Halloween Part III/Monster Mash Part I

Alrighty Folks!! I know we are supposed to be getting to our MONSTER MASH--and we are-- but first, I wanted to finish posting up my Halloween excursions--otherwise, it will just be a huge tangle of Halloween insanity all over the place, right?

So I'll post up part 3 of the Halloween festivities (part one, in Pennsylvania is HERE, and part two at the Village Parade is HERE) and a WEEE bit later today, the monsters will come out and play!!

You can wait just a little more today, right?? Mwaahahahaaa, yes, I am evil!

Ok..so...when we last left our Wild Haired Main character, we had just finished watching the Annual Village Halloween Parade. We were stoked to go the Theater for the New City Halloween party afterwards--I mean, the puppets in the parade were created by a well-known puppeteer FROM the theater.

It also helped that my dance troupe danced there a few times FOR Halloween. The gist of the whole thing is that performers perform for free, and they get a HUGE audience because it's relatively inexpensive to get in--so A LOT of people come to the shows. Because the performers aren't auditioned before being "hired" (there's no pay, remember), there is a huge bit of unpredictability in the shows you will see. But that's the fun part...

Because there are 4 theaters within "the" theater, there are four shows going on simultaneously. Plus, they have tarot readers and a spooky homemade haunted house in the basement--so you get to pick and choose what you will see! Fun, hilarity, craziness abound!

Here are a few pics of our night (CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE):

Here is the announcer at the main theater, where we first stopped off. I love the big spider web in the background!

Here is the first act--Jon Grimaldi, who is a magician and acrobat. He actually was a client of ours when I was a veterinary technician. He had circus dogs :)

Here he is with flaming sticks!

Back out in the main hall, this guys lay in a coffin ALL night like this in the area of the coat check ins! Nope, it's definitely not a mannequin!


In another theater, this strange lady mostly sang about love lost. I think she eventually realized where she was and finished with "An Ode to Psycho"--yes the movie!


After her came an amazing yogini. While it still wasn't very Halloween oriented, it was definitely entertaining! She's 54 and could do these amazing contortions!

Yes, I'd love to be able to do this when I'm her age! Wow!

Besides the performances, it was also great to see the creative decorating the theater did for Halloween! It was quite a feat as much of the stuff was created by hand by staff....

Haunted pony and masks at the entrance of the basement haunted house...

One of the giant scary masks hanging out in the lobby!

Little coffin signs near the bathrooms indicating which side was the "men's" and which side, the "women's"!

One of our favorite places was the ballroom theater. They had converted it into a Halloween Swing Party, with a huge swing band and plenty o' ambiance!

Here is the back wall of the theater, lit by a "witchy" spotlight....

One of the spooky long banners that lined the side walls...

Here's what it looked like when I used my flash

Here is the swing band! I loved them because: 1. The conductor was a woman 2. She was funny and witty 3. Most of the band wore some sort of costume.

We laughed, danced and had much fun!! What a night. Even after all of that, we still went out and grabbed something to eat...

After the parade, at a restaurant--one tired-but- happy-witch!

AND THAT, MY FRIENDS, IS THE STORY OF HALLOWEEN!
UP NEXT, MONNNNNSSSTTTERRRRS!

The Most Wonderful Time--Part II

So, if you remember my last post, I was mentioning the crazy TWO day affair we had this year in celebrating Halloween. You can click here to read the last post about visiting lovely Amish country in Pennsylvania on Friday.

Once we were done with the rural festivities, we returned in order to partake in the VERY New York City Halloween excursion known as the Village Halloween Parade. Some of you may not be familiar with the parade, although it has been covered on the Sci-Fi channel and other cable networks in years past.

The Halloween parade has been going on in the Village for almost 30 years and has quite the history, drawing people in from nearby states, and definitely the imaginative New Yorkers. The parade was started by several staff members from Theater For The New City, which is a well known East Village theater that hosts independent plays focusing on current social issues.

