Valentines!

A very sweet blog reader sent me the BEST package in the mail last week. Nancy first emailed me with some suggestions for our fall road trip, and asked if I would like some of the cards she collected when she was a kid. Of course! I was so delighted to open up the envelope and see all these amazing Valentine's! I had a few vintage Valentine's and have been on the lookout for me. I love every single one of these! So many I would have snapped right up if I'd seen them at an antique mall.

My favorite is the deer, or maybe that little space dude.

Oh wait, no, it's the hot dogs! How cute is that hot dog couple??

She also included this little knit outfit with a note saying her husband got it on a bottle of hot sauce over 30 years ago and maybe it would fit my squirrel. Mr. Squirrel is pretty giant, but it first my little ermine PERFECTLY! I have been cracking up every time I look at it.

Haha! I love how tall the hat is. I think this weasel needs a few more outfits. Thank you again Nancy, you are so thoughtful!

I know those Valentines up there made you wonder what we got up to on that love holiday. I had to work actually, but I took some time to finally make a custom banner with the kit I got for Christmas. I think I'll leave it up for a while.

I made Travis some vegan Shirley Temple cupcakes and left him this little display to find. He bought me a GIANT gift pack from Lush that totally blew me away! I can't wait to use all 18 bath bombs! Ah!

Wolf's Museum of Mystery!

We stumbled on this place while I was trying to get us to what I thought was a vegan shoe store (it wasn't, and all the shoes were lame anyway). All four of us are into the weird and gross so this is right up our alley! It was five bucks to get in and totally worth it!

The "museum" is the personal collection of a man named Wolfgang Von Mertz. There is lots of taxidermy, weird occult stuff, a real vintage iron lung, even a mummified falcon! Displayed next to x-rays showing what was inside! So much cool stuff!

 There were two cats, a black chincilla, and a HUGE dog walking around in there too. 

 They had quite a few art pieces by Butch Anthony, who has is own Museum of Wonder in Alabama that I really want to visit someday! I LOVE his art. The skeletonized paintings are my favorites. He sells them on his etsy. I want one for my collection!

 They had a taxidermy giraffe! Look at that beautiful thing!

 That is a picture of Robert Wadlow, one of the tallest men to ever live, at 13 years old! Amazing!

 I have been wanting a vintage baby caiman and this desk set is pretty incredible. Look at those bookends!

 They had a Lizzy Borden display that was supposed to be her. That is a real human skeleton! I went to an estate sale once that had one, but it sold before I could get there to see it. The photos in the back are of Lizzy Borden's father and step mother's skulls. I'm not really into serial killers and murderers but this room was really interesting.

 Elephant foot bar stools! See the cat on them? It seems so strange to me that a big game hunter would want to bring these big feet home and have them as bar stools.

Part of the upstairs was a horror movie room you can rent out to watch movies with your friends. Doesn't that seem fun? Marc and I got REALLY freaked out by this big werewolf statue that we were sure was going to move. We spent about and hour and a half at Wolf's and totally recommend it if you are into the weird and wonderful.

Adventures in Taxidermy

Don't worry, there are no graphic or bloody photos in this post!

As you guys know I have a little collection of vintage taxidermy here at camp Say It Ain't So. I just love it! I think it reminds me of campy dioramas at the local science museum when I was a kid. I had toyed with the idea of taking a taxidermy class at my local oddities shop, but the class I was signed up for got cancelled. My best friend Crystal, and my new friend Ashley both took classes though. Ashley got some rats that died from a woman who sells feeders to feed snakes and offered to bring them over so they could teach me how to do it. Here are some notes from my foray into taxidermy. I know most people aren't into this stuff, so it won't hurt my feelings if you skip this post. 

The rats were frozen and were pretty pee covered so first order of business was to wash and dry them. I  thought this might make me sad because I used to have pet rats and loved them but it really wasn't. These guys were destined for pet food, and once they died they would have been thrown away. Look at how cute mine is!

