setting the table.

Published on by Quandie4 Comments

For the most part I’ve put my miniature projects on hold for the summer.

I’ve got so many other things to occupy my time when it’s nice out, like gardening, garage saling, floating in my friend’s pools, drinking cocktails on the deck, and so on.

Working on miniatures makes a great winter hobby here in Minnesota.  Perfect for those sub-zero days when you don’t want to leave the house.  But our summers are pretty short, so it’s best to enjoy outdoor activities while we can!

But I did have one last thing I wanted to finish up before taking a little hiatus from the dollhouse reno and that’s setting the table.

I started out with a set of plates and silverware from Hobby Lobby.

That shiny silver finish wasn’t really for me, so I gave them all a coat of gold.

Then I set the table.

I used the gold plates as chargers and I topped them with some lovely floral china that I ordered from Twelve Times More Teeny on Etsy.

Then I added some pink tumblers that I ordered from Whimzzy Co, also on Etsy.

I used a simple white pitcher filled with flowers as a centerpiece.

And FYI, those are real flowers.  The blue ones are Forget-Me-Not’s and the white, of course, are Lily of the Valley.  Both are currently blooming in my garden.

In fact, the Forget-Me-Not’s are having one of their best years ever.  I think it might be because some of the other ground covers around it died back over the winter giving them more space.

So … a silver lining, right?

Whatever the reason, I’m really enjoying how pretty they are right now.  In fact, this might be my favorite spot in the garden at the moment.

Those are Curly Fries hostas just behind the Forget-Me-Nots.  They make an awesome combo.

But I digress, back to the table setting.  I’m also quite happy with how it turned out as well.

I’d love to be invited to this little dinner party, how about you?

a visit to winterthur.

Published on by Quandie4 Comments

Remember that time I went to Charleston in April to see the azaleas in bloom?  And then there was a huge storm the night we arrived that knocked the blooms off most of them?

Well, who would have expected that a trip to Delaware in May would make up for it?

I have to admit, it never even occurred to me that Delaware would be full of azaleas, but welcome to Winterthur.

Winterthur is the creation of Henry Francis du Pont.  It includes a massive 175 room house that he built to house his ginormous collection of American decorative arts (over 90,000 items).  There’s no way this guy could pretend to be a non-collector 😉

Not only did he collect American decorative arts, he also collected plants including azaleas.

And as you can see, they were in their full glory while we were there.

The ticket for Winterthur includes a 30 minute tram tour of the gardens, so we took advantage of that to get the lay of the land.  Afterwards we headed back to explore a few of the areas that I wanted to see up close starting with the Azalea Woods.

They were beautiful and definitely made up for the lack of blooms in Charleston.

The Peony Garden was our next stop.  The flowers were just beginning to open, but this single variety was in full glory.

The Quarry Garden was filled with blooming primroses.

It makes me want to add more of these to my own garden, currently I have just one small plant.

Unfortunately they were doing some restoration work in this garden while we were there so we couldn’t get any closer.  We had to settle for looking down on it from above.

The Enchanted Woods were a later addition to Winterthur.

This area was added about 20 years ago to encourage more families with children to visit.

I think I preferred the authenticity of the reflecting pool.

Next up was exploring the rest of the area around the house, if you can call a 175-room building ‘a house’.

I was fascinated by this rain water tank, at least I’m guessing that’s what this is.

As you can see, the downspout goes directly into that box so I assume it’s meant for storing rain water.  And just check out the concrete lions that are holding up the box.  No decorative detail was spared on this functional item.

We also took a self-guided tour inside the house where you can see just a handful of the 175 rooms.

Several of the rooms were decorated with hand-painted wallpaper.

And there were lots of spaces that were simply designed to display collections (because let’s face it, we can’t really call these non-collections can we?).

This room was just for candlesticks.

To be fair, I guess one could say that my own pantry is also mainly just a space for displaying collections 😉

As if the house and gardens weren’t enough, there is also a museum at Winterthur.  It’s a small museum, but by the time we got there we were getting pretty worn out so it was lucky there weren’t too many exhibits to see.

I really enjoyed the one called “On Tour: Lafayette, America’s Revolutionary Rock Star“.

