Not a creature was stirring, not even a zombie mouse.

The free Coins were hung by the free Silver with care,

In hopes that St. Yeti soon would be there.

The game players were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of a free Vacation Quest danced in their heads.

And Sunflower in her ‘kerchief, and Squash in his cap,

Had just settled their brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

Squash sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window he flew like a kernel from a kernel-pult,

Tore open the shutters and threw open the bolt.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the luster of Bejeweled gems to objects below.

Then Squash saw a site that made his eyes go agog,

A miniature sleigh, and eight tiny Zuma frogs.

It had a monstrous old driver, so snowy and sweaty,

He knew in a moment it must be St. Yeti.

More rapid than Lex his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now Noodles! now, Cuddles! Now, Hercules and Sally!

On, Eduardo! On, Jacques! On Pearl and Sophie!

To the top of the Facebook screen! To the top of the wall!

Now hop away! Hop away! Hop away all!”

And then, in a twinkling, Squash heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little webbed foot.

As Squash drew close wall-nut and a couple puff-shrooms,

Down the chimney St. Yeti came with a big boom.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his solitary hat tarnished with ashes and soot.

A bundle of zombies he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a yeti searching for a midnight snack.

His eyes – how they stared! His dimples like trolls!

His cheeks were like dirt, his nose two empty holes!

His giant gaping mouth was dribbling with drool

And the beard of his chin was as grey as a ghoul.

The thorn from a cactus was tight in his teeth,

And a flower pot rim encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a broad face and a white furry belly,

That shook when he gurgled, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and slow, a right smelly old zombie,

And Squash, when he saw him, called for the plant posse.

Then a wink of a Yeti eye and a twist of his head,

And for a second every plant was filled with deep dread.

But he ate not a brain, and went straight to his work,

Giving free Coins and Silver to all, then turned with a jerk.

And laying his remaining finger aside of his nose,

And lurching up, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him groan, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Yetidays to all, and to all a good-night!”

PS: Come to the Yuletide Yetidays site and scoop up 50,000 free Coins for Bejeweled Blitz, 50,000 free Coins for Zuma Blitz, 20,000 free Coins for Lucky Gem Casino, 25,000 free Silver for Solitaire Blitz, a discount at the Plants vs. Zombies merchandise store, a free PC/Mac game and more! These offers are only for a limited time, though, as Yetidays don’t last forever.

Enjoy the holidays and get ready for even more fun-tabulousness in 2013!

While this looks like the expert craftsmanship of contestants on Halloween Wars, we promise you'll be able to pull it off!

As a Halloween gift to our players, PopCap artists designed some nifty templates to make carving your favorite characters a much less daunting task!  Yesterday afternoon, our fearless Community team gathered to test out the templates before sharing them with the world.

Note: we don't actually recommend carving your pumpkins this early in the month. By Halloween, they'll look scary in a bad way!

All pumpkin carving starts with the messy fun of cleaning out the seeds and stringy stuff. Once you’ve got it hollowed out, choose your template and tape it on securely. Then you’ll want a simple pushpin to punch through the paper along the outlines, marking the pumpkin.

This is a labor of love. Love for Zombies, art, and you, fellow Zombie-lovers.

See the tiny little pinpricks along the outline of the Starrgh-fish? That's how you transfer the image on the page to the surface of the pumpkin before carving.

Look closely, and you can see the neat little lines showing him just where to carve!

So where can you go to get all these templates yourself?  Check out the Facebook fan pages for Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma Blitz, Solitaire Blitz, Bejeweled Blitz, and
Lucky Gem Casino over the days to come for posts sharing each game’s specific images, or download them directly from the links at the bottom of this post.

And finally, I’d like to leave you with some pumpkin-carving tips courtesy of our beloved Steve Notley:

To download each template, click the link for that character under the image:

Peashooter from Plants vs. Zombies

Sunflower from Plants vs. Zombies

Zombie from Plants vs. Zombies

Zuma Blitz Tiki

Zuma Blitz Frog

Hercules from Solitaire Blitz

Starrgh-fish from Solitaire Blitz

PopCap logo

Blue Gem from Bejeweled

Lucky Gem Casino Crown

I swear, it's even prettier than I remembered! The colors, the crisp lines... I'm gonna go play a quick game. Be right back.

