A Stop in Wine Country

Last weekend we stopped into a few wineries on our Beamsville adventure! It always amazes me how unique and different each winery is. Here are a few of the ones that caught out eye:)

Angels Gate

Peninsula Ridge

This one definitely wins most beautiful. They have a fancy little restaurant inside as well that looks like it's worth checking out!

Thirty Bench

This guy was my favourite, the grapevine wreath on the side of the barn is my new phone wallpaper!

Hapy Friday! I'm hoping to get to some Christmas decorations up this weekend:)

Door Love

Don't you love it when something turns out better than you expected? That's what happened to me when I sent my dad on a wild goose chase to pick up an old door I found on Kijiji. I'm visiting NB this weekend and had s chance to check out my door live in person. Saying I am in love would be an understatement. In fact I am already trying to figure out how to get it back to Ontario after the wedding!

Originally I was planning to paint the window with chalkboard paint, but now I'm thinking I will just use window markers. It is too pretty to change.

What do you think? Glass or chalkboard? Have you found anything lately that turned out better than you thought?

Beautiful California

Chris and I have been in California for the week. We capped off our trip with a magical night as Disney yesterday, but I wanted to share some of the sights from my trip to Mission San Juan Capistrano. This was a Spanish Mission in Southern California founded in 1776. It has beautiful gardens and architecture, as well as droves of 10 year olds! It is a requirement as part of 4th grade California curriculum to visit a mission (as well as build their own). We were told over 25,000 fourth graders visit this site each year:)

I also managed to find an antique store in this small town! The prices were a bit steep (likely due to the Tourism draw), but it's always fun to look around in a new city!

Atlantic Tour: Georgetown PEI

As I mentioned in Friday's post, Georgetown is PEI's hidden gem...not terribly hidden as they have a famous restaurant in the Tourism guide, but a wonderful sleepy little town with so much maritime charm! Here are some of my favourite shots of Georgetown!

The Kings Playhouse has a traditional Ceilidh every Tuesday night! 

The little harbour/marina had tons of old fishing shacks, great patina and awesome nautical images.

I couldn't stop taking pictures!

Fab Find Friday

So we made it back safe and sound on Wednesday night. We had an amazing time in the maritimes, the wedding was beautiful, catching up with family and friends was wonderful and we squeezed in some great beach time!

The highlight on Prince Edward Island (and my fab find today) was definitely the Historic Georgetown Inn. I have never been to the east end of the island, and I must say it is worth the trip. The inn is run by Dawn and Joel. The accommodations are lovely and dinner at the restaurant makes it definitely worth the drive! Joel sources the majority of his ingredients locally, and the result is fabulous! Dawn is a great source of information about the island, and always has a recommendation for a day trip or two! If you make it to Georgetown, you must go to Basin Head Provincial Park and check out the Singing Sands Beach!

Happy Friday to you all! This weekend will be spent catching our breath and saying goodbye to dear friends. I'll be featuring pictures and stories from our trip next week.

Fab Find Friday: Old Window Coat Rack

Chris and I picked up this old window at Aberfoyle's Spring Sale. I wanted something to hang in our front entry way that would solve the problem of not hanging our coats in the closet or a temporary place for guests. I stained the exposed wood a darker shade to stand out against the paint. 

The large hooks also came from aberfoyle and the smaller hooks came from christie...amazingly they have the same mint green chipped paint finish! We thought about replacing the glass with a mirror or a chalkboard, but I think for now it will stay as is. We just need to find the hardware to hang this guy:)

We're off to Gravenhurst for a long weekend wedding and some much needed relaxation!

Happy Weekend:)

Prince Edward County- Antiques and Finds!

Welcome to the second post of three on our trip to Prince Edward County last weekend. Needless to say, I adored everything about this county and decidedly wanted to move in minutes! One of my favourite things we did when we were there was just drive the county roads and happen across many of the treasures this area had to offer. In my next post, i'll share some pictures of what we brought home, but this one shows you some of the Antique-related places we visited.

When you're driving around the county, you're bound to come across a few antique shops, but there was one I had to visit, just based on its name: "Dead People's Stuff". I had picked up their brochure years ago at Christie, and couldn't wait to check it out. It didn't disappoint, they have a great outdoor section, a "Mantiques" room to keep my better half entertained (so thoughtful) and they're currently working on a "Ladies Room" upstairs.

Old crates- I still have visions of making this happen at some point!

I really love the idea of a guest bedroom with two single beds and white picket fences as the headboards! Chris said no...we'll see what I can do to change his mind!

I have seen tons of great spaces with shutters lately like this, this and this

This was another stop along our journey. Be warned this is not an antique store, but I did manage to find a couple old jars, a great milk bottle and a few old books for under $10!

