MERRY CHRISTMAS

Alone But Not Lonely At the Holidays: A Quiet, Simple Christmas Is a Gift

Return To Happiness

Return To Happiness

 The scent of the lily was sweet, the old ghost's favorite spring flower. Small pure, white bells sprung up in May, and each spring, he anxiously awaited their arrival. There was a special place he had found. A country road passed by the back lot of a house, in the ditch across from the yard, and a patch of lilies grew amongst poison ivy. He had dug some up for his yard and planted two stone pots with moss in one spring, and he always picked large bouquets filling the house with their beautiful heavy scent. The beauty of the afterlife, flowers were always in season, and this Christmas couldn't be without fresh lilies. A long time ago, he had read a book titled "The Meaning of Flowers" and found the lily of the valley's meaning quite beautiful - Return to Happiness. 

"Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see." 

As I mentioned before, these paintings are almost complete. If I feel something I've missed in the process, I will return to it and add in hopefully, removing nothing else from the illustration. Editing not only the writing but the illustrations as well. Some may never make it into the book.

 A mother/daughter Ghostly Adventure, writing together for the first time about their favorite subject, the supernatural. 

♥️ Annabelle & M ♥️

a-matter-of-perspective 🎄🐾

Happy Caturday
a-matter-of-perspective

“I have always thought of Christmastime when it has come round...as a good time"
But, Christmas can have all things, both good and bad, mixed in; it is not exempt from the rest of the days of the year.
The loss of a dear pet, our church cat, Karson, on December 23rd, a day before Christmas Eve, was quite sad, still today and for some time to come for sure. Then Christmas Night was yet another challenge: I may share it later with you.
It all depends on how we look at the situation. I try always to keep positive, although sometimes it's not so easy.
I look at Maggie looking out the window, alone, with no Christmas tree, somewhat a little sad, watching for Karson to come home, or is she just looking at the birds feeding at the feeder. Bat looking at me, thinking? Me thinking? We all have a different view from where we stand or sit.

A-MATTER -OF-PERSPECTIVE

article/photograph

Goodnight, Karson🎄💔💔💔💔💔💔🐾🐾

We are Heartbroken 💔 Goodnight Karson, our precious church cat. May 3rd, 2004 ~ December 23rd, 2020 

"Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime." 

Karson, the church cat

May 3rd, 2004 ~ December 23rd, 2020

Charles Dickens Merry Christmas, Karson, you will always be in our hearts.

Christmas Teddy Bears 🎄🧸🧸🧸🎄

 Christmas Teddy Bears   🎄🧸🧸🧸🎄

So, have you ever wondered how the Teddy Bear got its name? I always wondered if Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States had anything to do with the toy bear's name and of course, it turns out he did. I asked my husband and of course, he knew the story but I never knew. Here is the link to

A Short Story — “How The Teddy Bear Got Its Name”

 A beautiful little story to read to a little one at Christmas time.  

Who doesn't love a cute little Teddy Bear to sit somewhere in the house at Christmas time, if not all year through?

These two lovable Bearington Teddy Bears I bought today at Sally Ann in Kemptville and now join my little Angel Teddy Bear collection.

MERRY CHRISTMAS ~ THE COMPUTER'S FIRST CHRISTMAS CARD

The Computer's First Christmas Card

jollymerryhollyberryjollyberrymerryhollyhappyjollyjollyjellyjellybellybellymerryhollyheppyjollyMollymarryJerrymerryHarryhappyBarryheppyJarrybobbyheppyberryjorryjorryjollymoppyjellyMollymerryJerryjollybellyboppyjorryhoppyhollymoppyBarrymerryJarryhappyhappyboppyboppyjollyjollymerrymerrymerrymerrymerrymerryChrisammerryasaChrismerryasMERRYCHRYSANTHEMUMEdwin Morgan