I have to admit that I didn’t really know much about Lafayette prior to this trip.  Of course, I’d heard the name, and I knew he fought in the Revolutionary War, but that was about it.  Check out the link above to learn just a little bit about him and his ‘farewell tour’.

There were also a couple of exhibits in the museum that I found very relatable such as the exhibit about the Dominy’s, a family of skilled woodworkers that made furniture among other things.

This display pointed out all of the details that went into creating this piece of furniture.

There was also an interesting exhibit about furniture restoration.  This 17th century cupboard had been significantly altered over time.

The bottom section had been removed to reduce its height so that it would fit in a smaller room.  It has now been restored to its original design.

This next piece was once thought to be two separate pieces that had been ‘married’ together, so the two pieces had been separated.

It was only later that the conservators determined that no, these two pieces did belong together.

Another exhibit explored the use of toxic pigments in decorative items such as books, wallpaper and fabrics.

Arsenic was used to create the vibrant green on the items shown above.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, I will warn you that it takes the better part of an entire day to visit Winterthur and see everything there is to see.  We never did find the collection of soup tureens that I wanted to see, but in the end we were too worn out to look for them.  Luckily there is a cafe with grab-and-go sandwiches and salads, so we were able to get some sustenance before tackling the museum exhibits.

I highly recommend a visit though, I think Winterthur gives Longwood Gardens a run for their money as my favorite place we visited during our recent trip.  If you ever are in the Brandywine Valley area be sure to visit both of these!

carriage house sale recap.

Published on by Quandie11 Comments

Just a quick recap of the Carriage House sale for anyone interested.

The weather forecast for last Thursday was sunny and 75°, at least right up until Tuesday.  Then they added in a slight chance of rain.  Then on Wednesday they said we’d have morning showers on Thursday.  By when I woke up on Thursday they were predicting rain from 5 pm to 8 pm and I started to wonder what I did in a previous life that I was being punished for now.

OK, maybe that’s a bit dramatic.

But it was almost comical that rain was predicted for precisely the time frame of our sale (we were open from 5 pm to 8 pm on our first day).

It was a beautiful afternoon as we were setting everything up.

But we kept most of our merch inside rather than expanding out into the driveway like we usually do.

Sure enough, right around 4:30 we could see the dark clouds massing to the north of us.  The wind picked up and I started to wonder if we were going to have to hold our tents down.

But in the end, I must have actually done something right in a previous life because we only got a few drops of rain here and there.  The bulk of the storm traveled just barely west of us.  In fact, my friend Annie who drove over from that direction said she passed through a massive downpour on her way over.  Thank goodness that missed us!

All of that being said, we had a smaller crowd on Thursday evening than we had last year.  It’s hard to know why.  Did I not do enough advertising in advance?  Did the forecasted rain keep people away?  Were people out of town all week for the Memorial Day holiday?  Is vintage decor no longer as popular as it once was?

The weather on Friday morning, however, was nearly perfect, and we had a fairly steady flow of customers.  Most of them were people who’d seen my signs at the corner and stopped in on a whim.

The award for furthest traveled goes to Julie who came all the way from Duluth.  Thanks for that Julie!  I hope it was worth the drive 🙂

If you’re wondering what sold and what didn’t, I can tell you that my rusty stuff was some of the first stuff out the door.

I knew there had to be fellow rust lovers out there!

I plan to spend a good part of the summer coming up with more rusty creations for our next sale.

I had some sets of vintage kids books that sold really well.

I had them bundled by color and they all sold except for the yellow ones.  I get it, I’m not a huge fan of yellow myself.

I was surprised to find that my decorated boxes sold well.

I didn’t have high hopes for those since they haven’t done particularly well in the past (although they do well really well at the shop).

That being said, the stuff that didn’t sell included anything galvanized.  Watering cans, olive baskets, totes, scoops …

One notable exception was minnow buckets.  I had three of them, and two sold.

Honestly, I never seem to have a good feel for what will sell well and what won’t.  It changes from year to year.  Stuff that didn’t sell last year was some of the first stuff to go this year, and vice versa.

As I was cleaning up after the sale I made four piles; stuff to save for the next sale, stuff to donate, stuff that can go to the shop and stuff that’s slated for a do-over.

