Hi Blog Friends! It's been a while - we've been busy having our "Not Bummer Summer" (thanks Judy Moody for inspiring that!) and taking vacations and such. Thought I'd catch up for a moment and share some of the great GREEN finds I've made in my travels.
Found this great little shop in Ogunquit, Maine last month that does personalizing, where they carried all these funny magnets and this one made me smile :) I also picked one up that says YAY! BEES! for one of my real estate clients (and friends!) Speaking of real estate - man, it's been a hard summer. Contracts that had previously going along swimmingly are drowning left and right over circumstances beyond my control. It's really frustrating. Even more frustrating is how difficult it has become for so many buyers to become homeowners. I've said it before, but really it's creating a large demand for rentals in my market and they're so hard to come by.
On my way home from the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors Strategic Planning meeting I happened to drive by the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Salem, CT. They were unloading a truck and what did they happen to have coming in, but some cute square windows that might take the place of my oval decorative windows for the carriage house we're building. The oval windows are $900 each and we needed 2. The nice man at the ReStore sold me these 4 square windows for $10 each. $10! I took them on the spot. They're not what I had originally planned, but I think we can still add enough character to make it work. Looks like we can get a side door for around $25 too, but the double doors and the rest of the windows (seeing as how I'd like for them to match) will be ordered. On the building front, we're still looking at just a foundation and the floor has been poured. We hope to have framers starting this week, but it's just crickets out there today. Well, crickets and the sound of my bank account being depleted.
We finally made it to the Chester Farmer's Market on Sunday morning. Despite the pouring rain it was a great market, and there were many organic vendors, meat sellers, breads, fish, cheeses, other dairy like yogurts, honey, soaps, fresh flowers, jams, etc. We walked away with the beautiful bouquet of flowers that Scott surprised me with at breakfast (the vendor delivered them right to our table in the Simon Marketplace - it's so darling you should stop there!) plus divine cheese, baguette, & saturn (or donut) peaches from Glastonbury. I didn't realize we could grow those here - I'm going to try to get some going! Added to our fresh veggies from the garden it made for a lovely summer dinner on the terrace.
Here's Scott at the flower vendor, Hay House Farms of Old Saybrook, CT (and that's Julien twirling his Roma umbrella!) They are a CSA and participate in the Chester, Lyme & Old Saybrook Farmer's Markets. (We've talked about getting involved in a CSA, but between some of our friends I feel like we may have enough garden space between us to do our own! We'll have to plan better for next summer.) The farmer/artist has a blog and he said they do a farm stand on Thursdays 3-6pm - looks from the blog that you can visit the farm and check out their great kiwi vines which are producing! Again, I didn't realize you could grow those here....very interesting. There's a photo on his blog of the kiwi growing over the pergola. Apparently they also have a Stupa, which is rare in CT.
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