We can feel it. The season is poised for takeoff.  We’ve got the holiday wind beneath our wings.

Start your non-stop shopping blitz by combining two of our favorite things; chocolate and pearls. A source sent us the e-mail from Walter Bauman Jewelers promising a terrific discount on a sweet surprise; a chocolate pearl necklace!  Plus, they are giving away a free pair of chocolate cultured freshwater pearl earrings with every jewelry purchase this weekend. See www.walterbauman.com for store hours and locations.  

If you are looking for handcrafted holiday decorations, the historic Van Vleck House & Gardens (www.vanvleck.org) in Montclair is the place to be. The annual Deck the Halls festival is this Thursday-Saturday, with local artists putting their wreaths, topiaries and other Christmas-y things up for silent auction (to benefit maintenance of Van Vleck’s gardens and its educational programs). Admission, $5.

You can also see vintage decorations in another historic home, the Physick Estate, which kicks off Cape May’s holiday season with “An Old-Fashioned Christmas: Holiday Traditions Through the Years.”  On Saturday at 7 pm. Santa will throw the switch to light the Christmas tree and the thousands of twinkling lights adorning the estate. More info at www.capemaymac.org.

A different version of a traditional holiday show will be performed by the Alborada dance company on Sunday. It’s called Sueño de una Niña—A Spanish Nutcracker, and brings to the stage Spanish Christmas traditions through dances that include Goyescas, Verdiales, and Flamenco.  Show starts at 3 pm at the Richard Marasco Performing Arts Center in Monroe Twp. Admission, $12–$14. www.alboradadance.org.

You can warm up your palette for Thanksgiving with a Taste of Rahway (www.rcpnj.org/) on Friday.  There are sample offerings from at least 30 food establishments from Union County, as well as wine, beer, and aperitif-tasting stations. Food and presentation will be evaluated by judges including chef David Drake. It’s 6:30–9:30 pm at Rahway Recreation Center, at West Milton Ave and City Hall Plaza (732-396-3545). $40 at the door.

There are even activities for those who think the week before Thanksgiving is too early to start Christmas. Saturday at 2 p.m, at the Tuckerton Historical Museum (www.tuckertonlehhs.org)   in Little Egg Harbor, they’ll celebrate Veterans Day by serving the kind of lunch Americas ate during World War I.

Finally, our friends at the Community Food Bank e-mailed to remind us the annual turkey drive is underway this weekend.  You can drop off frozen turkeys, and canned goods at locations throughout the state.  Go to www.njfoodbank.org for locations.

Take a deep breath. The season is just starting.

If you are of a certain age you may have fond memories of singing along to “Two Tickets to Paradise.” Do it again tomorrow, when Eddie Money rocks the House of  Blues in Atlantic City (www.hob.com). And if you are that certain age, you may have teens who know the band Dashboard Confessional (www.dashboardconfessional.com). Be nice and take them to their House of Blues concert Saturday. Shows go off at 8 p.m., $28.50-$32.50.

Down in Cape May the music this weekend is cool, hot, bebop, swing: it’s the 28th annual Cape May Jazz Festival, Friday through Sunday. Headliners include the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Pieces of a Dream, “the quintessential favorites” of the festival, organizers say. $25–$150, www.capemayjazz.com.

Classical music lovers have several options. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is at NJPAC playing Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Dvorák’s Violin Concerto, Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., $22-$80. Tonight, the NJSO is playing the same two pieces at the State Theater in New Brunswick—it’s the climax of Rhapsody in Brew, which starts with a happy hour and complimentary hors d’oeuvres for young professionals at Harvest Moon Brewery, down the block from the theater. More info and tickets ($25) at www.njsymphony.org.

There’s also the Manhattan Brass Quintet playing music from the 1600’s through today at the Shakespeare Theatre’s Main Stage on the campus of Drew University, Saturday, 11 a.m. The concert features a demonstration of brass instruments, including bugle, piccolo and horn. $5-$12, www.ShakespeareNJ.org.

Opera lovers can listen big, or listen small. Big is Saturday evening at 8, when NJPAC hosts a production of  Puccini’s Tosca by Teatro Liricio d’ Europa, one of Europe’s most celebrated touring opera companies. $23-$89, www.njpac.org.

Small is Sunday 2 p.m., when Rutgers’ Zimmerli Museum (www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu) in New Brunswick opens its Opera Master Classes to audiences, featuring performers from the New Jersey Opera Theater working with young artists. $3.00 for adults, free for Rutgers students and kids.

And if you love music from the Portuguese-speaking world—or just want to learn about it—performers from both sides of the Atlantic are around this weekend. The Brasil Guitar Duo (www.concertartists.org/brasil_bio.htm) melds classical guitar techniques with traditional Brazilian music at the Museum of Early Trades & Crafts (www.metc.org) in Madison, Friday at 8 p.m., $5-$12.

