From The Nest

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIZ!

Happy Birthday to Elizabeth, born in the pumpkin patch on Halloween Day....the cutest baby pumpkin you ever did see!

My talented niece, now a grown woman, an accomplished marketing Wiz at the Oxygen network, with an apartment in New York City.......... beauty, brains and a wonderful love of life along with a wonderful love named Cliff, her handsome grad student and constant companion, who is her eye candy extraordinare!

Have a perfectly ghoulish day, lots of fun and Halloween delights!

more later,

carol

It's coming.....

Working on some new Halloween designs for the Current Catalog folks and really getting into the "Spirit" of the holiday....wanted to share one of the designs with you all. This is for 2008 so you are getting a sneak preview....only 2 more days to Halloween.

more later,

carol

In the company of pumpkins

What a gorgeous fall day, blue sky and sunshine and all in the midst of hundreds of pumpkins, searching for just the right one to carve this week. Stay tuned....

more later,
carol

Haunted Happenings

If you are looking for ghosts and goblins and witches and such, nobody does Halloween quite like Salem, Massachusetts. This place rocks and is filled with tourists now to celebrate the holiday. It is not unusual to see ghosts or witches walking along Salem Commons.
This is the Salem Witch house and the only building with direct ties to the Witch trials of 1692. This was actually the house where Judge Corwin lived who presided over the trials.

The Salem Witch Museum is the most popular museum in Salem and is owned by a fellow boater and acquaintance of ours from Marblehead.

These flags marketing the Haunted Happenings events fly all over Salem.

The old Custom House is situated right by Derby Wharf and it is where the sea captains, during the East India Trade explorations, would record their cargos when they arrived back in Salem after long voyages to faraway ports.

The "Friendship" is a reconstruction of a 1797 "East India-Man" merchant ship and symbolizes the rich maritime history of Essex county and is moored right along Derby Wharf by the old Custom House.

Of course it wouldn't be America without the marketing and sales of Halloween costumes and such. This store had some cute items and I loved the rather "sexy" witch advertising her goods outside the store. I didn't know that witches wore boxer shorts!

Laurie Cabot, Salem's official witch, is also into marketing and this is her store right on Essex Street, selling spells and shells and puppy dog tails along with all sorts of incense, glass globes, witches hats and other exotic things.

Here are some of the things you can buy in her shop.....special concoctions to make you rich, tall, beautiful, bad, good or whatever you wish for...there was a women in the store while I was there who was looking to purchase some "money powder" to sprinkle on her checks. The theory is that when she writes a check the money comes back to her so she never really uses any of her own money....mmmm sounded familiar, like I think that is what the bad guys do but they call it something else....

I took this shot from the old graveyard behind Essex Street looking over the stone wall with the red ivy climbing up and over it to another old building from the 1600's.

This is the old graveyard where there are many interesting old stones from the 1600s and 1700s including the family named Hawthorne, depicting angels and skeletons with some unusual and rather macabre engravings.

This is an example of what I am talking about....a good Christian wife lies here, notice that the H and the R are actually part of the same letter....with a skeleton with wings floating over her for eternity.

Another example from the old graveyard in Salem, Massachusetts , this one with more of a human face with the same wings as the skeleton one.

Now to really get in the spirit of the "Haunted Happenings" you can go to this booth and have real Dracula fangs added to your teeth.

Or you can simply buy a mask....

And, if you really want to be stylish and into the "Goth" look, these casket handbags come in an assortment of sizes and I am told are the very hottest thing to carry around Salem these days.

And, to keep you positively spellbound while visiting Salem, you can go to a Haunted House......

or visit the Wax Museum or.....

learn more about the history of the Witches in Salem or........

just hang out with some of the resident Zombies that are always around Salem.

This is a statue of Roger Conant, one of the founding fathers of Salem that stands next to the Salem Witch Museum. Every time I go by this statue I think of that poor man wearing that hideous hat and heavy woolen cap walking around in the middle of summer oh, those many years ago...he always seemed so spooky to me when I was younger and I guess he still does in a way. Something rather ominous about him, like he is on fated mission ......

So, for all the goes bump in the night, for the fun to be frightened, spooked, spellbound, and just have a great time dressing up and partaking in the giant party they have over there....make sure to visit Salem, Massachusetts during the "Haunted Happenings". It is simply Bewitching!!!

more later,

carol

Halloween Fun

Here is some Halloween fun that is part of my new scrapbook collection. When the link is up and running I will let you know.

more later,

carol

Boney Skulls

Working on some new Halloween designs and of course what is more appropriate than the ubiquitous skeleton and skulls? Had fun designing them!

more later,
carol

Candy Corn

Nothing says Halloween like Candy Corn!

What a fun and delightful sweet to announce the coming of Halloween.

more later,

carol

Halloween is coming

Halloween is coming soon and so are these cute Halloween icons coming soon to a store near you featured on a door mat.....so your trick or treaters can step up to your door on this cute design.

spooky and cute and lots of fun.....

more later,
carol

Sky Blue and Foliage

Seems like summer here again....warm days, very mild, with the sun mostly behind the clouds, the sort of weather where you just don't know what to wear when you leave the house.