At that time, one resident puppet maker began creating puppets for a renegade Halloween parade, which started off small. Those same puppets, as well as the theater still exist today (in fact, we were going to their Halloween show after the parade!) and the parade has become a big massive costumed free for all of fun!

What I like about this parade is it differs from other parades in that ANYONE can join IN the parade--including those with floats, their own puppets, or just walking in full costume. So unlike, say, Macy's which provides their own floats for the Thanksgiving Parade--you can either be a spectator OR a participant. And that works out perfectly in the East Village, which was historically the beatnik and artist quarters in the 40's and 50's.

Anyhow...on with the story! We managed to get to parade central around 6pm. Under cover of dark, folks already had the party going in the streets: hundreds of costumed folks, costumed children, and even costumed dogs walked madly through traffic on the way to the parade. Devils, goblins, witches, cartoon and TV characters and more than one Octo-mom rambled madly along.

Here are some pics of our night (click pics to enlarge):

Even the buildings were "dressed up"! Here's front stoop of one of the brownstones we passed on our way to the parade.

We stood by the old church that had been converted to a library. Besides the beauty of its old clock tower, the reason for this is because there is a tradition that puppetmakers would lower a huge puppet spider down to signal the start of the parade. For some reason they lowered the spider a bit later than usual but...

As you can see on the right of the above pic, they finally do lower the giant spider down.

Here it is doing a little dance in mid-air!

...And more dancing. Yes, this really is a marionette puppet! You can see the puppet-handlers on the tower above!

Then the parade began! You can see some of the old Puppets from the early Halloween parades, below. They are the skeletons for the "Dia de la Muertos" section of the parade, below. They are included every Halloween parade:

Yikes, it was raining slightly for the parade...which made for a weird affect when taking pics!

More skeletons!

I SWEAR I did not realize this skeleton had a naughty bra on when I snapped this! The dead apparently have a sense of humor!

Here is a large skeleton. Notice all the folks underneath that have to hold him up!

Right after the skeletons, a bevvy of cool articulated snakes came by. The guy on the right is holding a yellow "bat" which has flapping wings!

After this, there was a group of folks who seemed to do a "water" themed display. The blue scarves are water. Some people held up model ships that "sailed" in the water. Others held sea monsters ( like the one on the left side of the pic) that looked like paper mache lanterns with lights in them....

Some of the carriers in this water section also had..umm, fish on their heads. Like I said, it gets crazy around here for Halloween!

Here's an ethereal, haunted ghost floating overhead. This was all floaty silk and the face looks like a Victorian print.

Another ethereal ghost. Notice how tall it is: you can see it above a streetlight.

For a sudden change of pace, how about these painted ladies standing next to the wacky painted car?

Or these guys, in their home-made "Where the Wild Things Are" costumes:



I like this picture, of our fellow Halloween revelers, too:

So then FINALLY, when the parade was over, it was time to go to the party AFTER the party! But--yikes--since this post is ALREADY so long, I guess I'll have to continue this madcapped story for yet ANOTHER post!

Which should be fun because on SATURDAY we finally reveal the finished works of art from our MONSTER SWAP!! WOOHOOO!

It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year....

Ok, I know that old Andy Williams tune in today's title is really supposed to be about Christmas...but for me, Halloween comes to mind when I think of those sweet old lyrics. Because, well, Halloween IS just that for me.

I love Halloween. I live it. I keep Halloween decorations up all year. I cast magic around when I can. I am the undisputed Queen-o-Halloween. Okay, okay. I'm the queen in my own little corner of the world, as evidenced by other Halloween Queens so plentiful here on the web. Indeed, the other Halloween royalty inspire me highly!

So this year, for Halloween, my sweetheart and I decided to do TWO days of Halloweeny fun. Usually, Halloween is a bit somber as I am out on my lonesome because my Other Half is at work....which usually means I get to make mischief all on my own, but that's never quite as fun as having an accomplice.

