Michigan Postcards

Last week I posted some of the postcards I got from Ireland and the Isle of Man and Marie from Cpaphil Vintage Postcards contacted me and asked me to join her Postcard Friendship Friday (PFF for short). People show off their postcards, stamps, mailboxes and anything that relates to postcards. Sounds like fun! This week Marie is showing off a new stamp that France has debuted that is actually chocolate scented. (Marie lives in France, so she's kind of got an edge to getting those stamps.) Sounds very intriguing.

When Tom and I lived in Coldwater, MI., we used to go to a lot of auctions and estate sales. One of the things that I always bid on, but never got were books of old postcards. They always were bid up far to high for my blood. Some of the books would go for a hundred dollars or more. But this one day near the end of the sale, a book of postcards went up for auction. I think it had gotten lost in all of the stuff and I got lucky. I pounced and got about 70 postcards for $35. That was a great deal at the time.

I think most of these cards that I received were all from the same family and most of them are from the 1940s.

Lansing Auto Body

With all of the talk about the car industry, I thought I'd show off a few of the postcards I found in that book I was talking about. You can click on any of the pictures to view them larger.

Here's the General Motors Building in Detroit.

and here's the back of that card. I loved that he typed this postcard. What fun. He even had to turn the card and put it back into the typewriter to type the extra on the side.

Here's the place I was born and raised. Right there near the middle of the mitten is Lansing. That's where I grew up.

The Oriental Gardens in Jacksonville, FL

and this is the town where I live now :) I also found it in the postcards from that auction.

Thanks for taking a little postcard tour with me and don't forget to go on over to the PFF page to see more.

Kristin

Thrifty Clipboards

Welcome to another edition of Thrifty Thursday hosted by Leigh of Tales from Bloggeritaville. A fun little time to hunt around the house, the garage, someone elses house and garage or even a thrift store or two to dig up some cool finds. Be sure and check out the other Thrifty Finds, from the other participants.

Goodness, so far there are 13 other links to other thrifty finds :)



The other day I talked about Clipboards as Art and how I'd love to do that in my home. Well, today I decided I'd go out and see how much a few clipboards would cost. I didn't want this to be a giant expense, but I really did want to incorporate this into my home.

Well, I'm here to tell you that I found the clipboards (at my local office supply store)and they qualify for Thifty Thursday! I purchased 6 clipboards. They were sold in bundles of three for $3.99. That's just $1.33 per clipboard (plus taxes.) There were more expensive clipboards, but I really liked the simplicity of these - a silver hinge and clip and a thick board. Perfect.

I can't decide if I'm going to leave them plain and have all of the decoration be from what I clip on the board or if I'm going to spray paint the boards a high gloss white....or maybe I can paint them with chalkboard paint. hmmmm the ideas are flowing.

Anyway. I'm excited that I have the clipboards, now I just need to figure out where I want to put them and get some nails in the wall to hang them. I'll certainly update when that happens.

Hope you all have a fantastic day & please go visit Thrifty Thursday to see what else is going on in the blog world :)
Kristin

11 Miles to Kinsale

Two days ago I talked about our drive to Kinsale, but one of the things I didn't mention was how many times we saw a sign that said "Kinsale 11."

Seriously.

We'd drive a few miles, kilometers, units, whatever, we'd drive. Sign - Kinsale 11

We'd drive half a mile - Kinsale 8

We'd drive another mile or so - Kinsale 11

It was maddening.

It was like there really was no unit of measure. At one corner there was a sign that said Kinsale 11 and on the other corner Kinsale was 9 LOL

Well, we did arrive with very little trouble and I have no idea how far it was to Kinsale.

photo by Alison Alfredson

When we pulled into town and parked, I immediately saw my family -- Alison was taking a picture of this stairway. I never got a chance to take a picture of them myself - good thing my sister did - aren't they cool looking?!


Once again, the Gallery B&B photos - Alison took both of these photos.

Kinsale is a part of the Tidy Towns Ireland contest. They've been first, they've been last, they've been everywhere in between. This year they are doing a lot of road improvements so they decided not to enter, but next year they plan on winning the entire thing - the person in charge of the Kinsale committee owns the paint store :)

Ahhh, but Tidy Towns isn't just about paint, it's about the litter control, landscaping, improvements to streets, roads, shop fronts, rural areas, neighborhoods, wildlife areas and so many other things. But I have to say - those places that have been a part of the Tidy Town campaign for many years, tended to be a lot like Kinsale...full of vibrant colors.