And, the last few days it has been very foggy along the ocean........ the walk to the beach didn't give me that usual wonderful open expansive view as the fog hovered over the sand and rocks, completely covering up the ocean so I couldn't see the water at all....what we boaters call "Pea Soup" fog. It comes and goes, probably because the water is so warm now.

But, when the sun did appear again, I looked up to see this glorious tree and thru the tree the most perfect shade of sky blue....if only we could really have that color to paint with.

Nice warm days....but I am anxious for the real Fall to come and stay....to get out my great sweaters and vests, to layer and wear boots and to feel that little crispness to the air. I love this time of year, the change of the seasons, the colors, the feeling of starting again, putting away summer and bringing out the next season.....I cannot imagine living in a place where the seasons don't change at all and missing this time of the year.
The change of the seasons and the colors are good for the soul,it makes you think, rearrange, regroup, restore and reorganize, move on to the next thing, start something fresh....to always be the same is boring, static, doesn't encourage creativity, just too darn dull....
besides, with the coming of Fall we start the slow transition into winter and with winter comes the holidays and the anticipation of that exciting time of year is part of the fun of being alive....getting ready for what is to come, ever changing and hopefully growing and improving....

Like the foliage, wonderful and bright and green for months on end and then slowly changing the colors and eventually falling away, taking a rest for a while and then growing again in the spring, we too experience a sort of re-awakening...bringing new life, new colors, new styles, and new ideas with each change that comes to our lives and our loves.....

for all the creative people in the world, I think fall starts a new time for us to develop ourselves as artists....if only we had that really great "Sky Blue" color to paint with.

more later,
carol

Birthday in Boston

Today I took my Mother into Boston to have lunch at the Taj Hotel on Newbury Street ( the old Ritz Carlton) and celebrate her birthday. We had such a wonderful day together. Here she is toasting to her birthday with a Bellini, her favorite drink that she first had with my Dad in Venice, Italy many years ago. She is 85 years young, sylish and full of life. She is wearing her Austrian hat and Tyrolean jacket my Dad bought for her in Salzburg. She looks great in hats and loves wearing them. She is a very generous and caring person, a registered nurse by trade, loyal, supportive and loves her family. She is indeed, a very special lady, a promoter, the one who really pushed my brother and I to be what ever we wanted to be, she is the "marketeer" of our family, the PR person, the "never miss an opportunity" person and we all still adhere to her mantra. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch together, chatting away about our family and and what is going on in the world. The sun was shining, it was a gorgeous fall day in old "Beantown".

We sat right at the front of the restaurant in the hotel near the large window overlooking the street and across to the Boston Commons, the oldest public park in the country, where George Washington camped out with his troops during the Revolutionary War, 50 acres of parks and garden, the home of the famous Swan boats and the start of the Freedom Trail. People were walking by us on their way to here and there. It was just a beautiful setting. For our lunch we had a Caesar salad with shrimp cocktail, a cheese platter with asparagus, assorted cheeses, chutney and breads, and a pot of tea with petit fours for dessert. Just perfect!

No trip to Newbury Street in Boston is complete without a stop into Channel where Mom got a new lipstick and a favorite bottle of Coco perfume. She was quite taken with a gorgeous pair of black boots that sported the Channel logo in crystals around the heel for $925. We gasped at the price, but they were divine.

Then we walked across the street to the Boston Common's gardens to take in the gorgeous setting on such a beautiful fall day. They were shooting a movie called "Bachelor 2" with Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin and Dane Cook and they were jogging across this bridge for some scene in the movie about 4 times. Lots of folks were standing around and watching the shoot. Boston has become very popular for movies lately with 6 major films being shot here this year alone.

The fellow on the right in the photo worked for the movie company and he was politely asking spectators to stay back for this shot of Kate and Dane running across the bridge.....too far to really see them, but trust me they were there. He had a head set on and would say "Clear" and then "Background" and "Action" and then all the movie "extras" would casually walk by in the scene so as to look like they were really just jogging around the Boston Commons and all those people were just there in real life, not movie extras...then they would yell "Cut" and redo the scene again.....this went on 4 times, one time they had to redo the scene because a hair got on the camera lens....oh the life of a movie star, looked pretty boring redoing the same thing over and over....but, hey, then they could afford to buy those gorgeous Channel $925 boots, so it isn't all boring!

Here we are under an enormous willow tree next to the duck pond, soaking up the rays in the gardens across from the hotel.

I was thinking how lucky I am to have my Mom and be able to enjoy such a special and wonderful day with her in Boston and that she is in good health and good spirits to enjoy it as well.

Nothing like a birthday celebration in Boston.... a gorgeous fall day, movie shoots, Channel perfume and just great company, boots or no boots, we had a ball!

more later,

carol