martha stewart's halloween special

My dog Mel getting ready for Halloween!

Way back in August I started working on a very exciting project...Martha Stewart's Haunted House...the newest Martha Stewart Halloween Special which premiers this Monday, October 24th, at 8pm on the Hallmark Channel.  I worked along side many creative and talented individuals to help create a very inventive, fun, and of course, spooky show.  This week, Martha posted a few "behind the scenes" photos on her blog.  Be sure to check them out and get the insiders view to all that goes on when we work on these amazing productions.  I too documented some of our work along the way and will post my photos later in the week after you watch tomorrow night!  So remember, set your tivos and dvrs, or just settle in on the couch with a warm cup of cider to take your own personal tour of Martha's Haunted House.  You will be sure to get some new ideas.  Remember, Halloween is only 1 week away!

pumpkin heads

My husband Tom and I took a short trip up to the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire this past week.  We love visiting this area and have camped many times before in the areas surrounding the White Mountain National Forest.  This year we brought along our dog Mel and decided to rent a cabin at a local motel instead.  This worked out just fine for our few days of leaf looking, Mt. Washington Auto Road driving, trail hiking, and of course a little rainy day outlet shopping.  When we first arrived we were driving in the small town of Jackson, and noticed the above display of a bed on the side of the street.  With Halloween approaching, I thought it was a very clever and inventive decoration for the nearby inn to have to welcome their guests.  As we drove around Jackson, and the neighboring towns over the next few days, we began to notice what we coined "pumpkin heads", popping up all around, each with a unique theme or message.  Deciding it must be more than a coincidence that "everyone in the area was decorating with pumpkin heads"!....I did a little research to find out that indeed, it is a Jackson Chamber of Commerce sponsored event called, "Return of the Pumpkin People".  This event has been going on for 24 years in Jackson, NH and the surrounding area!  On our last day visiting, the weather was quite rainy, so after lunch, we decided to take a nice drive around and view as many of the Pumpkin People as we could find.  There is a map on the Jackson website, however we chose to make it more of a scavenger hunt, looking at the map quickly once, and then going off on our own to explore the area.  I photographed the ones we found and Tom, Mel, and I chose our favorites.  I noticed also on the website there is a ballot for a "People's Choice" award.  I think I will be printing that out and sending my vote in.  We had a great time checking out all the hard work that went into these creative, whimsical and inventive designs.  Just one more reason to head on up to NH!

Beetlejuice...a classic!

This boat named after Attitash Mountain Resort which is in Bartlett, NH...

I love how they used a tarp for the water!

 This was outside a restaurant we went in....I didn't even notice it at first!

Perfect advertisement for this cleaning service!

Who doesn't love Dr. Seuss?

more classics...

Go Patriots!  It is New England after all :)

LOVE all the mini pumpkin heads in this Gulliver's Travels re-creation!

Disney Princesses welcoming visitors at an Inn.

Out front at the Grammar School...art, music, sports & academics all represented!

The local Ski Club sends a very important message!

Tom's favorite!  Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash at an Inn in Jackson, NH

How appropriate!

Cinderella, out front at what used to be an educational theme park called Heritage New Hampshire.

Heritage is no longer open, but the building is still there.  It is right next to Storyland.

Mel thought maybe he could join this cast of characters.

I'm still not sure which one to mark down on my ballot.  Which one would you vote for?

the challenge

I shared this photo with Tom for his 1st photo...It 's a family portrait 9/25/11

There are many challenges in everyday life.  One I find I come across more often than not is the constant struggle to create art in my everyday life.  I consider myself a working artist, however most days I feel I work more than I make personal art.  Last year I did give myself the "challenge" of entering and completing The Sketchbook Project.  I had a great time participating and welcomed the challenge...however I have to be honest and admit, a little part of me has been missing my sketchbook.  I will definitely have to go visit it now that the books have returned to the Brooklyn Art Library's permanent collection.  While on vacation last week, my husband Tom was showing me one of  the latest i Phone apps he had downloaded called Photo365.  We are both photographers, he is as a professional photographer and I have a degree in photography where it has now become a favorite hobby more than a profession, but never the less, we are both usually snapping away with some kind of camera, and many times, it is with our i Phones.  So there we were looking at our i Phone photos of the day and decided, wouldn't it be a great challenge to do Photo365 together!  We decided to make the official "start" date our 7 year anniversary, and then go for a year and see what we each come up with.  I even added it to our "shared" calendar so each day at noon an alarm goes off  on our i Phones to remind us to take our daily photo.  Last night Tom told me it is much harder to "do this" now that we are no longer on vacation...I do agree.  However I feel that makes it even more of a challenge.  Maybe some days will not have a photo, and that is ok too. What I see is most important is to at least try to find some time where you can look, feel or find some inspiration to help create art for yourself, then the rest can all fall into place.  Sometimes just making the commitment is the challenge in itself.

This is my 1st photo...9/25/11

Katie, over at Adventures of an Art Teacher talks about setting goals in art as well and about the Project 365 in 2010.  I "googled" Project 365 and found that there are many photographers and Flickr sites out there where photographers have been taking daily photos and recording them, some better than others.  I think it is often a great idea for recording a pregnancy, aging of your children, progress of a garden,  or even the growth of animals. I am definitely looking forward to Tom's and mine.  

Has anyone else started a new and interesting challenge? 

i am 1,199,164,176 seconds old...and counting

My husband and I had brunch at the Bedford Post, in Bedford, NY.

