Halloween

    Today's Halloween. Here Halloween is Witchs' Day, Dia das Bruxas.
    And election day.
    Nuff said of that!

  

    On a lighter note, the following are Halloween images I have gathered
    from the web over the years.
    I don't have the credits for them. If anyone knows, I'll be most happy
    to give the authors their due.

    Warning: CUTE ALERT!!!

It's The Great Pumpkin!

 

A HAPPY and SAFE HALLOWEEN!

Joy

A few weeks ago while going through the garden, I realized that the scruffy, drooping plants in one of the fountain borders was lavender. Lavender!!!
With the start of the rains and few good soakings, the plants had recuperated from being transplanted and had started to bloom.

I love lavender!
Up until a few years ago it was very difficult to find lavender plants here.
Suddenly, surprise, surprise! Lavender in my own building's garden, planted unbeknownst to me.

These pictures are from a few days later...
Spring's joy.

 

 A new hydrangea

That time comin' round... and Rosehill Cottage

Warning!: Looooonng post! (with lotsa images!)

Already at the beginning of October the shops' Christmas decorations have been going up... a bit freaky, as just the other day was the beginning of the year!!!

Another sign of that time comin' round is the Christmas movies starting to be shown on tv.

One that I saw again a few weeks ago was The Holiday. I fell in love all over again with Iris's cottage! The next day, stopping quickly by a store on the way to wherever and looking through the sale table, I found the dvd of the film! Very inexpensive, which makes the joy even better!

Then, with the pleasures of googling and actually finding things as we can do nowadays, I found many references and, joy, joy,joy: images!

First the sad: The cottage wasn't a real one, but a life-sized prop at the location in Shere, England, complete with fake snow in June. (How do they get the vapor clouds from the mouths that we read as cold, cold, cold? digital effects?). The interiors were sets built in a studio in... LA., I believe. (writing this from memory as waiting for hair-coloring-goop to work its charm)

Oh, so that's why the cottage was so much larger on the inside than the out!!!

I realized that the interiors were sets when I started perceiving the Old Lady in The Shoe effect (how can you fit those "so many children" in the shoe without it being MUCH larger inside than out? I never saw it as such a huge boot as in the drawing below! Even so...)

Drawing of There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe by Kronheim, c.1875

                          There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
                          She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
                          She gave them some broth without any bread;
                          Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

The earliest printed version in Joseph Ritson's Gammer Gurton's Garland in 1794 has the coarser last line:

                          She whipp'd all their bums, and sent them to bed.

from Wikipedia

(They were were so much more direct in 1794, no?)

But I did think that the cottage, by any other name, was still a Rose ... -hill cottage — that is, a real cottage.
I found that it all being a fake is sort of freeing. Now I can imagine my own little Rosehill Cottage, build it in my brain, and all will fit marvelously inside.

I also found out that the producer of the movie, Nancy Meyers, has made many of the movies that I watch over and over, many for the storyline, but all certainly for the "backgrounds": the houses! Something's Gotta Give and It's Complicated are just two of these.

"... the production team was led Jon Hutman - but Beth Rubino, so wonderful on the set of SGG, was absent for The Holiday.  And just as with Something's Gotta Give, Nancy Meyers' personal interior designer has photos of "The Holiday" houses on his web site, but he is not mentioned in the film credits." — Côte de Texas, The Holiday Houses. Meyer's "personal decorator" is James Radin, James Radin Interior Design.

The Holiday's story and acting is in my "ok" range... Cameron Diaz a bit over at times. It is an enjoyable movie, in the light&cute style. The imagery is lovely... Jude Law's blue eyes (grey? turquoise??... does it matter, as long as we can look?) are always a nice holiday touch. The LA house is also beautiful, but it doesn't warm my cockles as the cottage does.

I believe this movie is based on one I saw many years ago about house swapping. That one was between a Colonial home in perhaps New England?, and a cottage in Ireland? The two women were also trying to forget problems... I think one a love affair, and the other the death of her child in the pool (???... of the Colonial?). As I can't remember the actresses or the movie's name, I can't find any references of it. And "house swap movie" and its variations only come up with The Holiday. So far.

The best definition images I found were from the site OutNow.ch - "Bilder zu The Holiday (2006)". I've posted them below, but they aren't as large as the ones directly on the site [my image hosting sites automatically cut down the size : (  ]
Click on the images to see the larger ones, with all the amazing detail that went into making these sets.

Iris's Rosehill Cottage

*all imagines from OutNow.Ch unless otherwise noted
 (I don't know who the original photographer is)

I want one, I want one, I waaant one! Pleeease!

"Rosehill Cottage 'The Holiday' film set; Shere, Surrey, England (via pg tips2)"
via Sinopse

Snuggly Living Room

Fireplaces all over!

I just love this little library/study that was made of
this little mudroom-type lean-to, with its "home-made" shelves.

 The Mysterious Bathroom
No skylights or windows on the exterior roof!

Rare back view by Paul Orford at Panoramio

Links to more information and sources:
 • Hooked on Houses - "The Holiday": A Tale of Two Houses
 • Movie Real Estate - Movie Real Estate: The Holiday
 • Côte de Texas - Holiday Houses
 • Silver Screen Surroundings  various posts
 • A day in the Life of a Dracofly - "The Holiday" Country Cottage

For more exterior images:
 • The Shere "The Holiday" Film Set  by pg tips2

Other Meyer films:
 • Architectural Digest - Something's Gotta Give
... and many more sites & images on the web...

The Holiday (2006)
Director: Nancy Meyers
Production designer: Jon Hutman

some Christmas candy
(don't forget to click)

 I want one, I want one, I waaant one! 

