sexy sadie

Meet the newest addition to our family: a big fluffy bundle of boundless energy we have decided to call "Sadie." She's a Golden Retriever puppy and we surprised Molly and Morgan with her on Christmas morning -- they've both wanted a Golden Retriever for years! They're both getting a speed course on puppy care and training and I think they're starting to realize why we didn't do this way back when they were little kidlets.

(Yes, I'm still smoke-free: 9 days)

Chantix or (not) smokin' in the boys room

I've been hesitant to blog about this simply because I feel it's so tenuous -- like a baby bird making it's first attempts at flight. For the first time in my life, I'm trying to quit smoking and I'm doing it with the help of the relatively new smoking cessation drug Chantix. Having never given quitting a good effort before, I wasn't sure just how effective this drug is in curbing cravings. However, I've noticed that an hour or so before my next dose, my nicotine cravings have become more demanding. Most of all, if you'd told me a month ago that I could go without a cigarette for 4 days, I would have told you that you were out of your gourd so I know Chantix is helping significantly. Having said that, I will add that this is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do.

Will I make it? I don't know. I know that, statistically, the number of long-time smokers who quit on their first try are about nil ..... but I still hope to be amongst them.

maggie meggie

I suspect that my children insist on having birthdays only to keep me feeling old. Today is Megan's 24th birthday. Meg has spent a lot of time with us in the last couple of months and I'm so very grateful for that. She's one of my very best friends and I could not be more proud of her: smart, energetic, resourceful, beautiful, kind, compassionate and simply one of the funniest people I have ever known. Happy birthday, Meggie!

Happy Thanksgiving

This is my grandfather, cutting a turkey in his kitchen in West Virginia sometime in the late 40's or early 50's. I suspect that he looks so stern because someone has snapped him wearing my grandmother's apron. Happy Turkey Day!

you've got a friend

One last wedding-related photo -- I promise no more until Erin's wedding photographer gives us her photographs. This is my near-life-long best friend, Sharon, as my Maid of Honor at my wedding. Gorgeous, no? Many, many years later we're still best buds, confidantes and frequent partners in crime. In fact, we're going to New York City in a couple of weeks to see what kind of trouble we can stir up there. I consider Sharon to be the keeper of parts of my personality that only emerge when I'm with her -- she takes good care of them.

the good, the bad and the ugly

This Thanksgiving-themed fashion ad appeared in the November 1967 issue of Seventeen magazine. I'm loving the dress, the stockings, the hair, the shoes and the colors .... those forked turkeys are a tad scary, though.

there's a kind of hush

The wedding is over and it was beautiful! Since we had a professional photographer and videographer, the only photo I snapped myself was this one of Emma, my niece and Erin's flower girl, taking a nap amidst all of the hustle and bustle of the bride and bridesmaids getting dressed for the ceremony. The nap was an absolute necessity since she spent rest of the day expending a great deal of energy charming everyone who crossed her path.

darling, you send me

Continuing my stroll down the nuptials memory lane, this is my baby sister, Heather, and her hubby, Steve, at their wedding in New Orleans last December. It was truly one of the most memorable, unique and from-the-heart weddings I've ever attended -- as anyone who knows my sister will tell you, Heather knows how to do things in style. Heather and Steve's absolutely perfect little girl, Emma, will be Erin's flower girl.

you've made me so very happy

Since I'm all sentimental about weddings, I guess I'll go ahead and post this photo from mine. That's my wonderful husband and me on our day almost 29 years ago. Four kids (and a wonderful stepdaughter) later, we're still going strong. A piece of fabric from my wedding dress has been sewn into Erin's dress -- I'm happy she's a sentimental fool like her old lady.

chantilly lace

I was thrilled to come across this Chantilly ad in the May 1965 issue of "Mademoiselle" since Erin's wedding is now only one week from tomorrow. Yikes!

baby now that i've found you

All this wedding talk and I realized that I haven't introduced the couple of the moment! This is my daughter, Erin, and her fiance, Lee. After seeing so many parents coping with the marriage of a child to someone they don't like, we feel very blessed. We like Lee a great deal and wholeheartedly believe that he will do everything within his power to make Erin happy.

i got you babe

I've obviously got weddings on the brain (and with good reason) so I thought I'd share this photo of my gorgeous parents on their wedding day in 1952. It captures their personalities so beautifully -- especially my mother's playful nature. Their marriage didn't last but I'm grateful for this image that reminds me how much in love they once were.

chapel of love

I think today's bride would recoil in horror at the mere sight of this wedding ensemble from 1971. In truth, there were probably a lot of brides in 1971 who didn't like it much, either.

