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On a whim last week we decided to go out of town for the weekend

On a whim last week we decided to go out of town for the weekend.  We ended up in Hartford Connecticut.  We had been there before but we weren’t able to do some of the stuff we wanted to do on previous trips so we decided that this time we would visit the places we wanted to but never could fit in.

One of those places was the Mark Twain House.  In the past we drove by it and stopped and wandered the grounds, but since we had our dog we couldn’t tour the actual house.   This past weekend the pooch stayed in Boston and so we were welcome on the tour.

I have always been a huge fan of Twain so I was quite curious to see the place where Sa

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muel Clemens (Twain’s real name) worked on some of his most impressive works including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and The Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

The outside of the house looks impressive.  Construction on the house began in August of 1873 and the family settled there in September of 1874.  The architect was Edward Tuckerman Potter and the structure is an example of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture.   The brickwork, the eaves and the gables makes the exterior look quite busy and at times it feels overwhelming to take in all the detail.

 

 

 

From the outside the house looks large but it isn’t until I toured the house did I realize just how large.  It has 25 rooms, including seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, an impressive grand hall, a large library, a glass conservatory, and a billiard room.  Sam worked in the billiard room and according to our tour guide he kept stuff on the pool table so he wouldn’t stop writing and play pool.  Apparently he was easily distracted and if the pool table was well kept and ready to play he would put down his pen.  In an effort to focus he kept odds and ends on the table so it would be an effort to clean the table to play pool.  Unfortunately no photographs are permitted inside the house.  However, if you are in the area I would suggest this tour!

The family resided in the house until 1891 when financial woes forced the family to live in Europe.  After they returned to America the family did not return to Hartford due to the death of their beloved daughter Susy in 1896.  Mrs. Clemens could not bear to live in the house with so many memories of Susy.  They sold the house in 1903.

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Best Place to Be a Mom — And the Worst
Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 7:00:20 AM | Brooke Lea Foster
According to a new study, Norway is the best place to be a mom in the world. Guess what’s the worst? When we were in St. John earlier this year, I met two mothers who left New York with their kids and husbands to live in the Islands. They missed their extended families, but not [...]Comments (0)
Cover Shot
Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 1:41:09 AM | chaemus
This afternoon saw me in a rush to shoot for a project I am doing on wine making in the Yarra Valley. With not long left to shoot before the images need to be off for test printing, and the weather looking pretty miserable for the coming week, I was not very positive about my prospects. Alas I took a chance I went for a drive, even though the skies were looking grey and gloomy, and the vineyards looking flat and boring, I had a feeling the sun would show it’s face. I drove to a spot I had been past just a few days before without my camera, and setup the shot in quite miserable conditions, but remembering the words of many superiors, landscape photography is about patience, it always pays to wait, and I knew the sun still had at least another hour before it went behind the hills.

My patience paid off as the clouds started to roll behind my head and bands of light came moving across the hill faster than I could get through a 5 stop HDR, luckily towards the end I was left with blue sky with some fluffy white clouds and the sun shining brightly for a good half an hour while I got the shots I wanted. It’s nearly safe to say, I think I have my cover shot for the book!! Very Happy!

 

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how to decorate a white couch
Monday, May 02, 2011, 8:14:24 AM | jocelyn jane cox

 

Don’t think of your white couch as a pristine object you can’t be comfortable on. Think of it instead as a blank canvas.

We’ve had a white couch for a few years and in fact recently procured a new one. (Thank you Ikea.) To those of you in our lives who have expressed concern about this decision or silently said to yourself, “they are going to regret that,” I want to let you know that we couldn’t be happier with our plush seating. To those of you who are courageous enough to have also purchased a white couch (or are considering doing so), I offer the following decorative suggestions:

Salsa: This plops very easily from the corner of a tortilla chip and smears beautifully with a paper towel.
Red Wine: The way this sloshes over the lip of a wine glass is truly exquisite, especially if you watch the whole event as if it is happening in suspenseful slow motion. A dishtowel and a bit of water will transform this to a lovely mauve shade.
Chicken Tikka Masala: Order this from Spice of India in Nyack, bring it home then fill your favorite bowl with its fragrant goodness. Then allow a piece of delectable chicken to somehow explode almost geyser-style from your fork in a way that defies gravity and could never ever be repeated. The combination of yellow, orange and red exotic spices is indelible and becomes even more vibrant with the application of stain remover.
Young Children: Invite several over to your house then provide them with lots of paint, crayons and magic markers. Laugh naively when their parents offer to write you a blank check for impending damages.
Chocolate Chips: This one is a bit more complicated. Gobble chocolate chip cookies with a wild enthusiasm you learned from the Cookie Monster. This should result in several chocolate chips falling onto your lap. Get up, sit back down on top of them, and allow your body heat to melt them into the fibers of the couch for a rich, abstract mocha design.
Moth: If it ever stops flitting around, press it into the cushion with the back of your hand in order to achieve an interesting charcoal-colored smudge. (Of course this is cruel, but wasn’t it also cruel when he snacked his way through four of your favorite sweaters?)
New Blue Jeans: Buy the darkest kind, the ones that leave dye on your fingers the first few times you wear them. Sit down and shift around a little bit. The result will be a gorgeous sky-blue splotch in the shape of your rear end.
Extra Slip Covers: This one is key. Decide against purchasing these when you get the couch and only decide to buy them after both the couch and the slipcovers have both been discontinued.*
*note: We did actually purchase extra slipcovers. In fact, we purchased so many extra ones in a paranoid flurry that they ended up costing more than the couch itself. The thing is that they are challenging to put on and involve taking a big portion of the couch apart. (Thanks again, Ikea.)

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