Island Life

I returned home from three days on Nantucket this afternoon and I'm already missing it. The weather was perfect, the island was in full bloom (we actually saw people "stop and smell the roses")
and the company; just a pleasure. 

Our first night on the island, we celebrated my friend's birthday at Cliffside Beach. 

The sunset was spectacular.

The following morning we awoke in our favorite inn to the aroma of fresh baked

 banana muffins with a brown sugar glaze. Heaven!

Our days were spent mostly lounging on Cisco and Miacomet Beach. 

Here is the view from my beach chair.

We returned back to the room just in time for afternoon tea. I don't drink tea but the homemade cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting were so delicious and I don't even like coconut!

After dinner we ambled around the pretty Nantucket town and ended every night with ice cream from The Juice Bar! THE BEST ice cream in the world!  (seriously)

No pictures of it though, I ate it too fast. :)

I do have a cute pic of my friends from the trip though. Could they look any happier?

And here is my blog post from last year's trip, if you need a little more Nantucket!

http://katherinehooperphotography.blogspot.com/2013/08/nantucket.html

Playing In The Clouds

There were some pretty cool cloud formations today at Compo.

Then I took away the color...

and started playing with filters...

and then went back to normal

More Than A Day To BBQ

Reposting a blog entry from Memorial Day 2010 in Westport. 

http://katherinehooperphotography.blogspot.com/2012/05/memorial-day.html

I can't bare to imagine how many more young men and women have been killed since this post.

Chasing Rainbows

Preparing for an early night in, I showered and put on my pj's at 7:00pm. As I'm about to turn on Netflix, my son yells upstairs that the rain has stopped and he thinks there may be a rainbow outside. So we jump in the car while I'm still in my pj's and head to the beach, camera in tow.

The first pic down the block from my house

Driving by the entrance to the Merritt Parkway

Overlooking the Saugatuck River and the town of Westport, outside Bartaco

Behind The Westport Arts Center, over the new Levitt Pavilion

Compo Beach

A few minutes later at Compo

No more rainbows today

Mother's Day 2014

Three weeks ago, 276 girls awoke to a nightmare. On the night of April 14th a gang of heavily armed militants attacked their dormitory at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, a town in Nigeria's Borno state. They shot the guards, loaded the girls into trucks and drove them away into the forest.- CNN

The world is horrified.

Mother's Day is a day of joy and flowers and time spent with loved ones. While we are all doing that here in America, this savagery is in the back of all mothers' minds. So instead of putting up images of beautiful moms today, I am going to share my pic, like the rest of the internet is doing, with the hashtag #bringbackourgirls because that's really the only gift we want for Mother's Day this year.

Tyler Hicks

Tyler Hicks is an award winning photojournalist for the New York Times (who grew up in Westport!) who just won the Pulitzer Prize for his images of the 2013 terrorist attack
at a mall in Nairobi. The pictures, like all his work, are stunning and emotional. 

In case you missed his interview on NPR the other day, here is a link.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2014/04/24/306437432/tyler-hicks-tells-the-story-behind-his-pulitzer-winning-nairobi-mall-photos

Back to Brooklyn

My dad and I took a little trip down memory lane last week. We drove around Brooklyn where my parents grew up, met, married and lived until moving out to the suburbs. A move I think my father still regrets.



This is the house my dad grew up in on East 24th and K. No car (you don't need a car in Brooklyn!), no TV until my grandfather finally gave in (my grandfather called it the idiot box) and a homemade boxing ring in the basement (a necessity for a house with 3 growing boys).

This is the street my mom grew up on, East 17th between Foster and Glenwood. A beautiful block. My father would pick my mother up here and she would get on the back of his motorcycle much to my grandparents chagrin.

Next stop was driving by my parents high school- Midwood High School. The New York Times said "Getting into Midwood HS is about as easy as getting into an Ivy League School". I'm not going to tell you what they thought of my dear ol' dad.

We drove through Sheepshead Bay next. Home of the famous Lundy's, the largest restaurant in the USA in its heyday. Sheepshead Bay also has a huge recreational fishing fleet, and is hometown to Larry David and Terry Gross of Fresh Air. It was too windy (for me) on the water to get out of the car 

so this is the only pic. ( I tried to make it look cold).

Brighton Beach. My father, starting around 10 yrs old, would take the train down here 

in the summer with his friends to spend his days at the beach.

The entrance to Coney Island. 

Imagine having this in your town as a kid? 

A giant amusement park right on the beach, complete with bumper cars, roller coaster, Nathan's hotdogs, The Parachute Jump and fireworks shot off every week in the summer.

The boardwalk at Coney Island

The Cyclone, the famous wooden roller coaster of Coney Island is a NYC landmark. It opened 

in 1927 and I still haven't been on it!

We stopped for pizza on the way home.

One oven, one guy making pizza, and believe me, he took his sweet time doing it.

My father joked that this guy had been waiting for his pizza since he was 16 yrs old.

We didn't make it into Bay Ridge but I love driving by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Westport Today

I had my camera with me while doing errands today. 

Here are some of the nice spots I drove by in my 'hood.

We are so lucky to have the playhouse in town. 

This church is on a narrow little lane in Westport. I love the bell in the steeple.

I pass this dilapidated old garage almost every day. It's awesome.

The water was sparkling so bright today on the river, you had to squint while looking at it.

My kids' elementary school. Beautiful building, wonderful memories.

I love driving by this house on my way to Saugatuck. It's on the main road but I love the color, the wrap around porch and it looks so great when they decorate it with American Flags for 4th of July.

Compo never gets old.