weekend houseguests...

I am absolutely thrilled to have two very special guests staying at the house this weekend!
Actually, two very special puppy-angels:
Brittany and Kristen!

waiting for Brittany and Kristen to arrive!

New Hampshire does not have the same overpopulated pounds and shelters as they do in the South. We have lived here now for two and a half years and have never... never seen a stray dog....incredible! It is said to be because of strict spay and neuter laws, but quite honestly (having been born, and raised and lived in the South I will say) it is primarily a cultural issue. It is just not okay here to mistreat, dump, let your dog run lose, or chain your dog to a bumper as it is in some places in the South.

So, the empty shelters here partner with the overcrowded shelters in the South and bring up dogs to find homes!

Here is information from the Shelby Humane Society's website explaining about the Shelby Partner's Program.... you can click on the photo to go to their site.

Shelby Humane Society's Shelter Partners Program, founded in November, 2006, is a volunteer driven (literally) transport program providing second chances for thousands of shelter dogs.
Shelter Partners moves pets from Shelby County, which is experiencing extreme animal overpopulation, to shelters in states where the success and enforcement of animal and spay and neuter laws and initiatives limit the number of pets available for adoption. Shelby Humane works with a dedicated group of partner shelters to find new forever families for dogs being transported. With rare exception, the dogs and puppies transferred are placed with adoptive families within a few days of becoming available for adoption at our partner shelters.
This program would not be possible without the dedicated volunteers who are willing to drive 19-23 hours to make these life-saving trips possible. We are always in need of additional drivers so we can make more trips and save more lives!
Please visit our Shelter Partners picture page which includes adoption day photos and updates for many of the dogs that have benefited from this wonderful program!
Save a Life - Sponsor a Dog for Our Next Shelter Partners trip!

Each Shelter Partners trip costs SHS $750-850. For $50, you can sponsor one of the dogs leaving our shelter to go to New Hampshire. We will send you a picture of the dog that benefits from your kindness and any information we have about it.

It was over a year ago that I first found the blog One Dog at a Time (while blog hopping) of two sisters who had just completed their first rescue trip driving dogs to New Hampshire. I was heartsick to find their blog literally two days after they returned home, as they had had van trouble, and I could have/would have helped them had I known. I contacted the sisters, Brittany and Brooke, and introduced myself and gave them my contact information for their next trip. I wanted them to have a NH contact, a "just in case" name and number.

From that point, we became fast friends and in May (on their second rescue trip) Ella and I were able to meet them in person! You can read about it HERE!

Sisters Brittany (left) and Brooke, with Ella at the Nashua Humane Society

Gorgeous "puppy angels"- Brooke, Kristen and Brittany

On this trip this weekend, Brittany (right) is coming with her friend- Kristen (center in photo above) and they are driving 33 lucky shelter dogs from Alabama to New Hampshire!

They will depart Alabama Friday morning and drive straight through, arriving in New Hampshire early Saturday morning. They will drive to two NH Humane Societies in different parts of the state to drop off the dogs.
Usually the girls have to head back immediately, but I am thrilled that Brittany and Kristen have taken some vacation days and will stay with us over the weekend!
The girls requested antique shopping! I want them to see and get to know New England, so I have lots of shops and sight-seeing planned!
(you will be greatly missed Miss Brooke...)

To see the adorable dogs they are transporting this trip and to follow their adventure, go to
One Dog at a Time blog (also on my sidebar).
The three girls also make dog collars that they sell on etsy! A portion of sales go to fund their rescue trips, so that the shelter doesn't have to pay for them. Be sure to check our their fun designs at the link at the bottom of my blog!



Ella modeling a One Dog at a Time collar!



Safe travels to the pups and the wonderful puppy-angels driving them!
Can't wait to see you!
xo,
joan

snapshot...

the Fall living room mantel

too pretty not to share....

I hope you don't mind a few more Fall photos!

It's just so gorgeous here that I can't help but want to share it all with you. When you look at the photos imagine that the view is not just in front of you, but all around you- 360 degrees of jaw-dropping color and beauty! And, to be honest, the photographs really don't do the views justice. Every day there are subtle changes; it is a spectacular time of year in New England. As I mentioned to Dan today, I think we use the word "wow" about 100 times a day during Fall!

We have 15 sugar maples along the drive up to the house.

The view from the upstairs porch.


Gorgeous falls are a mere 20-minute walk from the house!

Downstream from the falls. This is deep in the woods, so the colors are less brilliant, but still a stunning view, yes?!

A bridge along the hike.

Ella, being a very brave girl, making her crossing.


I adore this photo.

(This photo was taken from an adjacent hillside, looking back to our hill.)

I have to pinch myself when I realize that....
this is a view of where we live- literally!
The white house in the far right of the photo is my next door neighbor...

Our house sits directly behind (but not in view) the white house.

I want to do a post on how we came to live in New Hampshire, but perhaps this photo says everything that needs to be said.... ?!

A closer view of my next door neighbor's house. This photo faces North.


The little white dot about a one-third of the way in the photo from the left is on our daily walk. It is one mile from our house and is an antique church (that is now a children's summer playhouse). For reference, my neighbor's house can not be seen in this photo; it is out of the frame to the right.
The mountain on the left of the photo is Pack Monadnock.

This is a closer view of the little white dot/church!

