All Hallow's Eve

Since I am moving, I didn't decorate for Halloween this year. At work, I have a white pumpkin container on my desk. Right now, it's filled with caramel Hershey's Kisses-yum! I always try to keep a little chocolate on hand for my customers. Talking about one's finances can be so stressful, especially nowadays. Oh yeah, I keep a box of Kleenex handy too!

Enjoy the vintage Halloween illustration. I thought this one was particularly striking and unique. Not your typical artwork depicting pumpkins or witches.

Saturday night I am attending my friend's Halloween party.. The decorations were partially up at her home last week. They were impressive. Lots of spider webs and purple mini lights. I hope to get some interesting photos to post.

Until my next post, wishing you all a spooky and fantastic Halloween!!

Bake Sale!

I was the coordinator for a charity bake sale this past weekend. The bake sale was held in memory of our friend and coworker Joanne DiPaola. Joanne wasa teller at the bank where I work. She passed away in July 2006 after fighting her cancer for 16 months. She was the nicest person I ever met.

The money raised will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. We raised $1,521.

Friday the first day of the sale was Joanne's birthday. She would have been 61 years old. One of our customers bought a cake and donated it to us for our sale. She wanted the word remembering written on it. When she picked it up the word remembrance was written on it and it was spelled wrong. We decided instead of selling the cake, we would cut the cake and
each take a slice and remember Joanne on her birthday.

Here's the birthday cake in memory of Joanne.

We received a large amount of baked goods. We had 5 pies, coffee cakes, whoppie pies, apple crisps, all kinds of breads and coookies, espesso brownies, candy, jars of sweet pepper relish and rum mocha sauce.

We displayed the jars of sauce and relish in my wire container.

We even had a "decorating room". Any baked goods that needed packaging went straight to the decorating room to be bagged and embelished with ribbons and other decorative elements.

This is my cranberry apple crisp, all ready for a good home! The recipe is from Susan Branch's Autumn cookbook. Susan Branch is one of my favorites. I actually got to have afternoon

tea with her last Fall!

I always ask the bank to match funds from the bake sale. I'm not sure if they will but if they

do we will have raised over $10,000. in three years. Money to be used for free testing for women who can't afford it and for education about the disease. I think that is one of the best tributes we can give to our friend Joanne.

More Fall Porches and Door Decorations

I took these photos on a visit to Salem earlier this month. I was feeling brave that day and

seeing no one was home I stood on the walk and

zoomed in on the wreath. I thought it looked elegant against the black door.

I liked the yellow house with the dark green door. Nice color

combination. There was a lot going on with the facade. I thought it was simply beautiful.

The last house had nice ironwork on the stairs. Pretty mums on the porch and fabulous columns.

One more day of baking for my bake sale so another short post. I am tired from baking all day. I made double chocolate muffins, pumpkin pecan bread and muffins,

and lemon squares. Tonight some friends are helping

me package it all. We have some beautiful ribbons and Fall

leaves to add to the containers and bags. I'll post pictures

soon.

Fall Porch Drivebys II

Just a few more front doors and porches. I like the cornstalks on this one.

I love the bright colors of the mums against the brown house. Of course the leaves make it

even more fall-like.

This porch is pretty so the spider isn't all that scary. But it is very cool.

More tomorrow I hope. I am in the middle of baking cranberry apple crisps for my charity bake sale so I may not get to post until Saturday. I will have to play it by ear.

In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, please look at the prior porch posts.

Fall Porch Drivebys

I'm continuing from where I left off yesterday. Let me share with you the fruits of my labor. It's a tough job trying to find beautiful doorways and porches to photograph. We know there is no beauty in New England in the Fall. Yeah, right! The tough job is selecting which houses to choose for there were hundreds to choose from. So here goes. This Stoneham porch is precious.
I loved the bench with the pumpkins but then I liked the steps too and the railng so I went for the wider shot.

I liked the seafoam color of this Winchester home. The featherlike thingies in the pots, and the arrangement of the fallen leaves made this one a winner in my book.

This one blew me away. Really, almost literally. The winds were kicking up by the Lake in
Wakefield. No ornamentation on the door but oh those leaves are fabulous!!!

Again, the leaves got me at hello. This side porch is so charming. I think I need a side porch!

This home is in Winchester, north of Boston.

The colors on this house are so different and very appealing. I once looked to buy a condo in this
house. You should see the inside. It is as glorious as the outside. I love the purple steps.

Alas, the tour has ended for the day. Don't worry, you're coming back tomorrow. Right?

Porches on Parade

I am participating in the Porches on Parade event with the Inspired Room blog so I went out
this weekend to take pictures of doorways and porches with Fall decorations. Since I am having some technical difficulties uploading the photos, I can only post two today.

The first one I liked because of the color scheme. The color of the home goes well with the decorations.

I liked the second one because it was simple and nature had given it all the decoration necessary.

Sometimes natural elemnts are the most beautiful. I find the leaves on the ground as photoworthy as the ones on the trees.

That's it for today. I'll post more tomorrow.

New Friend

Today is Saturday and I didn't have to work. I decided to get started taking photos of Fall Porches and Doors for the October 2oth upload. See the Fall Porch button to the left of this post for more info. I actually started taking door photos about a week ago. The goal is to take photos of fall decorations on porches or front doors. I've taken shots of homes in Salem, Reading, Wakefield, and Stoneham.

Today I went to Winchester, a rather affluent suburb north of Boston and the town where I was born. I knew I'd find some great neighborhoods with interesting fall decorations. I snapped some wreaths on doors and leaves on stairs when suddenly I stumbled upon a beautiful home with a lovely garden. I looked at the fence and thought oh how cute! A cat statue on the fencepost. The statue looked back at me with big blue eyes. It was REAL!

The cat was beautiful and regal looking. She spied me and my camera and gave me a few sneers and then turned herself around so her back was to me. I called out to her but she had a typical catitude! Obviously this cat wanted no part of me. So I walked away and started taking photos of the door decorations.

A few minutes later, I looked up and kitty was jumping off the fence post and coming towards me. So I started taking photos of her, she got closer and closer until she was at my feet. She started head butting my leg. Now she wanted my attention. I should have given her a taste of her own medicine and turned my back on her. But, I am a sucker for a sweet kitty face and so she of course got attention from me. We had a lovely time. Her fur was so soft, the sun was warm, and we were enjoying a lovely Fall day. As you can see she was smiling by the end of our visit. I was smiling too!