Happy Halloween ...

I love Halloween!

Not for all the scary, gruesome movies or the ghouls and goblins, but for the excitement that it brings. How it allows all ages to be imaginative for one night. For how it brings out all the great elements of fall, like pumpkins & scarecrows & and a few fake spiders in fake webs.

All images from Martha Stewart

I have such great memories of going out on chilly evenings in my not-so-awesome costumes (one year I was a ballerina church mouse - go figure) with my friends to gather all the candy we could carry. I think that is what makes me so excited about waiting at the door to hand out candy to all the adorably dresses kids in our neighborhood. It makes me remember all my neighbors - the cool one that gave out whole candy bars and the not so cool one that gave out key chains for his company (but for some reason we went to his house every year holding out hope). My real aspiration is to be the neighbor that has awesome decorations and possibly a haunted attraction like a casket or something in the front yard every year - but for now I will stick with the spider web and plastic skeleton. Whatever kind of neighbor or trick-or-treater you are I hope you have an exciting Halloween full of ridiculous costumes and great memories!And remember all those pumpkins can go to good use in a yummy pumpkin bread later!

Fond memories ...

I was tooling around on Etsy this evening and I found this neat poster from Roll & Tumble Press.


It brought back fond memories of my weeks in Arkansas every summer visiting my grandpa. He lived in a small town in southern Arkansas, Camden. There wasn't a lot to do, so we were usually tasked with entertaining ourselves.

My grandpa had an old brownie camera that was stuck up in the top cabinet in the kitchen. Every summer when we would go visit I would get it down and "take pictures". When I found it one day when helping my mom hunt down some sort of pot or pan, I wished that there would be a half used roll in there that I would find and we could get developed. It didn't but I still thought it was the coolest. Luckily before my grandpa pasted away I brought it home with me. It's one of the few things I have of his but I treasure it so much. (The image to the right is the same camera that I have now.)

I have never been much of a photographer - I have this innate ability to take the worst, unfocused pictures. BUT I love photographs, especially old ones. I love the story behind them and the people in them many of which I never got to meet. I have a bunch of old photographs on my family and some of S's. Having a connection to the past is very important to me.