WATCHING EARTH FROM THE MOON

 SEEMS SO PEACEFUL

LIKE A GLASS FISHING FLOAT SUSPENDED IN SPACE, WEIGHTLESS

TWINKLING IN THE MIST OF A SHIMMERING STARRY SEA

IT'S WHERE THEIR HEART IS LONGING TO BE


"BLUE CHRISTMAS STARGAZERS" BACK WHERE MY HEART LONGS TO BE

ARTWORK AVAILABLE THRU PIXELS.COM, FINE ART AMERICA, SOCIETY6 AND ETSY.

goo.gl/FQiop8

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~ A Christmas Rose ~

After taking this picture of course I had to alter it again. While I was cleaning my studio I cam across tiny marquisette butterfly earrings belonging to my daughter and added them to the rose. I'll post the new picture later.

First saw this rose on "Miz Smoochie Lips" a few years back, then saw Lynn 's from "Sea Angels" all done in paper,and once again from "Calamity Kim" made with paper,fabric and tulle and of course "Mommy Makes Roses" as seen on Martha Stewart. I made a few roses to adorn my Christmas gifts.

This is an altered rose made out of an old paper rose,then I added German glass glitter, old lace, a poem on a vintage music sheet. They are beautiful and so romantic placed on the Christmas tree or adorning wreaths,garlands,as a brooch,on gifts like I have done or just pinning it to something you like and enjoying it year round.

At the moment I am cleaning house since I was ill for the past week with the flew and feeling quite blue with the passing of our dear Elly. Very hard at times to get into the spirit of things when some things seem so much more important to one's life. Slowly,very slowly we are coming back to feeling the cheerful Spirit of Christmas.

Magnificent Obsessions and Passions of My Heart

“You’ll not be able to get away from it! You’re too far in! It’s got you! …A form of insanity, maybe; but you may as well come along –”

I pondered on this passage for a while the other day and I suddenly realized that I been caught in a trap! But a beautiful trap!
I truly believe that I’m in love with the idea of being captured in this snare, a spellbinding web in which it sustains me…with wondrous Dreams, Music, Art, Words, and Happy Thoughts … All Passions of My Heart!


On any given day I may take a solitary walk down a winding way lost in the countryside of Tuscany. Once there I am enamored by the lovely beauty of a warm golden field of sunflowers dancing in the breeze to Luciano’s Nessun Dorma! I may even get inspired to write an Italian poem from the arresting experience.
Girasoli, Fiori Blu
Nessun dorma, senza tu….

Or may be wandering along the beautiful and enthralling pastoral valley of Wiltshire and be arrested in the beauty of Stourheads enchanted eighteenth century garden with its secret grotto lined in flint and volcanic Italian rock sheltering the statue of the sleeping nymph while water cascades over her mossy slumber bed.

And then the next night I may just slip back in time and become drunk of cuoreblu listening to Ashrams intoxicating violins playing a haunting melody of ancient echoes and somehow mysteriously without intention find myself in old Victorian England in the haunting mansion of “The Innocents”. The one and only best film adaptation of the novel by Henry James ~ “The Turn of the Screw”. It has to be the one movie I had seen as a child that I never really ever gotten out of my mind and has in reality haunted me to this day for there is always that imminent thought: “someone could be watching me through the window” an habitual reaction to drawing in the curtains when night falls. Definitely it is without a doubt, the scariest psychological ghost story I have ever come to meet.


I read once that a home was a mirror of the family’s happiness and virtue; a place to which one could escape the harsh, demanding and perilous world outside. And so I, along with many others have now found shelter and security in our blissful home. In a way our Dear Victoria has captured are fancy all over again; the Bliss of Home!



I have always longed for the old limestone home filled to the brim with antiquities, not necessarily costly but old and worn by others, my connectors to the past. To have a room with a view of infinite wildflower fields joined by the sea and pass the mornings and nights and all the in-betweens.






But my dreams of the old home in far off seclusion overlooking the sea never did materialize, although most importantly I was blessed with a lovely family and home. My home, my castle in all its imperfections… it is my safe haven. The place from where I view the world.

