Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast - Brewster By The Sea Inn & Spa

I have moved most of the posts form this blog to our new cape cod bed and breakfast blog. 

We will be still using this blog for weddings, photography, and some of Byron' side pursuits. 

To launch into this, I am pointing out two of  the people I have followed on flickr. 

David Rockwell is a talented artist in New York with a real day job.  His work is really wonderful and and does
several types of media.  This link takes you to his sketches on flickr, but I encourage everyone to look at all of his work.  This picture is a watercolor of a sketch he did while on Cape Cod. 




I know nothing about "primer" , but would love to be able to do this type of work. The black and whites and "mood" pictures, if I could do them, would be totally consuming.

Bill Vaughan
"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."
Byron
"A realist gets up on New Year's day grateful for that opportunity, knowing that there is much to do"

The past few years we have worked hard to put meaningful thoughts together for New Year's resolutions. It truly is amazing what level of personal growth this small business has allowed us to reach for. So follow us over the fold for our 2010 New Year's Resolution and visit us at our Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast

And; our wish for you and yours is a safe and fulfilling 2010.


We would love to share our New Year's resolution as it was a major point of discussion at our family dinner on Christmas day. We were blessed this year to have everyone home with a fun new twist since two of our children have moved back with us for the winter, planning to relocate to the east. We could not be more delighted!

Donna,
I always love the end of a meal when everyone is so full and we just sit around the table talking. It's an extra special time for Byron and I since our kids are adults now and it's fun to have life discussions as a family. So this year one of the kids asked about everyones New Year's resolutions. I had been thinking about mine for weeks and was actually surprised at their reaction. For years, mine has always been the same.......to loose weight, get more exercise and to be healthy. I am proud to say that I finally have this one in order since I have been able in the last few years to finally balance my weight and actually have only one size of clothes in our closet. ( that actually was a must since as innkeepers we never have enough storage or private space) This year I wanted to have a new resolution and decided to add a concept that actually I had been aware of and discussing with my husband on a daily basis.....to be cognizant of the power of words in our daily communication. Being a woman of 50+ (and hopefully wiser) I have stopped to think about what I say in my communication with my Mom (who is a stern New England lady and given her health complications this year has been slightly less than cheerful , our guests (the importance of always talking in the positive), our children (they are adults now and it's usually best to just listen then to give advise) and lastly our spouses ( I still do not have that one figured out).

Our children's reaction to my new resolution was precious....they all said whohhh Mom ...."that is deep!. I couldn't quite decide if that was a compliment or they thought the whole thing was silly. As for me it feels right and I have decided to move forward with this idea for the year.

Byron,
As innkeepers, Donna and I continue to lovingly perfect that part of our nature that is gracious, giving, and hospitable. For this opportunity to touch people's lives we are sincerely grateful. My resolution last year was to focus on connecting with the past in meaningful ways, since my career had kept me on the move and I had left so many people and friends behind. I was able to jump onto the social networks such as Facebook, Linked In, and Classmates in order to connect with people from high school, through college and then onto various stages of my career. This was not in any way associated with the inn and inn keeping and that resolution worked out well and will continue. This year's resolution had its genesis in the photography I had been doing the last several years. I realized that my photographs are getting technically better and even once in a while are interesting in that they are not typical and have a uniqueness to them. This year's goal is to start learning how to see the world more through an artists eyes and I have several strategies for doing that; I want to explore and blog on the art galleries on Cape Cod, I want to do black and white photographs that have an expressionistic and / or surreal aspect to them that can tell a different story about Cape Cod,and finally I want to escape the corrosive nature of or current political environment by focusing on the beauty of nature here on Cape Cod. As with last year's resolution, this is meant to be a "forever" project.

April & Nathan
It was precious to move around the table and to hear everyone's resolutions for the year. Our children felt comfortable with setting meaningful thought. Our precious son Nathan who has been through some tough times in life has asked us for help in starting anew and has set a long term goal to acquire a medical degree. His actions, attitude are now congruent with his capabilities and this is exciting. Our daughter, April, just graduated from architectural school in May and left Houston with a contract to design a green environment for the architectural firm she worked for. Her goal is to get a new job in Boston and continue to pursue additional levels of LEED (green architecture) certification. Our comments about and to her are that her future is very green.

Everyone dreaming of Cape Cod thinks of magnificent beaches and picturesque lighthouses. Many of our Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast guests ask about the history and location of the lighthouses that grace the National Seashore and a short history is at this link.

Two recent pictures of the Cape Cod Highland Lighthouse in Truro and the Provincetown Wood End lighthouse are shown at the top of this post.




Cape Cod has had over twenty lighthouses operating along its shores over the past 200 years and today seven still operate and several other decommissioned lights stand along the coastline.

We recently had a darling young German couple stay with us and by the end of their week long stay they had decided that they wanted to get married on Cape Cod and envisioned their elopement in front of a lighthouse.We have many elopements at our Cape Cod bed and breakfast but this was the first request to have the ceremony near a lighthouse. They decided upon the Highland Light in North Truro We planned a picnic lunch complete with chocolate covered strawberries, champagne, french bread, cheeses and fruit. What a wonderful surprise when the custodian of the lighthouse offered the couple an inside peek and the photographer was able to get a great shot of the newly married couple atop the lighthouse.

