Lancaster Trip!

Good Morning! It's been a few days since I posted and before I tell you what I've been up to, I wanted to say Hi and Thank You to my newest friends/followers. Thank you so much! I hope I don't bore you out of blog land and you keep visiting me!

We just returned from a short trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, one of our favorite places to go. As always it was a great trip, and we can't wait to go back. As soon as I am leaving, we are already talking about how to go back soon.

 The amazing ideas for country decorating just pop out of everywhere there and I come home so inspired!I just want to stand and take notes!  I do take tons of photos! We had stopped a day earlier to visit some friends and relatives and the weather was looking ominous--we kept listening to the weather at their house and we were getting worried but I wasn't gonna let it get me down.  It turned out to be great. A brief shower here and there made no difference to us. As a matter of fact, the timing of the showers never interfered with our outdoor activities one bit! It rained at night when we were sleeping and one night during dinner (that's fine) and we had a brief shower while we were inside a bunch of stores...when we came out of the stores the sun was shining! We did a lot in a few short days!

My son and daughter enjoyed visiting Lapp Valley Farm in New Holland. We had never been there before and it was so nice. The calfs and cows were friendly and so accessible.

My husband made a new friend with this pretty one! We had some great ice cream made right from the farm. I would have liked to take that little moo moo home with me.....just saying...

We did some exploring and I took lots of photos of course! We saw a barn raising with at least a hundred Amish men working hard. My husband, who is a carpenter, really enjoyed talking with them. Across from the barn raising, the Amish men were organizing themselves in to teams to do different parts of raising a new barn. We also saw Amish women pulling up in buggies and wagons with baskets of food. So cool to see. I didn't photograph it as there were so many Amish and they are not to be photographed so of course I had my camera put away out of respect.

I love this bridge!

So many pretty sites to see with covered bridges, Amish children, fields of vegetables and barnyards filled with animals. I was in my glory!

We did quite a bit of shopping (no surprise there, right??) We pack the car with everything we like from furniture to candles, to fruits and vegetables, knick knacks and anything else we like! We just enjoyed going through the stores and seeing what new ideas in country decorating were in Amish country. Here is just some of what I purchased:

This lovely crock!

candle holder!

All placed with greens on my foyer table:

I'm getting in such an Autumn mood...I can't help it. .......I got this mustard colored chair...

  A nice prim birdhouse that I had seen last year and for some reason left the store without buying it. I made sure I got it this year :)

We purchased two Billy Jacobs paintings. This one will go in our bedroom. It's called "The Road Home." It's very large.

The other one is in the family room in our basement.

We also got a great tv table for the basement. It matches the shelves we got last year. Amish made and very nice.

I bought a new flag. My husband loved this one best!

 And I have a lot more to show you but it's still all in my parlor waiting to be unpacked:

What a mess it looks like but I'll have fun going through it all!

 We also had some great meals at the historic Revere Tavern, The Fireside Tavern and our favorite, breakfast at Kling House in Kitchen Kettle Village! I had the most delicious "healthy" skillet of egg whites, onions, mushrooms, peppers...YUM!!!! But of all of that doesn't compare to seeing this:

or this!

Here are some more photos I took of some of the stores I went to. I love photographing their displays for ideas. Just call me copycat!

I had a nice big piece of shoo fly pie, apple dumplings and whoopie pies too! And we all played mini golf and went swimming!

Thanks for visiting! Have a great day!