These are cherished sets from my childhood, long since lost (with one exception). I have several pieces mixed into a couple of LEGO bins containing a fair number of pieces from these sets. One day I want to try piecing them back together as best I can.
10. 6615 Eagle Stunt Flyer
9. 6835 Saucer Scout
8. 6915 Warp Wing Fighter
7. 6087 Witch's Magic Manor
6. 6279 Skull Island
5. 6048 Majisto's Magical Workshop
4. 6769 Fort Legorado
2. 6973 Deep Freeze Defender (now own complete and built several years ago!)
Every year at the Draper City Park in Utah, a large tree is decked out in thousands of strands of Christmas string lights. It has been dubbed "Tree of Life". A few nights ago I was driving around with the family in search of a car wash near by and I noticed that the graveyard/mortuary was all decked out in Christmas lights, so I decided to drive through and check it out. It is here I discovered what I now lovingly call "The Tree of Death". It's actually quite beautiful, and they actually give out free hot cocoa and roasted marshmallows at the cemetary. Plus I am willing to bet there won't be droves of onlookers surrounding The Tree of Death. Lastly, the Tree of Life is clear down in Draper, where as the crematory is just up the road. Where would you go?
I also notice that the Tree of Death has a beautiful white glow, whereas the Tree of Life appears to have more yellowish lights. Now that I think of it, I wonder if I should actually call it "The Tree of The Knowledge of Good & Evil" instead of The Tree of Death. What do you think?
I was going to post some pics of a vintage Slimer puppet I fouund; but my spouse taught me today that shopping at the DI is a waste of time. I will rebrand this blog into a sports blog, like a normal. No more money and time wasted at the stupid DI, garage sales, or thrift stores! I will definitely plan a Super Bowl party this year, and enlist my son in peewee league football. I will need to buy one of them Rokus to watch all the football, baseball, and everything else that's ends with "balls" games.
This year, I predict, my boys (The Browns), will take the Super Bowel LIII!!! The final score will be 59-0 against the Raiders. See me analysis below.
(place holder football strats)
Wait, I think my wife probably wants me to turn this into a cleaning, cooking, parenting, relationships, and home decor/improvement blog.
Is Camp Floyd haunted? The public is invited to participate in a paranormal investigation of Camp Floyd. Because of the popularity of this program, four sessions will be conducted this year with each date limited to 40 participants. Admission fees are $7 per person and reservations are required.
Participants are encouraged to view the museums at Camp Floyd during the day light beginning at 6 pm, with the event starting at 7:00 PM and ending at 9:00 PM. Participants are encouraged to bring their own flash lights, recorders, cameras, digital and infrared cameras where park staff will assist participants in the use of their equipment in finding paranormal orbs, mists and sounds.
A brief presentation will be conducted to familiarize participants with paranormal investigating techniques and findings as the investigation starts. All participants will be invited to present their findings at the conclusion of the investigation, and will have the opportunity of viewing photographs along with other paranormal evidence gathered at this historic site.
Camp Floyd was a short-lived U.S. Army post in the Cedar Valley, Utah, United States. The Stagecoach Inn was a nearby hotel which also served as a stagecoach stop and, during 1860-1861, a Pony Express stop.
You can bet I will return and report our findings! Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever investigated paranormal activity?
I also discovered that Trolls 2 was filmed right in in the beehive state, Morgan, UT! I plan to watch the movie, and then the documentary about the movie's production, "The Best Worst Movie Ever".
These are amazingly good, I was surprised! They are the October donut of the month this year at my local Smith's Food & Drug (Kroger) grocery stores. If there is a Smith's in your area check and see if your bakery has these!
They're just chocolate donuts, topped with Oreo crumbles, and apple flavored gummy worms. 10/10 must try this month!
Do you have a Smith's nearby? Have you tried these? Are there any junk foods you gotta have this time of year?
They're back again this year! Not sure how many years they have done the Square Pumpkin, but we're talking 35+ years now! I really wish they would run a new local commercial. TV is all but dead these days. Arctic Circle has ditched the "Square Pumpkin" title it seems, and now just offers a spooky Halloween themed kids meal box. It's not as cool as in years past, but I'll take it. The food is the same, the only difference is the box, and the annual Halloween "flashlights". Gotta keep them safe for Tricks and Treats!
