Author Archives: Dianne

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About Dianne

Domestic goddess, wife, mom, gardener, paper and collage artist, geocacher, local traveler, cross stitcher, baker, crafter, Facebooker, blogger, decorator and photographer.
Jun22

We’re back…700 miles later

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I will start now, but will finish it later as I still have to catch up on bills, clothes and cleaning. It was a nice trip! We got to see some little towns in Maryland and Virginia. We were going to Williamsburg on Wednesday, but there was an accident in the tunnel (or something) and we decided not to overheat the car or waste time. We went to Norfolk and looked around a bit and then headed back to the Virginia Aquarium. Virginia Beach is nice-very clean and it has a wide boardwalk. We had fun locating caches and my total is 13 now. Couldn’t find a few micro caches-tried for one in the dark, not a good idea. Also looked for one in 95 degree heat, not good either. The bigger caches were fun to locate.

Here’s one of my favorite beaches:

The beach at the Chincoteague wildlife refuge (park). It was like bath water. We didn’t spend too much time here as it was about 6 in the evening. We had just traveled all day from Virginia Beach to Norfolk back to VB and here.

Jun17

NJ day two

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I should add that for dinner the first night we were in Atlantic City we went to a restaurant that has been in business since 1912! I was picturing ladies in their bustled skirts and big hats coming to the ‘Fork and Knife Inn’ for dinner.

I had a lobster egg roll before dinner. If I had known I was going to have enough dinner for three people, I would have ordered a few appetizers! I had braised boneless ribs and Yukon potatoes. I brought what I couldn’t eat back to the room as we had a frig. I stored it on ice, but it was just a bit cool to touch after 7 hours in the car (and not in a cooler), so I tossed it. Brian had a nicely presented flounder dish.

We walked up and down that the boardwalk, but it was so windy, we headed back to the room. We did see some famous celebrities hand prints in cement-Cher, Joan Rivers, Frank Sinatra, Dom Deluise, to name a few.

The next day we got a light breakfast and walked along the beach for about 15 minutes. The sand was blowing sideways. They are finishing up a new hotel/casino called Revel-wow it’s spectacular!

Not sure how many stories it is. That’s a golf ball in the daytime and a globe at night on the top . You go up these long escalators to the different floors. At 10 in the morning , there weren’t that many people playing the slots. I have a $5 rule, if I put in $20 and lose $5,  I cash out. I sat down at a few penny slots and used a few dollars. I had a $20 left and we started winning and got up to $54! I cashed out. I used the money for a few souvenirs for Sean.

We decided to drive down to Margate, a lovely town with immaculate homes. You can’t believe you are a few miles away from Atlantic City as the main drag there is very seedy. I wanted to do a virtual cache at ‘Lucy the Elephant’ landmark. We decided to take the tour of the inside of Lucy and climbed up narrow, winding wood stairs.

Lucy looks like this on the outside

And like this on the inside:

 One of Lucy’s eyes shows a view of the ocean

The tour guide took our photo in the howda

Crazy windy and hair!

A view of Margate

See Lucy on the water tower? The original Lucy was from 1881 and fixed up both in 1970 after she was moved a few block and in the 2000s

We then headed 40 more miles south to one of my favorite places around Cape May, NJ. Brian says I should have a place there. : )  Not a ton of people because of the wind.

I’ll have to take a horse and carriage ride next time!

The Virginia where my grandparents honeymooned back in 1921.

This is so sweet.

I thought this was cool of my reflection-

From the hotel-not bad at all 35 floors up.

Better hit the hay, we are getting up really early tomorrow-250 miles!! That’s the longest drive we’ve done in a while (at least Brian and me).

Jun16

Five little Nuthatches

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Five little Nuthatches are living in a gourd in our evergreen tree out front. There were two gourds and one fell down, so I was thankful it wasn’t this nest before they arrived. They must have been born during the short time we were away. And wow are they noisy. The mama and dad are only about 4 inches long and the call is wickedly loud.

