In Bremerton, the fish have completely turned the tables on your average lusty Washington fisherman, battling him out of the water (much to his surprise). All that remains is to gut him, clean him, and prepare him for dinner–may I suggest sus-he*?
Spotted on Fourth Street in Bremerton, WA *Worst. Pun. Ever.
Sometimes, when you want something done right (or at least, large), you have to do it yourself. I had an Ouija board out at my last Halloween party, but it was plastic-y, cheap, and not the eye-catching spooky centerpiece that I was looking for. If I was going to turn my house into a proper Goth Downton Abbey in October, I’d need something grander.
Something grander started with a big hunk of plywood at Home Depot. I took the measurements of my coffee table and had them cut the board to those dimensions. (I ended up having to wander through the store for a while looking for an employee, and as the piece of plywood was so large, it looked like I was using a clever disguise to hunt wascally wabbits.)
Once that sucker was cut to the proper size, I brought it home and used a woodburning tool on all of the edges so they wouldn’t be so bright–I wanted them dark enough to almost visually blend with the coffee table in dim lighting. I could have accomplished this aim in any number of ways other than woodburning: stain, paint, marker, blood of the innocent…I just chose the method that tickled my pickle at the time.
After the edges were to my liking, I put a couple of thin coats of Restor-A-Finish on top to bring out the grain and darken the wood a bit. I chose Restor-A-Finish for a couple of reasons: one, I had it on hand already so it was effectively free, and two, Restor-A-Finish has only a small amount of stain in it so I didn’t have to worry about accidentally making the wood so dark that it would compete with the lettering on top.
As usual, it’s at this point in the process where I got so involved that I stopped taking pictures, because I always forget about maybe blogging the project later in the heat of the moment. But it’s not like there’s that much to it, either. I wanted the board to have a creepy woodsy theme, so I used very thinned-out black acrylic paint to wash on a couple of trees on either side of the board. Thinned out acrylic soaks into the wood much like watercolor and by layering it, I was able to get the overall effect I was looking for. I found a free font I liked on dafont and printed it out huge. Using that as a guide, I eyeballed it and penciled a larger approximation of each letter onto the board. When I was satisfied with placement, I then used a sharpie to fill them in. I went with sharpie over paint for the ease of crisp lines, a generally matte texture, not having to worry about chipping, and keeping the lettering area smooth. I have zero intention of ever using it as a functional board (I don’t believe in it and even if I did, it’s too dang big), but I wanted it to look as though it could be used as one, and letters with any amount of raising would keep the planchette from moving smoothly.
Speaking of the planchette, I decided that instead of the standard heart-shaped piece of wood, I wanted something that looked sort of like a crow skull. To make it, I used a cheap monocle I’d bought as a photo booth prop for the wedding and sculpted the skull shape using apoxie sculpt around it. I love apoxie sculpt–you mix equal parts of the putty thoroughly and you have 1-3 hours working time to get it shaped it exactly as you’d like, after which it cures hard and waterproof, able to be painted, sanded, drilled, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. I find it superior to sculpey and the like because it doesn’t need to be baked to cure and I’ve found it to be less fragile as well. The only downsides are the shorter working time and higher cost per ounce, but I’m still using the one pound pack I bought in 2010, and I’ve found that if I don’t finish a small sculpting project within a couple of hours, I won’t ever finish it, so the shorter working time actually works for me in that it keeps my butt glued to the seat and focused on what I’m doing. Once the apoxie sculpt finished curing, I painted it with some acrylic paint.
Spooky, no? If I was going to do it over, I’d use a larger magnifying glass lens instead of a monocle, and I may yet do so, if only because the magnified area is so relatively small compared to the size of the letters. But for under $12 (basically, the cost of the wood, since I had all of the other materials on hand), I definitely have something that’s much more dramatic and eye-catching than the cardboard board game!
Now that it’s officially fall, the time is right for a fall adventure. Namely, corn mazing, pumpkin patching, and petting farm animals. We visited The Farm at Swan’s Trail in Snohomish on opening day and were excited to see that in addition to a corn maze and a pumpkin patch, they also offer apple picking and duck races. That’s right: duck races. I don’t know how long it took to train the little quackers to speed down their trough and then fly back to their pen once the race was over, but I appreciate the trainer’s diligence, as the races were delightful. They zip through the water very quickly and adorably, and they’ve solidified for me that should I decide to raise any backyard fowl for eggs, it’s going to be ducks and not chickens.
From front to back: Big Jim, Steve, Butch, Sundance, Chocolate Thunder, Aflac, Chuck, and Moose the Goose
I rooted for Chocolate Thunder both times, and both times he came in dead last.
The Farm at Swan’s Trail has put their own spin on their corn maze: instead of doing a Halloween theme, they have recreated the state of Washington and the major roads and thoroughfares therein on twelve acres, with bits of trivia and information about each city marked on the map. You can start at one of four starting cities in eastern Washington, and the goal is to exit at Gray’s Harbor. Along the way, there are a few “road closures” so you can’t just blaze across the entire state on I-90.
Not really all that different from the real Spokane.
They even recreated Sam Hill’s Stonehenge with a corn twist!
The Peace Arch looks a little different than I remember, though.
They include three wooden bridges in the corn to simulate the real world bridges: one at Vantage, one at Grand Coulee Dam, and the one we all remember watching shake apart in physics class, the Tacoma Narrows or Gallopin’ Gertie. On these bridges, you can just barely see some landmarks peep out of the top of the corn. On some years, you see a little bit more, but it’s all dependent on the height of the corn, which grew to extraordinary heights this year. We only saw the tippy top of the Space Needle and the Peace Arch–everything else was hidden by corn.
Space needle!
When we got into the area of the corn that would roughly be categorized as our neighborhood, I sent Jason off to simulate skulking in the shadows like a teenage delinquent, because I’ve got to find some way to laugh about what’s been going on in our backyard. I really enjoyed the Washington map maze–granted, you’re never really “lost” insofar as you know your roads, but it was also fun to visit all of the cities in miniature and learn interesting bits about their history. For instance, I never knew about the British/U.S. territory dispute in the San Juan Islands that was sparked by a pig (later dubbed “The Pig War”). I bet this place is a hit with schools for field trips! After we finished the corn maze, we checked out the hay maze, which, as it turns out, is really only a maze for those persons under two feet tall, and ends in a slide that I feel I could have easily cracked in half with my ass…so not really for adults. But I’m sure it’s a blast for kids! 
They’ve also got a petting zoo area at the farm, with a pony, a donkey, some goats, and some wee fuzzy pigs, whom I discovered don’t much appreciate being petted on their fat little piggy cheeks. Thus rejected, I went off to eat my feelings with some kettle corn, which we dubbed our “hot kettle corn baby”.
Rock-a-bye kettle corn on the treetop When the wind blows you’ll fall in my mouth when the bough breaks you’ll fall in my mouth and down will come kettle corn into my mouth
Pretty catchy, no? 
When we’d pumpkined and mazed and patted and kettle corned to our heart’s content, we set off to another farm stand that had advertised large boxes of honeycrisp apples for sale as well as fresh-pressed cider and u-pick flowers. I like all of those things. I especially liked that they also had sheep. Cute, fuzzy, baaing sheep.
I picked approximately a truckload of dahlias for under ten bucks, and I brought home enough honeycrisp apples to make a 10 pound pie and STILL have apples leftover, so I’m calling this a successful fall adventure!