Only Love

When speaking of Love, Divine Love, It is All...
... and excludes none.

Thank you, Joel Burns, for taking a stand against the endemic bullying of all that are different and giving hope to many teenagers, and adults, in need of it.

One Cool Dude

And seems to be a Very Nice Man.

On the 6th October, Johnny Depp made a surprise visit to a London school after receiving a letter from student Bea Delap.

           "Captain Jack Sparrow,
              At Meridian on old Woolrich Road we
              a[re] all a bunch of budding young pirates.
           Normally we're a right handful but we're having trouble mutinying against
             the teachers! We'd love it if you
              could come and help.
                               from
                             Beatrix Delap
                                  aged
                                     9
                            a budding pirate
            PS We have a plentiful supply of rum!"

Sources and for more information: Daily Mail ; Meridian Primary School, Greenwich ; The News Tribune

... and the "Fallout"; and Of Weevils

Fallout is the term for the residue of an atomic bomb. Not quite that here, but almost: the arrival of the closets/cupboards has had a similar explosive effect, as everything has to be moved around before trying to be adjusted into the new, and smaller, spaces (smaller than the "shoved into a corner" of before — aaaargh!).

Today, I've taken stuff out, again, of my deposit/nano-studio, the same stuff  I'd organized — can it be just a few weeks back?; vaccumed the area; put in the steel shelf unit from Son²'s room, which was freed by putting his stuff into his new closet, on the floor, in the hallway, into he other room, till finding their way back into his room; then bringing my stuff back...
This sentence was going on and on and on, and on, as is this task!

So, to take a breather both gramatically and from the work, I'm putting in some videos from Master and Commader: The Far Side of the World.

I love the movie and finally bought it at the beginning of the year. I particularly love the soundtrack. I play it over and over... or e-e-endlessly, as The Family sometime can be heard muttering almost, but not quite, below my hearing. I've put it on my mp3 player, both whole and as an "album" with only the classical/traditional tracks.

So here goes a lovely bit of "hearing".
Ah, and the looking is not too bad either! ; )))

The following 2 videos have no scenes from the movie, except for a few photos, but only music from the soundtrack.

"La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid,  Nº6, Op 3" by Luigi Boccherini, 

which got me hooked on the soundtrack (with some photos)

This is one of my favorite... no, all are favorites: I love them all!

This then, an "at this moment of resting" favorite piece, the
Concerto Grosso in G minor ("Christmas Concerto"), Op. 6-8 Adagio,
by Arcangelo Corelli

Ah, yes! The weevils...

A bit of Boccherini's lovely  "La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid"
as played by Dr Stephen Maturin and Captain Jack Aubrey
— Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe

Beware: SPOILER!

Although this video doesn't have the original soundtrack,
it is a good "trailer", by XXXCallistaXXX

I can't put all the videos here, and I do have to get back to the organizing.
If you, my mythical reader, haven't yet seen the movie, please do!
Action, suspense, beautiful hunks playing with swords, tall ships, the sea, good dialog, and beautiful music!

... still Closets!

... the Closet-Guys still here.
Today they should finish. By the end of the afternoon.(fingers crossed!)

The carpenter is nice, and accepts when I call for corrections. The work is looking good, if I just forget that he basicaly didn't follow many, nearly all, fine and not-so details and measurements of my projects. Yes, those projects: the ones I spent hours/days thinking over, checking out measurements such as shoe-drawer heights — measuring the various males-of-the-house' boots, sneakers and shoes; testing out heights from the floor so the broom can clean under the bathroom closet easily; ways of dressing to determine which side the drawers should be on...*sigh*
*Sigh*
I think this merits a BIG BIG ***SIGH***

As I'm basically stuck at home to see that that alls-ok, I'm taking a stroll down my blog lane, over there on the right.
I've taken several more trips with bloggers.
Which reminds me to start thinking of fixin' and posting photos of my June trip here.

This weekend we'll have a long holiday, as next Tuesday is a national holiday, Nossa Senhora de Aparecida, Brazil's padroiera, patron saint.

We'll be going out to a friend's country place, a farm about four hours (six?) hours drive away.
Lovely, lovely, mato ("countryside")!

This year I have hardly been away from The Big City at all. On the June trip, we visited more cities, lovely also to be sure, but not nature. And I do so feel it when I stay away from a natural setting.

When I finally get to the weekend, all in all it'll have been a good week:

• The closets installed... perhaps even with their contents IN them and not strewn all over the rest of the apartment.
• My Maralunga sofa finally back, refurbished after 20+ years of wear and tear of the antics of three rambunctious boys and their friends, bicycle wheels, skate boards, two Belgian shepherds who loved to take naps on it, and various entrepid field mice just trying to find a nice burrow in its fluffier parts. Plus, the about  nearly fours years of being ostracized to The Attic, as was first too large for the small apartment, then too scruffy to bring to this one.
• An invitation to a long weekend in the country...

Closets!

Getting ready for the carpenters to install the closets/cupboards.
Yea!!!

This time around, it'll be the two "boy's" bedrooms, the hall linen cupboard, and the "social" bathroom in the hall.
Keeping my fingers crossed that all will go well.

The getting ready part: taking shelves/stuff, clothes racks, boxes etc from the areas where the closets will go in.
As no private yard, and threatning to rain anyway, shifting the stuff from room to room. *sigh*
If all goes well, the installation will be done by tomorrow evening.

Waiting...

Just finished my chiropratic session, and awaiting the arrival of the closets... ...

"Nine, nine-thirty" may mean "sometime before lunch"!