MOUNT DESERT (AP) – Martha Stewart is celebrating the end of house arrest by spending the Labor Day weekend at her home in Maine.

After an eventful year marked with a prison stay and house arrest, the domestic diva was seen boarding a plane on Thursday to travel north along with hordes of others spending the weekend in Maine, the Bangor Daily News said.

Jim Willis, chief of the Mount Desert Police Department, confirmed that some of his officers have been hired to provide guard duty for Stewart.

Willis declined to say how many officers would be providing the security detail or how long it would last. Each officer will be paid $50 per hour to keep an eye on Stewart as she relaxes in Skylands, the Seal Harbor estate that she bought in 1997.

A 12-bedroom, pink-granite summer “cottage,” Skylands was built by Edsel Ford in 1925.

Stewart received permission to fly to Maine after her electronic bracelet was removed early Thursday, ending more than five months of home confinement – including a three-week extension for violating unspecified probation rules.

She left for the Westchester County Airport just before 8 a.m., avoiding an encampment of reporters and flew to Maine.

Stewart, 64, was sentenced last year to five months behind bars and the same length of time under house arrest after she was convicted of lying to authorities about her 2001 sale of about 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems Inc. stock.

She will be on probation for a year and a half, meaning among other things that she is not allowed to get drunk, own a gun or leave the federal court district without permission. She must meet with her probation officer and submit monthly reports on her activities.

Willis said there’s nothing unusual about being asked to provide security. “That’s something we do quite routinely throughout the summer months for quite a few people.”

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