So this year, a whole two day affair of Tricks and Treats was underway. Note: this means I'll have TWO posts regarding this (trust me, there was A LOT going on!)....and since I've always wanted to go to an old-time farmer's market in the fall, and I love Pennsylvania, we decided to go into Lancaster, PA.

Now, if you've never been there, you are missing out. I already love the artist friends I have made, who are from PA. There is something about the place that makes for some fine artists, I tell you!
Some of my friends:

Jen of Gypsy Mare Studios
Carolee of King of Mice Studios
Michelle of The Studio at Crow Haven Farm
Marie Patterson of Marie Patterson Studio

...and there are probably more of you out there that I don't even know about (in fact, feel free and comment if you are a PA artist, I always love meeting new people!)

Anyhow....so off we went on a two hour drive that covered all sorts of quaint and bucolic scenes, that made my farm-loving heart happy as we whizzed by barns and lovely foliage and horses.

We finally arrived at our destination: in this case, we chose one of the largest farmers markets in the country--GREEN DRAGON MARKET has over 300 stalls, and yes, I didn't disbelieve them once we got there--the whole thing was an endless myriad of amazing food, crafts and tons more. Pennsylvanians, I have envy!

I have never seen anything like this place!! Again, if you have farmy tendencies, you will be in heaven. If you like great bargains on food, you will be running around like some sort of possessed banshees....we definitely were. We were the tacky tourists saying: "wow, I can't believe these LOW prices!" Sadly, I later realized that it was more likely that we lived in a place with highly inflated prices, and we'd come to accept it. One more reason to determinedly keep looking for a life outside of NYC (ahh, but that's a story for another time, kids!)

Anyhow, to say I was wowed by the experience is something else. We had endless fun looking through the various fresh food stalls, antique book stalls ( I managed to find a 1910 published The Secret Garden for only $5! And tons of other books I had no time to look through!), candy shoppes, primitive shoppes, country stalls and SOOOO much more.

It was a treasure trove. We looked, we shopped, we ate too much sugary food and comfort food (I've yet to eat the Shoofly Pie), we talked to Amish and Mennonite folks, we learned new things, we probably scared the locals a little ( I mean, I still have that crazy hair o' mine!), and we had too much fun that could have went wayyyy past the 5 hours(!) we spent there. If it weren't closing time (at 9pm!) we would have kept going....even with 5 hours of fun, we hadn't seen everything there was in this huge and wonderous labyrinth of PA goodness.

OK, so can I say, again to my PA friends: How could you keep this a secret from me???

Having said that, here are a few pictures of our day (click to enlarge):

Of course, since Halloween was around the corner, we had to check out the huge variety of pumpkins at the produce stalls. I have to say, I was fond of the unusual "Speckled Pumpkins"!

I loved these boxes at one of the larger country and prim shoppes!

...and these clocks at another prim shoppe, especially the ones with the star shaped pendulums!

And here is one of the flower and plant stalls. I love the way they painted the pumpkins!

I particularly liked some of the primitive and country decor...like these cloth chickens, cleverly sewn with potato mashers for "feet"!

And here are some of those same types of chicken in pink and other "girlie" colors!

And, of course, more Halloweeny stuff, in primitive style!

There were sweets....

...and more sweets. Heck, we were too busy eating sweets to log in all the amazing sweets being made in various booths.
Candies, Whoopie Pies, fruit pies, cakes, home-churned icecream...how does anyone stay thin?
I'm not EVEN mentioning the homemade Amish Potato salad and Macaroni Salad and various meat specialties!

At the end of all of this, we lugged our 20(!) bags of things back to the car and, as if by magic, the horse that lives on the farm across the street came up to the clearing, and stood long enough to take a picture.

I say it's magical because HE came up as we came up to our car as if he wanted to meet us for the picture....


And, he literally stood long enough for me to take the picture.

Here he turns to give us his "good side"....
...and stands for us to take the photo!

The minute I snapped the shot, he turned and walked back over the hill!