I had Cosmo out for a walk on his harness and hooked him up to a trellis on one side of the tree while I ran in to get the zoom. I had a little time focusing on the gourd, but I then stood inside the branches of a nearby Dogwood and waited a few minutes. It didn’t take long for Mama to come back, though she hopped around the branches watching Cosmo and then she hopped around me with this nasty grub or caterpillar in her mouth. 

I was very happy with these shots! If you’d like to use them, let me know first. Thanks.

I have more to tell you about our little trip tomorrow.

Jun16

Whirl-‘windy’ time at the shore

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Brian and I were down in Atlantic City, Margate and Cape May, NJ from Thursday to early evening Friday. Monday we are all headed to Virginia Beach, Williamsburg and Chincoteague Virginia! Wow!

From parking garage

We were way up there!

Out the window near the elevators from the 35th floor of Trumps

We ate near here and then went to the Atlantic City Aquarium

I knocked off a Geocache challenge of finding an anchor!

Creatures on the Aquarium. I was fascinated by the 17 yr old turtle.

Jellyfish

They had a sweet garden with wire structures that had vines planted to cover it. I was so glad I brought that jacket as it was chilly and windy on Thursday. My hair took a beating.

We were in the area of the Absecon Lighthouse where there was a ‘virtual geocache’. They wanted you to count the steps on the front porch and tell you the hours of operation. : ) No, I didn’t climb up it this time like Sean and I did back in 2008.

More tomorrow!

Zoey-we haven’t worked on the bathroom-most are cleaning jobs and me painting the medicine cabinet.  Guess I’ll be finishing that at the end of June.

Jun11

Well hello, Mister Buck

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Brian happened to see this fella down the bank through the kitchen window. He put the zoom on the camera…

He brightened my day. My own day was blah as I didn’t sleep well. Sean and I get along really well, but last night he pulled a fast one on me. We had bbqed ribs, hotdogs, deviled eggs and pasta salad all ready for dinner and one minute he said he was coming home and the next he said he was eating fast food with a few buddies he ran into even though he had seen them the night before!  If we had more meat, I would have had at least one guy over. Times are a bit tough on the food budget. Not happy. I can forgive, but not forget. He didn’t get dinner made for him tonight. I was hoping to see my mom today, but I ended up crashing at 3:30 with the cat. Maybe tomorrow.

Jun10

True Blue

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I saw this Delphinium at Lowes last week and decided to get it as I really do love ‘true blue’ flowers.

I decided to put it in a pot this time around to pamper it.

Also a find at Lowes was this Jim Shore sun face. It had a point at the top broken off (to the right of the top one-used a glue gun) and I asked Brian to take it to customer service and they knocked $5 off! I am having trouble finding glue, but will look in a craft store again for super duper glue.

My sinuses are bad today and it’s hot and humid, so we may skip checking some geocaches along a nearby route in Delaware unless we go later in the day. The Delaware geocaching trails near the museums here all look like ammo boxes, my type of find. This is not far from VP Joe Biden’s home.

I wrote to a guy who had found a micro cache down the road from us to see if he could give me a hint about it and he said he forgot about that particular one ‘which’ he had just found  in the last few weeks! Is there a written geocache law that says you can’t help other cachers? I certainly would say you are ‘warm’ if you are near a pole….something like that. Oh well….maybe some day.

Jun8

Photo Hunt-Clean

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Cos cleaning, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I don’t have many photos associated with ‘clean’, though all my photos are ‘clean’. : )
I love Cosmo’s little tongue showing here. I may tack on cleaned up gardens if I run across any photos.

