Halloween

A little background on Halloween:

The origin of Halloween dates back 2000 years ago to the Celtic celebration of the dead. A Celtic festival was held on November 1, the first day of the celtic New Year, honoring the Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. Celtic ritual believed that the souls of the dead returned on the evening before November 1. The celebration included burning sacrifices and costumes. These early events began as both a celebration of the harvest and an honoring of dead ancestors.

Halloween spread throughout Europe in the seventh century. It began with "All Hallows Eve," the "Night of the Dead." It is immediately followed by "All Souls Day," a christian holy day.

The first lighted fruit was really carved out of gourds and turnips. European custom also included carving scary faces into the gourds and placing embers inside to light them. This was believed to ward off evil spirits, especially spirits who roamed the streets and countryside during All Hallows Eve.

The Irish brought the tradition of carving turnips with them to America. They quickly discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve.

I can attest to that since, growing up in Scotland, we used to raid farmers' fields at night to find the biggest turnips, which then took hours to carve because they're rock solid. On Halloween, we'd don costumes and go door to door with our lanterns asking for "a penny for the Guy" ~ screw candy, we Scots went straight for the cash!

Here's my Halloween tune for the day.

Blast from the Past Song of the Day

Who knows why this song popped into my head today, except that it's totally cute and makes me smile. Unfortunately, you'll only be able to play it if you have iTunes, at least until I can reconfigure the format.

Some of you might even remember the album cover... from the 60s. Personally, I was still a twinkle in my dad's eye;)

Tilly and The Wall

If you didn't catch them on Letterman last week, here's a sample called Bad Education or check out their brilliant and bizarre web site.

The Departed

Leonardo DiCaprio stole the show in this tense stomach-twister. I was skeptical walking into the theater since I’d heard that the plot didn’t hold together and that, towards the end, Mr. Nicholson was a parody of himself eliciting laughter from the audience. It’s true, we did laugh, but I think it was a deliberate ploy on Scorsese’s part to relieve the gut wrenching tension, we were rooting for our guy DiCaprio that strongly. The rest of the cast was superb with flawless performances, especially from Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. It will be interesting to see who gets the nominations come Oscar time. And for all you Leonardo fans, this pic comes courtesy of Warner Bros…. yum!

Shoes Shoes Shoes...

I watched a surprisingly good movie last night ~ In Her Shoes. Of course I shouldn't have been surprised since it was a Scott Free production with Curtis Hanson directing and featured lots of fabulous shoes!

Rent the DVD and be sure to watch the special feature about filming in an Assisted Care Facility for Active Seniors ~ super darling real seniors ~ maybe Florida wouldn't be so bad after all, though currently the retirement plan is Puerto Vallarta.

Then today, I received an email from Ms. Hattie, newly returned from a sojourn to Oklahoma, suggesting that In These Shoes? could be my theme song. Not that I'm close to being Imelda Marcos... much the pity;)

Marie Antoinette ~ Brava Sofia!

I’ve never been a fan of Sofia’s or, indeed, of Kirsten Dunst’s, but with Marie Antoinette, they’ve both hit a home run… and in such glamorous style!

With a total budget of $40 million, I can only imagine how much was spent on wardrobe… and every inch of Shantung silk was worth it, dammit! I won’t start on the shoes… drool.

I’d heard some rumblings prior to the movie about the choice of a contemporary soundtrack, but it worked. Actually, it worked brilliantly. In fact, instead of feeling immersed in stodgy, historical Versailles, I felt like I was hanging out with some rather daring-do people that would fit nicely into my own party circle ~ if only we could afford the fancy pad☺

The movie was utterly decadent from start to finish. The only question at the end (since we know our history) was how those women could indulge in all that champagne and cake and still retain miniature waists?

Tea Partay

Whoever thought of this is brilliant!