Merry Halloween!!

Looking out my studio windows toward the road.

Still smiling our halloween smiles!

My mother would hang this black cat on our front door on halloween night.

Here in the Hudson River Valley most of us are tucked in and waiting out this historic storm.
We are ready with our generator if the lights go out and hopefully we will
be able to hook up the tv and watch Hocus Pocus! (My favorite Halloween movie!)
Of course the party is postponed till next weekend, but more poeple will be around so that is good!
(especially our son who will be up for a visit from DC :))

Snowy Halloween!

The weatherman is saying four to six inches on saturday....oh brother!

Here in the Hudson Valley we had an October snowstorm about fifteen years ago

that caused problems for weeks. The trees are still leafed out and when they

get filled with snow they get heavy and break and bring down power lines.

I am doubtful that I will be able to have my annual Halloweeen Party on saturday :(

I Love Halloween!

The Living Room Fireplace

Part of the Mantle

Hutch in the Kitchen



Rat in the Kitchen!!



I love the autumn holidays, Halloween with it's fun dress-up and Thanksgiving with it's food!

Where we live, we don't get many Trick or Treaters if at all, so the past few years I have been having a Halloween Party and sleepover with my nieces. It gives me a good excuse to get out all my decorations.

We play games and dunk for apples and then stay up late and watch scary movies and eat popcorn.

I love to scatter little decorations throughout the house and I placed a faux rat on top of my microwave. When I was cooking today I needed to get into the cabinet above and so I moved the rat to the open shelves next to it. As I was busy cooking I forgot that I moved it

and scared myself when I went to reach for the EVOO!

Finished Projects!!!

It is so nice to be all ready for the holidays (as far as my house goes!) this early in the game. The decoupaged table has already been put to work as a bar area with great success, even spilled red wine cleaned up beautifully.
The little sewing table is now in my new dining room and is holding the silverware chest and extra serving pieces, oh what bliss to be so organized. (it's the little things in life, right?)
So I decorated for Halloween and I will have a party this year. We don't get very many showing up for trick or treat. Last year we had an all time high of 12, so having my friends and family in for a party is a great way to celebrate.
I also wanted to show a few pictures of a desk that I refinished. It has quite an interesting story, my brother in law found it near a dumpster at work. He liked the way it looked and brought it home but my sister couldn't find the spot for it and asked me if I wanted it. I looked at it and thought that I could break it up and paint on the top, maybe take the legs and saw them down for different projects so home with me it came. When I really looked it over to start breaking it up the next day I realized that there was not one single nail in the whole piece, it is completely dove tailed and notched together and you can see that it was hand made by a master craftsman.
It truly is my nicest piece of furniture and all I did to it was clean it up and use re-finisher on it. It is missing a drawer, the fronts of the two remaining ones are not right but I love it. Everytime I walk past it I run my hand over it and think about all the hours someone put into creating this beautiful work of art and hope that he or she knows how much I appreciate it.