Category Archives: Brian

Nov17

Get-away postponed

Posted on Thursday, November 17, 2011 by Dianne

I just postponed our B&B weekend as Brian has the same bug Sean had. I feel bad he is coughing and feverish, but I think being in close vicinity with a sick person won’t be very romantic. As soon as he came home for lunch, I got all nervous (I had just packed up the bag too). Who’s to say I won’t get it too as I’ve had some cold like symptoms-crossing fingers. I’m bummed, but I’d rather us both be healthy. It may be a ‘New Year’s’ weekend. The room was really nice looking with a whirlpool tub and electric or gas fireplace. I need to run down to the store and get Bri some daytime cough medicine. He is off tomorrow, so maybe we can go out to lunch if he is up to it. We have until April to use the Livingsocial deal and of course we got charged for the late cancellation.
I start the job on Monday. I think we will get paid for the training. We were just given the paperwork yesterday and had to be put in the system.

Oct31

Happy Halloween!

Posted on Monday, October 31, 2011 by Dianne

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Here’s wishing you a fun-filled, ghoulish kind of day.
My photo is from 1995 when we use to have to go around to different towns to trick or treat. I made Sean the pizza costume. He is holding a small take out box pizza that lit up.
We sure had a lot of fun on Halloween. Our youngest niece isn’t trick or treating this year and I know her daddy will miss that as he love Halloween. We’re all waiting to trick or treat now with grandchildren which is going to be a long wait I think.

; )

Oct30

Gimme Candy!

Posted on Sunday, October 30, 2011 by Dianne

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I had some fun finishing up some 4″ x 4″ collage cards and ATCs this evening. I love this little guy and knew he was good for a Halloween piece.

Brian’s dad gave me an old 1992 rip off desk calendar and I have been having fun doing collages with it like the above bird background.

I bring home coasters from restaurants and ‘The Black Widow’ was the first collage I made. I was trying to make her greenish, but she still looks pale. I will probably put a ribbon for hanging her up.

Today was a rather tense day. Brian hadn’t talked to his day since late yesterday afternoon. We found the phone number of an old ‘original’ neighbor, but she was at work. The next thing we had to do was call the police. They sent a patrol car and he was fine, but his phones weren’t working. All day we tried to call, so 8 pm tonight, Brian went over. He looked at the cell, took the battery out and put it back in and it started working. This seems to happen all the time lately.

PHOTO HUNT-Broken

(made this ATC back in 2008)
I have a sticker book of the works of Michelangelo and this is Jeremiah who was the prophet with the ‘broken heart’. Thank goodness for google as that info made my card what it is!

Oct24

One quarter of a century…

Posted on Monday, October 24, 2011 by Dianne

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This of course implies to my only child and son Sean who turns 25 today! We were able to spend the day together on Sunday, the three of us, or ‘The Mod Squad’ as Brian sometimes refers to us when we are doing a bit of mall walking. He decided to drive us up an hour to Lancaster to ‘The Park City Mall’, one I was to years ago. Brian didn’t remember going, but maybe we did. I definitely remember going with my mom and family and getting a t-shirt made, the kind of place where they press the design on for you. Anyway, it was a bit crowded and reminded us of other malls closer to us. He did buy himself some jeans and a watch. He picked up and thumbed through a book about neat places to visit and I made Bri go back and get it for him. And we got him the Phillies division championship shirt.
We were going to hit ‘The Olive Garden’, but it was really crowded, so we went to a smorgasbord place and he liked that. I was a bit stuffed and felt blah, but some Chamomile and mint tea helped me when I got home.

Happy Birthday Sean!

Birthday Portrait

Newer Son/Dad shot

My only photo of the lovely Lancaster scenery from Sunday-taken out of the car (and edited)

And finally, I wanted a photo of me in my ‘owl hat’. Animal hats are really popular right now!

Update-I purchased my own domain name, but it isn’t working yet….I’ll let you know. It was about a $1.46 a month on wordpress…not bad at all!

Oct15

Mooovee along please

Posted on Saturday, October 15, 2011 by Dianne

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Cows in pen, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Brian and I went to a quaint tavern for lunch called ‘The Whip’.(Their photo slideshow is nice on the website). We had seen it mentioned on a local ‘foodie’ show last night and decided to go. Unfortunately, it was crowded at even 1:45 pm. We were sitting next to a very loud group of ladies. I noticed when their order came before ours, most got the same as me the ham and brie quiche and salad.

Brian got fish and chips.

