Author Archives: Dianne

About Dianne

Domestic goddess, wife, mom, gardener, paper and collage artist, geocacher, local traveler, cross stitcher, baker, crafter, Facebooker, blogger, decorator and photographer.

Sep12

I think I got a job!

Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2012 by Dianne

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Really! The guy emailed me and said to meet him in front of Wally World with copies of certain documents. Sight unseen too! It’s a magazine merchandiser for the above store and a few other local ones. A friend said she did a job like this and she loved it. So I do 5-8 hours and don’t have to think about it until the next week. On other days I can do online sales and art projects. I would like to do some greeting cards with a local theme….thinking mushrooms.

So here’s what happened, Brian got a call from the district manager (or something like that) for the job near Lancaster. He said he’d think about it. I then went on the website and they needed someone for the stores close by. I filled out the application and that same evening the gentleman got back to me! I can’t beat twice a week.

I am glad I got in shape a bit this summer from our hikes. I will probably do a bit of lifting, but if I worked in a daycare, I would be lifting kiddos 25 pounds or more.

I’ll keep you posted!

Sep11

Lovely Oakbourne Mansion and park

Posted on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 by Dianne

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There is a little gem of a park on the property of Oakbourne Mansion in West Chester, Pa. I’ve been to the glorious mansion a few times for a craft sale. It was nice to walk through the big rooms and check out the crafts.

We came to find a cache in this whimsical ‘water tower’. The cache was on the outside, but I really wanted to see this amazing structure.

This was near the back here…Brian spotted it first. His only find of the day. I found the rest-hee hee! They say that bats live up in the eves here. We didn’t see them or their ‘guano’.

Then we walked down a path to find one near a pond. We happen to meet a lady coming out of the woods from a hike and she pointed us to which we thought was the right direction. Well if we had gone straight down a road, we would have avoided a root covered trail. We got some exercise and when I see beautiful natural spots like this:

I am in awe of how pretty it is!

There were suppose to be turtles around, but we didn’t see any. : (

The cache was behind the pond. We went down the wrong path at first. I am so going to write stuff down after I read the posts. We did have to bushwhack a bit and I spotted the cache almost out in the open. It didn’t have much in it, so I added a nano travel coin and swag.

So we went after cache three in this location and it was opposite of where we had just been. We could have driven around to a different entrance, but walked down another road. I am pretty sure we walked by a half way house. There were some guys there with shaved heads standing around outside, just hanging around. I was a little nervous. There we were at that pretty place and then come across this group. They didn’t say anything…right away. We heard one say ‘walkin’ in the woods’. So we looked around a basketball court area and noticed an old stone wall. The cache was a ‘pole’ and we didn’t see any pole except for the basketball hoop. Brian saw a path and we went down it. Then we saw a pole which happened to be the ‘the pole’. I saw some wood piled up around the bottom of it-yep, that’s a sure sign it’s hiding a cache. There was a little bison tube hanging there! I didn’t take a photo of it as my battery was going.

We walked by ‘those guys’ again and headed to a cache near where my late uncle lived. It was placed by a big new electronic billboard. I got out and looked first, but there was a fence up with narrow planks and I couldn’t see on the other side of it too well. There was a long silver nail hammered near one fence post and I swore that was where the cache was suppose to be-think it was a decoy! When I got home I saw where people were dodging sprinklers, so it must have been on the other side of the fence!

We were heading home thinking Sean needed me to make dinner, but he was going to the town where his school is to meet up with his girlfriend. So I said I wanted to see this:

I needed to frolic in them!

I saw a local artist on Facebook who had a photo of himself painting these. Spectacular!

Since we were in that area, I saw a cache that looked fun and cute. We drove a few miles and we found it quickly. I like creative caches!

The cache was the egg! Ha ha!

Traveling down the road we did a cemetery cache that’s been on my list for a while. Gee cache owner, thanks for putting that one way on the other side-near the road. It was neat to read the different stones, some very old.

Look at this marker! I was in the car and saw this and jumped out to get a shot of it!

Actress Linda Darnell is in this cemetery. She passed away in 1965, being a fire victim.

We went and grabbed a roast beef sub and headed to ‘just one more’ even though it was 7 pm.

Thanks to the previous logs, I knew the bees were gone from a cache, but it took 3 lamp post skirts before we found the pill bottle cache.

