Fabulous Fall

Another gorgeous day here...Have not been so good at bloggy here since I just want to be outdoors all the time when it's like this! SO beautiful!

We had a nice breakfast this morning - I made asparagus, onion and cheddar omelets! And our yummy coffee from Spain. Deelish! After that, we took the dogs to Singing Beach in Manchester so they could romp on the beach! A wonderful time was had by all, let me tell you! Koty, however, did try to start something up with a couple big huskies on the beach. Our dog, my friends, is a racist! It's terrible! He HATES all huskies and ALL German shepherds. Across the board. Case closed. They are all scum and need to be yelled at, apparently! I can understand the husky thing - we had a neighbor and he had three quite aggressive huskies. We had a run-in one time with them when the owner had them off-leash, so Koty remembers that. I can give him that. But the German shep thing? I have no idea where that came from, but they are apparently cut from the same terrible cloth as huskies! In Koty's mind, anyway!

After the beach, which, incidentally is in Manchester-by-the-Sea, and give me a large break that the people in that city actually rallied to get the official name of the town changed from Manchester to "Manchester-by-the-Sea." Really? Seriously? Give me a huge break. We are ALL by the sea, douchebag! We live on the COAST!!! Jeeeez. Get over yourselves Manchester people!

Let's see, where shall I go on vacation? How about Palm Beach-by-the-sea, Florida? How about that? Boston-by-the-sea? New York-by-the-Sea? Give me a break, right? No one else would be so douchebaggy as to call themselves that!! JEEEZ!

Ok. Sorry. A bit of a rant there.

So, after the beach we came back here, dropped off the dogs and then walked downtown to a new restaurant that opened up on Wednesday called Cafe Polonia. Polish food. Phooey. We had bad potato pancakes - they were undercooked and just not that tasty. I make much better ones, if I do say so myself! And most of the stuff on the menu was, of course, meat-related. I haven't eaten red meat since I was 18, so it was sort of a bust for me. I had a dreary cabbage soup that was 99% broth. Not exciting. Too bad!

Walking to and from the restaurant was pretty fun, though! Salem is a mob scene this month and particularly on weekends! Lots of street vendors out and food carts and people in costume! It was entertaining!

After that, we came back here, and I grabbed the invitations for our big Halloween bash that I made up and walked around to neighbors' houses to hand them out...Now, as promised, I will tell the tale of last year's debacle that was our party. What a mess! So, unbeknownst to me, my lovely husband invited the entire Western world to our party last year. Or at least a good portion of Salem! We had probably 120 crazy noodlehead people come through our house. At one point I bet we had close to 80 people here at one time! People were showing up with like 6 or 7 or 8 or more friends - people I'd never met or seen before. It was so unsettling having utter strangers in the house!

Well, the first real sign of things to come was when my husband dropped an entire case of BOTTLED beer on our bar floor, which is tile. DISGUSTING. So, of course, he did a crap job of cleaning it up, so that meant that people were walking in the beer and then tracking it throughout the house. I was not a happy camper.

The last and final straw after I was finding cups, beer bottles, beer cans and random drinks in every possible location throughout the entire downstairs, was when we were FINALLY rid of all the crazies and were heading to bed at 3am. Gird yourselves here - it's going to get graphic and digusting...

Ready?

Are you sure you want to scroll down and read this?

Really? You're sure?

Ok.

In front of the loveseat in our living room on our beautiful Oriental rug? A huge pile of vomit. HUGE. And the perpetrator or shall I call him the URPitrator left his glasses right plop in the middle of the puke. So, we knew who it was immediately. Not some young person either, this guy is in his mid-50s and should FRIGGIN know better. Right?

MAN. I was beside myself. I refused to even go into that room until the rug was out of there. It was revolting. ReVOLTing. So, I made my husband take care of that and he also called the guy the next day and said this:

"So, dude...You missing your glasses?" And the guy said yes.

"Well, uhhh, we found them last night. RIGHT in the middle of your PUKE on our living room rug!"