Speaking of the next sale, I’m considering adding a fall sale this year.  That will depend somewhat on my schedule since Mr. Q and I have a trip to Canada planned for September.  But maybe?  We’ll see.

Until then, a huge thank you to everyone who turned up.  It was great to see so many familiar faces!  I hope you’ll come back again next time!

rolling with the punches.

Published on by Quandie8 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

Are you ever plagued by indecision?  Afraid of making the wrong choice, or just unable to make up your mind?

Well, I’ve gone almost 6 years without being able to decide what tree to put in our front yard, or really even whether or not I wanted to plant a tree again.

Let’s recap.

When we moved into our house 35 years ago or so, there were two trees in the front yard.  A maple to the right, and a black walnut to the left.  My sister was visiting the summer that the maple came down.  We were sitting on the front enclosed porch watching a storm roll in when it came crashing down.  Lesson learned; when the warning sirens go off, take shelter in the basement or at least an interior room.

The tree missed our house, but it was a close one.

Back then we ended up also removing the black walnut (it was not a great tree, dropping those huge walnuts all over the yard) when we had the fallen maple cleaned up.

I replaced that maple with a 2nd maple, and the walnut with a flowering pear tree.  Here is a photo taken in autumn when the maple had its fall color.

I loved that tree.

Flash forward to 2019.  The maple was looking really good and finally serving its purpose of providing some shelter from both street noise and from the street light directly across from our bedroom windows.

Then another storm took out maple no. 2.

Ugh!

Once again, I chose to have the pear tree taken down when the maple got cleaned up.  It had gotten rather misshapen next to the maple and it didn’t look good on its own.  You can sort of see that it was mostly bare on the right side of it in the photo above.

Then came five years of being unable to decide what to do next.  I really wanted to plant a Princeton Gold Maple.

I love that bright lime green color.

But did I really want to put yet another maple in that spot?

I thought about doing a Honey Locust instead.  It has a similar golden color, plus the added benefit of tiny leaves that don’t really need to be raked up in the fall.  But I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it.

I finally decided that I would just take a chance on another maple, so I started looking around for the Princeton Gold.  I found one at Abrahamson’s Nursery two years ago, but the price tag was $250.  Yikes!  That seemed a bit much for a tree.

So once again, I put off making a decision.

However, the other day I headed over to Fleet Farm to see what they had in their plant section and lo and behold, there was my Princeton Gold Maple … and only $149.  I bought it on the spot, even though that meant putting the top down on my VW Bug convertible and very carefully driving home with a tree sticking up out of my car.

  Will it be three time’s the charm, or three strikes and you’re out?  I guess time will tell.  But at least I’ve made a choice!

In other garden news, I’ve started filling in the some of the bare spots in my garden that were the result of winter kill.

I lost three brunnera next to the potting shed, and I’ve replaced them with Heucherella ‘Pink Revolution’.

I lost my ‘Rozanne’ perennial geranium, or Cranesbill, under the ‘Limelight’ hydrangeas, and I liked those so much that I replaced them with more of the same.  Last year these bloomed all summer and up until the first freeze for me.

Then I addressed the large dead spot next to the front porch.  I started by replacing the ‘Sun King’ Japanese Spikenard.

Then I added three ‘White Diamonds’ fern leaf bleeding hearts.

They have a lovely blue green foliage and white flowers.  Fern leaf bleeding hearts like partial shade, and this spot is what I would consider full shade.  But I have another fern leaf bleeding heart in this area and it has done really well in this amount of shade.  It’s one of the first things to bloom in spring and then it keeps blooming all summer.

I’m hoping the white ones do as well.

I also added in some ‘Unique Ruby Red’ astilbe just behind the fern leaf bleeding heart.

Up until this year I had a white astilbe in this spot that was loving its life.  So hopefully this replacement will thrive, and hopefully we won’t have another killer winter for a few years.

Last up, I replaced the hostas that didn’t come back with some freebies from my neighbor nnK’s mom’s garden.  Judy was kind enough to tell me that I could divide any of her hostas and help myself to the divisions.

I started with this pretty little one with rounded leaves.

And I also chose this one that is a little bit larger and had pointed leaves and a bit more variegation.

