This gallery contains 12 photos.
Last weekend was the 29th Annual Mushroom Festival a few miles away from here. We had wanted to go on Saturday night, but we got heavy rain and decided to try a restaurant around the corner from where we live. I lately haven’t been pleased eating out. I got lobster mac and cheese which was […]
This gallery contains 23 photos.
We went and brought my mom here to take her to Hershey Gardens which is a couple of hours from here. She hadn’t stayed with us since January! She had full charge of my brother’s old dog during the weekdays until the old fella was put down in July. I had taken my mom to […]
I few weeks back, maybe a month ago, Sean and I took my mom to Scott Arboretum Swarthmore College’s campus to see their renowned rose garden. We had been there a few years ago and the roses were perfect. We also went in May. By June and after a rainstorm, the roses were starting to fade. It was a bit warm also, so we didn’t stay long.
Mom isn’t fond of this photo, but I like it because Sean is in it too. He worries about her so much as she had two mini stroke incidents that required hospital stays. When we we can, we go down and take her to a store or place like this. Right after this stop, we ate in a restaurant in Media called Picasso and shared plated of shrimp kebabs, battered dipped asparagus and a few other things which she loved.
These are geraniums!
A bench with Dean Bond’s name on it. This is his rose garden. The graduates get a rose from the garden pinned to their gown.
Beautiful Clematis with one of the college buildings behind it.
Sean liked the Seafoam roses
The gate to the rose garden
Really love this one.
The summer is flying by!
I saw where I was going to update my blog at the end of March. That didn’t happen and I want to share so much that it will take a few posts just to catch up. We were in Tampa, Florida for 4 days almost 3 weeks ago! We did our beer budget exploring there-no Busch Gardens, etc. We went along with Sean on his conference trip. We also saw St Pete’s Beach and Clearwater, Florida on day trips. More about Florida soon.
I also found a website I have entered over 130 of my photos on. It’s called Pixoto. So far I have won 31 awards. Your photo is matched up against someone else’s in the correct category and people pick which one they like better and you get points. 500 and up are good. It’s fun! I even got a few of my photos printed on canvas. Mine are all for sale! They look nice and are ready to stand up or hang up.
Back to March! After we saw the America on Wheels exhibit in Allentown, PA. we went back to a trout nursery to see what that was all about. There were lots of people enjoying the nice day. Some were buying food to feed the trout. It so happens that a lady I work with grew up in that area and knew all about the nursery, etc.
The main house at the nursery past and present
We drove around Allentown a little. First to look for caches. Many happened to be parks filled with basketball players, etc. Not too much fun to look, so we left. There was some construction also. We were looking for the Liberty Bell museum and didn’t see it.
I got out and took a few photos of the Trout Historic society. Sure, that makes sense. What a grand old place. We tend to go places when buildings are closed or too late in the day. This was closed.
Sean wanted to check out the casino in Bethlehem, so we said ‘why not’? There were was a little shopping area there too. A steel town, many factories are shut down. The casino is in a converted factory. We shopped a few stores. I love The Farmer’s Almanac store and bought a few things there such as marked down St. Patrick Day’s things, a fairy canvas that lights up and some food items like jam and mustard. After that, I was zonked. It was getting late, so we headed home. We had to find a restaurant too.
We had a late dinner in a place near Exton like a fancy Denny’s. We got breakfast food and a lady was playing the piano to boot. We enjoyed that and our day. Glad to see new parts of PA. Even though we don’t live that far away, we hardly venture up this way. I’ve never been out to Pittsburg, PA. out in the western part of the state. Oh, someday!
Next post Tampa and the western area of Florida!
This gallery contains 19 photos.
We like to take day trips for our birthdays when they come up, that’s if we can think of a place to go. My friend mentioned ‘America on Wheels’, a fairly new museum in Allentown, PA. It’s a few hours away and we decided it would be something to do for hubby Brian’s birthday (which […]
This gallery contains 22 photos.