 Crystal got a black one.

 Ashely's was the cutest! This was the first time we've hung out in person, which might seem a little weird. Haha! But we met on instagram because of the taxidermy classes!

 Ok, so the first order of business is to separate the skin from the body. It took a REALLY long time for us to get through it. Hours and hours. I'm pretty squeamish and had to take a few breaks and go outside but I'm pretty proud of myself for getting it done. I'm not going to lie, it was really gruesome. I actually had nightmares because of it. I'm not going to go into the process, but if you are interested, we used this website for tips, along with what they learned in the classes. I'm not going to link the classes they took because the instructor is apparently pretty awful, but I've heard great things about Afterlife Anatomy, who also travels around teaching classes!

 You also have to create a little false body to go inside the rat. The eyes are just regular black beads. It's weird how realistic they look once they are in the skin.

 Here we are working hard! As you can see it is now dark! We worked from about 4 until almost midnight! With a little break for tacos.

Ashely demonstrating how were were all feeling about 6 hours in. Haha. So over it. But wanted to finish! Look at how cute her rat looks!

 Really, the worst part was all the skinning. I gave up once we got to the head and Ashley finished it for me. Bless her. Stuffing it and posing it wasn't bad at all. 

You wire the arms and legs into place, and try to make the tail look ok. I'm not sure how well I did that part, we'll see.

 Here is my little gal all done. She looks ok for my first (and probably only) try I think. We'll see how sh looks in a few weeks. Crystal took mine home so it could cure in her basement, away from curious cats.

All in all it was an interesting experience and I'm glad I did it. I know it seems weird for a vegan, but I really like taxidermy and feel like it honors the animal in a way. Do I expect everyone to agree with me? No. But that's ok. I hope you found it interesting at least!

The Pink Palace!

are you sick of my memphis pictures yet? haha. since i've been trying to post more on my blogspot i've been trying not to post 100+ pictures at a time so it all gets dragged out. i think i like it more though. there is nothing worse than coding a huge entry and something going wrong and you have to do it again. so anyway, here are some pictures from our last day in memphis!


we woke up late and browsed through some antique and vintage stores. there is a great store called Flashback, but i'm so used to paying estate sale prices i can't handle vintage shop prices anymore. 28 dollars for a set of salt and pepper shakers? no thanks. crystal found this incredible velvet jacket that would have been perfect for her if it hadn't been so tattered at the bottom. and so expensive.


next we went to the pink palace. it's a science museum. we went on their free day.

there was a huge natural history section. which i loved of course.


an exhibit on how they do taxidermy too.

we probably spent the most time looking at the skeletons.

teeny tiny hummingbird skeleton!




there was a huge and cool exhibit about medical history. that skull is a child's skull with the adult teeth waiting to grow in! so sick! and there was a gross leech diorama, and another one with a doctor sawing someone's leg off! so scary!


the best part was this huge awesome circus handmade by one guy! it took him years and years.

it was so detailed! and the parade moves around on a track and lots of the other things move. like the acrobats.


and the animals in the menagerie.

i could have looked at it for hours.

part of the museum is in the house that belonged to the founder of piggly wiggly grocery stores. so it has the "original collection" of the museum. mostly taxidermy.


and a shrunken head! there was an explanation about how it was made. creepy.

so the pink palace was really fun! i can't believe we hadn't been there before!

we ate at the cupboard on the way out of town, another road food suggestion.


the food was good, nothing spectacular. but that bread basket!! might have been the best rolls i ever had. so buttery and soft. and the tiny cornbread was great too.

crystal wanted a cheap tacky memphis shirt so we stopped at a truck stop on the way out of town to look for one. they didn't have any memphis shirts but they had a whole rack of xl shirts for things we had loved when we were in elementary school. it was so weird! like we were in a time warp. they was a really cool ninja turtles pizza party shirt that we tried to get travis to buy but he wasn't interested for some reason.
so there you have it! our semi annual memphis trip!