Levittown

Levittown, PA is an interesting place.  It is a suburb of Philadelphia.  This is Monica's hometown.  Her mom still lives there in the house Monica grew up in.  A community built in the 50's, there are 17,000 homes.  There are only 5 house plans.  Monica lives in the C section.  All the streets start with the letter "c".  The houses are also all the same plan.  Almost all have been altered over the last 60 years but you can tell they were the same at one time.  The man who built it planned it as a community with churches and schools.  No streets come together at a 4 way intersection...he wanted easy flowing traffic through the peaceful setting.  Google it.  It is quite facinating.

Here's a back view of the houses.  They have that little back knockout on the second floor.

The view from the front of one of the homes in the neighborhood.  This one still has the garage.

Garage gone and porch added.

I just loved walking around looking at the differences and similarities.

Reminds me of those movies about the 60's where the men come out of every house on the block at the same time, carrying the same briefcase and getting into the same car.  They did a search during an anniversary to find a home that was completely original on the exterior. There was one house that came close but not close enough to win the prize.  The house numbers had been changed.

One house in the hood had some major renovations.  It was on Extreme Makeover Home Edition.  It really doesn't look like it belongs here anymore.  "Bus driver move that bus!"  The other homeowners on the block got to choose either new turf for the lawn or a new sidewalk.  (Maybe so it would look good on TV)

The other Grandparents, Bob and Lisa, live here.  Monica and the boys are staying here for awhile.  It's a cute house in a very nice neighborhood.  We were happy to visit them there.

No Hunting

Years ago the kids raised some pheasants.  When they got too big to keep in town we brought them out to the property.  These just might be decendants. 

Shabulous

One of the things I've been looking forward to since we have all this room out here on the property is hosting a show.  I love to go to other people's shows so why not have one here.  Sandra and I pulled one off this past Saturday.  It was a lot of fun and a huge success for the first time out.

A vendor already here with a load thursday morning.  We had two busy days of setting up and getting everything ready.  We had twelve vendors this year and hope to double that for the next one.

Vintage trailers on display.  This is something we hope to expand next year.  We may try to have a Sisters on the Fly campout and get a lot more cute trailers out here.  It is fun to look through them.  We had Morgan's, mine, Lexy's, Gareld's and our neighbor Connie brought her's down.

Morgan spent three days baking goodies for her booth.  BoBo Dean's did really well.  Customers were eating it up!  She makes delicious cheescake and a whole lot more.

Some friends of ours brought out their miniature horses and gave kids free rides.  They were a big hit!!

The pumpkins were a summer long adventure.  All went well until right before we were leaving for a week on vacation.  The deer started eating them and the magical deer repellent wasn't stopping them.  We picked them all and put them in a trailer until the show.  It was fun to grow them. 

We talked about getting a food vendor to be a part of the show but I had an idea one day that we could do soup and bread.  Here's the Soup Kitchen crew.  On a cool day who doesn't like soup?

My Shabby Shack.  I love it!  I liked the idea of it.  I had fun planning for it, then watching it being built and painting it.  Decorating it has been a joy.  Working with Gareld on the porch and pergola gave us some together time.  Filling it and setting it up for a show is on of my favorite things to do.

Shabulous was a great experience!  Can't wait to do it again.

Candid Camera

The critter cam catches all kinds of creatures.

  Family members picking blackberries.

We haven't seen these little visitors before.

We are trying to get a good picture of the bear but here he is.

Gareld moved the camera to a new spot so we will keep you posted on anything that shows up.

Farmland

Gareld left the tractor parked out back last weekend so it was the perfect opportunity to get a photo of the old house in the background.  Summer is on the way out and Fall is on the way.

As of this year 2012 this is a century farm.  It has been in the same family for 100 years!

Neighbors

Here's the fenceline at the top of our property.  We have 80 acres.  As we were driving up the road to the neighbors house I said to Gareld, "we have a lot of property I've never seen."  I guess I need to walk the fenceline sometime like Morgan has done.  It sure was pretty up there looking out over the valley.

Our neighbors have a beautiful, big house filled with hunting trophies, head mounts, full body mounts and georgeous furnishings.  It was fun to walk through and see it all.  It was like a wildlife museum...in fact they had a wildlife museum in Joseph at one time so when they built the house they built it big enough to house all the animals.  There are fullbody mounts of cow and bull elk, cougars, wolves, coyote, racoons, lion, zebra, moose, deer, african animals, sheep, goats, bears, and caribou just to name a few.  Many years of successful hunting are represented.  There was an awesome head mount of a red stag that he got in New Zealand last year.  The reason I was up there was to see her vintage trailer and antiques that she is going to have at our Shabulous show in October.  It was nice to be invited up.

Here's a view of our place on the way down.  There's extra cars and kids down there.  Morgan had some friends and cousins over to shoot clay pigeons.  We really need to get that storage trailer emptied out and torn down.  It's an  eyesore.  There's a hand made sign going up the road that says "mobile home road".  We wondered if it was named for our ugly single wide we bought to live in if we needed a temporary home before the house was ready.  It was a pretty drive on a pretty day.

Pie Day

The berries are on.  I passed these beauties on my walk today so I grabbed the pick-up and parked beside this bush and filled up a big bowl in no time.

Self portrait..me and the berries.

Beautiful, fresh, fruit.

It's nice having a daughter around that loves to bake!!

Thanks, Morgan