This past Friday, on the 7th, Brian took me down to the annual Philadelphia Flower Show at the Convention center. I saw that Rachael Ray was going to make an appearance (at a flower show, thought that was interesting as she is known as a cook), and I wanted to see her. We had gotten […]
Since Sean is off on weekends now, Sundays are our days to do a little investigating and caching. Last week, February 23rd, we went to the town where I was born, West Chester, PA. It’s the county seat of our area and a nice college town. I wanted to stop first in a cemetery to see where a cache was placed where a bomber plane went down in bad weather in about 1944. Never been to the cemetery, but my late uncle’s stepdaughter and husband are buried here. We went in a big circle because of the wacky GPS, and then went in the wrong entrance. The cache was down in a wooded area in about a foot of snow. We passed on that one until the spring.
We headed to a park next. We should have looked at the hint before we parked as the place we needed to look was on the other side of the park. We trudged through the snow in the park at first, but then started walking on a sidewalk and the street. I was huffing and puffing a bit, not knowing I was getting sick with a sinus issue (I missed two days of work last week). We had to walk in more snow, grabbed the one cache, but couldn’t locate another. I decided to take a few shots of the pretty Marshall Square Park area.
I had an Independent film maker from Instagram ask me if I took this shot. Of course!
We went looking for about 5 caches and only found 2 because of the snow. We kind of expected that, but it was nice to see the town with it’s covering of the white stuff. We will go back. The second one we found (we went out about 4:15 and ate a late dinner!) was also in a park.
Yesterday on the 2nd of March, we went down to around the Stanton area of Delaware. We wanted to check out not only caches but stores like Kohls (60-80% off!).
We do cache mostly from our phones and Sean doesn’t have a premium account, so he couldn’t count at least one find. A few stops we decided we’d skip or it wasn’t worth getting out of the car. It was raining also. Then I saw a FSC (First State Cache) at St. James Church in Stanton and we headed over. What a quaint place.
We want to come back and look around the cemetery.
We found a few in easy spots, but it’s the above places that really keep us interested.
This church was built in 1714.
We had a little more snow overnight again, about 3 inches. I decided to brave it and take a few photos. Here is one of my favorites of the day.
On a personal note, my mom was in the hospital over the weekend. She was down in her basement and all of the sudden her left arm and leg went numb and down she went. She managed to get up and crawl up the stairs! She called three of her kids first instead of 911! This was about 8:30 in the morning. When I got up to talk to her, her speech was slurred a bit. We went down to the hospital for a few hours, but her tummy was bothering her and she was waiting on a room, so we came home. She is 83 and apparently she had a mini stroke and they needed to watch her for a few days. They also found a small blood clot in her head, but she was sent home. Whew, that was scary!
I’ve been hanging low watching the 58.4″ of snow pile up over the last few months. I can’t do any shoveling, not with my back. The guys have done their share, but they have a snow blower this time around too.
I’ve taken at least 20 Instagram photos featuring the weather and snow.
I did a cupid theme for Valentine’s Day on my mantel
Sean gave me the ‘Love’ print (in Philly) and I got to see it in person at the end of December.
I have been doing a lot of sorting-yarn, fabric, craft items, etc and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s spread all over the house right now. I really have to downsize more.
I’ve knitted a few hats too! One of which is ‘almost’ in the colors of the Geocaching logo. I made it too big at first, ripped out about 5 rows and did a little crocheting and gathering at the top. I added a pin I had and wore it geocaching on Monday in Dover, DE.
I’m working on a cowl right now. I had pretty old knitting needles and bought some new ones and what a difference!
We all were trying to think of a local place to take a day trip yesterday. We were going up to Allentown to see a car museum and maybe the art museum, but it was a holiday and a Monday. so they were closed. We took a drive to Dover, DE which is about 60 miles one way. I am trying to get to 500 geocache finds, but this winter it’s slow going.
Our first spot was Pickering Beach. A few of us had to go to the bathroom and the little cottages were locked up tight. I completely forgot there were caches there, but the GPS was out anyway. I usually am very thorough with our trips to do caching, but I was aiming for Allentown, not Dover. I did notice there were several DGT (Delaware Geocache Trails) ones and we did find one when we could get to it. It was at a brewing company! I had brought a little beer mug trophy to add to the swag. When I ordered them, I thought they were much smaller. So glad to find an appropriate place to add one.
The other places, all museums were closed. We plan to go back in May to see them all. The beach should be crawling with horseshoe crabs from the Delaware Bay.