Prince Edward County- The Sights

This is the first of three posts on our trip last weekend to Prince Edward County. This is the Sights edition, I will also be posting about "What we Brought Home" and our Antiques visit. I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked because somebody (not naming names) said I looked like a foreign exchange student and walked a number of feet ahead or behind me, hoping for disassociation!

This is the Regent Theatre in Picton. It is a beautiful old theatre (since 1918) that still plays movies and hosts many other local events today!

French Country was one of my favourite stores in Picton! It was absolutely gorgeous, and the shop owner has actually lived in France for many years. They had everything from french linens, scents, glassware and jewelry.

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I took this shot for all my MTA/Sackville readers, as we had a Stedmans in Sackville, with a Frenchy's in the basement no-less and it brought back good memories!

This store puts brings the Island and the County together and reminded me of home just a little! Chris and I have a visit to PEI planned in July, and I can't wait to enjoy the Island!

This is the town hall in Bloomfield, erected in 1869! I tried taking numerous shots of this building, and it wasn't until we were in the car, parked in the middle of the road that I got this shot...somebody warmed up to the photo-taking and I couldn't have got this one without him! There's hope yet!

Small Towns

Chris and I are off to Prince Edward County this weekend! I have always wanted to go, so I am very much looking forward to checking out all of the local shops and restaurants. They're having Countylicious right now, so we've got reservations at one of the well known spots East & Main Bistro! You can look forward to the pics and stories next week.

I thought I would start out the week sharing some of the great pics we took when we went to another Small Town a few weeks ago; St. Jacob's Village. I had been to the market but never to the village, and they had some great sights! A tip for Antique Hunters- Hamel Brooms is not just a Broom shop:)

This was a very cool set of shops set up in an old flour silo!

Discovering Georgetown

Last Saturday I went with Chris to Georgetown as he had a Dentist appointment. I knew it had  quaint downtown with a few shops, and I certainly was not disappointed. I actually only made it down one side of the street, missing the butcher, creamery and famous cupcake shop; I guess there's always next time!

As I do in any new small town, I started taking pictures of the architecture and quaint shops. As I poked around in one, the following conversation occurred over text:

Chris: Are you taking pictures? The people in the waiting room are making fun of someone taking pictures on the street.
Me: I've never cared what others thought, and I don't intend to start now
Chris: I knew it was you:)

I found this great antiques shop on James St that was a treasure hunters paradise- one of those places where nothing has a price tag, and you have to move things around to get further into the shop. I ended up getting an old window frame that will be converted into a mirror/key holder, and old book, and an old Blue Ribbon Baking powder tin.

Do you spot anything interesting?

Home for the Holidays

It's been a busy week at our house! My parents arrived on Christmas Eve from New Brunswick. We had our first Christmas in our house, and then headed to Chris's parents house for an amazing Christmas dinner!

The kittens enjoyed their first Christmas and all the paper and ribbon! 

My Grammy crocheted us this beautiful afgan for our living room

You know you've made too many sweet treats when there are still leftovers after all of the parties and visiting (read: not complaining)!. This year I made sugar cookies, homemade twix bars, homemade peanut butter cups, peppermint patties, ginger cookies, peppermint bark and salted caramel chocolate pretzel bark. The pretzel bark and peppermint patties were clear favourites, and I will be adding those to the annual traditions list along with the homemade twix bars. I'll share the twix recipe a little later.

We left on Wednesday afternoon for New Brunswick, as one of my good friends is getting married on Christmas Eve. It was a long drive, but we did have some eye candy along the way!

Boy was I glad to see this sign!

I hope you all had a great holiday. I'll be back in a few days to share the DIY from my friend's wedding as well as share some cooking and design resolutions as we look forward into 2012!

Sackville

I was "back in the Sack" as they say in the Maritimes on Tuesday recruiting students at my Alma Mater Mount Allison University. Sackville is a gorgeous small town that I adore. It's also a great  central point of all three Maritime capital cities; you can get to Fredericton, Halifax and Charlottetown from Sackville in under 2.5 hours. Here are some of my favourite shots; I didn't make it to the marshes this trip, which is another must do, but there's always next time!

 Mel's Tea Room is legendary, serving milkshakes and breakfast to MTA students for a very long time

 The Vogue Theatre is a cute one screen theatre that had midnight toonie movies when I was in school. There were a few great girls nights held at the Vogue!

 Bridge Street is a wonderful little coffee shop, they have lots of yummy tea options and their breakfast bagels are delicious!

I loved the architecture of this old church, so beautiful!

Have a great weekend!