The night wasn’t over though. I had a cache to hide. I went down near where we go to the doctor and dentist as I saw a great area to find one. We get there and a guy was snoozing in his car. My GPS wasn’t coming up, so we drove around to an upper parking lot. We went down to the first lot and the guy had left. I guess we scared him! I went for a guardrail instead of the lamp skirt. I came home and put up the cache for review. Within a few hours it was up and someone had found it already!

So we surely had a fun afternoon finding 6 out of 7 caches!

Brian is still learning at his job. He had someone call about stocking stores with magazines. He said he’d think about it, but I went online and applied right afterwards. Why not? A pal said she did it before and enjoyed it.

Such a sad day of remembrance for our nation. It’s hard to believe that 11 years ago, our lives were changed forever. Seeing the memorial back in February made the events of that day real and surreal.

Sep8

Photo Hunt-Stuck

Posted on Saturday, September 8, 2012 by Dianne

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Part of my Aurora Borealis pin collection, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

This is some of my collection of vintage pins with aurora borealis stones-‘stuck’ in a pin cushion/Christmas ornament.

Sep8

27th year of the Mushroom Festival

Posted on Saturday, September 8, 2012 by Dianne

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Brian and I headed up to the next town where the mushroom festival was in full swing. It was a bit warm, but a breeze was blowing once in a while. This festival grows every year! There were rides for the kids, more than last year and lots of vendors. Not an exciting shot, but so hard to take photos

It was up and down the main drag-that walk is getting longer, but I didn’t mind it as much this year!

Almost every restaurant that lines the town on both sides was represented . Absent again was Longwood Gardens who has the best mushroom soup, hands down. I did purchase soup from another place and it wasn’t as thick and rich as Longwood’s is. We bought this sampling of food-not that cheap. Almost $33 for this:

Two cups of mushroom soup, two beef portabella burgers, mushroom/asparagus risotto (with very little asparagus) and stuffed grape leaves. Ouch right? I wanted one more thing, but we ran out of cash. The food was good, but not wonderful. I want to make that risotto and I will load mine up with mushrooms and asparagus.

Outside the Kennett Inn, Chef Antonia Lafoso was signing her cookbook. She was on ‘Top Chef’ about 4 yrs ago. We didn’t go to talk to her as I wasn’t interested in her cookbook ‘Busy Mom’s Cookbook’. If you remember when we saw Maria Muldaur, I do not care much for ‘celebs’ sitting or standing behind tables. A few years ago at the festival, Food Network star Sunni Anderson was so sweet and put her arm around me for a photo. Standing up greeting people. That says a lot to me.

It’s an event we like to attend, a chance to sample food and maybe see someone interesting.

A few hours later, we had heavy rain, so it was a good thing we went when we did! I may go up again with Sean in the morning. He’s not much on moving fast on days he has to work though.

This evening I worked on some Artist Trading Cards! It’s been a few months and it felt good to be using my papers again.

Sep8

It’s always 2 out of 3

Posted on Saturday, September 8, 2012 by Dianne

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It’s been kind of a slllllooooowwww week here. When there has been a whirlwind of activity and then you are grounded, days creep by. I went to the doctor, she prescribed very pricey gel rub for my aches and pains. Did she not hear I need to get generic stuff? I got a little discount because of the Key Ring Phone app, but not as much. And my blood pressure reading, the first time they took it was 132/82! That’s the lowest it’s been for a doctor visit in 2 years! I still need to try and lose weight, which has been hard for me, but maybe I have more muscle than fat? My weight varies 2-3 pounds all the time and of course it was higher at the doctor’s visit. The doctor is probably in her mid 30s and was wearing a peasant dress with the tube top under her lab coat. At least she is a relaxed doctor.

It’s been wet too, we aren’t use to wet lately and so I sorted out piles and piles of papers from Brian’s old job which he should have tossed months ago. Speaking of Bri, he’s getting use to his job as a cashier. It’s just part-time and he may have to look for another part-time job in a few months times. The manager said they only hire p-t. It’s something and it’s experience.

My PT Cruiser is in the shop. It needs a few things repaired: rotors, brake pads, transmission cooler hoses and a tire-really all 4 before the winter, but we will go to Wally World for 3 of them. An unexpected surprise. I don’t know why my rotors rusted out like they did. We don’t have a garage, so that didn’t help matters.

