It's All Hallows Eve!

The big day is finally here!

We've put on our Halloween hats, some of us are more enthusiastic than others,

. . . brought the pumpkins up from the basement

. . . and went to work!

Now they're all lit up and ready for the Trick or Treaters to arrive!

A couple of years ago I found these LED lights that flash different colors. They have definitely saved the day (or night) when the candles wouldn't stay lit because it was raining or snowing or both. The weather is pretty decent tonight, sure hope I don't run out of candy!

While we wait for the trick to treating to start, Kibitz has decided we need some fortune telling on this spooky evening. 

He brought Ivy and Burt one of Edward Gorey's Fantod Packs from his recent travels. It's a set of cards that will tell all the dreadful things lying in wait for those who ask what the future might bring.

To have his fortune read, Burt takes the pack in his left hand and. . .

. . . flings it into the air, while keeping his eyes closed.

Then he picks up five cards from the floor, keeping them in order.

The cards are laid out starting with first card in the center, then top, left, right and bottom. According to the interpretive booklet, Burt first card, The Stones, indicates he is currently subject to falling sick with a sudden affliction, possibly anemia or paralysis. He could also suffer strife due to a forged letter, false arrest or a loss of teeth. There's also a chance that a misconstruction of evil communications could lead to an estrangement or even worse, a distasteful duty. Yikes!  

The Urn foretells harmful rays that attacked him in his past may return. On an upcoming Friday he should watch out for a forged invitation or perhaps a low fever, it's a little unclear. As for his inner self, The Blue Dog means that throughout October he's susceptible to weltschmerz or an accident in the garage. As for the outer world, The Waltzing Mouse says to expect corruption and brawls. (Guess that could apply to almost everyone.) Finally, The Plant forecasts that in July he could be afflicted with bad credit or worms. Hmmmm . . . that's probably more than we need to know . . . ever.

Was that someone at the door?

Maybe it's not a good idea to let Zombie Boris and Natasha answer it.

Now the real fun begins, let's just hope they don't meddle in the election!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Many thanks to Marfi at Marfi-topia for creating and hosting Haunted Humpdays.

She is the Queen of Halloween!

The Dilemmas of Decorating

The skeleton crew is joining Marfi at Marfi-topia for some spooky fun leading up to Halloween.

It's only a week away, which means that it's time to finish up all the holiday decorating and spruce up the place for All Hallows Eve!

Can you ever have too many pumpkins? Then again, how many is too many?

Is it possible to have an excessive amount of Halloween decorations?

Well, it might be fun to find out.

Even though we've had most of our Halloween decorations for quite awhile, when we start to think about autumn (even if it's only August), it gets harder ever year to wait until October to put them up!  

Every once in awhile a decoration or two will get misplaced but eventually they turn up. Burt's ancestors somehow got put away in the piano bench but have been gracing our mantle since June when we accidentally came across them. I don't think any of our visitors have even noticed their unusual characteristics and Burt's been very happy to have them back.

In the past our shopping for Halloween decorations usually took place in November. Let's just say some of us are prone to procrastination. Shopping after the holiday meant the selection wasn't th best but you really couldn't beat the prices. Then a couple years ago, in the middle of October, while picking up candy for the Trick-or-Treaters, we noticed all the spooky stuff was gone! Except for the costumes everything else had been replaced with Christmas ornaments! It was horrible!

After that frightening experience, we finally learned our lesson. Plus, it's a great excuse for getting out and doing some early shopping and who can resist the lure of new treasures anyway?

Of course there's always the issue of where to store all that new stuff.

Earlier this year, while being trapped inside by an unprecedented hot, humid summer and then hoards of mosquitoes, we spent way too much time watching the endless Christmas in July sales on the shopping networks. (When did they start devoting an entire month to them?) Anyway, every once in awhile a Halloween goodie was slyly sandwiched between an angel and a snowman. Eventually we caved and ordered this Jim Shore Kitty. I wonder if there will ever be Halloween in June sales?

  

It's about the size of an actual adult cat which came as a surprise when we unpackaged it - as is the case with most of the things we purchase online, ha! It's huge size may be why our kitties have not felt the need to knocked it off the chest of drawers onto the floor . . . yet.

This is the newest addition to our Halloween hoard and it makes our whole house smell wonderful! It was a gift from our goddaughter. Thank you, Katie! She sent along the cool spider rings, too. 

Ivy found a great place for her new pumpkins. It's funny how just a few new things will give new life to older decorations or sometimes just moving the old stuff to a new place transforms it completely. Then again, Ivy's been rearranging the curio for about a month now and it still looks just awful! Maybe we need to do a little more shopping?

As you can see all this shopping and decorating has taken quite a toll on poor Burt. It's always important to take a break and relax awhile to reduce the stress of the holidays, even the most fun one! Hope they don't get too comfortable, there's still pumpkins to carve, garland to put up and lights to string before the Trick-or-Treaters start ringing the door bell!

Thanks for stopping by!

Are you ready for Halloween?

Haunted Humpday at the Edward Gorey House!

The skeleton crew is joining Marfi at Marfi-topia for some spooky fun leading up to Halloween. Last week, while Burt and Ivy were rattling their chains and spooking the neighbors at home, His Madness and I spent an afternoon on Cape Cod with our son Andy and his wife Kristin.

We went for a walk along one of the many beaches and this one also had a long pier that stretched out through a huge salt marsh. It was low tide so we were able to catch the sightly creepy sight of hundreds of crabs crawling out of their muddy burrows to feed on plants and algae. It may be awhile before I order the seafood platter with crab legs.