This boy is also obsessed with cheese burgers right now!
Milen got the Franky, and Ava got the Eyeball. The flashlights don't change much from year to year, but they are a fun little tradition. One year they had robot flashlights, which was stranger than aliens for Halloween. Like I said, I'll take it. (They're better than the flashlights featured in the above commercial . I wish I knew when that commercial aired. I wanna say late 90's, early 2000's?) McDonald's is lame now and doesn't offer Halloween Happy Meals, and BK is totally out to lunch when it comes to their kid's meals. The Burger King Kid's Club is dead.
Milen got creative with the lights and used them to light up the ghost shelf
Anyways, I got my usual Pumpkin Pie shake. This time I added chocolate, which made it kind of taste like pumpkin chocolate chip cookie ice cream. And for some reason they topped it off with a Nilla Waffer.
Any other Utahns out there? What do you think of the Square Pumpkin meals? If you're not from Utah, do you have any local eateries that offer Halloween themed kids meals? If you do know of any other fast food joints with halloween offerings this year then please let me know! and show me pictures!
Honestly, we don't really all need a cellphone. We all got on just fine before.
Which leads me to the real reason to ditch the cellphone and go landline: so I can use an awesome 80's phone! My dream landline phones:
Garfield phone
The Real Ghostbusters phone
As of March 19, 2018 there are still 100,000 working pay phones in America. I want to use one! I have spotted a few dead pay phone booths in Salt Lake City, but I don't know of any that still function here.
A red phone
Red lips phone
Gumby phone
Clear plastic phone
Hamburger phone
Hotdog phone
Rotary dial phone
Cool Spot phone
Micky Mouse phone
Pac-Man telephone
Talking Homer Simpson phone
Darth Vader phone
Two tin cans and a string
Are you going to try the no scroll challenge? If so, what landline phone do you want?
It’s been years since I’ve been able to build a snow Gollum. The snow was finally decent enough this year to throw some snow together and call it good. I used the Shy Guy pumpkin for the head. The kids love him unconditionally.
Do you love the snow, our would you rather spend Creepmas in the tropics?
Construction of the DI Treasures Nerd Cave has begun, in the only room on the apartment available, the unfinished basement storage room. At least the kids can't get in and destroy (although they have broken off the child lock before. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until that happens again).
BARF!
Real life, it can be ugly.
Robo Rally, safe from the children.
It is a work in progress, still mostly a cluttered storage room, but things are starting to fall into place. I scored a free TV with 2 AV inputs, so I have hooked up my N64 and PS2 slim for games and as a DVD/CD player. I need more extension cords and a couch and or comfy chair. A couch would be a challenge squeezing through the narrow entry way to the basement.
We'll see how far I can come in another month.
Do you have a Nerd Cave? What is it like? Where can I see pictures? Have you been relegated to the basement?
I spotted these ornaments are my parents' during Christmas 2017. The bear and snowflake are paper, but the tree is painted wood. All featuring your's truly in different larval stages, a different hair style for each year of elementary school. My current hair style is short, with a little "fwoosh" in front.
Last summer we had to move out of the house we were renting and moved into a condo/townhome rental. We were quite sad to lose the huge, fenced in back yard, and I lost my finished attic Nerd Cave.
Fortunately our new place has a nice spacious unfinished room in the basement. The bad news is all my geeky stuff is stored in boxes in that dingy, dark basement. This year I want to organize, purge, and tidy up the remains of my nerd cave. I will draw inspiration from other nerd caves and will be saving hardcore to buy a home. We likely won't be able to afford a new home until 2019, but the goal is finally insight and things are looking up.
So, I will feature a different nerd cave on the blog each month to analyze and glean insight from. I have one picked out for January 2018, so stay tuned (http://lunacityarcade.com/).
Do you have a nerd cave or a man/woman cave? Or are you in the same boat, with everything is just stored away in boxes?
May it chill your bones this fine Creepmas season.