During the 19th century heydey of lighthouses, keepers were needed to tend the kerosene in the lamps.After the Cape Cod Canal opened in 1914, ships traveling from Europe to Boston were able to bypass the Cape's outer shore. The number of shipwrecks declined dramatically and that coupled with 20 century technology made many light houses obsolete. By 1960s most of the remaining lighthouses were automated and no longer needed keepers.

Today, many of the lighthouses that remain are open during the summer for tourists to see. Each has it's own unique character and is well worth a visit:

Race Point Light House, Provincetown

Wood End Light, Provincetown

Long Point Light, Provincetown

Highland Light, North Truro

Nauset Light, Eastham

Three Sisters Light, Eastham

We love to visit the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham which is a great place to plan your adventures on Cape Cod

Chatham Light

Monomy Point Light, Chatham

Nobska Light, Woods Hole

We love to visit the Salt Pond Visitor Center which is a great place to plan your Cape Cod adventure. Happy exploring!

Donna and I really appreciate the diversity of our guests and we are always amazed at how well spoken they are. I still run to the dictionary and sometimes to the thesaurus after a morning conversation.

With Donna in Houston, I started looking at a few words; recalcitrant, curmudgeon, etc. that, in a strange way, might be a reflection of my missing her. At any rate I hope you enjoy using this online thesaurus tool


This should be a great way for kids to learn new words. Imagine this tool expanded so a student could use the words in the nodes in sentences, including verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.


type rest of post here!!

This year we were planning an adventuresome getaway to Costa Rica for our winter vacation. After much discussion and family issues, we felt obligated to change our plans and go to Cody Wyoming to visit my mother in-law who was just moved into a long term living facility. We decided to tweak our getaway and stay at a nice hotel.




Since we own a Cape Cod bed and breakfast we were able to do a trade with a lovely boutique hotel in Cody called the Chamberlin Inn. We not only had a fantastic stay but made new friends with the innkeepers, Ev and Susan. They have beautifully restored this property with intricate metal and brick on the exterior and tastefully decorated rooms inside.

We spent most of our time packing up the family home and visiting my mother in law, but on the last day we decided to take most of the day for ourselves and what a special afternoon we had. Upon our innkeepers suggestion we headed up to Shell, Wyoming where a recent archeological find included some dinosaur tracks. The weather was absolutely perfect with full sunshine and temperatures in the 60's. We did some hiking, had a picnic lunch, took some great pictures and had some great laughs on a nearby hill.Our day concluded with a relaxing dinner at Trapper Creek Mountain Lodge.



We drove back to our beautiful room in Cody knowing that this was an absolutely perfect vacation. We not only had a relaxing but busy stay in Cody, but we were able to spend some quality time with my mother-in-law, put a smile on her face each day, made some new friends and have fond memories of our afternoon in Shell, Wyoming.

Charlie Heller just put on a website internet marketing seminar here in Brewster at the Brewster Ladies Library. Although this was suppose to be for people just starting with internet marketing, I always find that it gives me more knowledge and more specifically that it gives me energy and motivation to do a little more for our Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast website marketing.

The biggest thing I learned (relearned) this time was to increase both the number and the quality of our inbound links. I will post code below that I would want people to use in putting a link to us on their Cape Cod Activities page or on their


The bit below is what I would like to offer as our link (with the picture from this blogpost) for links. Contact me for the HTML (use view source on your browser).

Brewster Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast/

Brewster By The Sea is an upscale Cape Cod Inn and Spa with beautiful walks to the beach through the Museum of Natural Histories’ nature trails and to Paine’s Creek Beach. It features an onsite spa, heated pool and outdoor Jacuzzi, elegant breakfasts and luxurious accommodations.

Most people visiting our Bed and Breakfast on Cape Cod notice upon their arrival a very distinctive US Flag with 44 stars. The significance of this is a huge surprise to our, mostly Northeastern, Bed and Breakfast guests. Very few know anyone from Wyoming and no one seems to know that Wyoming was first in the US and indeed the world to give women the right to vote. You may wish to check out this link on women's suffrage and Wyoming.



Donna and I are headed to Wyoming for two weeks in March to clean my mom's house out as she is no longer able to live alone. We really look forward to hiking, visiting the cabin in the mountains, seeing the Buffalo Bill Historical center and in particular the Whitney Gallery of Western Art.


The 44 Star Flag : This Flag became the Official United States Flag on July 4th, 1891. A star was added for the admission of
* (44th) Wyoming - July 10, 1890
This was the official flag for 5 years. The Presidents to serve under this flag were Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893), and Grover Cleveland (1893-1897).

It is always nice to get a 30 second overview of US and world history whenever I think of my home, the "wyoming territory" and for the 1890's the

United States History: The Gilded Age (1890)
and the brainy history version

It is harder to find the quick world history timeline overview and this is the best I found with just a quick search.