Yummy, like home cooking from England. As we sat waiting a bit, we started to chat with an older lady and she said to get ‘the pudding’. After lunch, I asked the waitress and she said it was cake-think it was described as ‘sticky cake’-buttery with a caramel sauce and side of vanilla ice cream-really delectable-I have half of it here as Bri only tasted some. Update-from a review its’ called Sticky Toffee Pudding-very cake-like to me.

I had my camera and Bri drove the Cruiser and if I saw something I wanted to photograph, he slowed almost to a halt when he could-thus the cow shot through the windshield. Nice day, but very blustery.

The Whip Tavern is an English pub situated in beautiful Chester County horse country. The drive to get there is an experience in itself no matter what season. Rolling hills, pasture land and then all of a sudden you happen upon The Whip on the corner of N Chatham Rd (Rt 841) and Sprindell Rd which seems in the middle of nowhere.

“Jolly good, this ‘cool interpretation of an old English pub’ will
‘put a smile on your face’ and sate any ‘cravings for bangers and mash’,
‘amazing fish ‘n’ chips’ or ‘fantastic’ lagers and bitters…’pubby and clubby’ ‘treasure’ ” ~Zagat

Sep27

Quaintness

Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 by Dianne

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Steps of The Poor Richard Inn, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I don’t remember ever being near the beach at this time of the year, so we got to see pumpkins, mums and other autumnal decor. This is the steps of the Poor Richard Inn where we stayed back in 1999.

Gingerbread trim is so pretty!

The landscaping was gorgeous. Love the Mandevilla on this unique lamppost. This home was built in the 1880s!

You know I love gazing balls.

These are clever decorations. As mentioned below, this is the door to The Virgina Hotel where my maternal grandparents honeymooned in 1921.

Cute elf butterfly catcher

The arcade where we played games in the summer of 1967

The sky was rather ominious!

Cute tour trolley. Missed the horse drawn carriages.

‘The Empress’ what an amazing ‘private home’! I couldn’t get it all in one photo!

The Empress was built with the purpose of opening as a bed and breakfast. And yes, it is as neat and mysterious inside as one would expect– not that we’ve seen it first hand (the owner is out of the country) but we’ve chatted with a couple of people who have been inside and have had a look at the original blueprints. It has eight guest rooms, each themed after a queen – hence the name, “The Empress.” Each guest room has its own luxurious bathroom, also themed with regard to European tiles and decor. At the ground level, blueprints show a spacious parlor with a fireplace, an adjacent living room, also with fireplace, a dining room and big gourmet kitchen.
From: Capemay.com

The garden of ‘The Empress’
I have to say I was so exhausted from having about 7 hours of sleep in 2 days. I had tossed and turned the night before going to the beach and that night, even though we turned the lights off at 12:30, the air conditioning, light peeking in through the slants in the blinds and my mom being noisy (when she takes out her hearing aides, she doesn’t know how loud she is). We had a little trouble finding Cape May (feel dumb-a few towns over) as the GPS wasn’t working that great.
Here are a few scenes from Ocean City, NJ

Not too many 5&10s around! It was a cute store with lots of marked down merchandise that mom enjoyed going through.

Neat window of a consignment shop

Not too bad of a beach day

Where we met the gang for breakfast…mom bought ‘a baker’s dozen’ of their famous cinnamon donuts and they didn’t last long-only had two in three days. The car smelled so good.

If I won the lottery!!

My pal Heather and me. Many of the ladies came down together and hung out together, just like high school. I hung out mostly with Heather (she was solo) and Sue and her hubby.
And last but not least, our photo booth shots-so crazy!

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Sep5

Sunset and Sustenance

Posted on Monday, September 5, 2011 by Dianne

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NatlHAlex 044, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Thanks to a lady for posting her own sunset photo on Pinterest, we found Sauciety( http://www.saucietyamericangrill.com/) right on the waterfront to get our own sunset photo, a good meal and a bit of a discount on the meal! It was the restaurant below the Westin Hotel. I booked an online reservation and mentioned a code word to get 20% off the bill. Anyway, we got a glass of wine (Brian and me) which shot the price up.