I wrote two blog posts while I was in Kinsale - you can read them here - I'm in Ireland & Day 2 Kinsale

After getting settled into our rooms, we set off for dinner. Our hosts at the Gallery B&B Carol, told us about this tapas place down by the harbor. Vista.

I didn't take any photos of the food because we had so many dishes, but I did write down a few of the dishes. We had a seafood plate, piquillos, a cheese board with Irish cheeses - one was called Marchego cheese...I really liked that one - Antipasti plate, seafood chowder, fish cake, Thai chicken and a pizza Margherita. These were all small plates of food - usually we just got a few bites. Some of the plates were loved by all and some by just a few. We managed to eat every bite.

The wind was just howling on the harbor, but the boats were relatively still. I'm not a huge fan of boats, but it was just fascinating to see them all.

Photo by Alison Alfredson

I liked the way the sun was hitting the colorful homes in the background.

After our meal we wandered back to our Kinsale home - we took a look at a few of the pubs and restaurants that we passed, but pretty much we just went back to our room and fell sound asleep.

Another day in Ireland. It's been a blast.

Kristin

Lighting

I've got 7 of these in my kitchen ceiling.

I've always liked these halogen lights because they light up the kitchen so bright.

Now with all of this florescent lighting going around I finally decided that I'd try one in the kitchen.

UGH

I hate it.

It never comes on quickly and it isn't recessed into the fixture, so it sticks out and bugs me (on a daily basis.)

A month or two ago, one of the lights in the far corner burned out.

I didn't replace it.

Shortly after that one burned out, the one over the fridge burned out.

I didn't replace it.

So now I had 5 lights in the ceiling and one of them was the slow to turn on florescent light.

It was getting pretty darn dark in the kitchen, but I was getting used to it.

At least I had the light over the sink.

until two nights ago.

and I had a sink full of dishes.

I had a lamp ready to plug in if it was far too dark.

So yesterday I purchased 3 new halogen recessed indoor floodlights.

Goodness! We have light!

It's a good day.
Kristin

On the road to Tipperary

I know, I've spent more days blogging about my trip than I was gone. Well, at least today we are moving out of Nenagh and moving south toward Kinsale, Ireland.

This is where the two cars took very different directions. The car with Naggy, my parents and my sisters all took the main road (or shall I say, a less narrow road, that is usually better marked than the smaller roads) while Tom and I took the back roads to our next stop to the coastal town of Kinsale.

Tom and I set off. At our first real crossroad, we saw this sign. We headed toward Tipperary.
I don't know if you can see the sign facing the camera, but it says that Nenagh is 8 KM. So we've gone approx. 8 KM (these signs are always subjective lol)

About 20 minutes later we saw that exact same sign again. Hmmmmm. We took a wrong turn somewhere and had to laugh that we were right back where we started. I did mention a few times - "Tom, I'm sure we've seen that farm house already this morning." After about 40 minutes, we got ourselves on the road to Tipperary.

I just liked this green building and the somewhat handpainted looking name.


The Irish landscape going by.

During most of our drive, the hedges blocked our views of the landscape. It was rare to actually see the end of the hedgerows. It looks like there was a stone wall inside that hedge. Sneaky, very sneaky!

I really never did get tired of seeing the pastures. They were so beautiful. It was a bit foggy that day - you can really see it in a few of these pictures.

Tom and I got a bit turned around again on these unmarked roads. All of a sudden we came up on a little outcropping of shops and a town name that wasn't on my map. We stopped the car and started trying to figure out where we were. We noticed 4 road workers across the street that we thought might be able to help us. As I was getting out of the car to walk across the street I saw this sight...cows grazing near a stone tower. I hadn't even seen it before then. Oooh, I'm so glad I didn't miss it. I think it was one of the most wonderful sights I saw in Ireland.

We asked one of the workers to help us get back on the correct road to Tipperary. His accent was so thick that my husband said "I'm four generations away from being able to understand you." The other three workers laughed and said that they couldn't understand him either! hahaha One of the other workers told us to go up this road, turn at the grey stone building and keep going until we saw the such and such farm... Then he assured us that there was a sign. And he was right. And, there are a lot of grey stone buildings! goodness.

This door was so cool looking. We had stopped off on the side of this intersection (see photo below) to try to figure out which way we needed to turn. There were just too many signs that I couldn't read them fast enough to make a decision. So while we were stopped I snapped a photo of the door we parked next to and a picture of the confusing sign.