Today Brian finally cut the grass after 2 weeks and late in the afternoon (a little too late) we ran out to do a few caches and grab a pizza dinner.

The first place we stopped was a little town with a park. From what I read it was in the gazebo…we went right to it…and I ‘thought’ Brian checked around the ceiling ledge well and he said he didn’t see anything. So we walked around the park thinking it was a bigger box….nothing. We went and sat in the gazebo and I remembered the hint was octagon, so he started looking again and ran across a Altoids box painted white to blend in with the gazebo! What a relief for him to find it! He needs to use more stealth at times. I mean with that phone booth cache, the GPS was awful, but I went back in the booth, saw the chain hanging off a raised spot (probably where the phone book was) and felt around for it (I am scared of bees and keep an eye out for any flying about) and there was a key box painted red to match the booth! (I forget if I shared the photo!)

This had logs dated back to 2008. I didn’t bring my swag and didn’t take anything.

Next we went to one called ’70 Windows’ which was placed less than 2 weeks ago. There is two levels of stores in a ‘u’ shape. The hint was ‘neenah’ which means ‘little’ (or micro, right?) There was a Talbot’s Petite store there and 3 foot lights with shades running along the back of the sidewalk and their shades were metal. However my GPS was bouncy. We got to ’17’ feet and it went up to ’54’ feet, that kind of thing. The other cachers left good hints. We even thought it was on the second floor and there wasn’t anyplace good to put it. But, all was not lost, we ate some awesome pizza at ‘Pizza by Elizabeth’. The menu has the pizzas named after last names of famous Elizabeths-Taylor, Montgomery. I got an artichoke and spinach in fontina with crispy fried onion on top…with wheat crust. I had a spring mix salad with Vinaigrette-just delicious, even the toffee candy the sweet waiter gave us at the end of the meal. Brian had a BBQ chicken pizza named ‘Shue’ for the actress. Mine was ‘Jackson’…Betty, Beth? I don’t know.

We saved some for Sean and headed to a cache in church parking lot. It was way back off the main road and a lovely area. I want to go back and take photos.

This is called Christ Church. Near Wilmington and Greenville, DE. Our Vice President Joe Biden lives around this general area some place. On the way to the church, we saw some huge homes. I did a Google search and his home is on a lake or pond that is more in the open.

So we had the entire parking lot to ourselves. Again bouncy GPS. We checked in the only lamp skirt that we came across that moved and saw a few bundles securely wrapped in plastic bags. Not sure what they were, but we didn’t even touch those as they had been there a while, were wet and guarded by spiders. After 10 minutes and going in a little wooded area where there was mulch, etc., I decided to check out an additional parking sign (think that’s what it said) and looked behind it! Voila! There was a silver bison secured with velcro. Sneaky! My phone camera died so Bri took a blurry photo. I just got that awesome shirt last night at Wally World-camo!

So that was my 2 out of 3 caching day. Up to 110!!!!

Sep5

Caching around DC

Posted on Wednesday, September 5, 2012 by Dianne

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Before we went the 10 miles or so to Washington, DC (on the 2nd) We went to find a cache in a neighborhood near National Harbor. You could tell it had been there many more years than 4 years like the town. I’m pretty sure it’s Oxion Hill, MD. We drove by a Cirque du Soleil tent. That would have been fascinating to see. Did I mention it was raining? So we pull up to the area and I see a fence and guardrail. Sometimes I get so excited to find the cache, I forget the hint and things I have read about it! Plus I am getting out of the car in the rain in a strange neighborhood. Brian and Sean stayed in the car. I looked along the fence and turned around-the GPS showed it was close to the road-come on mush brain-it’s the guardrail! And there it was! I brought it back in the car and dumped it out and stuck a travel bug in it, then squeezed everything back in.

Didn’t I get a tick on me from this 5 minute caching! All the times I’m in the woods and I find a tick on me in a neighborhood!

I was checking out the phone for another cache and brain fog set in again! Brian had said he needed gas and drove by a nice gas station looking for another cache. We turned around as we thought we missed the road and as we approached the station again, the numbers went down! He had decided to skip the gas and it was there at that station-rats.

We got to DC in about 20 minutes and the hardest part was finding a place to park, next to the crazy streets there. We had to get ourselves around to the back of Union Station and then we did park on the roof of the garage. We looked around the station a little and the guys got coffee. We headed out to look for the caches (marble brain #3 episode-2 hours sleep just doesn’t cut it for me).

