Sleeping Beauties

Sleeping Beauties

Corner View: Roadside

 If you were in our small town this past Saturday,

you would have seen  an amazingly huge crowd of people 

sitting and standing on either side of one of the two main roads.

The annual Pumpkin Festival Parade was from 2 - 3:30.

We were actually sitting further up on this hillside.

Our friends own a huge bed and breakfast

and we gather there with lots of others

to watch the parade.

In our small town, folks get more excited about

old and new tractors than almost anything else in the parade.

This is just one of the fracking wells

that stand tall along the roadside

as I drive to and from work.

They are in the process of installing this one.

It will be there for about 6 weeks,

then they will dismantle it 

and move it to another spot.

If you happened to be on a certain section of Rt. 146 yesterday afternoon

and glanced over to the side,

you would have seen these beautiful girls 

posing for Homecoming 2013 pictures.

We took pics of them in dressy outfits up at the school

and then had them change into their country girl look.

The photographer and I began this 'tradition'

last year.

I am all for being proud of our country roots.

The three on the left, in the picture below,

are freshman, sophomore, and junior reps for the court.

The next five are the senior candidates for Homecoming Queen.

For those of you not in America,

I'm not quite sure how to explain Homecoming,

but it is a major tradition at most high schools here.

(At least I think so!  It is in Ohio.)

For more roadside views from different spots throughout the world,

check out Francesca's.                .

Corner View: Home

As some of you know,

we have been searching for the right house

in which to make our last home.

There are 5 houses on the market here in this lovely small town 

for every 25 that come on the market in a near-by town,

where my son lives.

However, C. is not our home;

B. is.

So for 3 years now,

we have been examining houses,

wondering if 'this one could be the one'.

Although, I don't have photos of all of them,

here are some.

This was to go up for auction, but there was a problem with the title

being free and clear,

so we did not bid on it.

I never got inside it.

This is a landmark home in our  historical register town.

They bought it at the peak of the U.S.'s real estate market

and were selling it at the low point.

It was quite expensive and needed many updates,

the two greatest of which were a remodeled kitchen and bathroom.

 A friend of ours grew up in this
home.  She and her sisters were considering selling it after their mother died.  They knew we were interested,
so with much hope in all our hearts,
we looked.
The bedrooms were tiny and strangely located and the upstairs bedroom and storage room needed a lot of structural
work. There was no air conditioning.
The kitchen would need major updating.

 I have only inside rooms and the side yard photos of this house.
It was a lovely, fairly new home on one acre in one of three nicest neighborhoods in town.   However,
the rooms were incredibly smaller than  I expected considering the price tag.  This is the kitchen, dining area,
and main living space.  There is no separate dining room.  We could not get 13 around that table in that small space and would have to move furniture to set up a table in the living/family room.
We can get all 13 in the dining room of our 600 sq. ft. home now--a feat not to be taken lightly!
Below is a picture of a side yard to this house.

This one was far out of town, but off
of Interstate towards where my son lives.  It was on 14 acres, so we decided to check it out.  The realtor had told us to look at the outside first and then if we were still interested, he would set up a time to show us the inside.
We knew the house would require a lot of work, but the price was very low for that reason. The land and outbuildings were great.
However, our thoughts were drowned out by the sound of the Interstate 70 traffic---not the peace and quiet we were seeking.

 This home was a 20 minute drive from town,
but there were 3 decent ways to get to
my school from it, so it actually would have been the same driving time to my work.  It once belonged to a close friend of mine--a long time ago--and before the additions and big building were built.

It sat on five acres with a pond.  Part of the pond can be seen here.  The house you see is separate and not close to the house we were looking at.

Here is the big building that was built for multi-purposes: the main one was for the guy's successful gun shop.

However, the building was specifically set up inside and Mike would have had to tear down walls.

There is an apartment upstairs that would have been good for my daughter and her family when they visited.

But the house itself needed work inside and out. The young widow (he was much older and each wife was younger than the previous one until he was almost 'robbing the cradle'; my friend was the first wife) had let it deteriorate.  She just couldn't maintain it. 

However, the kitchen and main bathroom did not need remodeling. The kitchen was in a new addition 

and the bathroom had been enlarged and redone.

In the end, it was just too far out of town.

Also, if anything happened to Mike, I'd be isolated and would struggle with upkeep.

 This one was my dream  home.
I grew up across from it.  I wrote all about it here.  I featured the incredible stained glass windows in another post
This is the only one I cried over.
To say "It needed everything redone and brought up to code and time period (like heat upstairs) is not exaggerating.  Though lower than the others, the price was still ridiculous considering  we would have to put a lot of  money it.
Mike told my son that if we were 20 years younger, we might take it on, because then we would have been able to do a lot of the work ourselves.

But now, it was too much, too late in our lives and with a little yard.

This will be our home soon.

We close on it July 8th, but they won't be moved out yet,

so it will be Aug. before we are in.

Check out more of it here

As Goldilocks said, "This one is just right."

For more views on 'home' from around the world,

check out Francesca's Fuoriborgo.

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