So, how about some progression shots?

Here is how this space looked last summer.

So fab!

And then nearly every one of those plants died over the winter with the exception of the ‘Stiletto’ hosta that you can’t actually see in the photo above because it’s behind a larger hosta.

Here’s how this space looked a week or two ago.

So sad!

I just don’t know what happened here.  As I’ve mentioned before, I do have jumping worms in my garden.  So it’s possible this is jumping worm damage.  However, this spot wasn’t particularly loaded with the worms last summer.  I definitely had other spots in the garden that were worse, and they are doing fine this spring.  Thank god all of my gardens don’t look this bad!

And here is how it looks now.

By the way, all of those extra pops of pink are impatiens.  I decided to fill in with some annuals this year since the perennials are not going to fill out for at least a couple of years.

You may also have noticed that I am using cocoa bean shells as mulch here.  I read that there is anecdotal evidence that jumping worms don’t like them, so I’m giving them a try.  I’ll report back at the end of the summer with any results I notice.

In the meantime, today’s gardening lesson?  You have to be able to roll with the punches.  You just never know when Mother Nature is going to take you down.  You just have to dust yourself off and start over again sometimes, right?

the carriage house sale.

Published on by Quandie2 Comments

Just a quick public service announcement to say that the Carriage House Sale is open this morning from 9 a.m. until noon.

We have plenty of stuff left, so if you weren’t able to make it last night all is not lost.

Plus we’ve slashed some prices.  So even if you did come last night, you may want to come back again!

Please note, that Hiawatha thermos is sold, but we still have the silver one, and those beautiful vintage tablecloths.

So if you’re local, do consider stopping by.  It’s going to be a lovely morning to be out hitting the sales!

Hope to see you there!

vintage garden style.

Published on by Quandie5 Comments

I recently picked up a copy of Better Homes & Garden’s Vintage Garden Style magazine at the supermarket.

This is one of those special publication re-print sort of magazines, ‘back by popular demand’.  Which tells me that people still love vintage garden stuff as much as I do.

As I’ve been getting ready for the Carriage House Sale (which starts tonight!), I realized that ‘Vintage Garden Market’ is definitely the theme of our sale.

We have quite a few items from the various categories featured in the magazine starting with watering cans.

This first one is a no-brainer.  Of course we have vintage watering cans …

and some that are maybe not so vintage.

Next up, vintage enamelware.

Yep,  we’ve got this too.

The article in the magazine on collecting (or non-collecting in my case) vintage garden books really struck a chord with me.

There were so many lovely books featured.  Now I’m tempted to be on the lookout for vintage garden books myself.

And Sue brought a few for the sale.

We’ve got a few newer garden books too!

There was also a feature in the magazine on filling unique vintage items with succulents.

We have quite a few wooden totes like the one shown above that you could fill, plus any number of other vintage pieces that would be perfect as succulent planters.

For example, I’ve decided to sell on my antique newspaper roller that I used to plant with succulents myself.

I loved the look of the succulents in rusty iron urns shown in the magazine …

And I just happen to have a very similar faux rusty urn for sale …

along with a bunch of other rusty pieces of salvage for the garden like these old iron headboards.

I also am selling this rusty lady …

Remember when I purchased her in bright white?

Doesn’t she look so much better rusty?

FYI, I use the Dixie Belle Iron Patina Paint with the Green Spray to achieve that rusty look.

There’s another fun article in the magazine about giving an old structure a new life as a potting shed.

While I don’t actually have an old shed for sale, I do have one in my back garden and if you come to the sale you are welcome to pop your head in and check it out.

I recently recovered the seat of my wicker chair with some gorgeous vintage bark cloth that I purchased at my friend Lisa’s sale (one of these days I really have to share her sale with you).

Not that I didn’t love the bark cloth that was previously on the chair, but I needed to scavenge that for a chair that I am including in my sale.

The florals on it were perfect with the Miss Mustard Seed Apron Strings milk paint color on the chair.

By the way, there are three different shades of pink in that photo from three different brands.  The chair is in the Apron Strings (read about that original makeover here), the French flower bucket is in Dixie Belle’s Apricot (read about that project here), and the oval lidded tin on top of the box is painted in Fusion’s Little Piggy (read about that paint job here).