To my mind, the greatest joy of Zuma is how dynamic it is. I’ve written at length in the blog about how Zuma teaches you how to play as you go; this game wants you to succeed. Zuma Blitz takes it to the next level by letting you choose tools to carry with you in the game. The original Zuma Blitz had nine power-ups, and you could choose up to three per game. The new Zuma Blitz island of Kroakatoa has ten power-ups to choose from, but even better, we’ve added a whole new category of boost!

Tasty tropical treats tempt the tongue. Flavorful foods fuel the frog! Appetizing aliments augment your achievements!

Food is like having a fourth power-up slot, only better. With power-ups, you only get one of each type — you couldn’t, for instance, choose to fill two power-up slots with the Speed Shot in order to double that boost’s effect. But you could choose to play with Speed Shot and then add the Hasty Pudding on the food menu! That’s doubling your speed boost! If you’re lucky enough to land a Spirit Eagle monument, you could conceivably triple the speed boost based on your power-up and food choices.

(And while we’re on that topic, we’ve added some major improvements to the way monuments work on the new island — by popular demand, you now choose your boosts after accepting the monument! Also, monument streaks are now possible — once you’re on a streak, you can keep playing with that same monument, and it costs less each time!)

All of these options allow for the greatest depth of strategy ever in a Zuma game. The old island allowed you to discover and hone your playing style; Kroakatoa encourages you to explore it and find ways to enhance it. The power-ups and food can be combined endlessly to support your play, whether you choose to bolster your weaknesses or exploit your strengths.

Color Nuke is a brand new addition, and it will blow your mind! Technically, it will blow up all the balls of a single color on the curve, which is pretty sweet.

Check it out:

I know I’m good at gap shots, shooting Fruit, and maintaining my chain. So Speed Shot is a necessity for me, because it helps me slide my shots through narrow gaps. Fruit Master is a great choice, because if you’re good at something, give yourself more chances to do it! And Chain Blast rewards my vaguely obsessive-compulsive chain tendency. Top off that boost combo with a helping of Gapple Sauce, which makes gap shots worth even more points, and I’m going to the top of my leaderboard!

Or who doesn’t love making stuff explode in Zuma Blitz? If you like boosting your game with Bombs and Cannons, you’ll love Pyro Popcorn! It makes all your explosions even bigger!

Of course, there’s another big change, and that’s the switch from mojo and idols to coins. In the old Zuma Blitz, you earned small amounts of mojo for every game you played, and you were occasionally granted idols at various levels of achievement or as prizes in the random spinning treasure chest. Idols could be redeemed for mojo, and mojo was how you paid for boosts and monuments. That made my brain bend a little just trying to describe it. Coins are a much simpler form of currency (and as a bonus, the word “coin” actually is synonymous with currency in your head, so you don’t even have to learn new terms to understand it!). While you won’t receive small quantities of coins for every game you play, you will receive large quantities every time you level up! In fact, we did the math, and we can assure you that the average player will get more in that lump sum payment than they could ever have gotten over time in the smaller incremental grants.

Kroakatoa is not just the newest Zuma, it’s the best Zuma Blitz ever. If you’re a Zuma Blitz player but you haven’t joined us on the new island yet, watch for your invitation to board a boat and come on over! You should see it above your game board any day now.  If you’re new to Zuma Blitz, what are you waiting for? Come to the island paradise of Kroakatoa and get to blasting some balls!

Here it is again, a little closer.

Because we are process nerds, we contacted CJ to find out how she made it. This is that story:

“He is carved out of 1 lb EPS foam (that’s the white stuff made up of little beads.) I used a heated carving tool and a rasp. Once I got the shape right, I cut the accent markings from a very thin sheet of the same foam and hot glued them on. I sanded him down with 80 grit sand paper then brushed on a layer of thinned joint compound. When that dried, I sanded him again, this time with 220 grit sand paper. Then I repeated the joint compound and sanding step. Once he was smooth, Larry sprayed him with a two part epoxy hard coat. Finally I airbrushed him and applied a gloss top coat. The joint compound and hard coat are what make him look like he is made out of something other than Styrofoam. The airbrush paint I used had a pearlized finish – I don’t know if you could tell in the picture, but he looks like a glass Christmas ornament…. well a very large ornament! He was a lot of fun to make and brightens my day when I see him in the office.”

See? Simple!

Seriously, though, that is a great piece of work and we are impressed by the level of skill and artistry required to create it. We are also crazy jealous that we don’t have one.