We did find 5 geocaches, but not the neat ones at the John Dickerson Plantation and airplane museums as the gates were closed at these locations.
I’ve only worked 2 days for the entire month of February because of the weather. The kids all have cabin fever and get a bit itchy.
Some things are going on like the orchid show at Longwood Gardens and the Flower show in Philly. Hope to get to Longwood in the next few weeks.
And last but not least, some Artist trading cards were made much to my enjoyment! It’s been a while, though I made 13 Valentine’s Day cards for the kids.
A few weeks ago, Brian and I drove down to Rising Sun, Maryland to do a little geocaching. Caching has been not happening that much this winter as we have had a classic ‘Alaskan’ winter. My pal was saying it is milder this year in Alaska than it is on the mainland. They can’t even have their iditarod races this year for lack of snow and cold. Wow!
So we hit a few caches and they involved mostly humongous oak trees. This one was near a school and cemetery. Brian looked like a peanut under it! The cache was pretty easy to find.
Just think of the history this tree has survived through. All the winters, storms, etc. and it’s still standing!
I’m sure the oak was planted around the same time this meeting house was constructed.
A few other oak trees along route one were not as lucky. One was near a little cafe, aptly named ‘The Spready Oak’. There was suppose to be a cache tucked in the remains of it, but we couldn’t find it. We went in the cafe, and sure enough the waitress knew all about the cache (she said it like a cache case) and it was gone as she use to put stuff in it. The cache owner knows about it and plans to add a new one.
We found a cute diary in the middle of no where. There were some goats and ponies too. The cache was kind of out in the open, but it probably under bushy leaves in nicer weather.
That pony nibbled my fingers!
It was lunchtime, but we didn’t want ice cream for the meal. Maybe we’ll come back another time if we remember the place.
Our last stop was this cemetery that would have been perfect for a Stephen King movie. It was up on a hill. The little church is so tiny (locked up tight and under surveillance). Out of picture range is a modern day housing development.
Well we looked for that cache high and low, and could not find it! I was kind of glad to get moving as the sun was hanging low by the time we gave up. My phone GPS was going too and we missed a cache in a memorial right down the hill! Brian can take about 5-6 caches and call it a day.
We headed to Oxford and got some produce and ordered pizza from one of the last Pizza Huts around.
A few days later, the three of us were off on a Monday (MLK day) and drove up to the Pottstown, PA area to the Philadelphia Outlets as we had never been to these. There were a few stores I adored- Crabtree and Evelyn and Vera Bradley! I got some long sleeved t-shirts at Talbots too.
We then headed to Skippack, but this wasn’t the best time of year to go there. We looked for about 3 caches and found two.
This past weekend (1/25 to 1/26) I had my mom here to treat her to a show. We sent down to Wilmington and the Dupont Theater to see ‘Ballroom with a Twist’ featuring ‘Dancing with the Stars’ dancers Cheryl Burke, Derek Hough, Tony Dovolani and Peta Murgatroyd. We also were pleasantly surprised by the talent of ‘American Idol’ finalists Von Smith and Gina Glocksen. Also the Cirque De Soleil acrobats and ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ performers. The many troupe dancers performed the most.
We had to climb up to the balcony (oops) but we had a very good point of view of the stage. I don’t remember seeing performers faces so clearly either. The costumes were sparkly and the dancing almost effortless, though certainly not easy.
My mom had a little trouble hearing the question and answer session, but all in all I think she enjoyed the show. I really thought the acrobats were amazing! They used ‘silks’ and twisted and turned on them-I don’t know how they do it!
When we were waiting for Brian to pick us up, we ended up chatting with some ladies who had driven up from Virgina to see the show. I went out to take a few shots and came in and saw the one young lady posing with Von and Gina! I took this quick shot and mine was better than her friend’s shot. I put it on Instragram and she did finally see it.
Next post will probably be a visit to the Longwood Garden orchid show! (Whenever that will be!)
This gallery contains 23 photos.
Sean and I went to Longwood Gardens a few weeks ago so we could see the holiday decor before it came down. What was exceptionally pretty to me was the outdoor lighting! They really outdid themselves. It was fun to walk among the glowing, glistening tree and things. Not having a tripod made it a […]
Collages & Creative Goodness 