knock out as much of the dust and grime as I could before taking the pressure washer to it.

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

With the help of some wood glue, clamps, hockey tape, paint, and loads of patience, I was able to reconstruct the broken tree I got from the company which shall not be named (I think the Oriental Trading company is officially banished from my Halloween kingdom at this point).

As you can see, I've started decorating it with large spiders, skeletons, a few lights and garland. The reason for the post, however, is not to parade around photos of my Frankenstein tree, brought back to life. It's to tell you about the quick and simple Halloween Ornament How-To now available in my monster workshop.

All you really need is some clay (I used cheap Crayola paperclay), some cookie cutters, some ribbon and some paint to make yourself Halloween shapes for trees, wreaths, doorways or windows. This is a good one to do with the kids.

Below are more images of the tree so far. Enjoy!

Imagine, fellow ghoulies, your favourite scenes from masters of horror surrounding you in a dark tunnel, playing larger than life beside each other, moving so fast you hardly have time to name the movie title. Brilliant.

Deep below Union Station (our main train station here in Toronto, where all the subways, buses and trains meet), in an underpass was Horroridor: 20 foot screens with projected film clips of famous scenes from horror (and some non-horror) movies. The thing they had in common? Screaming.