While I don't much care for the dress or scarf, I do relate to the mindset of the designer: simple, uncomplicated and modest -- an offset of the "hippie" trend at the time. This wedding would have taken place on a farm or a beach, food and decorations would have been made by friends and family.

My wedding wasn't quite this down-home but it resembled this far more than the wedding my daughter will be having. Don't misunderstand me: I'm thrilled with Erin's choices and I'm happy that she's doing it her way. But as they used to say, different strokes for different folks.

wedding bell blues oranges

I got married in my groom's home with about twenty people present. Our wedding budget was probably about $150. Suffice to say that I don't know nothin' about planning weddings. When Erin got engaged, we hired a wedding planner, a florist, and a caterer because we were hoping that most aspects of the wedding would be handled by them. Boy, was I kidding myself. While they are ALL doing their jobs (and appear to be doing them very well), I wasn't aware of just how many miscellanious details would still fall to us. Erin has taken on the lion's share of them but our bedroom is gradually starting to resemble a storehouse for an autumn decorating wholesaler.
These are just a few of the 50 bottles of orange sparkling water for our guests who are staying in hotel rooms. They'll be part of a larger basket of orange-themed novelties -- everything from bath bombs to orange scones. We went with the orange theme because of our Florida location and because the color fits in well with Erin's autumn color theme. One and a half weeks to go!

ooh child

This is the kind of magazine ad that would have had me scraping all of my hard-earned babysitting funds together and running to the drug store as fast as possible. I don't specifically recall them but I can just about guarantee you that I had some of these eyeshadows -- this was precisely the type of advertisement that got to me every single time.

What was it about Yardley ads in the 60's that made their products so appealing? Was it the whimsical, sweet, and innocent image they offered? Is it because they weren't suggesting that we become vampy red-fingernailed femme fatales -- just a prettier -- and non-threatening -- version of who we already were?

what i'm playing right now

My first introduction to casual gaming was the original release of Luxor. It literally took me about a month of frequent playing to complete it but I loved the challenge and the look and feel of the game. It's probably not much of a surprise that I was beyond thrilled when the third edition was recently released and I'm thoroughly enjoying grabbing some time to play between wedding planning and supervising my retired husband.

build me up, buttercup

This ad for Tangee lipstick and nail polish appeared in the September 1967 issue of "Seventeen" magazine. Of course, this was back in the days when "Seventeen" measured a whopping 13"X10" and didn't even comfortably fit on a teenage girl's lap so everything in the magazine seemed larger than life.

We have two wonderful elements from 60's advertising here: one, the eye-popping color and two, quintessential teenage model Colleen Corby (on the left). Any 60's girl will remember her in a heartbeat. Just looking at this ad gives me psychedelic-tinged warm fuzzies and makes me want to listen to something by Tommy James and the Shondells.

she used to be my girl

Now that Halloween is past us, we're speeding straight into my second oldest daughter's wedding a little over two weeks from now. I'm approaching the date with a mixture of happiness (she's marrying a wonderful guy) and a touch of sadness (how did she grow up so fast?). I recall my mother expressing the same feelings when I got married. Life really is a circle, isn't it? The chocolate truffles above were part of her lovely bridal shower a month or so ago and the photograph below it is of ALL my girls -- from the left: Erin (the bride), Caitlin, Molly and Megan. Is it any wonder that I'm partial to pink?

transformers! more than meets the eye

My brilliant son, Morgan, created this kick-butt "Transformers" Halloween costume with the help of his equally brilliant older sister, Megan. The top picture shows him in robot mode and the bottom picture shows him after he "transforms" into a jeep (with working headlights!). Our family has always taken Halloween very, very seriously and this year was obviously no exception.

