Ms. Toody Goo Shoes: November 2018

Friday, November 30, 2018

BEST OF THE WEEKEND 11.30.18

Hi there, everyone!
Welcome to Best Of The Weekend!
I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!
It's already a distant memory, I know,
and everyone has transitioned into full holiday mode.
Hanukkah starts Sunday.......yup, this Sunday!
I know most of you take days to decorate for Christmas,
but for Hanukkah, all I really have to do
is bring the menorahs up from the basement!
I do have to do some shopping,
but Junior Goo Shoes won't be home until mid-December,
so I've actually got a little bit of time.

If you need some inspiration for the holiday season,
you've come to the right place.
It's all right here ↓ at BOTW!

We'd appreciate it if you'd follow the BOTW co-hosts.

****************

We feature all kinds of posts --
recipes, home decor, DIY, gardening, travel, whatevah!
so link up your best stuff!

Non-Bloggers: There are hundreds of fabulous ideas collected here each week;
just click on the links under the thumbnail photos,
and you will be taken directly to the blog post.

All of our features are pinned to our Best of the Weekend board!

Last Week's Most Clicked:

Christmas Decorations You Can Use Year Round | My Sweet Home Life

A Few Of My Favorites From 11.16.18:

Pancake Mix Cake With Graham Crackers | Dizzy, Busy and Hungry

Healthy Gingerbread Bars With Walnuts (Gluten Free) | Healthy Helper

21 Ways To Use Vintage Items In Christmas Decor | Postcards From The Ridge

Guest Room Ideas For The Holidays | The Country Chic Cottage

If you were featured, grab our button!

Please share your links!

An InLinkz Link-up

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING AND ME

Empire State Building | Ms. Toody Goo Shoes

You may not know this,

but the Empire State Building and me?

We've got a thang goin' on.

We're tight.

Thick as thieves.
Besties.

The Empire State Buiilding in NYC | Ms. Toody Goo Shoes #empirestatebuilding

For 28 years, we saw each other on an almost-daily basis.
We were close......separated by eight short city blocks,
but the wide open view through my office windows
made us feel much closer.

Pre-blogging bad photo from my office, but I had to make a point 😉

Pre-blogging bad photo #2 from my office 😕

I got to know it well over the years,

mostly through those office windows,
but often, we connected outside at street level,
where I looked up to it in awe.

Sometimes, our relationship was long-distance,
from across the Hudson river.

Whenever a flight back home took me over NYC,
the Empire State Buidling was there to greet me from the ground below.

Once, I saw it from the inside out
up there on its 86th floor observation deck,
getting to see all of New York City through its eyes.

I witnessed its many different moods.......
clear and strong on sunny days.......
dark and shrouded by rain clouds.......
soft and filtered in blizzard-like conditions.......
and completely invisible on foggy days.

I'll never forget seeing at its very worst.......
against a backdrop of thick smoke on 9/11.
It loomed larger than ever that day.
I kept looking out my windows,
to make sure it was still there.

I saw it decked out in a multitude of colorful lights........
Green and red for Christmas.......
Blue and white for Hanukkah.......
Rainbow for pride week.......
The various colors of NY's sports teams.......
Orange, white and green for St. Patrick's day.......
Pink for breast cancer awareness month.......
Red, white and blue when it felt patriotic.......
Green for earth day.

Pre-blogging bad photo #3 from my office 😖

And, I saw it go completely dark in times of tragedy
a few too many times.

Although we're not as close as we used to be,
we still keep in touch.
On my frequent jaunts into the city,
it will often peer at me from around a corner,
or peek out at me from behind a building.
The Empire State Building is one of those friends that
no matter how long we've gone without seeing each other,
it feels like no time has gone by.......
and we pick up right where we left off.

LINKING WITH:
Best of the Weekend
Keep In Touch
Our World Tuesday
Through My Lens
Take Me Away

Monday, November 26, 2018

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS DAY TRIP: AN OUTDOOR MUSEUM

The Hopper Goetschius Museum in Upper Saddle River, NJ

Are you a museum person........

the type who can spend hours wandering through a museum,

stopping to look at

Every.

Single.

Thing?

Not me, nope.

I'm aware that this admission

detracts from my uber-hipster-urban-cultural image 😜,

but I wasn't born with that museum-patience gene.

Don't get me wrong......

I LOVE and appreciate art!
I have enjoyed seeing paintings and sculptures
from some of the world's most famous artists.

It's just that.......

I
want
to
see
what
I
want
to
see

.......and then head right to the museum gift shop.