Here is the street view of the above photo! The white dot (!) is the church on the left. Trees hide the steeple of the church on the right in the photo above.
I will also add that I was brought to a few tiny tears this past weekend when driving home past this very spot, and there was a tour bus driving through.... a tour bus was driving through my neighborhood! Lets just say that did not happen in my neighborhood back in Dallas!

Thank you for sharing the view with me!!
Happy Fall to you!

join us for a glass of wine

Last evening, Dan suggested we have a glass of wine at the adirondacks in the front meadow where we could watch the sun set on the maples up at the house....
a delightful suggestion!

It was a very crisp night, so we donned down jackets and gloves.

As the sun started to go down I noticed Ella sitting there shivering. She's not a shivering kind of dog, so I knew she was really cold. I gave her my faux fur collar I was wearing, and while most dogs would try to shake or paw it off... not Ella! I think she knew how lovely she looked! The shivering stopped immediately. She wore it for a good 30 minutes, and probably would have worn it all night if I hadn't taken it off her when we went inside!

As she would bend over to smell something on the ground, the scarf would rotate and she then looked like a reindeer!
Thank goodness she doesn't take it personally when we laugh hysterically at her!



The light faded and the moon came out... time to go inside.

Cheers!

weekend find...

After a stunningly gorgeous 40-minute drive through Fall foliage to get to our favorite pancake diner we stopped in our favorite dive antique mall and found these beauties...
antique piano legs!

As luck would have it, on Friday the contractor and crew arrived to start the barn room renovation (a post to follow), and lately I've been thinking about what to do for a large barn room ottoman.

Score!

These gorgeous hand-carved legs measure 23 inches in height. Their large scale is perfect since the barn room is fairly large at

23 feet- 6 inches x 27 feet with a 12 foot plus ceiling. I'm thinking an upholstered top, but we could also do a wood top made with reclaimed barn wood... .

What would you do?!

did I mention the price?...... $68, and then after the 10% discount for cash..... $61.20!!!!!!

each leg is numbered... love the antique font

the legs are on iron casters

What's this you ask?!

This is one tired shopping-dog under the down comforter taking an afternoon nap. It's hard to be Ella!!

the finished front

Five big projects have been (mostly) finished at the front of the house: fieldstones under the porch, antique cobblestone walkway, new garden bed, new sod, new gravel drive...

so now only

1, 527 more projects to go!!

Click to see the "before" photos.


We had originally hired a stone mason to construct the stone skirt under the front porch, and the cobblestone walkway from the front porch to the gravel drive. He was an "unusual" chap (to put it politely), but he was the only one of the three we interviewed that brought a portfolio for us to look at, and, most importantly, his price was right! Turns out he had a wee bit of a drinking problem, and by day two had been relieved of his duties. If it wasn't so pathetic, the beer can he attempted to hide under the shrub while working might have been comical. Luckily for us, on day one of the job the stone mason (and his helper, i.e. driver) had some business at the DMV and arrived sober and worked like the wind getting the front-facing stone wall put in during the morning and early afternoon. After their return from a long lunch the job (and their speech) moved a bit slower, but still moved along. Day two we were not so lucky, and only got a "start" on the end cap of the porch.
All, I can say at this point, is thank goodness for a very handy, talented husband who then put in the whole cobblestone walkway by himself, and is working on finishing the stone end cap on the porch!

In this photo you can see the different stones and textures, and how they play off one another: fieldstones under porch, cobblestone walk, and gravel drive, and how pretty they all look with the new sod!

Here you can see the wonderful color variation from the antique cobblestones which were originally from a street in Massachusetts.



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 Where the sun is hitting the cobbles at the base of the steps you can see the wonderful texture the cobbles have. Dan received a wonderful compliment last week when a guest mentioned how level and easy they were to walk on! Since the antique cobbles are all different heights, widths, and lengths it is a daunting task to install them level.

Close up of the fieldstone skirt. All of the stones are from our property.
There are several different ways one can install a stone wall, one is with mortared joints, another is dry-stacked. Since the antique stone walls that run along our property line are dry-stacked we chose that look. This is actually a variation, it is mortared in from behind the stones for structural support. If you look back at the before photos you can tell what a huge improvement this stone skirt is!


I designed the walk to have a flair at the top (that part was really fun for Dan!!) The new bed to the left looks like it is very angular in this photo, but it is actually only the new sod that is giving it that effect. It has, in reality, a rounded corner.

The front with the new gravel driveway. The gravel reads white in this photo, but in person it has much more gray in it. It is still a little "dusty" as it was crushed at a near-by quarry just for our project. To take this photo I was standing in one of the two "bays" that make up what we refer to as "the parking pad." The driveway ends here at the house where I am standing taking this photo and at the edge of the photo on the right side.

I realize the bed doesn't look like much now, but I promise it will be really pretty next year! The bed is filled with shrubs, and perennials and next year we'll add annuals. It will bloom predominately white, with soft pinks and purples/blues as accents.

If you follow the driveway straight and then turn left (behind the white adirondack chairs you can see in the middle of the photo on the left) the drive takes you to the road, if you were to turn right it would take you down to the garage which is underneath the barn. The dirt you see on the left side of the drive will be seeded within the next couple of days; we are just getting it done before the cut off time for putting down seed.

Rainbow over the east meadow!