Poking Around Pickity

I’ve mentioned many times the favorite luncheon spot for Jennifer, Renae and me, Pickity Place in Mason, NH. After going so many times, I stopped taking regular photos of our visits, with the exception sometimes of the oh-so-beautifully-presented food. However, Renae brought to my attention that Pickity was having a photo contest this year to win gift certificates! “Capture the magic of Pickity” is the theme of the contest. During our last visit, I brought my Canon and set out to find the magic. It isn’t difficult to do at this place, but I was also hoping to find a few shots that other folks might pass by. I’ve collected my favorites here. Some are just because I really like them, a couple I am considering submitting. I won’t tell you the ones that struck me as possibly contest worthy just yet. Tell me your thoughts in the comments and we will see if we are thinking along the same lines….

Baaa, baaa … well you know!

Foxglove-a-glow

Set me free…

A gardener’s work is never done

Dragonfly in Copper

Grow dammit!

How sweet it is

I have until Labor Day to make my submission. I may not be limited to one selection. I’ve inquired at the FB page for the contest. Which ones do you think might have a little magic touch?

I Heart Challenge, Part 3

Visit

A great visit – Renae and Meghan and I visited Pickity Place for a lunch date in early August.

Fresh

The water at Pickity tastes extra fresh with the addition of lemon and herbs.

Shadow

Hi there – that’s me taking a picture for you!

Sign

A sign with my surname on it near the beach that I love so much… it must be fate, right?

Splash

Dream

This house was being built last summer and it appears it is still for sale. My dream house at the beach! A girl can dream.

Outside

This prompt was a bit on the vague side, but I thought this would be a nice view to have whenever one is outside.

Details

Patterns left in the sand by the retreating tide.

Sunrise

I made it outside just in time for this one!

Silence

Stars on the water seemed to evoke a sense of silence. One night that week Sarah and I sat outside together, mostly in silence, except for the occasional, “OOH! There’s one!” while we watched the Perseid Meteor Showers.

Warmth

I stood in this spot one morning near the end of our week, feeling the warmth on my face and trying my best to appreciate the moment and just be.

This completes my August photo challenge. Remember, you have until September 5th to let me know about your photo challenge posts through either a pingback or comment to my original post, which you can find by clicking here.

I Heart Challenge, Part 2

Up High

This was a lucky shot I happened to grab on a morning walk, and one of those times I wished I had the telephoto lens attached. I’m pretty sure this is a great egret that was soaring above my head.

Someone Special

Sarah on her 18th birthday, with her uncle Larry (my sister’s husband)

Throwback

This is a throwback to 13 years ago this month; the girls were flower girls for my sister’s wedding.

In the Sun

Shiny water sparkling in the sun…. ahhhhh…..

Circles

Spirals are kind of circles, aren’t they?

Adventure

I walked by this scene several times on my morning walk. It isn’t my adventure, but I’ve always thought it would be a great adventure to actually camp out on the beach.

Cool

It was too cold for me to go swimming this year, but this is where Sarah found her cool on several afternoons.

Window Pane

A nice scene of a beach cottage found on one of my walks.

Simplicity

A simple but lovely place to sit.

Before/After

Lunch, followed by dessert, at Pickity Place.

I Heart Challenge, Part 1

I never thought this would happen, but would you believe I’ve finished my own photo challenge? I kept a photo of the list on my phone, and kept it in mind in my travels this month. The grand majority of these photos are from my vacation in Maine, which is what allowed me to actually complete the list. The other photos come from other good things that happened in August, like Sarah’s 18th birthday and a visit to Pickity Place.

Rather than overwhelm you with 31 photos at once, I’ve decided to present 10 at a time, with a bonus 11 in the third post. I’m going to present them in the order of the original list, but please know, for the most part there is no correlation between the dates on the list and the date the photo was taken.

Happy

Sarah’s 18th birthday was a family BBQ, with this happy little Minion cake that made everybody smile.

Sidewalk

Not a traditional sidewalk, but my favorite kind of sidewalk, my walk from our cottage to the beach.

Treasure

A “treasure” of the natural type, sand dollars found on my walk.

Floral

I could’ve chosen from lots of pictures to fill the bill for this one, but I chose this one from Pickity Place because it reminds me of a photo that I would eventually like to take. Someday I want to find a huge field of sunflowers to photograph, but thise huge grouping of black-eyed susans was gorgeous and summery too!

Messy

There’s lots of messes around my house I could have shown you, especially with laundry being done in full force in anticipation of the girls heading off to college in the next few days (wahhhhh!!!! 😦 ) but I’ve picked a view of my little “home base” at the cottage. This is where I had my breakfast each morning, and where I collected my supplies for the beach each day like camera, magazines, books, sunscreen etc.

