Welcome, 2012!

Happy New Year! Okay group, after a few weeks' hiatus, we have returned! We staggered through the holidays and now we're ready to hit the ground running and get our plans for 2012 underway. And this year, we're going even bigger!

So to start, I'm really excited because the mailman finally delivered the goods:

Today I unwrapped my brand new copy of The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses, by Paul Koudounaris. (To see some of the photos from this amazing book, head over to my wonderfully witty Dear Santa post). Apparently Santa got my list too late, so I had to order it myself...

Anyway, this book is absolutely incredible. Beautiful pictures throughout, and with each page I flipped came a new idea for this year's home haunt (which by my count, is down to only 292 days!). I can't wait to sit down and carefully read all of the information contained within. I was pleasantly surprised by the size, fit and finish of this book. It is the new crown jewel in my small collection. This is the perfect photo reference for all of my upcoming "corpsifications"...

Also, for anyone in the Northeast Ohio area (and beyond), the word has gone out that the Northern Ohio Haunters group will be getting together for their first Make & Take of the year. And this one is going to be special. Be sure to clear your calendar on Saturday, February 4, because the first M&T of 2012 is going to be held at Forsaken Haunted House in Mentor, Ohio. Sweet! I can't wait to get a behind-the-scenes tour of a pro haunt. I will be taking copious notes and photos and will report back as soon as I can. The wheels are really starting to turn for Halloween, 2012!!

Moving right along, Scrapes and I have both been monkeying around with a cool, new iPhone app called Instagram. We've taken some of our old photos and imported them into this program, complete with different photo exposure textures and borders. Tons of users posting up tons of beautiful photos. I'm there representing the home haunters!!

And finally, I can't close this post without realizing the date on today's calendar. So for all of you horror fans, I present the single greatest scene from any of the Friday The 13th film franchise...