And, as if that weren't magic enough--I wanted to show you what we got for roughly $100 for our trip. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to get HALF of this for that amount here in New York. We loaded up our acquisitions on our kitchen table to demonstrate the amazing things you can find at amazing prices in PA:

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. The whole table is full of all sorts of things...I will try to describe here (CLOCKWISE): Vintage porcelain pie plate with vintage rolling pin, two large tubs of fresh spinach sitting on top of a vintage scale (which I needed for soapmaking and baking), 4 yellow peppers, one stalk broccoli, 10 sweet potatoes, one blueberry pie, one chocolate chip Whoopie Pie, one package chocolate wafers, 2 zucchini, two yellow squash, 10 apples, 10 pears, a dozen oranges, half a dozen jugs Turkey Hill beverages (which we found at one of the various local Turkey Hill stores--don't ask, my sweety has some sort of Turkey Hill fixation), another broccoli stalk----MIDDLE, CLOCKWISE: 3 older books, including The Secret Garden children's book from 1910, vintage copper mold with grape design, 2 pounds of seedless grapes.

Trust me, this would cost over $250 here in New York! So how do I move to Pennsylvania, again?

So....that was our Friday. Up next, Halloween in downtown New York City!

Halloween Wishes and A Monster Swap Announcement!

Hello Lovelies!

Hopefully, everyone is getting over their "Halloween Hangover" in which excessive costuming and revelry are just now a hazy blur (but the sweet taste of way too much candy still lingers!).

My sweety and I had TWO whole days of crazy Halloween fun (Halloween is our dating anniversary), one in Pennsylvania (yes, we FINALLY managed to get out there, despite our impossible working schedules)! And can I just say--to all of my Pennsylvanian artist friends--HOW COULD YOU KEEP THIS PLACE A SECRET?? And, when can I move there?

Haha, all of the details of the Green Dragon Market and the Village Parade in New York City are for another post (or two!).....

Rather quickly though, I wanted to give a heads up to the swappers of the Monsters in the Closet Swap and everyone who might be interested in seeing all of the finished creations on this blog--the scheduled show was supposed to be Nov 4th/5th, but because I've been asked for the extension by a few people (hey, Halloween revelry happens, I know!)--this has now been pushed to NOV 7th. Which means the new deadline to turn in your doll is Nov 6th at Midnight US Eastern Standard Time.

Hope everyone can make it over to see the haunted lineup! Happy Halloween and more, soon!

A Treatise on Kindness...

Alright, everyone....

I had planned to post about Missouri--and I will catch up--but even during this hectic but wonderful time heading up to Halloween, I wanted to stop a moment and tell you a few stories of kindness.

I'm not the luckiest person in the world. I've never had the job that would make my parents proud or that would keep me secure. I've never been the prettiest, skinniest, most popular. I've often taken the path less traveled to find much of it coming to a dead end. I've been downright hard to deal with at times, even unloveable. Despite this, though, people have bothered to care, to bless me with little tokens of love in one form or another. Friendship, small gifts, a hello...well, you know what I mean.

I wanted to share a little (more) of this today....

Several weeks ago, I hosted a bee workshop. The attendance was low--a group from PA, with children showed up. The owner was a highly sustainable farmer who grew mushrooms. At the end of the discussion, this is what I was gifted with....

Mushrooms....

And more mushrooms...

So many, in fact (those fuzzy guys are mushrooms called pom-poms, by the way)...

That we barely could fit them into the fridge!!

Trust me, you're looking at HALF of what was given to us!

And they were EXCELLENT! So, if you are interested in some amazing mushroom products, PLEASE stop by Phillips Mushroom Farms website! Great people and great product!

The second act of kindness is a little different. I have a friend, fellow farmer and farm writer Tina Michelle who has the fabulous online Small Town Living...she is funny, very kind, the kind of person who radiates and loveliness....

From her, I learned of a family with three wee girls whose mother was having surgery, and that they might not have Halloween festivities (though I was sure that was the least of their problems)...and would anyone be so kind to send the family Halloween things?