Side A
1. Winter's Majesty - Nox Arcana Intro
2. Winter's Majesty - Aquilon's Wish
3. Psych-Out Christmas - Silent Night - Quintron & Miss Pussycat
4. Nightmare Revisited - Nabbed - The Yoshida Brothers
5. Gingerbread Man - The Residents
Side B
1. Psych-Out Christmas - Christmas Monster Party - Len Maxwell
2. The Police - Every Breath You Take (Audio) - Stranger Things 2
3. Psych-Out Christmas - Jingle Bell Rock - Quintron & Miss Pussycat
4. Weird Al Yankovic: In 3-D - Nature Trail To Hell
5. Surprise Eggs! - Do Not Hold On To It - Ulsa
This is my fist post/response to the Round Robin Challenge. It was hard to nail down exactly what my collecting obsession is, but after some soul searching I finally figured it out: I AM OBSESSED WITH CREATING WORLDS! This obsession with creating worlds explains why I love building toys (LEGO, Construx), micro toys (Mighty Max, Micro Machines, Trend Masters), hobby toys (model trains, Christmas & Halloween villages, etc.), table top gaming (D&D, War Hammer, Brik Wars), and good old play sets!
Custom minifigures I created. Space is my favorite LEGO theme.
Basil The Bat Lord, Fright Knights Castle sub-theme
My earliest toy memory was when I was 4 or 5 years old, building the Blacktron Message Intercept Base (Set 6987-1). I still have bits and pieces from that set, and I hope to one day rebuild it. I have always loved the customizable nature of the LEGO brick. You really can create anything! I really miss the modular Classic Space base plates and I wish I had stocked up. Even considering just custom minifigures, there are millions of possible combinations of head, torso, legs, weapons, hats, etc., it is mind boggling! You really can build your own little world out of LEGO, though it can become very expensive. This is why I enjoy others' amazing creations, like Jang Bricks on YouTube, and the Construx Custom Designs Gallery.
My brother and I were huge fans of Galoob's Micro Machines and I still have a large collection of Z-Bots. This inevitably led to my love of Bluebird's Mighty Max series and all the other micro toys that flooded the market in the 90's. I loved that my parents could afford to buy me playsets, because they were so much cheaper in micro form.
Z-Bots Combots line, Tomahawk in custom desert scene. I simply used an old tan sheet as sand. Army men buckets are perfect for little accessories, like the barbwire fencing.
I also recall with fondness our family trips to the Intermountain Train Expo. I really want to visit again this year with my Dad and bring my kids along too. It was so cool seeing all the work and detail that went into those model trains and the surrounding landscape!
I recently started building a Halloween a few years ago when Tombstone Corners hit Dollar Tree stores. Ever since I visited Gardener Village in the fall as a kid and saw the Halloween villages there, I have wanted to create my own village. Check out my latest Tombstone Corners post, with links to every post HERE.
I have never played D&D or War Hammer, but I appreciate and marvel at the creativity of the games! I love the imagination and creativity that goes into a D&D game; and dedicated War Hammer players have created some incredible terrain and structures from everyday household rubbish!
And lastly, playsets and toy dioramas have always interested me. I did get some traditional playsets as a kid, like the Swamp Thing Swamp Trap playest (1990), and one of the Bat Cave playsets (I can't even remember which one to be honest, and a few others of note. I will be making a top 10 playset list of my personal favorites that I owned or really want). However, I always ended up creating playsets myself using cardboard or whatever else I could find. I recently created a playset from a cardboard apple box, Frogacuda's lair/toy room basement/sewer or something. The great outdoors is another quick and easy playset of sorts. Retroblasting puts it best with their video "Greatest Playsets you didn't 'buy'":
Frogacuda & Froggy Jr. in their toy room. Micro toys are perfect toys for bigger toys.
Old Sheets are perfect for a quick and easy landscape.
Another part I love about dioramas is crossing toy lines. Here we have Imaginext, The Real Ghostbusters, and Playmobil. The more the merrier!
I enjoy building in many different mediums. My 2015 ginger bread contest entry at work, Eversweet National Forest. I won first prize for Most Creative. That is real maple syrup in the candy lake.
What is your obsession, collecting related or otherwise? tell me in the comments below!