 It was an unseasonably warm day but quite cloudy and a little rainy. All the more fitting for a visit to the home of a writer and illustrator best known for his humorous but "unsettling" books.

Our destination was the Edward Gorey House Museum, located on the Yarmouth Port Common. He was the creator of delightfully strange characters that inevitably fell victim to unfortunate events.

Many years ago, while working at the university library, HM recalled that he first came across Edward Gorey's book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies when it was being added to the children's library. 

It made such an impression on him that the drawing and text for the letter "N"  has been stuck in his mind ever since. Maybe it was due to the fact that he had to look up the meaning of ennui . . .

 . . . or that he just really relates to eccentrics!

Fans of the PBS series Mystery will recognize his illustrations from the animated opening credits. That was my first introduction to Edward Gorey's work and to be honest, for many years I had him mixed up with Maurice Sendak.  

Edward Gorey was born and raised in Chicago, after serving in the army during WWII, he attended Harvard and graduated in 1950. There's a wonderfully written biography of him here. Although he majored in French Literature, he'd always had a talent for drawing. After college he moved to New York to accept a position at Doubleday where he designed book covers and eventually became a well-known commercial illustrator. In 1953 the first of his own books was published. 

He went on to publish over one hundred books as well as keeping up a demanding career as an illustrator and printmaker. In 1979 he bought the cottage on Cape Cod with the proceeds from his production of Dracula. Originally done for a small theatre on Nantucket in the early seventies, it eventually found it's way to Broadway as Edward Gorey's Dracula where it opened in 1977.  It was quite a hit and ran for three years, winning Tony Awards for Best Revival and Best Costumes.

Speaking of costumes, just like his character above, Gorey was found of wearing fur coats, especially with Converse sneakers and often to the ballet. In all, he collected twenty-one of them before having a change of heart about wearing fur and locking then all away, sometime in the eighties.  

The kitchen of his home is decorated in typical Gorey style and with his own possessions. Who needs curtains when there's a giant bat to keep the sun out of your eyes? It's always fun to see a kitchen still intact in a house that's been turned into a museum. Usually, they have either been removed completely or turned into offices for the staff. 

Oh, no! There goes Una down the drain! 

Skull soup anyone? It's not just for breakfast anymore.

 The docent told us Edward Gorey was a huge ballet fan and had attended every performance of every production that George Balanchine choreographed for the New York City Ballet. Apparently, he designed a beach towel for one of their fund raisers, too.

In addition to his personal 25,000 volume library (which he left to San Diego State University, the docent said he had read them all, most of them twice!) he collected all sorts of things. The most notable ones on display were his jewelry, skeletons, rocks and toads.

A lot of them inhabit the window sills.

The lethal ones were clearly marked.

Edward Gorey died in 2000 at the age of seventy-five. He left his estate to a trust he established for the welfare of all living creatures, from the raccoons he allowed to live in his attic to bats and even invertebrates. Here is a great photo of him relaxing with three of his six kitties and a few thousand of his books. His home became a museum whose profits help benefit animal rights and literary causes.

If you ever find yourself wondering what to do on Cape Cod when it's raining or even when it's not, The Edward Gorey House is a fun and interesting place to visit.

Thanks for stopping by!

Haunted Humpday - On the Road Again

The skeleton crew is joining Marfi at Marfi-topia for some spooky fun leading up to Halloween. For the next couple of weeks Burt and Ivy will be at home, keeping the spirit of the season alive and upsetting the neighbors while HM and I drive to the east coast.

We are delivering a carload of stuff to our son Andy and his wife, Kristin. They bought a house this past summer so now we are taking the opportunity to get rid of a lot of some clutter to pass on a few family heirlooms to them. Since this trip is more about transporting goods than being on vacation, we are trying to convince ourselves we are having fun by calling it our autumnal adventure. 

Of course, no adventure is complete without a skeletal stowaway,

Kibitz believes in getting an early start to the day, whether we like it or not.

Cleveland was on our route so we decided a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was in order.  

Kibitz was ready to rock!

As you can imagine, the museum was filled with lots of stuff, too.

Since it did seem like this might be the kind of place than would really embrace Halloween or at least refer to it but apparently they didn't feel it was necessary. Come on guys, what about Smashing Pumpkins? 

At least there were skeletons everywhere. They showed up on guitars - throwing the horns,

and wearing cowboy hats.

playing a starring role in a psychedelic posters from the 1970's,

and on murals from a former music venue. This one was riding a hybrid airplane/horse while playing a guitar - now that takes coordination!

Then there was this stage costume with a matching cyclops skull bass guitar. I can't remember which band this came from but it was displayed between memorabilia of The Talking Heads and the Ramones. It doesn't seem to fit with either of those groups but he really has a great smile.

There may have not been any signs of the season but at least The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame overlooks Lake Erie. Ok, the name of the lake is spelled differently, but they sound the same. 

So, while it didn't quite live up to our expectations, it was fun place to visit. The early history of rock and roll and how it developed was interesting and it's probably a great place to catch some live music. Unfortunately, we came on the wrong day for that!  It was a little hit or miss with who and what was featured, my guess is that most of the really significant guitars and memorabilia have already been acquired by the Hard Rock Cafe. Maybe as time goes on they will fill in some of the gaps and possibly even include a few women! To be honest, the best part of the museum was the music and it was loud!  Not at concert levels but definitely not dinner music. No one was complaining or maybe I just couldn't hear them, ha!

A late (or early?) Happy Haunted Humpday! 

Thanks for stopping by.