Electronic bugs be gone: Kykuit tour tickets are once again available online. The Rockefeller estate opens for the season on May 10 with a new, streamlined tour menu - Classic, Grand, Kids, Timesaver, and one the Kykuit gurus like to call "Selected Highlights." Pretty much everything up on that hill is a highlight, so I'm not sure how they select them. Good topic for a future entry. I'll track down the responsible party and find out.

In the meantime, you can read all about the various tours here. Slots for opening weekend, which coincides with Mother's Day, are already filling up, so if treating mom to a Kykuit jaunt is in your plans, you may want to solidify them now.

What's up there, you ask? Way too much to get into in one blog entry, but, for starters, a six-story stone mansion, formal gardens, classical art, modern art, and the valley's best views of the Hudson.

Historic Hudson Valley's kick-off event of the season, Hands-on Heritage Crafts at Van Cortlandt Manor , drew a big crowd April 5-6 looking to go to the work the old-fashioned way. And that they did. We had youngsters churning butter, breaking flax, even tin smithing! Adults got in on the acts, too, more images of that to follow.

That weekend's weather did a bit of a flip-flop. The forecast called for grey skies and general sadness on Saturday, with decent sun and warmth on Sunday. Ended up sorta the opposite. Oh well, either way it was a nice kick-off for the spring season. Were you at the event? Did you churn, smith, or sew anything? Let us know.