We are back in The Tearoom today, to celebrate Halloween with you! It's one of our favorite holidays and this year, we get to celebrate with Little Victorienne and her friend Cerfie Blanc! They are amuck with excitement, but have agreed to cooperate and have their portrait taken for this special day!
As usual, they are dressed for the occasion! The pattern on Victorienne's dress is based on Gustave Doré's illustration from "Beauty and the Beast" and as we have come to expect to see her with some large and unusual hair adornment, she is wearing a huge bow of chocolate brown taffeta! Her friend Cerfie Blanc has returned to The Tearoom as well today, and is resplendent, dressed up like a black rose bush! What an unusual but beautiful costume (and especially for a deer!!).
And of course, we could not let you leave without offering you treats! Please, won't you help yourself to a brambleberry tart? Please just be careful of the brambles! Some folks (Cerfie Blanc included) do not mind munching on them, but they are rather...er...bramble-y!!
Dearest Friends,
I'm not putting quite as much energy into my Halloween festivities this year, but I still wouldn't be happy if I didn't add a bit of the spirit of the spookliest time of the year here at The Tearoom!
So, as we nibble our Spider Cookies from Mars (recipe below), I hope you will enjoy some small, but creepy short videos and films!
Even though I love the original by Bauhaus, the cover of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Nouvelle Vague is quite wonderful, complete with video clips from the wonderfully creepy Dracula movie!
Here is a short clip from The Addams Family, one of my favorite episodes. Be careful of getting a severe moon-burn!
And here, Herman Munster recites some lovely poetry!
As promised, Chinese Spider Cookies, a yummy & easy Halloween treat!
I hope to see you here again on Saturday, for more festivities!
Dearest Friends of The Tearoom,
I do so humbly apologize for my absence from The Tearoom as of late! Trust me, left to my own devices, I would spend all of my time here, nibbling cakes and sipping tea with My Dear Friends of The Blogosphere. However, Real Life does intrude on our Imaginary Lives, sometimes in the most disruptive ways possible.
For me, when I anticipate something is going to happen to me, I find it helpful to deal with it through my art. My last blog post was my anticipating the inevitable.
About 2 weeks after my last blog post, I had to have emergency open-heart surgery. I'll spare the details, but things were a bit scary for me for a bit, due to some unforeseen complications. However, once I began to recover, I did so quickly and was able to come home 18 days after surgery. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. David Robaczewski at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine for being such a dedicated and brilliant surgeon.
And music plays a big part in the process of healing as well. One day, while I was in Cardiac ICU, my darling Mr. V played some music for me. There is a lot I don't remember from that time, but I do remember this because it helped me to have a normal few moments in the midst of a very surreal and sometimes unpleasant experience. One of the songs he played for me was one of my favorites from Jamie xx called "Loud Places". Here is the video of that song:
It is now two months later and I am recovering well. I feel better everyday and each day I find I am able to do more and more of the normal everyday things I did before surgery. I have been lucky to have had nurses and therapists who came to my home to help me, one of the best being my Occupational Therapist, who encouraged me from the beginning to get back to my artwork as soon as I was able. After such an extensive surgery and so much anesthesia and pain killers, I was experiencing motor coordination and cognitive issues. These have now all cleared, as the doctors had anticipated they would, but much of my physical and emotional recovery is due to returning to working on my art projects.
As well as some work I have done of my on-going book project about my paperdoll daughter Victorienne, I have been busy creating new collage sheets for my Etsy shop Velvet Revived as well.
And I'm not done yet! If any of you remember, I did this small collage for the first online Mad Tea Party I participated in.
I'm putting the finishing touches on an updated and much enhanced version to sell in Velvet Revived! Keep watch for it! It is my goal to have 100 items for sale in Velvet Revived by the end of the year.
And, as I mentioned in my last post, I am still plotting and planning a visit to a museum by our family of slightly-creepy-but-mostly-adorable dolls! They will be lurking (in that way that they do!) around the opening of my show of digital collages at Le Musée de Divan Rouge! I will announce more about this exciting event soon!
Click her picture to read a tribute to her great inspirational influence on my life.
Donate to The Gossamer Tearoom
If you enjoy what I do here, won't you please consider buying me a coffee? Thank you so much! Donations to my Ko-fi account go to purchasing art and vintage supplies for my art projects.
The Gossamer Tearoom can also be found on Pinterest...
...and on Twitter...
...and now on Instagram as well!
Please take a look at my Etsy shop Velvet Revived!
Digital collage sheets, printable invitations and other printable projects, made from vintage images and creativity
Click the banners above and below to visit my Etsy shops! (And please feel free to post these banners on your blog!)
The Gossamer Tearoom Shop....
After you are finished sipping your last drop of tea and nibbling your last bite of cake, I do hope you will click the items below to visit The Gossamer Tearoom Gift Shop!
Welcome to The Gossamer Tearoom, a Tearoom of the Imagination...Please join me here to relax and enjoy fun discoveries I have made or new creations I am working on! I regularly host imaginary teas where I select teas and pastries that have enticed me. I'm interested in food, art, writing, selling vintage items. This is a place which celebrates my light side and my dark side too. A little bit of creepy has never hurt anyone!
Close your eyes and imagine yourself in an English garden by moonlight or a French tea salon under a wedding cake ceiling and opulent chandelier. This imaginary place is a quiet place of peace, of art, indulgence in teas of our own imaginings, of music, of light and of dark. Please enjoy your visit here!
Posts