Two

You probably could have guessed what I’d use for that prompt, right? If not my two beautiful girls, it probably would have been my two four-legged oafs, who will be almost as sad as me when the girls leave. (Cedric the cat has 4 legs also, of course, but he’s not an oaf)

Relax

I took this photo kind of by accident, but I ended up liking it. I was playing around with the timer seeing what shots I could get from where, thinking maybe I’d take a shot of myself relaxing on the beach. Instead this is a shot of my favorite place to relax.

Blurry

I was actually thinking about what Mike wrote here “Blurry could be an easy one… put the camera in manual mode and capture an image out of focus” and that being the easy way out on that one. We had one rainy day on our vacation and I was looking out from our porch when I realized the rain provided the perfect opportunity for a cool blurry shot.

Horizon

Being at the beach, it was always easy to find a horizon shot. I liked what the boats and the lighthouse added to this one.

Feet

Super easy shot for me. I always take pictures like this one. It’s like a summer thing for me taking pictures of my feet happy and out of shoes and relaxing. I even wrote a whole post about it last summer!

So there’s my first ten shots. Its a rainy day so I may just sit here and write up the other two posts. Not sure how soon I should send the next ones out to you. Got busy days upcoming – annual Lobsterfest party with great friends tomorrow. Meghan back to campus on Sunday, Sarah goes Wednesday – after that, a real look at How Life Will Be. 😯

Spring Changes

This quote is so true in so many ways. I’m here to focus on the beautiful this morning, despite the fact that today’s weather is less than beautiful.

Spring has been very slow to arrive in the northeast this year, but we have finally been experiencing some days of warmth and sunshine. Last Sunday was warm and breezy, and I took a little time just to sit outside and appreciate.

I haven’t lifted a rake or anything else to begin spring cleaning, but I’ll get to it soon enough. Chives are poking through last year’s dead ones to make a new appearance this year!

It is school vacation week here in Massachusetts. Today is Patriot’s Day and Boston Marathon Day. A blogger that I read, Amy of “Plain Mama” is running this year. Best of luck Amy!

I got to kick off my vacation week in one of my favorite ways. Jennifer, Renae and I headed up to Pickity Place once again. Saturday’s weather was lovely and sunny and warm, and flowers were popping out all over, despite Pickity’s New Hampshire location. We figured they must have started some of these plants in their protected greenhouse and then brought them out.

These were not from the greenhouse of course:

I’m not sure what these are; they reminded me of a purple version of forsythia.

And I always share a picture of the beautiful dessert presentation too:

What beautiful changes are you experiencing this time of year?

A Wonderful Spring Weekend

Spring is finally sproinging around here, and it’s about time after the lousy, frigid, snowy winter we had!

Saturday brought a delicious visit to Pickity Place in Mason NH. I’ve blogged many times about this favorite lunch place of my sister, our best friend and me.
Lunch was good and tasty, but the dessert yesterday was OFF THE HOOK! Check this out:

That gorgeous thing is a vanilla flan with caramel sauce, raspberries and mandarin oranges.

Happy pansies and jonquils decorated the little cottage in the woods:

as well as the perennially sleepy Pickity Kitty:

Today brought sunshine and a high temperature around 60 degrees F! That in itself is a wonderful thing. The hike that we were rained out of last weekend was rescheduled for today. I have a friend with an interesting goal this year – to hike all 92 miles (the width of the state of Massachusetts not including the north shore and Cape Cod) of the MidState Trail. It runs from Douglas MA on the Rhode Island border to Ashburnham MA on the New Hampshire border. I said I’d like to join as often as possible, so we began our quest today! We did a little over 3 miles today, but that included looping back to the parking lot, so we still have around 90 miles to go. Next time we will strategize with parking cars and such so we can accomplish more of the route in one outing.

But for today, we enjoyed each others’ company and being out in the spring air. Our dogs enjoyed every puddle they tromped through and getting muddy!

Group portrait of Sherry, Greg and me (and Angel, Teddy and Daphne) at the Rhode Island-Massachusetts border.

The marker

A crossing trail, running through Rhode Island. Only 78 miles to the ocean! Let’s go!

One more group portrait, after our lunch break.

I’m looking forward to making my way up my home state throughout this spring, summer and fall – I hope we can find the time to complete the full trail.

Happy spring everyone! Is it finally feeling like spring where you are too?

P.S. WordPress has nicely informed me that today is my 4 year blogoversary! Still carrying on the “when I feel like it” way, 4 years later! 😉

Zen Kitty

I’ve borrowed this photo, as well as this blog title, from a Facebook post of my sister’s. This kitty in a state of uber-peacefulness is a nice representative of a mostly awesome week around here.

It started last Saturday when my wonderful posse of long time friends arrived for a murder-mystery style Halloween party.