The three of us chose a three course, prefixed meal and that saved a bit too. We had huge bowls of spring mix salad with raspberry vinigrette dressing, crusty bread with olive oil and some with sun dried tomatoes for dipping. Brian had salmon and asparagus:

And Sean and I had lobster ravioli:

How do you like the dishes?
And we had a creme brulee type custard for dessert

and Bri had bread pudding (not shown).
The prefixed price was about $35 each.
Us at dusk on the boardwalk:

And my favorite guys:

Sep5

All you need is Love

Posted on Monday, September 5, 2011 by Dianne

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First concert-Brit Beat doing the Sargent Pepper Years, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

English Garden in front of the hotel:

Brian, Sean and me had a nice weekend down off the Potomac River at the National Harbor (also known as Oxion Hill, MD). Sean didn’t go to the concerts, but explored the little ‘boardwalk’ town and took a water taxi to Alexandria, VA. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to, but he finally made up his mind to do just go! We went there by car on Sunday and ate, shopped and walked around there.
It was a bit muggy but there was an occasional breeze off the river. The group pictured here is called ‘Brit Beat’ from Chicago. They dress and perform in four different ‘Beatle phases’. This happened to be the Sargent Pepper era. They were great. It was awesome as there were bands from all over the world! We especially liked the band called ‘Old Brown Shoe’ (from a George Harrison song) from the Netherlands. Another cute band was ‘Jukebox’ from Puerto Rico. There were some issues with waiting for bands to set up and then this one band ‘Norwegian Beatles’ didn’t play as they had equipment issues. We mostly enjoyed seeing a new place and sitting and listening to some of best known songs in the world. Some didn’t just play Beatle songs-some Rolling Stones and a few others, even the band’s original songs were tossed in the mix.
And the place we stayed, The Gaylord is the biggest non-gaming hotel on the east coast! There are 2 thousand guest rooms and at least 5 restaurants (we ate breakfast in one). They have an Olympic size pool (Sean stuck his feet in the water). If he had sat in a lounge chair right outside the pool area, he could have heard the music for free! It’s kind of hard not to hear it anyway.

More later!
By the way-used a mesh back support thing I got in a Dollar Store which helped me most of the time, but the chairs provided were metal fold up chairs-ugh.

Aug28

We survived Hurricane Irene!

Posted on Sunday, August 28, 2011 by Dianne

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It’s been a tense few days, but when we woke up with power and less rain we were very happy! According to the weather people, Hurricane Irene made landfall around 5:30 am in Little Egg Harbor, NJ, south from here, about 2 hours or so away. Unfortunately, my mom lost power around 10 pm or so and they think they heard a transmitter blow. Mom is more suburban than us. We do have a little water in a few places in our basement, but very manageable. Because it didn’t rain as much as they thought, that saved us. Also we put plastic around outside. Brian and I are dopey from nerves and achy from doing stuff outside. Thank goodness he cleaned the rain gutters out more as that probably helped too. Whew!

Now to look forward to the Bruce Hornsby concert on Tuesday and the Beatlemania trip on Saturday. No more hurricanes for my last hurrah of the summer. ; )

Update: 11:14 am is history-she’s a tropical storm now!

Aug19

Whirlwind of activities-part one

Posted on Friday, August 19, 2011 by Dianne

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We take short vacations but really jam pack a lot of activities into that time! From stopping at our favorite sandwich place in Rehoboth Beach to seeing something new-we keep ourselves busy. When we got to Rehoboth, the sky looked like this:

It did start to rain, so we wondered into an arcade where the guys were attracted to the baseball games:

Brian has a good pitching arm from being on a team at one of his jobs. : )
Here is a sign to tell you about Rehoboth. Both Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb have ties (Kathie Lee’s parents parents had an inn there and Hoda’s mom recently bought a place there-they just had an episode there a few weeks ago)

Of the various beaches we visit, I love the little stores that line this area the best. Isn’t this a pretty pavillion?

We then hopped in the car (the rain was steadier then) and headed to Ocean City. It’s about 30 miles just to get to the outskirts of Ocean City, Maryland. We were staying on 13th and it starts about block 150.
Sean picked out this place and paid for one night. It was a good location, but we had a small room with double beds. I judged from the bathroom tiles it was built in the 1950s (as was the first apartment we lived in that had similar ones) and I was right-1954!

BEACH PLAZA HOTEL– Built in 1954 by Ethel Griffin Kelley and her son Harry Kelley, a former mayor of Ocean City. Richard Nixon and his family spent many vacations here. Bryce and Shirley Phillips have owned and operated the hotel since 1970.

They are renovating it and the lobby and restaurant are very lovely.

I’m not sure what the story is behind these ostriches on the front porch. There were plenty of rocking chairs to enjoy the beach scene too.

How clever was it to make the porch tables out of old Singer sewing machine tables?

We went down to check out the beach. Right before this photo was taken, a big wave came up and splashed my newly changed pants. What a shock!

That night we walked about 10 blocks! Whew! We had a pizza dinner that wasn’t too great and then Brian and I stayed in and Sean went to the young people’s night club. He rolled in about 1:30 am as he had to take a bus to the place. We finally got to enjoy some beach time on Wednesday. I’ll continue in another post.