So we walk toward the Capitol. It is quite a sight. Oh, I’ve seen it in 5th grade (been in it also) and seen it many other times, but to see it from other angles is amazing.

Getting close to the Capitol

So here it is in all it’s historic majesty!

The only problem-I forgot it was a ‘virtual’ cache until we looked around a park nearby-that was a waste of time because are they going to let you put a box next to a historic place like this-really? Anyway, when I figured it out, I was suppose to take a photo of the other side, where the Presidents take the oath of office! Grrrr-well, I had seen that area too, and I am sure a kid in my 5th grade class fell down in that general area (I’m talking 1970) and Cam broke his leg! It may have been Arlington, but it was in DC. I told the C.O. what happened on geocaching.com and he didn’t say anything.

The next was also a virtual and within 10 minutes I remembered something about turtle eyes in the questions. This was across the way from the Capitol at the Library of Congress. Another issue was I had forgotten my geocaching bag with the GPS device and my phone’s battery was going. It was making the screen darken up. So I looked at the description again and answered the questions. The turtles were in a fountain near the sidewalk. The ‘authors’ were along the top of the building show below. That was all we did as we were tired and had a 6 block walk back to the car.

We grabbed some pizza and headed home. Well we started to head home and I mentioned that DC Cupcakes was in Georgetown. We tried to find that for almost an hour-Sean’s GPS took us to the incorrect end of ‘M’ St. When we located it, it was 6:30 and it was hopping in that town with limited parking with no place to park in the area of the shop. But the shop was going to close at 7:00 and there was a line going out the door! For cupcakes! I guess because they have a tv show and all. I am going to make my own cupcakes for the fellas after all that running around. And we want to go back to Georgetown-it looks like a nice place, similar to New Hope in PA.

So again we are on the road to home-we are going through downpours every 5 miles or so. I then mention a easy virtual cache in Baltimore-you just get info from a memorial. We get off the exit and run into traffic and roads that we had needed to take being closed. No baseball game, but Sean remembered there was a Nascar show there and they were letting out! We never got near the cache and ended up going through an ‘iffy’ part of town. We were all getting tired of city driving. Did I tell you how awful it is to drive in DC? This was pretty bad too.

I’m glad we stopped, but I would have liked to see the President exhibit at the Madame Tussand Museum, which I didn’t remember about until we got home. Not a good day for remembering anything! I truly do research my cache hunting well and things go smoothly-most times. Big city caching is harder! There aren’t a ton of box caches, but there are a ton of virtual ones to be found-in the future.

Union Station

Seen anything familiar from the roof of the garage?

Sep4

First some Potomac/DC greenery

Posted on Tuesday, September 4, 2012 by Dianne

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Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center-National Harbor, MD

Inside the hotel, an interesting wall hanging

A park near the Capitol with a very overgrown bush. Looks like it has multi-beards.

Outside the Library of Congress

A park on the way back to Union Station

Butterfly weed

Very tame squirrel! There were two of them right outside an office building, so they probably got fed all the time.

Sep3

Potomac and DC area exploring-pt 1

Posted on Monday, September 3, 2012 by Dianne

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The three of us went down to National Harbor, MD on Saturday the 1st for Abbey Road on the River, the musical tribute to the Beatles. We went last year and stayed at the Gaylord and had a fun time. I changed the room this year to the atrium area so we wouldn’t have as far to walk. That helped, as did bringing foods for a few meals, but that’s about it. It was very humid and just standing in the sun for a few minutes was miserable. We purchased ‘general admission’ tickets and not ‘preferred seating’. Even though it was suppose to be half price for two days, it was still $70 and we had a hard time just standing and finding a place to stand. Last year they had seats open and we usually got to sit down, almost at every venue. Many times this year, there were empty seats for the P.A. and people standing elbow to elbow everywhere even up and down the walkways for G.A.. To me that isn’t too safe and not very organized. Saturday night we sat in a little area for hotel guests near the pool with tables-we could barely see the singers, but we could hear them fine. That isn’t right.

We took a few shots of the bands-I have to ID them by looking at the schedule later, but I think we saw maybe 4-5 bands and last year twice that many.

See all the empty seats for the preferred seats? Behind this fence it was jammed.

