Apple

Apple

Yesterday I returned from being a vendor at the Hudson Valley Wine and Food Festival. Well, I wasn't only a vendor, I was the artist who designed the work featured on the festival poster, the Taster's Guide Program Booklet and the t-shirts. That was a nice feeling.

This year the festival was located to the Dutchess County Fairgrounds. The fairgrounds were established 160 years ago. There are stables and corrals, gazebos and vintage buildings. It's very sweet, a wonderful location ... and clean and plentiful bathroom facilities -- a major plus at a 'tasting' event.

I stayed in a very sweet little Inn in Red Hook, NY. There are little cottages that used to be stables (or at least they look that way). My room has lace curtains on the windows and a quilt on the bed. Also, a small refrigerator and a little tv with cable! Across the winding road amid the farm houses and orchards is a small gas station, a deli that serves hot breakfast and a beer distributor. Now is that heaven or what?

I dined in great restaurants and toured the mansions along Rt. 9 - the Vanderbuilt Mansion, the Suckley Mansion (did found letters suggest a Victorian romance with Daisy Suckley and FDR ?), the Mills Mansion and the FDR home, rose gardens and final resting place.

I'm happy to say that I will be designing next year's poster for the festival as well! So, naturally, I have all of these creative images swimming through my thoughts.

But mostly, while away, I thought of my Mom. It was the first festival that I couldn't call her and tell her all about it. It was very bitter sweet for me. There were moments that I thought I'd just about go crazy with grief .... and today, on September 11th, my parents would have been married 59 years.

Of course, today is a day where so many people are missing their loved ones.

Letters: I lived in Cape May, NJ for six years -- from 1979 'til moving day on November 25th, 1985. In those six years, my Mother mailed me hundreds of letters. Each hand written, several pages ... or typed on our old Royal typewriter. I saved them all. Every once in a while, I'll get cozy in a chair, reach in my large leather satchel and pull one out to read. They transport me to a world of my Mother and Father building the gazebo or visiting with my relatives or tasting my Mother's wonderful chocolate cake. No doubt there are tears and I can hardly make my way through one, but to see her pretty handwriting and to hear her voice in the words written on the pages makes me feel that she is sitting next to me. I hope you know Mom how much these letters mean to me.

If you would like to purchase a 6" x 6" oil painting on stretched canvas that you see on this site, or commission a painting that is special to you, please email me.

These paintings are priced at $100.00 plus s/h.

info@annelizabethschlegel.com

www.annelizabethschlegel.com

Thank You!