My journey embarks from the private room of my studio! A place to me far removed from the outside world and yet at a touch of a key I am somewhere distant from the physical place which I call home. In the comfort of my chair I see the world in virtual reality; and meet friends from places I dreamed I would visit someday.
Obviously there are dreadful sites out there but you have the choice. Most times I come away with an exhilarating feeling of fulfillment and contentment. It is really in all essence the poor man’s way of living life extravagantly without the means!

Like anything that is pleasurable can become addictive. There has to be a happy medium to everything one does or else it can take hold and suck the life right out of you! Gaming, dating, music, food, art, nature, literature, travel are all but a few of people’s addictions or are they?

In retrospect we have always loved many of these things; its part of life and the web is an extension of our environment. It makes it easier and more accessible to information and communication than ever before. In seconds we have what we were probably looking for some time if not for years before the internet evolution. Many have found their ancestors and their secrets for better or for worse…ha! I found out recently that I have a younger American brother….So I guess I have connections in the States as well as Italy and Argentina and Australia and Germany to name a few of my gypsy family roots!!!
The information that is available to us is beyond ones understanding of the scale it extends; its infinitive!

Upon reflection, when I surf, I actually enter into another world; a world of dream and inspiration, of beauty and of loss. At times I find I get completely compelled, lost and mesmerized with a site and If my husband or kids call out to me I may be inclined to have not heard them consciously, thinking that it must be someone calling their kid outside until enough times the blaring of my name will sound out and I’ll snap out of it and come back to ground zero…ha-ha….still a child at heart! But I know my limit and when the laundry piles up or dishes and the beds aren’t made or that I want everything in the world; that in its self is an obvious indicator that I’m spending way too much time on the keyboard and looking glass.


As a child born under the cosmic sign of Pisces I have always been prone to being a bit of a Romantic, actually rather an extreme incurable one to be more precise in describing my nature. I can’t stop favoring so many of the Flickr pictures that I come across but that is due to my leaning to art…mosaic…creations of sorts!


Even as a little girl I showed an Passion to decorate the Hearth for Christmas!!!!!

Regrettably, I’m a terrible photographer and subject and ultimately haven’t learned the art form. So I reside on others art and take in their beauty to create a magic tapestry, a crazy quilt, a memory collage or simply just a Flickr mosaic of life!

Back some 45 years ago you would have found me in a vast white field of daisies over looking the sea; busily lost picking all that I could see, not knowing when to end my gatherings while my mother was calling out to me to come…..if that would ever happened!!!! I always was one to be captivated by the beauty of nature and the work of man. Such things I came to learn weren’t worth importance to my evolution of successful maturity although now I can afford the luxury of such retreats. But I must say these so called unimportant values in a sense make the fabric of a person and who they become.


And so when you see a sunset that takes your breath away or a moment in time you have never felt before, take heed and observe in the silence the beauty that surrounds you. Pull out that camera you just bought and make the memories that sweet dreams are made of and upload them to any of the numeral sites that are available to you to use for free like ; Flickr, Webshots, Picasa just to name a few. And if your hearts desire is to view old film stars and songs of the past check out Muirmaiden on Youtube.

Bear in mind life is yours for a very short time and one should live life to its fullest. I have taken that aphorism and am living by it.
For a moment I get to live in some else’s red slippers and see what it would be like having and owning the things I dreamed of having but in the end my heart belongs within the visually imperfect home to the richest home one could ever dream of having. The family and their home is where the heart takes rest and views the web of the world. I may be caught in the web but for only short periods of time, for I know that it is another ones life out there I view and that mine rests here in the real passions of my heart!




Affairs of my Heart ~ A Poem

Affairs of my heart… I’ve fallen under your magical spells
Pinned to my spirit with brooches of jewels and of shells
I love all that is and all that shall be
Imparted upon this restless, unreeling happiest heart that is me

Words floating on air, sparkling and luminous… as pretty as a golden -haired lass
Encrusted with the twinkle and glitter of mica, crystal and glass
Love, dreams…imagine and wish to Believe, maybe a little naïve… do I Dare?
Fairies and mermaids do really live here!
With flowers and lace entwined in their wavy long radiant hair!




