Celebrating & Some Silliness....

I'm celebrating having just finished my final exam for my ninth grad school course. Only two more courses and the internship to go.....and the internship hours are already done. Whee!

Anyway, I'm spending waaay too much time playing around on the internet, waiting for the Cupcake Princess to get home from the homecoming football game. I found this cool little site. Now, I'm not much into Halloween, but thought this could be my little Halloween posting. Go out to this site and put in your name and it will give you your fairy name. My fairy name sounded perfect for Halloween. (I think I need some sleep!)

Your fairy is called Gossamer Willowglow

She is a caster of weird dreams.

She lives in spiderwebbed wonderlands and insect grottos.

She is only seen in the light of a full moon.

art courtesy of http://www.fotosearch/ .com

I LOVE the pink hair!

Happy Halloween!

~Allie

Treasures in the mail........

Look what treasures came in the mail this week! I had entered a giveaway over at Aged Vintage Papier back in July but didn't win. However, I got an email about two weeks ago saying the person who won never contacted them with a mailing address. SO..............they pulled another number.....AND IT WAS MINE! The gift tags are so feminine and sparkly. It doesn't show up in my poor photo though. Julie from Fabulous Finds was the contributing artist and the one who made all of these lovely things. They are so beautiful that I really don't want to use them as gift tags. I'd rather keep them and just look at them for inspiration. ~Allie

House & Garden

Just got home from seeing the Cupcake Princess in another high school theatre production. This one is called House and Garden. It's a British comedy, kind of a funny Upstairs/Downstairs kind of thing but it's quite unique. There are two shows going on at the same time. One is in the auditorium, that's the Garden, and the other one is going on in the Black Box theatre across the hall, that's the House. The characters travel from set to set. So you have to go to two nights of shows to find out the whole story. We went to Garden tonight and we'll go to House on Saturday night. What fun! I'm so proud of her! ~Allie

Racing through October

What a BUSY month this has been so far! I've hardly had time to spend reading my favorite blogs or posting anything of my own. Had a girl's weekend last weekend with my best friend, Julie. We headed down to my parent's house on the lake Friday night after work. Stayed up until midnight visiting and slept in late on Saturday morning. But not too late that we were out of the house by noon to head to a holiday craft show at the Belton Expo Center. After tasting every dip and soup and seeing some ideas for Christmas, we continued down the highway three exits to Salado, Texas.

Salado is a sleepy little art town in Central Texas. It's old time Main street is dotted with lots of antique shops, dress shops, art galleries, crafts, collectibles and so much more. The weekend we were there, they were having their Christmas in October Christmas Market that coincided with their Chocolate & Art Festival. There's SO much to tell that I'll have to break it up into a couple of posts.Christmas was EVERYWHERE! This is Julie checking out a sparkling, silver and crystal tree which I couldn't capture on my camera very well. There were SO many beautifully decorated trees. I guess that's why I'm having a hard time getting into Halloween and Thanksgiving. I saw a Christmas wonderland and I'm ready to celebrate the season now!I realy like these tall, skinny trees. Maybe this is the year to get a new tree. HMMMMM.......Big Daddy may not like that idea. But they are SO stunning! All of these trees had the coolest tops to them. A spray of sparkling, whispy "things" making the trees look like there were 4th of July sparklers bursting from them.

I love this tree top! Wish someone would come and decorate my tree like this for me........I'm not sure I can do it on my own. The picture is kind of dark but I think you can get the idea.

This tree with the feathers was also stunning. It would look great in my parent's house on the lake. We saw a lot of pheasant feathers everywhere we went on Saturday. I even found a darling cupcake ornament. Had intended to go back and buy it after I had finished looking through the whole store and then got so wrapped up in the holiday-ness that I walked out without buying it. Can you tell I was just a little overwhelmed. It was a fantastic day!

There's more to share from our girl's weekend but I haven't the luxury of time this weekend. More soon! Are you feeling in the holiday spirit yet? ~Allie

Show & Tell Sunday

So here's another way to get rid of "Bloggers Block"......Show and Tell Sunday. What a great prompt! Think I'll try it!! Today's offering is the art of

Thierry Poncelet.

I came across this print about 10 years ago and fell in love with it. Never had I seen anything like it before. And while he's not a Scottish Terrier (we'll save that subject for another Sunday) this gentleman's handsome, bearded face and elegant pose just captured my heart. Big Daddy even liked him! We bought a wooden easel to display this dapper chap in our home and lovingly named him "Dogman".

One day, I stumbled on some photos in a catalog of other prints that were done in the same theme.....classic paintings with canine heads instead of human heads. The artist responsible for these canine aristocrats is Thierry Poncelet.

Thierry Poncelet was born in Brussels in 1946. He studied Fine Arts at the St. Luc Academy and then joined Max Masot's workshop to learn the art of painting in the traditional way and restoration. However, his love of painting soon outgrew his interest in restoration, and he decided to become a full time oil painter, specializing in whimsical dog portraits. Mr. Poncelet calls his portraits "aristochiens".This morning, I decided to look around the internet to see if there was anything new about Thierry Poncelet since I last researched him. What is this?! There's a book with a collection of his art work and a humorous, biographical sketch of each of the portrait "sitters" is written by Bruce McCall. On the back of the book cover it says, "The fetching result is a vision of a society gone to the dogs.". Santa, I would like this book! (Thank you Alisa, for the tutorial on using links in my posts. I think it worked!)

Mr. Poncelet's art suits me to a "T". And thank you to my friends and Big Daddy for indulging me and contributing to two of my passions.......dogs and laughing. This was a LONG show and tell......thanks for staying with me to the end.

HAPPY SUNDAY!

~Allie