We’ve got a slightly bigger selection of pink/floral items this year.  I feel like the floral trend is coming back around, what do you think?

Although this next article doesn’t specifically pertain to items at our sale, I still thought it was worth a mention.

It features 7 tips about shopping at a vintage market and the photos are all from the Oronoco Gold Rush held at the end of August about an hour south of the Twin Cities.  I’m sure that most of my local readers have been, right?

I suppose some of the tips might apply to my sale, especially tip no. 6.  Love it?  Buy It Now!  Because if you don’t grab it quick, someone else will.

As I mentioned, the sale starts tonight from 5 pm to 8 pm.  We’ll also be open tomorrow morning from 9 am until the noon whistle sounds in North St. Paul.

We are accepting Venmo and Cash only.

Hope to see you local readers there!

the carriage house sale.

Published on by Quandie2 Comments

Those of you who have followed me for a long time already know about my occasional sale, but for those who are new around here I thought I’d share a little bit about it today.

My friend Sue and I started holding occasional sales out of my carriage house sometime before 2002 (I didn’t start keeping a record of it until then).  We started out as just a slightly above average garage sale, but over the years we began to curate a nice selection of vintage and upcycled home decor items.

Originally we held just one sale a year, but then we started having one in the spring and one in the fall because we had a lot of inventory.  It was so much easier to find good vintage items at garage sales back then!

I once found an entire box of old cameras at a garage sale.

I can’t even imagine coming across that today.

How about this haul from 2015 …

Not just one, but two vintage typewriters … and two sleds.  Plus a couple of tackle boxes too!

I think most of you will agree that it’s getting harder and harder to find good vintage items at garage sales these days.

Anyway, eventually we slowed back down to just one sale per year, and then it all got to be too much for me and we quit having sales altogether after 2016.

At that point I had added blogging to my to-do list.  That plus a full-time job, plus some pretty steady furniture painting kept me pretty busy.

Flash forward to November 2021 when I retired from the day job.  I definitely had the time to host a sale then, but did I have the inclination?  It took me until last year, 2024, to decide it was time to try it again.

My friend Sue signed on again, and my friend opK joined us as well.

And now, they are both back this year as we once again host a Carriage House Sale this Thursday and Friday.

I’ve been so busy getting ready for the sale that I haven’t actually had time to take any photos of the merch.  But once again we will have lots of vintage and upcycled home decor including quite a few of the items that I’ve shared here on the blog, like the flower market tote.

And the vintage camp chairs.

I’ve also got this pretty floral box for sale …

And these pretty french flower buckets.

I’ve got some faux apothecary style amber bottles,

as well as this garden herbs tote.

And so much more!

This year it looks like the weather is going to cooperate, the forecast is 76° and sunny!

So if you’re local, I’ll hope you’ll swing by either Thursday evening or Friday morning … or both!

another rainy garden tour.

Published on by Quandie9 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

Or maybe I should say good morning from a garden, because this garden is not my own.  Today I’m sharing Longwood Gardens located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

As you’ll soon be able to see, we visited Longwood Gardens on a rather rainy day on our recent trip to the Brandywine Valley.  But you know what?  I actually don’t mind visiting a garden in the rain.  It was raining during my visit to de Hortus in Amsterdam, and during my visit to the Munsinger and Clemens Gardens in St. Cloud.  I think you can get some of the prettiest garden photos on a rainy day.

So … Longwood Gardens … have you heard of them?

USA Today recently named them the no. 1 best botanical garden in the U.S.  Consisting of more than 1,100 acres, Longwood has pretty much everything you’d want to find in a botanical garden.  The map shows 32 ‘districts’ including a cascade garden, a bonsai courtyard, an Italian water garden, a meadow garden, a rose garden, the oak & conifer knoll, and the topiary garden shown above plus more.

The land that Longwood Gardens sits on was originally purchased by a Quaker farmer in 1700.  In 1798 his grandsons began planting an arboretum.  Their heirs weren’t interested in the project though and over the next 100 years the arboretum was allowed to deteriorate.  Then in 1906 Pierre du Pont purchased the property to save the trees from a lumber mill that had been contracted to remove them.