He was horrified, of course and offered many apologies and to pay to have it cleaned. So, that was nice, right? Well, the cretin NEVER paid us a penny. Not a cent. So, POOP him, is what I say! POOP. ON. HIM.

Not a good party for good old me. It better be FAR more civilized this year, or I'm going to be taking names!

Back to today...After walking all over to hand out invites, I then had to water everything! I don't ever remember watering my flower boxes this late in the season, but I must have...Huh. I'll have to pay attention next year! Anyway, things are still going strong and looking pretty.

I don't have any photos from today - will take some tomorrow. I will leave you with a fall arrangement I did for a client a couple years ago. SO pretty and they looked fabulous in her dining room!

The large centerpiece:

I really liked this centerpiece!

Two smaller ones for the ends of the table:

And one for her living room table:

Ok. That's all I gots for today.

Hope you're having a good weekend!

Au revoir!

Glorious, gorgeous and splendiferous!

What a day! Seriously amazingly incredibly beautiful! I wish I could clone this day and have this be our fall weather for the rest of October and November. It was 73, sunny, bright, crisp and just so fantastic! I even got to spend some time in the sun on boaty today! BONUS! Any day that I can wear shorts in October or November is a bonus day in my book!

So, we are now officially in full swing here with the Halloween festivities. We had our adorable local parade last night to kick of the Haunted Happenings, as the city calls this series of events and things to do and carnivals and food places that open for the rest of October. There is a good energy in the air every October and this year is the same. We watched a bit of the parade last night and I got all misty looking at all the children in their cute costumes, and the families everywhere and the marching bands and funny floats! It's so middle-America and sweet and innocent like you want your town to be! Sends me back to my childhood and watching the Cherry Festival parades and just loving it!

Now I'm offically in love with my little city of Salem! It really couldn't be a much nicer place to live!

In that spirit, I decorate the house each year with silly and fun Halloween decorations. Nothing too scary, just sort of on the silly side what with my gay skeleton with his many boas and the funny spiders that lurk in my flower boxes! I also LOVE my ghosty lights. I used to have a ton more of them, but someone stupid had to destroy a bunch of them a couple years ago. We used to be the target of some pretty bad vandalism - ripping apart my flower boxes, stealing my plants, stealing my pretty front-door wreath and then I'm sure it was the same people who felt the need to steal and or throw in the street a bunch of my ghosty lights. Why? I cannot tell you. However, I'm happy to say that whoever they were has either stopped or moved away, so our place is much quieter now as far as that crap.

Let us take a gander at the current situation out there, shall we?

Pumpkins and gourds on the back step:Love these! Can't wait to carve the big pumpkin!

I adore these little curliecues on the little pumpkin's stem:SO cute!

The view of the side of the house:
I just noticed the twig wreath there on the door has fallen. Windy day today.

Up close of the ghosty lights:
I've had that paper jack-o-lantern for years and years now. I cannot understand how it stays together after being rained on a million times! Crazy!

My faaaaabulous skeleton!

Cute spiders on the wreath:


One of the many lurking spiders in the flower boxes - also have orange LED lights in all of the flower boxes:


And now for some fleurs - my Montauk daisy is in full bloom:
It sort of got moonched up and misshapen this year. I think the heat was too much for them...But at least they're blooming!

And the forget-me-nots are still blooming like crazy! Look how they've spread!


Next post we will talk about our upcoming Halloween party and tales from last year's debacle! Not sure if you'll want to tune in for THAT! Blech.

Ok...Gots to run. Going to feed the dogs and make the rest of dinner. I roasted a chicken today while I was on the boat and my stomach is already growling because it smells so darn good in here!

Ta ta for now!

Wholelotta nuthin

Boy oh boy oh boy oh BOY is this weather the PITS. THE PITS, I tell ya! Can't stand all of this dreariness and ick. Rain rain rain. Clouds clouds clouds. Rain. And some clouds. With rain.

Luckily it looks as though it's going to break up tomorrow and then be beautiful on Friday again.

The house is weirdly quiet right now. The dogs are at the groomer's right now, so it's just terribly empty in here! Amazing how much they fill up a space with their fuzzy, little bodies! When I walked into the house after dropping them off, I forgot for a split second that they were not here and it just felt so strange to come in and not be greeted by my furry little waggers!