I think we had passed Tipperary at this point and I think the direction we needed to go was on the side of the sign you can't see from this vantage point. I had to run back a ways to be able to see the other side of the sign.


At one point in our trip to Kinsale we came across these mountains. Most of the hills and very tall mountainy looking hills were farmed or were pasture...all the way to the very top. These were not. It was very odd, and lovely. Everything I had seen so far in Ireland had the same feel, but these mountains really made thier own statement.


Tom even pulled over to the side of the road so I could take a photo or two. I think they were called the Galty Mountains.

OK, so we traveled from Nenagh, through Tipperary and finally made it onto a main road at a place called Mitchelstown. We took that main road through the town of Cork and were just about 30 KM outside of Kinsale when we decided to stop in quite a large bustling town called Carrigaline. The place we decided to eat was Istrabraq's Steak and Bistro. This is where Tom had the Monster Burger (I posted the picture of it in Friday Fragments) and I had a chicken salad with bacon. Turns out it was a grilled piece of chicken with grilled onions and bacon in a nice big salad. It had some sort of creamy/spicy dressing that was real good, even though I don't like spicy things. Turns out that when the others had lunch, someone had a burger with egg and someone else had a chicken salad with bacon. Totally different places and yet we had the same things. Funny.
There was this really nice man in the restaurant that told us how to get to Kinsale. I told him where we were parked and he told us to turn around and take the road that we had just passed. I mentioned that it would be nice if we could continue in the direction we were headed...was there another way that would meet up with the road he suggested? He said YES there certainly was another road, but it was quite a bit narrower than the road he originall suggested.

Goodness, those roads were terribly narrow to begin with, so we turned around :)

Anyway, I saw this funny barber shop sign as we were walking back to our car.


Jut before Kinsale we saw this cemetery. I asked Tom to stop so I could take some photos.

The Celtic crosses are all over the cemeteries. Usually there was no place to park to take photos, but today there was a little building with a parking lot next to this place, so I got a nice close up view of them.



I walked by this wall as I was going back to the car. I thought it was so interesting to see the cutouts in the wall --- I wonder if they were the doors and windows to a home at one time, because when I peeked behind the wall, there was just a large pasture. There was no sign that a home had ever existed.


We arrived in Kinsale, Ireland. Within a few seconds after arriving in the city we see my family. They pointed us in the right direction to get to our B&B - The Gallery. Just a few blocks away. We couldn't miss it, it was the color of French's Mustard. I loved it.

That's all for today on our continued trip through Ireland. However, I do want to send a out my gratitude to all of our Servie Men and Women on this Memorial day. Thanks so much.

Kristin

Good Bye Nenagh

On this morning we are leaving Bayly Farms. (sounds like Bailey) I just had to walk around and take a few more pictures before we left - but I never did get one of Desmond and Jackie - that's too bad, they were wonderful hosts.


This was the breakfast set up that we came down to this morning. The pineapples were delicious! and looked so pretty cut like that. We had a traditional Irish Breakfast again, with that glorious Irish bacon that I was going to know and love even more in the days to come.



This was part of the sitting room. The little ceramic dogs in the windows were so cute - and yet I almost expected them to be there when we first arrived.

I thought this was the same window as the inside, but I see it isn't. This window is much smaller than the one in the picture above. So there must have been several sets of them. The wisteria vine was in full bloom.

This was the door that led to our bedroom. I tried to get a few shots of the interior, but all I could get was either a bed and a wall or a window lol The slanted roof made it difficult. All I can tell you was that the bed was very very comfortable and I was sorry to say goodbye to it :)



Back downstairs - these were the interior set of doors on the main entrance of the house. There are actually three sets of doors in that tiny space. The exterior ones are bright green (as you can see on the exterior shot above) then there's this set of doors with the glass panes, then along the side, you can see the next set that look more shutters. There's even a hole cut out for the door knob to go through.

I think originally the white doors with the glass panes where the exterior doors and the other set were indeed shutters to keep the cold out. Then the entrance way was added to the facade, which required a totally new set of doors.

It's all so confusing - yet interesting!

Another view of the sitting room - the large white doors led to the dining room where we ate breakfast. I loved opening those doors. They were giant and heavy and original to the home.

I took this picture mostly to show off the wood floors. Those planks were huge and so well worn.

Look at the feet on this piece of furniture! They were so detailed.

Another exterior shot of the Bayly Farm house - the upper window is where my Dad stayed.

