Allaire

Doors and Windows of Allaire

Allaire Village closed sign
We visited Allaire State Park back in early November. Here are some of the doors and windows of that pretty park. The above building in the historical village was closed, but many were open.

allaire_bakery
Strictly speaking, this is not a door or a window, but it is OPEN – so it’s like a gateway to the bakery. I enhanced the saturation of the colors in Photoshop.

allaire_door
We were able to visit the original home of the Allaire family. As I said on a previous post, we were not allowed to photograph inside, but here’s the doorway to that interesting home. It was said to still be inhabited by a descendant of the original Allaire founder in the 1950’s, and that 1950’s owner kept a horse in his kitchen. Eccentric.

This was a vertical photo, so I increased the canvas size to make it horizontal, and then I used the clone stamp tool and the blur tool to get the main part of the photo to extend a bit into the side areas.

allaire_windows
What is that white board that looks like a door but is curiously up too high to be a door? Where there once steps there? I didn’t notice this until today, when I was looking through these photos. Does that happen to you; do you find mysteries in your photos that you didn’t recognize when you were on the scene?

allaire_train_window
These are windows in the train of the Pine Creek Railroad, which is next to the Historical Village. The train ride just goes around in circles, but we did get to see some deer as we circled about.

For more windows and doors, visit Window Views (hosted by Mary the Teach):
window_views

Red Train of Allaire

allaire train posterized
We will really have to go somewhere else in New Jersey soon, because I keep showing you images from our wonderful trip to Allaire State Park (if you click on that link, you’ll see all my posts on Allaire). There is a fun train ride called the Pine Creek Railroad at Allaire, and I had fun using the Live Trace tool in Illustrator to come up with the above image. I used Photoshop to get the train conductor’s face to look not posterized, by putting the photo under the Live Trace image and erasing the Live Trace layer on his face.

allaire_train_foliage
Another version: this one shows more color and detail, especially of the foliage behind the train.

allaire_caboose
And here’s the caboose at the train’s end, turning the corner.

Review with Carpenter Sign

Carpenter Shop Sign against Fall Foliage, Allaire Historical Village
Carpenter Shop Sign against Fall Foliage, Allaire Historical Village

On My Blog

Farmers Market, Highland Park, New Jersey Mushroom Barley Soup allaire_blue
Woodworking Shop in Allaire Historic Village, New Jersey animo Yellow and Orange Maple Leaves in Edison, New Jersey

Learn History of Zionism

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

I am planning to do another one of those “What Do You See” posts this weekend. And I may participate in the Weekend Reflections meme.

Allaire Workshop in Sepia

Woodworking Shop in Allaire Historic Village, New Jersey
Woodworking Shop in Allaire Historic Village, New Jersey

The sign at bottom reads:
“Ten Digits When We Start Ten Digits When We Depart”

For more sepia scenes, visit:
sepiascenes

Should Women Vote?

Allaire State Park - Re-enactment of vote of 1836
Allaire State Park - Re-enactment of vote of 1836

Yesterday we had the fun of visiting Allaire State Park in Farmingdale, New Jersey, including the historic village and the train ride. The historic village featured Election Day 1836 – should women get the vote? The man without a hat was arguing with the women suffragettes to his right that that was a ridiculous notion.

allaire_blue
The actors played their roles with great oomph and and in an impromptu fashion – they talked directly to the audience (there was no stage, and we were part of the show). The boy on the right was handing out blue ballots for his party, and he handed them only to the men in our party (my husband and a friend), but not to the women. I joked that I could influence my husband’s vote by telling him for whom to vote. My daughter and her friend, however, wanted the pink ballot party to win, no matter what the agenda, so they kept sneaking into the building to cast ballots for the pink party. They succeeded once or twice, but they also got caught and got a good “scolding” – all in good fun.

allaire_ghoul
I wasn’t allowed to photograph the insides of the Allaire Village buildings – too bad, there was a lot of good history. We took the short train ride near the village at the end of our day. I’ll post the train another day, but here’s a great ghoulish guy at the train stop. He’s just there around Halloween time, have no fear.

For more photos with a little red or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
RubySlippers_morris