When I went to The Louvre in Paris,

I hightailed it straight to the Mona Lisa.

At the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence,

I made a beeline for The David.

In Rome, I had every intention of zooming straightaway to

Michelangelo's Creation Of Adam in the Sistine Chapel,

but was forced to walk through the entire Vatican Museum to get there

(I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it).

That's not to say that I don't enjoy spending time in museums........
I do.

I'm more likely to be "all in" when I head to a museum

which depicts an historical event

such as Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Tel Aviv,

the 9/11 World Trade Center Museum in NYC,

or the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
And I do want to go back to Washington, DC specifically to go to the
National Museum of American History,
National Museum of African American History and Culture,
and the Newseum.

Recently, I had the opportunity to go to a museum
of a totally different caliber near my home.

It isn't a world-renowned museum housing priceless artwork,

or one commemorating a major historic event.
It is tiny, in comparison, yet it plays a large role in preserving

important history of the local area from as early as the 18th Century.
I can never remember the name of it,
so I just call it the Hop and Go Museum.

The Hopper Goetschius Museum in Upper Saddle River, NJ.
is an outdoor museum site that has a collection of
historic buildings and artifacts from around the north Jersey area.

I'd driven by many times, yet I had never been.

It took a field trip with my photography class

to get me to there.

Hopper Goetschius House C1739 (possibly older).

The main house dates back to at least 1739,

but it may have been built as early as 1713.

vThe Hopper Goetschius Museum in Upper Saddle River, NJ | Ms. Toody Goo Shoes

It now serves as a museum,
preserving household, farming and other assorted artifacts
from the 1700s through the mid 1900s
and is maintained by the Upper Saddle River Historical Society.

An outhouse and out-kitchen are original structures,
and still sit on the grounds.

Other buildings were moved to the property over the years

from nearby areas, to save them from being demolished.
The VanRiper-Tice barn,
perhaps the only remaining New World Dutch Barn (c1800),
had particular meaning to me,
as my parents used to take us to the Van Riper and Tice farms
when we were kids every fall for apple cider and donuts.

VanRiper-Tice Barn at The Hopper Goetschius Museum in Upper Saddle River, NJ | Ms. Toody Goo Shoes

VanRiper Tice Barn C1800

Ramsey Sayer Schoolhouse (C1820, left); unidentified building on right

Woodshed (C1896), with the schoolhouse behind it.

The museum wasn't officially open on the day of our trip,
so there was no docent to take us around and explain what we were seeing.
I had to rely my guide named Google, after the fact.

We spent about 2 hours, inside and out,

practicing our photography techniques.......

adjusting ISOs, apertures and shutterspeeds.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing technically,

but it was a lovely setting to work on my composition.

Sometimes the best day trips

are a stone's throw from your backyard.

LINKING WITH:
Our World Tuesday
Cooking & Crafting With J&J
Through My Lens
Keep In Touch
Best Of The Weekend

Sunday, November 18, 2018

DRIVING DOWN THE HIGHWAY

If your pet could Uber, where would it go?

When I posed that question to Junior Goo Shoes about our dog,
he didn't hesitate with an answer.........
He was certain that Sadie would absolutely, positively
tell her Uber driver to head down the highway
to the closest cheese stick factory.
She is crazy about the part-skim mozzarella variety,
and when she hears the wrapper being torn off of her favorite people-food,
she runs from wherever she is in the house in hopes of getting a nibble.

Yes, I can see it now.........
her head craned out of the car window........
ears flapping in the breeze........
sniffing the air for that first scent of cheese sticks
wafting from the factory.

Ah, the promises and possibilities of the open road!

"...Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night's busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven's waiting down on the tracks..."

Yep, it's me, quoting Bruce Springsteen lyrics again.

Can you conjure up that feeling you had
when you first got your driver's license.......
The exhilaration of getting behind the wheel,
and taking yourself ANYWHERE.........
Knowing that you can drive down the interstate to independence......
or take the freeway to freedom........
BLISS!

The euphoric realization that a full tank of gas,
and a hunger to explore highways and biways
can take one on incredible adventures has never left me.
If anything, my appetite for road trips has only intensified.
Having a penchant for road trips must be a family trait.......
Junior GS has been planning a cross-country junket
to take after he graduates from college since he was 15 years old.

Whether you take the yellow brick one,
the one less traveled,
the rocky one,
or all of the ones that lead to Rome,
ladies and gents........start your engines........
it's time to hit the road!