The theme of the mystery was “Murder at the Millenium” and each of us was supposed to be one outstanding character from each decade of the 20th century. There’s yours truly over there on the far right as “Scarlett Harlot” an actress from the 1930’s.

The directions that came with the party game suggested decorating with something made to look like a time machine. Meghan, a great fan of the BBC series “Dr. Who”, said we should make our time machine look like a T.A.R.D.I.S. (For the un-Whovian initiated, click here for more information) We decorated the front door like this:

so that each of our guests had to pass through the time machine to arrive at the party.

Our fabulous party was followed by a fabulous Red Sox World Series win on Wednesday night.

Our jack-o-lantern was carved, and I happily enjoyed the roasted pumpkin seeds:

Halloween blew in windy, wet and warm. Only a scant few trick-or-treaters came to my door. When it seemed the doorbell would no longer ring for the evening, I settled in to spend some time here:

Saturday arrived again and provided another thoroughly enjoyable day. My sister, our best friend Renae and I made another pilgrimage to our favorite New Hampshire lunch spot, Pickity Place. Pickity was the place where the photo of Zen Kitty was taken.
How’s that for bringing a post full circle?

Okay, I did say it was a mostly awesome week back at the beginning of the post. That seems to suggest there might be something that wasn’t so awesome. Before heading out with my sister for the day yesterday, I dropped my car off at our Ford dealership to have a dashboard warning light checked. The result? A hefty repair bill:

There’s always a sprinkle of bad in there to remind us how we need to appreciate the good!

Pickity Abstracts

Time is running short to get an entry in for Scott’s current assignment.  I took advantage of our visit to Pickity Place (fabulous food as always!) to look for some natural abstract photos in the gardens that surround the restaurant.  Here’s what I was able to find:

This last photo isn’t abstract at all, but I definitely thought worth sharing.  Dessert from yesterday’s Pickity luncheon:

It’s all in the details

I’d been wanting to write a blog post this weekend, but I hadn’t taken any pictures this week to share with you.  Today I had plans for a luncheon at a favorite spot that I’ve shared with you many times, Pickity Place.  My sister, our best friend and I were in need of a nice girls’ day out.  At the last second this morning as I was on my way out the door, I grabbed my camera and put in my bag.  My thoughts were : I’ve taken so many pictures at Pickity Place, what new could I possibly find to share?  It is November afterall – No leaves, no flowers, November.  However, one lesson I’ve learned in the past is that it is the times that I don’t have my camera with me that I will surely wish that I did.

Perhaps it should have come as no surprise, I did find a few photos today.  One of the wonderful things about Pickity is the way that it changes with the seasons and makes each one beautiful.  The sun came out for a surprisingly warm day for mid-November in New Hampshire, and the sunlight seemed to have a special, almost filtered, quality to it at this time of the year.  Today I found some beauty in the small details, details that I might not have otherwise noticed if it had been a day filled with striking flowers and bountiful greens.

Some of the most beautiful details come in the form of the amazing meals served at Pickity Place.  I didn’t think to take any food pictures until we got to the last lovely course.  Today’s dessert was a pumpkin spice roll with caramel-raspberry sauce with fresh whipped cream.  The small quarters where the meals are served made it a little difficult for me to focus since I only had my 55-250mm lens with me, and I thought when I looked at the LCD that the dessert was my focal point.  Instead, here you have focus on my delicious mulled cider and the remains of our refreshing water carafe, but you can get the idea!  More great details:

Thank you Pickity Place – and Jennifer and Renae- for another fabulous afternoon.

It’s the Hippy Hippy Sheep!

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!  Like hi, man! I live at this like totally awesome place called Pickity Place?  I totally don’t know why they call it that, but like, do you have any idea how heavy wet wool is dude?  Huh? Oh, like sorry man.  I’m not supposed to be talking to you about that.  Lessee, what was it now?  Oh yeah, flowers!  I’m not usually into those flowery-type thing-a-ma-bobs, but since someone calling herself Karma asked me to, I thought it wouldn’t be too lame!  Besides, man, you know what they say about karma, right?  Hey, just who are these they people anyway?  Oh, sorry, getting off track again….”

“Now this one here, it really isn’t too far away from my  pen, and I could like totally chow down on that if they’d let me get near it.”

“As long as you don’t scarf the fuzzy-bee-dude in the middle, I’m sure this could be a tasty snack.  You know, I’ve heard there’s this golden retriever, lives in some town in western Massa-something-or-other, that like eats ’em on purpose?  Isn’t that like so gnarly?”

“Now this one, I can’t figure out man.  Why are they throwing the snacks in the water bowl?”

“If I was actually clean, I think I might look like this one dude.  That’d be like so far out!”

“Look at that, a way groovy smorg!”

“So, like anyway dudes, it was totally cool talking to you.  I gotta split, but you should totally cruise my pad at Pickity Place.”