I started the meal with a delicious cappuccino and warm cinnamon bun!

Last weekend was my birthday.  I had a great day spending it with my family.  Late in the afternoon it started to rain and storm pretty bad...however this weekend we are hunkering down in preparation for hurricane Irene to hit the East Coast, so I suppose last weekend's storm is not looking so awful after all.  These photos captured my latest birthday as seen through my i-phone....

We took our dog Mel for a hike at Mountain Lakes Park in North Salem, NY

On our hike I stumbled upon a red toadstool with white spots!  

I have never seen a real mushroom like this in person.

I really loved the vibrant red of these mushrooms too!

Seeing acorn caps scattered around reminded me I better get started on ornament making soon....

the craft sales and holidays will be here before you know it!

Mountain Lakes has a great sandy beach area where Mel took a little dip!  Here I caught him mid-shake!

After a family dinner with my husband, parents, sister and her family...we ATE CAKE!

I love cake...all kinds of sweets really!  

This year my sister made a "funfetti" cake and iced it with a swirly pattern that resembled tye dye.  

Very fun and festive, not to mention delicious!

My niece Casidy and Mel watching the festivities. 

 Her birthday is 5 days later so we actually celebrated together and shared birthday wishes.

Till next year...

 ♥

what are friends for?

Dan's excellent friendship bracelets worn proudly by her husband Keith (photo by SDB)

A few weeks ago my bff Dan invited us to her shore house at the Jersey Shore for the weekend.  As we packed up the usual...food, clothes, beach chair, etc....I packed an extra bin for our "beach activity".  I had been seeing everywhere the resurgence of "the friendship bracelet" and I thought what a perfect activity for us to re-learn on the beach while working on our tans.  I don't know about you, but I was obsessed with making these bracelets growing up!  I would spend all summer making bracelet after bracelet.  So I got excited and went and bought the largest collection of embroidery floss I could find at Michael's (I had a 50% coupon, bonus!) and then I proceeded to print out several patterns for us to follow.  Now I didn't go and print the basic stripe or chevron that I remembered so fondly from my teens...I thought to myself, we are artists and master crafters, who needs the basics!  I am going straight for the expert patterns!  I did watch a simple YouTube video that was very informative on the 4 basic knots you need to know.  So I figured, if I could teach my partner in crime the basic knots, then we could just follow the patterns and be on our way!  Like riding a bike, it would all come back...or so I hoped!  So when I got to the beach I was very excited to see that Dan and her sister-in-law-to-be Nicole was also excited to get started on making some friendship bracelets.  We all picked our colors and I gave the basic knot making tutorial.  Then we all picked out these detailed hearts patterns to follow.  This is when I realized I probably should have read up a little bit more on the process.  I think my excitement got the best of me and I skipped a few steps.  We struggled a bit trying to read the patterns.  The more detailed the bracelet, the more advanced the pattern is and naturally the harder it is to make.  Not really the "mindless" bracelet making we were looking forward to for our first friendship bracelet on the beach after all those years!  While I tried my hardest to stick to the hearts pattern and teach them to Nicole and her friend who also joined us that day, Dan had a flash back to when she was a teenager and actually remembered how to make the basic chevron, or v pattern.  She decided to follow her instincts and let the string lead her along.  Later that day I figured out how to make the basic stripe pattern as well.  I put aside my half started heart bracelet, and started a new bracelet with 12 strings, 3 different colors (4 of each color) for my husband Tom.  It took me a while to get in the groove, even with the simplest pattern!  I actually took it home and worked on and off at if for a while...but after I sat there and committed to it, I finished and felt a great sense of accomplishment.  I actually made it too long and had to go back and take out a few rows to fit it to his wrist!  I then moved on to an inverse chevron and chose 2 colors I thought would compliment Tom's first bracelet.  Last night I tied them both on his wrist and felt like a giddy school girl all over again.  If you are interested in making some of these bracelets I recommend starting out with one of the basics and then moving on to a more advanced one.  There are so many fun patterns out there!  I found watching the YouTube videos/tutorials people have posted were the most helpful, I guess that comes from being a visual person!  Some of the paper patterns I was reading seemed to get very confusing.  Hollistergirl101 has a basic chevron and an inverse chevron video that I thought was very easy to follow.  For the basic diagonal stripe, check out this page at  Friendship-Bracelets.  They also have a pattern for any other bracelet you have probably seen!

The bin that started it all

Dan "listening" to the string

Nicole giving a go at the diagonal stripe & using her morning coffee to keep the bracelet in place!

Dan's dog Hope modeling the latest pet fashion!  This one was made in her fur/skin colorway!

(photo by SDB)

I took my bracelet with me on the train and used a safety pin to attach it to my bag!

Dan developed a new pattern while teaching the technique to our friend Janine! (photo by SDB)

 When I was researching I found that the knot tying technique used to make friendship bracelets is actually a form of macrame.  The making of friendship bracelets originated in Central America and was first seen in the US in the early 1970s.

She also discovered GOLD embroidery floss! (photo by SDB)

My first 2 finished bracelets on my husband Tom!  According to the tradition, the recipient must wear the bracelet until the cord wears out or naturally falls off to honor the hard work and love his/her friend put into making it.

 ♥

* a special thanks to Dan (Sweet Dani B) for documenting her friendship bracelet making & letting me share some of her photos with you all here!  

Let us know if you too have gotten bit by the "friendship bracelet making bug"!