The Flower Garden Walk was du Pont’s first addition to the arboretum.

I loved the way the flowers are grouped by color in this area.

I think my favorite is the purple section.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to try something like this in my own garden, but I’m not sure I could pull it off.

In 1929, du Pont added a 61′ tall carillon, or chimes tower.

It has had a variety of different bells over the years, but it has been kept in running order and it was lovely to hear it chime out throughout the garden.

I took so many photos, and there was so much to see.  I don’t want to bore you guys with a million garden pics, so maybe I can just share the highlights.

There is a ginormous conservatory and this next photo might give you some indication of just how large it is.

It’s filled with beautiful things.

All of that pink?  That’s hydrangeas!

I sure do wish I could get these kind of results with a macrophylla hydrangea, but they really don’t like our cold weather.

They also had a beautiful display of blue ones too.

In case you are wondering, that tall purple flower behind the hydrangeas is a Canterbury Bell.

That’s another plant that I’ve never had much luck growing.  It’s a biennial, and I just don’t have the patience for a plant that takes two years to bloom and then dies.  Same with foxgloves.

The perfectly round globe shaped hanging planters in the conservatory were gorgeous.

This is the sort of thing you can do if money is no object, and you happen to have a greenhouse to grow them in.

Beautiful to see, but hard to emulate in real life.

There was also a fern wall in the conservatory …

and a children’s garden …

and an orchid room.

There were so many beautiful orchids (I thought of you when I saw this room Monica!).

There was a bonsai display tucked just behind the conservatory.

Some of the bonsai were 80 to 100 years old.  I can’t imagine the skill it takes to create these beautiful pieces of plant art.

I’ve saved the most spectacular aspect of Longwood Gardens for the end and that’s the fountains.

Remember the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas that I shared a few weeks back?

Well, the fountain show at Longwood is about 10 times more spectacular.

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get any photos of the ‘show’ where the fountains dance to music.  By the time we got to that part of our day I was a bit worn out (we spent nearly six hours exploring Longwood), and the rain had decided to come down a bit harder just at that moment.  My photos above show the basic fountains while they aren’t ‘performing’.

So I guess you will just have to head to Longwood Gardens yourself to see the fountains dance.  It is definitely worth the trip.

Have any of you been there?  If so, what was your favorite district?  Or do you have a botanical garden to recommend near you?  Leave a comment and let me know.

the flower market tote.

Published on by Quandie9 Comments

Remember the wood tote that I picked up while garage saling a couple of weeks ago?

Well, I’ve given it a quick makeover.

I started by cleaning it well.  While doing that I noticed that there was some sort of oily looking stain on the inside bottom of the tote.  So I gave just that bottom two coats of Dixie Belle’s Bonding Boss, just in case that stain wanted to bleed through my paint.

After letting that dry for 24 hours, I painted the inside of the tote in Dixie Belle’s Kudzu.

And so far, so good.  No oily bleed thru.

Next I painted the outside in their Drop Cloth.  Once that dried, I taped off some grain sack style stripes and painted those in the Kudzu.

I followed that up with adding just a portion of Dixie Belle’s Flower Market stencil.

Here’s the full stencil …

I taped off everything except the “Flower Market” wording for my tote.

I then gave the entire tote a vigorous sanding to age it up a bit.  I finished it all off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta in the Fresh & Clean scent.  If you haven’t tried this product, I describe it as halfway between hemp oil and wax.  It comes in 5 different scents, plus an unscented version.  I think I like the Orange Grove the most.  The Fresh & Clean is a little bit more subtle, and … well … fresh and clean smelling.

Next up I filled the tote with a load of lilacs.

I came home from the Brandywine Valley to find my lilacs in full bloom, and since then we’ve been having very cool weather (as low as 38° one night this week) so the blooms are sticking around a bit longer than usual which is nice.

Those purple lilacs are the Albert F. Holden variety, FYI.

But you wouldn’t have to fill the tote with flowers.  You could display lots of things inside, like pretty china and a lovely vintage floral tablecloth.

or maybe some books.

Speaking of books, I am planning to include ‘a year at Brandywine Cottage’ in an upcoming giveaway.