Or bring a box of tissues to hear Cristina Branco (www.cristinabranco.com) sing melancholy, mournful Portuguese fados. It’s Friday, 7:30 p.m., at Kean University’s Wilkins Theatre—sad songs to start a happy weekend.

There’s the new season at NJPAC, there’s Rutgers and NJIT and Essex County College making their campuses more inviting (alas, poor UMDNJ can’t get out of its own way), there’s still those Ironbound Iberians packing them in, there’s last week’s grand opening of the Pru Center….

Is Newark officially cool yet?

At least, look up and see the cool art deco buildings downtown. The New Jersey Historical Society is sponsoring “Art Deco Confidential: A Narrated Architectural Walking Tour of Newark,”  led by architectural historian Glen Leiner. It’s Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Cost is $49 and includes a catered lunch from landmark Hobby’s Deli, access to The New Jersey Historical Society’s exhibits and a guided tour of the Newark Museum’s Modernist collections. Call (973) 596-8500 ext. 234 to make reservations or hit www.jerseyhistory.org.

And now for something completely different: Back in the early 1970s, deep in the Piney woods of Waretown, local fiddlers and banjo pickers would head to Joe and George Albert’s deer cabin for a Saturday night hoedown. It was the birth of what became the Pinelands Cultural Society, which this Saturday is sponsoring the Legend of the Jersey Devil Show at Albert Music Hall (www.alberthall.org), a venue that traces its Piney heritage to the old deer cabin.  Showtime is 7:30 p.m., adults $5 children $1. Try the website or (609) 971-1593 for tickets and more info.

You got to love our state. You can go from thoroughly urban to completely rural. And where else do people “go down the Shore”?  Go and see why some love it in autumn. Or, if you need entertainment by the sea, you can hear “Roxanne ” and “Don’t Stand So Close” at the 30th-anniversary reunion tour of the Police. Concert is Saturday at 8 p.m. $50–$350 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. (800) 736-1420 or www.thepolice.com.

Though we have urban and rural,  Enn Jay is mostly suburban. Sometimes, you can even find high culture in our ‘burbs. Like the performance of Carl Orff’s stirring choral work Carmina Burana by Morris County’s Masterwork Chorus (www.masterwork.org), Saturday at 8 p.m. at Drew University.  Concert also includes works by Bruckner, Stravinsky and Bartok. $25-$40.

Is New Jersey officially cool yet?  Click on the link below to Write the Editor, and let us know what you think of our Enn Jay.

The big Stuff-To-Do-This-Weekend news is the grand opening of the Prudential Center (www.prucenter.com) in Newark, with Enn-Jay’s own Bon Jovi. His ten-night stand runs tonight through Nov. 10. Schedule and ticket sales: www.islandrecords.com/bonjovi. 

Of course, it’s also the weekend before Halloween. We found activities North, Central, South and Shore.

In Morris County, historic 19th century Cooper Mill in Chester gets decorated for Halloween to welcome kids, who can listen to ghost stories and go on a scavenger hunt; Saturday, 1-3:30 p.m. Two hours later in Chatham, creep along the darkening trails of the Great Swamp in the company of spooky storytellers. www.morrisparks.net/halloween.asp.

In Princeton, scare’ums for grown-ups: the David Sarnoff Library (www.davidsarnoff.org),  which documents the history of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), is staging a reenactment of War of the Worlds, Orson Well’s radio program of Oct. 27, 1938 that scared America into thinking Martians had landed at Grover’s Mill, in West Windsor. Performances Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.

In South Jersey, trick-or-treaters can hear goblin tales in the scary witch’s kitchen at the Discovery Museum in Cherry Hill (www.discoverymuseum.com), which closes at 5 p.m. and reopens at 6:30 for the festivities.

And down the Shore, the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (www.capemaymac.org) is sponsoring rides through Cape May’s Victorian streets “with a guide who will relate the paranormal findings of Ghost Writer Craig McManus at various properties along the way.” Trolley leaves in the evenings: Friday at 8:45, Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 7.  $10 for adults, $5 for children,  (800) 275-4278 for reservations.

Ghosts are not the only things you may see flying around the Cape this weekend. It’s the peak of fall migration, time for the New Jersey Audubon Society’s (www.njaudubon.org) annual Autumn Weekend Bird Show. It’s three days of field trips, indoor workshops, nature exhibits with live birds of prey, and wildlife artists selling their work at Convention Hall. www.birdcapemay.org.

This weekend we also want to see one of the art world’s legendary photographs, Ansel Adams’ 1941 shot of an old Spanish village in New Mexico, Moonrise, Hernández. Four distinct prints (made in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) will be on exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum (www.princetonartmuseum.org) starting Friday and until January 13.

And if you want to feel good while doing good, go on the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Ocean City, on Sunday, opening ceremonies at 9 a.m. Check makingstrides.acsevents.org or call (908) 629-0386 x203.  

Get out and enjoy—rock the Pru, or go ghost busting.  You’ll feel the spirits!