That evening we did have a nice dinner at McCormick and Schmicks Seafood right on the waterfront. Sean and I had their McCormick Seafood trio of salmon with grilled shrimp and stuffed shrimp with green beans (under cooked-ugh) and cheesy kind of potatoes.

Brian had Mahi Mahi with a corn bisque. We also got a huge, delectable piece of carrot cake to share.

We took a little walk to find a cache. It was about 1/4 mile away and we had to cross over 4 roads, two which had a lot of traffic on them. It was near an interesting rock formation:

This is my early 1970s look.

The hint for the cache made it a little too easy to find. I ‘always’ look at the hint since I have gone to the trouble to go and look for the cache in the first place. It was down from this area behind a rock. Not in good shape. I forgot to bring my bag with my geocaching stuff, so I had no travel bug or swag to drop (really didn’t want to take it to the restaurant). The pen was between another rock which I didn’t see right away, so I used a crayon from the swag-lol.

So we walked on back up through the town to listen to more music and I started to have a coughing attack. It happened when we drove into the place a few hours earlier. I think my sinuses decided to act up. I was okay after I got into the hotel’s air to revive. I am spoiled by a/c. So we ventured out to ‘good ol’ general admission and right smack in the middle were 4 hotel chairs-with papers on them. I had seen them earlier with papers on them. I watched those chairs for 10-15 minutes and then decided to go sit down. You don’t save hotel chairs in this area. I was the only brave person to do so and another 10-15 minutes went by and sure enough a woman came back and said they were their chairs because they put papers on them. I said you don’t save chairs in this area and I needed to sit for a few minutes. She had a chair next to Brian and her hubby was very nice and said to stay. I said we will leave in a few songs anyway which we did. (We did see her later at another concert and she decided to sit in the 1st or 2nd row-now that’s not a good idea in a closed room with big booming speakers).

Look at the nice view they were stealing from other people. If they wanted preferred seats, they should have paid for them.

On the pier

It felt like about 94-that fan with the mist was worth every penny I paid. I seemed to be the only person with one-crazy!

So after the above fiasco (this was at the night show) Sean took a water taxi over to Alexandria like he did last year. Brian and I walked along the river and still heard the band and saw them from the back. And then…

the lightning show began….

in all my years I have never seen lightning like that-truly spectacular and scary at the same time! We decided to go in as the rain began and they cancelled the show! Inside everyone was going upstairs, so we did also. They did the firework show anyway which was pretty awesome.

‘Fire and Rain’

Not a fun way really to watch fireworks

We sat and waited for an indoor concert and listened to a few songs, but we had Sean on our mind as the rain was coming down in buckets and the power had gone out in the bar he was in. He asked the bartender how often that happens and he said about once a year! The roads in those old towns tend to flood out and Sean had to wait a bit to come back on the water taxi. We could have driven over to get him, but thank goodness that worked out well.

DC tomorrow!

Aug29

Cache #4

Posted on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 by Dianne

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Kennett Square borough building, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I finally got permission to place my cache up in historic Kennett Square, PA.! I am pretty sure it’s the first cache in downtown Kennett which is pretty neat in my opinion. It’s been ready to be hidden for about 3 weeks and the assistant borough lady got back to me yesterday. I was not allowed to place it behind the building as there is a strange declining walkway to the basement. Not for handicapped people. Perhaps the previous owner used it for his plumbing supplies.
I had a little trouble with the coordinates as the cache is so near a building. I had to come home and tweak it on Google by plugging in my cords and changing a few of the numbers I had scribbled out which turned out closer than what I ended up with.
This is a good tie-in with the upcoming Mushroom Festival festival on the 8th and 9th too. That’s if geocachers like to go to mushroom festivals. : ) Speaking of geocachers, a local group is having a picnic at the end of next month and we may attend to get to know more people who enjoy this hobby.
Brian was gone all day to his training session. He didn’t take a break for 5 hours-yikes! He says there is a lot to know, but he’ll get use to it. And it’s so close to home too.

PS-I took this photo about 6 years ago and the building and landscaping are much nicer now.

Aug28

I’m Being Followed by a Moonflower…

Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 by Dianne

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I love that this vine shows me about five delightful and fragrant flowers a night (and a bit in the light) for the past few weeks. All of this beauty from about 3-4 seeds planted right near the evergreen tree.