Who could say no to this? So, off went three wee packages of goodies in a box, to three wee girls, a little earlier this week.

I had an acquaintance earlier this week who, when I told her the story said: "well, you don't have much money, why are you sending gifts to people you don't know?"

The way I look at it is this: we all are given opportunities to show kindness. WE are the gifts, and we are all gifts to each other, potential friends to be made--friends in waiting--and not strangers. Yes, it's sappy. Perhaps unrealistic, even. But I won't apologize. The idea of three little happy girls makes me happy. And sometimes, it's as simple as that.

Happy Halloween everyone!
What are everyone's Halloween plans! We plan a full day of fun and festivities Friday and Saturday! More on that, soon...

Hello From Kansas!

Hello There!

Well, if you read my last post, you would know that I am deep in the Heart of America right now, on a farm journey of sorts! Today is my last day here, so a little bit of news!

First, these two are finally in my Etsy store!


So hop on over there as they are for adoption at a VERY reasonable price!

Next--a few pictures from my stay in this amazingly beautiful place, the Moore's Farm in Kansas.

It's funny, because most New Yorkers and metro dwellers tend to think they are the center of the Universe, and that places like Kansas are "the Middle Of Nowhere." I'll let you in on a secret--as you can see by just a few of my pictures of this unbelievable loveliness: sometimes you can really be in the middle of Everywhere, and Everything, even in the middle of nowhere...







More of this story--and an announcement--soon!

Somebody Pinch Me!

Greetings Lovelies!

I'm sorry, once again, for my small absence--as usual, I am off and running with various projects. And, with continued gratefulness, I can say they are both keeping me busy, and seem to be prospering....

In other words, MORE good news is afoot!

Firstly, I wanted to thank everyone who stopped by my little blog for the Halloween Party, and thank you to all the new readers of this blog! Thanks for joining up to read my ramblings!

NEXT--the beekeeping has finally gotten me into the New York Daily News! (You all do know I wrangle animals and run into the wild when I'm not dreaming over here, right? If not, check out my beekeeping adventures HERE)

Here is the link to the article (ignore the silly picture, they kept asking me to smile WIDER. Doh!)

AND--as I write this, I am a few hours away from jumping on a plane and going to MISSOURI to check out a possible farm job! 400 acres of farm fun! Woohoooo!

I'll post more when I get back on Sunday! That and the crazy tales of too many mushrooms (trust me, it's quite a story!

AND IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH -- in the midst of all of this running around, I have managed to finish these creepy and cute Halloween Dolls/Ornaments!

click to enlarge pics

Spooky Kitten and her magical, glittery pumpkin friend

(front)

(back)

Spooky Kitten is roughly 7" tall and made of muslin that has been painted, sanded, and entirely hand painted and detailed. She has a cute seude and lace ruffled trim skirt and a wee button in the back that you can attach string for hanging. Spooktacular Low Sale Price: $13.99

"One Eyed Jack"

(front)

(back)

One Eyed Jack
Is quite a guy
Who excels at Spying with his little Eye
And be sure that what he says is true
When he mentions that he has his eye on you.
But if you make fun of his pink doll, he surely will be hurt,
And next thing you know, he'll have you for dessert!

One Eyed Jack is 5" inches tall and painted, sanded, and then handpainted and detailed. He has a button on his collar and button in the back for hanging.
Spooktacular low sale price: $13.99

Shipping for each is just $2.00 first class mail...

I will list these guys on Etsy tomorrow since, as I've said, I've got a plane to catch--so this is an opportune time for one of my readers to snatch up these little guys for a slightly lower price, before I list them there.

You can also see more cute characters and get your last minute spooky fix by visiting my Etsy Shop HERE ...

Actually, I'd LOVE it if SOMEBODY would adopt ONE of these guys! It's getting rather crowded at the Magical Creature Orphanage!

More news SOON!