So yesterday, my friend June over there at Bye, Bye Pie had us readers send in pictures from when we were kids. Here's mine I sent in:
One of her readers commented that I looked deep and wise in that photo and that I would probably not have befriended her because she was too flighty!

I thought that was an interesting comment to make about someone's 4th grade photograph! I probably was fairly deep for a kid. I was and still am very outgoing, but also pretty introspective. I am not afraid of emotions and really feeling them, I guess. I like to do things by myself and I like it quiet. I don't get people who are workaholics or people who constantly feel the need for other humans to be around! I guess that's why I love the ocean and plants and cooking. I can get lost in my own little brain when I do these things. Very zen, I guess!

Sorry for the seriousness here today. We've got sort of a big deal going on in our family and it's caused me to to do a lot of thinking about things that I normally don't really think about so much. Plus, it's rainy and dreary and yuck out side and I can't take pictures of my pretty posies or my Halloween decorations! In between rainstorms I decided to decorate the house. We have a million strands of lights - orange LED lights, pumpkins, skulls, bats and some ghosties!! I also put up two bags of that fake cobweb stuff, hanging bats, hanging spiders in the flower boxes, a few spiders on the front door wreath and, of course, my glow-in-the-dark skeleton with his boas of sparkly pumpkins and spiders!! Here's the scene from last year - similar this year:



What can I say? I'm a kid at heart!

I also bought a baby pumpkin and two gourds for the back porch and a big pumpkin which I will carve as we get closer to the big day!! : )

OK...That's all for today. I've got to am-scray and shower and then off to get cracked again today at the chiro!

Later, peeps!

Short and sweet

I have approximately three billion things to do today. I'm going to make this short...

It is FALL in a big way here. In the last week things have changed drastically from being sort of still summery to WHOMP! Fall hitting us smack in the face with full force! Leaves have changed a lot, some have dropped, it's COLD out there and it's been quite dreary. Phooey. Not ready for this. Not ready at ALL for what comes AFTER fall. I won't even say the nasty word.

Despite the dreariness and coldness I did a power walk and did a few errands along the way. I like the multi-task walk, you know? Dropped an envelope for a neighbor, dropped a package in the UPS drop-off thingy, dropped off lunch for hubby and then walked around downtown, saw more fully dressed up adult-type people. IT's a MONDAY people! Whatever with them! And then walked to Walgreen's and got few Halloween decorations and some other necessities and then walked home!

In my email was a link to a YouTube video. It is the loving tribute by Jimmy Stewart to his dog, Beau. It made me cry. But I loved it.

If you would like to watch it, I highly recommend doing so! CLICK HERE for the link.

It made me think of my beloved dog, Lady, who I loved and adored and I miss her so much lately...She was the goofiest looking dog - like there were all these mis-matching parts of dog laying around and they glued them onto this big, boxy body of hers! Giant ears, little, skinny legs, curled up tail and funny little spots on her feet and chest! She was anxious, barked too much, was aggressive with most other dogs and was generally a giant pain in the a**!! But there was something so wonderful and sweet and magnetic about her! She loved me thoroughly and she swooned when my husband would come home from work! I've never seen a dog turn so inside out with worship over someone like she did for him! And she and our other dog, Koty, were literally best best best pals. They adored each other. And they had their own little language like when we would give them extra special basted marrow bones? They would each chew their own bones for about an hour or so, then by some magical mind power they would do the switch. We have no idea how they each knew it was time to leave their bone and go to the other, but it happened literally every, single time we gave them those special bones. Bizarre. We were always mystified at this!

When Lady got sick and finally so weak she could no longer make it up the stairs to sleep in our room (a sad time for all of us), Koty also ceased going up to our bedroom. He stayed downstairs to be with Lady. They were just the best pals. It was wonderful.



Ahh, the good old days.

Sorry for the lack of fleurs...It's cold out there and not much to report right now!

Have a fine Tuesday, all!

Ciao!