When she is not creating Zuma frogs for her own enjoyment, CJ runs (with the aforementioned Larry) a company called Pirate’s Palette. “We paint backdrops, build and restore furniture, make props and sets, and create styrofoam sculptures. We originally started doing this work for theatre, but have branched out into other areas – signs, architectural ornamentation, trade show pieces… the applications are really limited only by imagination. And when it comes to Styrofoam, we can make anything.”

CJ was also very forthcoming about the challenges of her work which I am sure are things that nobody at PopCap could possibly relate to in any way. “My work isn’t without its share of stress. Deadlines can be killer. People call up asking for items in an impossible time frame. And people call wanting things that I have no clue how to accomplish, but I am not smart enough to say ‘No, I can’t do that.’ I take the job and we stress until we figure out how to make it happen. I am lucky enough to be surrounded by brilliant, imaginative people.”

You can check out more of CJ’s great work on the Pirate’s Palette site or on their Facebook page. Don’t miss the life-size Delorean with working gull-wing doors!

If you look in stores today, you’ll find a bunch of cards featuring hearts, flowers, puppies and other adorable imagery. However, I feel there’s something seriously lacking in these cards. Something… amphibian! Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be all kittens and candy, there’s totally room for our green, croaking compadres!

To celebrate this February 14th with our froggy friends and our favorite valentines, the Zuma Blitz art team put together some awesome Valentine’s Day cards for you to print out and share! There are two cards, click here and here to print them out.

I think this one is my personal favorite:

Which valentine gets your heart all aflutter? Let us know what you think! Or better yet, take a pic of your valentine and share it on our Wall!

Tara is PopCap’s Community Manager for Zuma and you can find her on the Zuma Blitz Facebook fan page. 

Weasels sound... weaselly... but look at that cute little face! That is the face of a weasel who wants to play some Zuma Blitz with you!

Spirit Weasel grants you a free tier 1 Cannon powerup or adds an extra cannonball to any existing Cannon power-up. The standard Cannon shoots three balls at a time, so a Spirit Weasel-enhanced Cannon will shoot four! Or, if you are a level 69 player who has earned the Super Cannon, you will have five balls in each cannon shot! It’s can-tastic! Cannon-ical! Cantankerous! (Okay, I ran out of fake words.  It’s still a pun… if you think about it.)

Already have Cannon selected as one of your powers? Then watch as the Cannon goes ballistic! (I mean... more so.)

Better still, the Cannon power-up balls appear more frequently when you play as the Spirit Weasel. So more cannonballs, more cannon shots, and on top of that, the balls you take out with each cannon blast are scored at a higher rate!

And don’t forget the grand finale when you invoke a Spirit Animal: the Spirit Weasel’s favorite color is yellow, so all remaining yellow balls on the board at the end of the game will be cleaned up for you in the Spirit Blast! If you’ve got more presence of mind than I tend to muster when playing Zuma Blitz, you might be able to leave extra yellows on the board to increase the power of the Spirit Blast. It’s well worth it if you can!

So head over to play some Zuma Blitz, and we’ll have a special gift for you! Between now and 12 p.m. PST January 27th, we’re giving away a free Spirit Weasel! That’s right, folks, the first one’s free.

Also free? This weaselicious desktop image!

Today in Seattle we celebrate the most hoppin’ of national events: National Dress Up Your Pet Day! (I swear we’re not making this up.)

While I know many a PopCap employee will be dressing up their furry friends on this most glorious day, we want to make sure everyone can get in on the fun, even if they don’t have an animal buddy of their own! Courtesy of the awesome artists on the Zuma Blitz team, we’ve created a pet that won’t get you in trouble with your landlord: The Fold-A-Frog!

Fold-A-Frog may not be able to shoot marbles like his big brother the Zuma Blitz frog, but he’s got some mighty fine hopping skills and a wardrobe from the Cray-Z House of Fashion to match his mad moves.

You can download your own frog here (PDF).

Here’s our highly trained professional frog folder demonstrating proper Fold-A-Frog construction technique:

Once you’ve got your frog folded and decked out in the latest amphibian fashion, be sure to take a picture and post it to the Zuma Blitz Wall. Five fabulous frog folders will net themselves fame and glory, as well as 500,000 Mojo!

Tara is PopCap’s Community Manager for Zuma and you can find her on the Zuma Blitz Facebook fan page.