You can just see a hint of the vine growing outside the window of his room. I loved the detail on the window - the curved part of the double hung window. I thought it was unusual, but as we traveled through Ireland, I noticed that detail on most of the old windows. Once again the shutters are on the inside of the windows and fully functional -- of course, I opened and closed them several times :)

Off we go to our second location in Ireland. Kinsale.

I've got a lot to show you, so be sure and come back.
Kristin

Note Cards

I broke down.

I know I said just a few days ago that I don't shop very often

BUT when it comes to stationery, I have a hard time resisting.



These are the cards that I ordered the other day from ilee's Etsy shop. Last year I ordered a few things from her shop for Christmas but when I first found her over a year ago, I ordered note cards.

The cards are all gone now. Not a single letterpress card was in my stash.

I wanted to write Thank You notes to a few people and all I had was my recycled note paper. That paper is really cool, but for people who don't know me, getting a Thank You note on a torn out piece of a catalog is confusing.

So anyway, a few nights ago I caved in.

The package of cards arrived yesterday. I didn't expect them to arrive until the middle of the week, so this was a nice surprise! Enclosed with my order were these two Letterpress Thank You cards. I love that she does that. It's the perfect way of saying Thank You!

Thanks ilee! I love your Etsy shop.

Bunratty Castle and Lake Shannon

This is the second half of our drive from Bayly Farm in Nenagh, Ireland to the Bunratty Castle near Lake Shannon. You can click on any of the pictures to make them larger.


I just loved this ruin. I was in the car snapping pictures like crazy while we were driving by. There were no other walls or buildings - just these two. I can only imagine what the building used to look like. Well, no matter, I think it is beautiful in this state.

The countryside. Goodness, it's gorgeous.

The two cars in tandem drove to Lake Shannon. We just wanted to see it. The sign for a lake side walk, had us driving down this little neighborhood. This house was just so nicely landscaped. There were a bunch of homes in this area that looked a lot alike, but I liked this one best.

The parking lot to the lake said it was closed, so we just parked on the street and started out on our little hike. It was probably only a half mile on this very well worn path to the lake. We passed moms with strollers, joggers, families and kids playing in the surrounding woods. So it was certainly not closed...I guess it was just the parking lot. When we popped up at the top of the ridge, this was our view of Lake Shannon. It was actually very hard to see the water - almost all that you see is mud. Lake Shannon is tidal, so when the ocean is at high tide, the water rises in the lake. Pretty cool! We were obviously at low tide.

Tom went down to investigate the footprints we saw in the mud. We just couldn't imagine someone walking across the lake like that! Sure enough - an adult and a child walked across the lake in the mud.

We hadn't seen any cliffs along the ocean side of Ireland because we hadn't gotten there yet - so I took this picture of a large rock on the coastline of the lake. I hunkered way down to make it look giant :)

My sister Alison took this photo of Durty Nellys and Bunratty Castle.

Durty Nellys is a bar that's been around since 1690. I'd say that's a well established icon. Bunratty Castle, in it's present form, was completed in 1425.

It's a pretty compact castle, but it has been turned into a real tourist attraction with the addition of a folk park. I guess you can see craftsmen working, tour the castle, tour the home that was built in the early 1800's that was much more modern than the castle, and also tour all of the outbuildings and gardens of the castle.

I found this photo at 400 years of the Telescope.

We didn't tour the castle or the grounds because it was pretty pricey. (Too pricey!) So I peeked in through a few of the gates and snapped some photos. Those will be coming along after I talk about lunch!

Lunch at Durty Nellys. My Dad and Mom had raw oysters. I'm not a fan, but I guess they were really good. We also had Fish and Chips, Hamburgers and lots of fries. I think everything was served with fries. Tom took this picture, and so here's the close up of when I took the photo so Tom could get in it. :)



Here's one of the little houses on the grounds of Bunratty Castle. I thought it was just adorable!

Here's the map of the castle and the surrounding areas.

I love these signs. I can't begin to pronounce any of it, but I love them :)

This wall was running the length of the castle. I just loved the plants that were growing and flowering in the wall. It was a commmon sight in Ireland, but in this instance, I wasn't zooming by it in a car!

This was the iron detail of one of the gates. I know the gate isn't particularly old, certainly not 1400's or anything, but the details were gorgeous.


This was my final shot of the castle. I just needed one more shot!

I was a little bummed that we didn't get to wander around this castle, but I kept reminding myself that there would be other castles to wander through that wouldn't be so costly to go through. I would find out later, that this would indeed be the case. I got to wander through a fort and a castle in the days coming.

Thanks for coming with me on our travels. It's a pleasure to have you along.
Kristin