Brian and I were out in the yard all afternoon today. He was trimming the forsythia along the road and hedges along the house-this took 3 hours. I was planting more seeds and a few polka dot plants I had gotten. There is a pretty shade of pink in that plant this year. I needed to fill in bare spots. I also stuck more nasturtiums around different gardens. We are enjoying low humidity all week, so not many posts as I want to be outside.
My brother had tickets to a Phillies baseball game for yesterday at 1:00. The guys decided to go at the last minute and by a small miracle got there around 2:45 after having to go to my mom’s to get the tickets. The Phillies didn’t play well at all and got swept at home by the Dodgers. That hadn’t happened since the 1940s! The guys enjoyed being in the stadium and that gave them their baseball fix for the year. Tonight the team is playing awesome in Baltimore and so far are winning. Crossing fingers (they won).

Here’s Sean at Citizen’s Bank Park with the statue commemorating Phillies announcer Harry Kalas who passed away suddenly a few years ago. Coincidentally, a pal of Sean’s dated Harry’s son for a few years.

While the guys were gone, I cleaned out a yucca and Red Hot Poker garden near the road and planted yellow Lantana, yellow Marigolds and different colors of Celosia there. I also added nasturtiums and a few moonflower seeds there too.

Jun5

Cache #5 found!

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So this was the third time we went looking for this cache, and some nice people or critters made a trail through the weeds, so it was easy as pie this time to spot. An animal had left a ‘gift’ right at GZ (ground zero) and I am so glad I didn’t touch it, but I came close to it! Can’t get away from animal poo. At my mom’s we walked into her house finding her trying to clean her fairly new vacuum as she rolled over some from the older dog-he’s getting old and can’t hold it anymore. We ended up taking the machine outside and using the hose on it-ugh!

So anyway…here I am with the cache. There wasn’t much in it, so I will bring back a few buttons and things for the next time I take a walk in the park.

Notice I am wearing my camouflage shirt too! And make-up (we were going to the grocery store later).

Thinking we were on a roll, we headed out to an ‘open area’ find. It was off an housing development (gorgeous homes) and I thought, oh how far could it be down there? Well the compass started at 600 and a lot of the trail had mulch, but it was really steep too! We walked along the White Clay Creek, so pretty. We read that a train use to go by near here from Newark, De to PA.

I sure wish I had my Canon  with me so I could have shown you more awesome nature shots.

Brian took some photos on his phone too!

We get to the middle of these woods and both my phone and GPS device decide to quit on us! Rats. I sent Bri down to a ‘beach’ area near the water as it seems that other cachers saw that beavers had chewed on wood in that area. It was just too wild to see anything with the naked eye and there weren’t any good hints to help us. I think the people who live in this area donated nice benches along the trail. Of course we saw other animal gifts, but no animals. Brian mentioned snakes and I crossed my fingers. As more people find this one, there will be more hints. It was a good hike. I think between the two areas, we walked at least 2-2.5 miles today! Woo hoo! Good exercise. We have to remember to use OFF! on us or I need to mix up a tick deterrent formula when I get some tea tree oil. You mix that with water and spray on your clothes. I should be more weary as I have had Lyme disease or still have it. I don’t know if you ever really get over it fully.  We rewarded ourselves with some steak, corn on the cob and baked beans for dinner. : )

Jun3

Some challenges for Swap-bot

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I’ve been hosting challenges over at Swap-bot for about a month. I’m going with the alphabet and working up…Animal Anomaly, Babies and Baubles, Cooking Capers, Daydreaming, Elephant Enigma and the 4th of July…..so far.

Here are a few I’m made lately…

Animal Anamoly

Babies and Baubles (my grandmom called babies, ‘Baby Birds’)

Cooking Capers-photocopy from an old kid’s book-so cute! We have a brown bunny hanging around the yard this year too! : )

 Daydreaming

Elephant Enigma

I did the 4th of July one before I put up the challenge. It’s from a M.E. tear off calendar page:

Cute Cupcake

Geisha Girl

So I’ve been having fun being creative with paper.

I did the grouting on the glass mosaics. Some were sunk in the adhesive more than I would have liked and some got crooked. I even saw a chip in one! This section is hidden a lot, but it’s nice because it’s like a backdrop for the vessel sink. I really love the look. It’s great for the guys to shave with!