happy halloween

Oh, how I adore Halloween! This photo was taken at my Halloween party in 1964 during a rolicking game of Bite the Apple. That's my Dad grinning in the background -- I think he had almost as much fun as us kids.

hey there, georgy girl

My daughter, Molly, decided to dress up as a 60's girl for her high school's "Decades Day." I was more than a little enthusiastic about that, of course, and even pulled out my vintage "George for President" Beatles button and let her grace her lips with my treasured straight-from-the-60's Yardley Slicker Frosted Lip Polish. I don't know who enjoyed it more .... her or me.

not witchy women

This photograph is on a postcard that is stuck in a corner of my bedroom mirror all year long -- I love it that much. Like many, I've always assumed the elderly women were four models posing as witches. Seeing as Halloween is almost upon us, I wanted to learn a little more about the photograph and so I did some research. I couldn't have been more wrong. The photo is titled "Jacobean Tea." It was taken at The Hospital of Holy and Undivided Trinity at Castle Rising in Norfolk, England in 1929. The women reside there and are wearing Jacobean dress as they take their afternoon tea. I don't love the photo any less -- in fact, I love the fact that this is how they truly lived. And there is something so revealing in their expressions and posture - the sweetness of one, the wry sense of humor of another. It will remain stuck in a corner of my mirror for many years to come.

monster mash

My daughter Megan and her boyfriend, Hunter, went to a downtown Halloween party this past weekend as Batman's foes Two-Face and Poison Ivy. Zap! Pow! Splat!

"sleeping beauty" done kid-style 1958

As promised, I'm posting a photo of our kid-produced and kid-performed neighborhood version of "Sleeping Beauty." I'm in the pink dress and my Prince Charming is in the blue next to me (no, he didn't really kiss me when he woke me up .... yuck!). All in all, it was a pretty impressive effort on the part of a bunch of kids. Our parents got together and threw a big neighborhood barbeque post-performance and told us over and over again how wonderful we were.

what i'm playing right now

I'm almost always in the middle of playing one casual game or another. For the unindoctrinated, a casual game is a game played on the computer. Unlike a lot of other computer games, though, they're generally very simple and fit well into my lifestyle --they don't require hours of continuous complex gameplay and they're easy to start and stop. I particularly like to play at the end of the day because I find that while they're somewhat mentally stimulating, they're also quite relaxing.

Right now I'm playing Diner Dash: Hometown Hero. You can learn more about current casual games at Gamezebo, a wonderful site that always has the latest news in casual gaming.

candy is dandy

I've been dieting for almost six long abysmal months and have succeeded in losing 32 pounds. I would like to lose 12 more. Almost anyone who knows me would tell you that I can be a paragon of willpower when I want to be. But I'm only human and Halloween -- a day I love second only to Christmas -- is right around the corner. Now I could try to fight the holiday temptations and probably eventually succumb to a Reeses Cup or two pilfered from my son's treat bag and end up subjecting myself to all sorts of massive guilt. Or I could give myself permission to enjoy myself and promise to get right back on the bandwagon the next day. I've chosen the latter. Halloween night will find me curled up with a bag of Hershey's Kisses Candy Corn while enjoying the live six hour Ghost Hunters event at Waverly Hills Sanitorium. Woo hoo! More Halloween candy goodness at X-E

the sleeping beauty sheet

One of the earliest pop culture influences on my life was the Disney film "Sleeping Beauty." I first saw it when I was five years old and somehow convinced all of the other kids in my South Carolina neighborhood that it would be real nifty if we put on our own "Sleeping Beauty" play for our parents. I was going to be "Sleeping Beauty," of course -- after all, the whole thing had been my idea -- and I needed a costume. So early one morning while my parents were still slumbering, I got into the linen closet and pulled out a sheet to create my costume. My mother caught me right after I had cut the sheet up and had started coloring it with crayons. She wasn't impressed .... or amused.
We did produce the play and it was a big hit with our parents. I've got pictures somewhere and I'll post them when I come across them.

happy birthday, mom

My Mom passed away in 1990, and I will miss her every day of the rest of my life. Of all the many advantages I've had in life, I count scoring her as my mother at number one on the list. Mom, I hope I've made you half as proud of me as I have always been of you. Happy Birthday. I love you.