Creepy Close to Home

It's that time of year, when things that seem perfectly normal become totally creepy.

Ok, this is probably creepy year-round, but I never gave it a second thought until the leaves started falling off the trees and the days became shorter. The Oneida Correctional Facility, located just miles from our house (welcome to Rome, where prisons can be found, well, everywhere) is a beautiful old facility. It looks like it could be an old mansion, an entire campus of historic buildings. That is until you notice the medium-security electric fence and security cameras that encompass the place.

The campus is made up of 47 buildings on 85 acres of land, and opened in 1988 as a medium security correctional facility. The earliest buildings on the land date to 1886.

If you think that's a little weird, consider this. the campus has been shut down, leaving most of the buildings abandoned and the property unmaintained. Only a few buildings seem to remain in use, and in the morning and evenings you can see the lights in those few buildings, and only those, on.

I assure you, we are perfectly safe in our home. In fact, the old campus is currently for sale (see more pictures here) - but this place is practically begging to be the setting for a scary movie, so I thought it only appropriate to post about it tonight, on the eve of Halloween. Hey - maybe American Horror Story should consider it for their next season?

Happy hauntings!

(photo credit goes to nydailynews.com)

Stubbs Halloween Party, 2.0

We did it. This year we threw our second Halloween party - and this time we invited the entire Rome military community. Don't cringe, it has to be one of the smaller military communities around, but happily, it still resulted in jam-packed house.

We began the Halloween tradition one year ago, when we spent way too much money on Halloween décor. Now, to make up for it, we will become 'that family,' the ones who throw the annual Halloween bash.

Actually, we quite enjoy creating an excuse to get dressed up as adults - and the more people that join us, the better.

This year, we had no less than 40 people pass through our front door, and spent the evening chasing around tiny Elsa's, Supermen, Anna's, Hulks, Peter Rabbits, Darth Vaders, and more. It was happy chaos, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thank you to everyone who made this party a raging success! (Photo credit goes to B'linda and Stephanie, because I was having too much fun and didn't take pictures.)

 

 

That guy. He can't be trusted.



 

Happy Halloween!

Stubbs' Harvest

We didn't go to a pumpkin patch this year (gasp!). I'm actually quite pleased with the reason why. Our garden turned out to be a fine enough pumpkin patch for us - yielding four perfectly perfect pumpkins (and a few tomatoes and watermelon).

Last night at sunset, we hitched the cart to the lawn mower and headed out to the garden to harvest our produce. This sounds way more country than it actually is.

The garden itself is a sad, sad mess - we should be ashamed. I shouldn't even reveal how bad it is, but hey, this is real life people. The truth is, amidst our other projects this summer, a garden was just not something we could keep up with. We bit off more than we could chew, and the garden got the cold shoulder.

Thanks to Tyler's watchful eye, a few things (including pumpkins!!) survived, and I'm quite grateful for that.

Happy fall!!