Darkness descending within this old house; winter is here!
Spirits of the night come to me near
Come close; be still, while I in joyous pulse write… by the candle’s vanishing light
As snowflakes outside softly drift down to the silence of the night


The hearth burns a jolly fiery glow and warmly gives call
Whilst twilight quietly fades into the rosewood hall
And the music takes note; embarks on its journey twisting and winding in graceful flow… in its gothic delicate dance …

And then begins the faint echo of the weeping and strange violins.


Summer’s wildflowers now have all gone with the wintry chill
But the tuberose, slender and tall keeps company with the curious cat precariously poised on the sill
Intoxicating in its sweet-smelling and heady perfume
I’m lulled into a false state of sleep under the broom

The owl patiently sits on the wood of the very old oak that resides in the little country courtyard
Above hangs a plump milky white moon in a sea of twinkling stars that keep him on much heedful guard
Books… threadbare and olden; keepers of lyrical words;
Senses wild with delicious enchantment I’m blissfully bestowed!
And the night of the winter lays quietly still under a white shimmering blanket of sugary snow

Annabelle 12/2007


Some of my Obsessions and Passions of my Heart... A listing of the glittering stars that make life magic:



I have listed here for your pleasure:

Zsaj…My first addiction to collecting gorgeous ethereal photographs
http://www.flickr.com/people/98474349@N00/

My mosaics:
http://www.flickr.com/

Paul Potts sings opera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelJrP3P7tA&feature=related

Freddie Francis the cinematographer responsible for creating the atmospheric mood of the film “The Innocents”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s61Lz0CqY8Y

Eerie Clips from the movie “The Innocents”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhqQEnASvJ0

Or if you are in the mood for a good deep sleep visit
Gentle ghost classics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-01ID1O_n8



Or just reminiscing on the Vintage Blonde Bombshells of Hollywood or other movie screen stars Muirmaiden has a beautiful collection
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJvuz64vTvA


For a complete resource of Victorian literature, poetry and art one must visit: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/dgrov.html


A beautiful site with a secret garden you’ll sure want to explore: http://www.follytowers.com/stourheadtrail5.html



A beautiful and haunting Italian band who has completely entranced me from the time I discovered them through a fabulous Italian disk jockey’s website who herself is an inspiration of sorts
http://www.ashramusic.com/ “Maria and the Violins” and here http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=71645906



And then of course here is an itsy bitsy list of the many, many blogs I obsess about and the stuff that dreams are made of… The Bliss of Home:


Victoria the ROMANTIC magazine has come back! ~ http://www.victoriamag.com/

http://wwwbeyondthevintagepath.blogspot.com/

http://www.beyondthevintagepath.com/page/page/653262.htm

http://karlascottage.typepad.com/karlascottage/

http://monicaanderson.blogspot.com/

http://prettypetalsboutique.blogspot.com/2007/08/sparkling-kind-of-wish.html

http://www.missduffys.com/

http://www.cindyellisart.com/index.asp

http://wwwcindyellisartcom.blogspot.com/

http://www.queenoftarte.blogspot.com/

http://www.onehundredwishes.com/

http://www.fadedrosecottage.com/

http://monicaanderson.blogspot.com/

http://www.romantichome.blogspot.com/

http://sweeteyecandycreations.typepad.com/

http://www.thebowerbirdsnest.blogspot.com/

http://www.natashaburns.blogspot.com/

http://jeannesbliss.blogspot.com/

http://ltthings.blogspot.com/


http://izabella.typepad.com/

For lovely authentic Italian cuisine by a Swedish chef and photograher
http://www.lucullian.blogspot.com/


And this is only a minuscule part of my beautiful relationship with the fascinating and intoxicating web!

Annabelle 12 / 2007