I just need to get that pulled together.  Some of you may know that I used to always bring something home from my travels to give away here on the blog.  But I looked back and I haven’t done that since my Amsterdam trip back in 2023.

I’m really slipping, and time is flying by so fast!

But, stay tuned.  At the conclusion of my posts about our trip to the Brandywine Valley I will have a giveaway that includes that book.

As far as the tote is concerned, I’ve put it in the pile of merch that I’m gathering for my upcoming occasional sale.  And that’s coming up awfully quickly as well!

If you’re local, be sure to save the date!

historic new castle.

Published on by Quandie12 Comments

While visiting the Brandywine Valley, Mr. Q and I stopped in at Buckley’s Tavern in Centreville, Delaware.

It was a charming little place located in what was once a private home built in 1817.

I had what I consider to be the best chicken pot pie of my life there.

But the real bonus was our waiter.

Somehow he and Mr. Q got to chatting about the Brandywine Battlefield, and war games, and painted gaming miniatures … all stuff Mr. Q is into, and so was the waiter.  He also gave us some great advice on places to visit in the area.  On his advice we spent a lovely evening at Birmingham Hill, one of the battle sites, but more on that in a future post.

He also suggested we visit historic New Castle.  He described it as a more authentic, less touristy version of Colonial Williamsburg.

The Dutch West India Company established a fort in this spot along the Delaware River in 1651, so that gives you an idea how old the area is. During the next 31 years, New Castle was alternately governed by the Dutch, Swedish, and British, changing hands five times.

Our first stop was the New Castle Visitor’s Center where we picked up a map for a self-guided walking tour of the town.

We started off heading down this amazing cobblestone road …

to the Immanuel Church and its churchyard.

I suppose some might find it a bit creepy, but I love a really old cemetery like this one.  It’s so interesting to read the tombstones.  Poor Thomas Bird lost his wife when she was only 21 years old.

After exiting the churchyard, we headed towards The Dutch House.  Unfortunately it was not open for tours the day we were there (it’s only open on Saturday and Sunday), but the staff at the Visitor Center told us we could wander through the gardens both here and at the Amstel House (also not open inside).

I have to admit, I took a few photos of each garden, but looking back at them I’m not sure which is which.  I think the one above is the Dutch House garden, while these next few photos are of the Amstel House garden.

Look, they had clematis blooming already!

There was one historic home open for tours the day we visited, the Read House.  However, after making two thwarted attempts to see it we gave up.  The first time we stopped by there was a small tour group in front of the house and the guide quite abruptly informed us that it was a private tour and we’d need to come back in another hour.  The 2nd time we stopped by there was no one at the ticket counter and after waiting about 5 minutes for someone to show up, we moved on to Packet Alley.

This is where packet boats from Philadelphia met stage coaches bound for French Town.  Travelers heading from Philadelphia to Baltimore would take a packet boat to New Castle, board a stage coach for the 16 mile journey to French Town, and then board another boat to Baltimore, and this trip took several days.

In 1832 the road between New Castle and French Town was turned into a railway line and the ticket office is still standing.

We also saw the Old Town Hall.

It was built in 1798 and is a “head house”, which is a building that served as a town hall in front of a series of market stalls that stretched behind it and could be accessed through that arched opening.  My photo above shows the back of the building, so I’m standing where the market stalls would have been.

I did enjoy checking out a few of the window boxes in New Castle.

They weren’t quite as impressive as the Charleston window boxes that I shared back in 2022, but they were still worth a photo or two.

I did particularly like these pots …

and now I’m wondering if I can do something similar in my own rusty pots this year (FYI, the Dwarf Alberta Spruce spirals that I put in them last year did not survive our harsh winter).

We ended our visit to New Castle with lunch at Jessop’s Tavern.

The tavern is located in a building built in 1674.  According to their website, they “strive to be reflective of the American food history that shaped what we eat today, representative of the English, Dutch, Belgian, and Swedish presence in this region.”

We ordered the Oli Bolen, a.k.a. Dutch Apple Cakes, for dessert.

And they were delicious!

We really enjoyed our visit to New Castle.  We felt like we practically had the entire town to ourselves, granted we were there on a Thursday morning in May so it wasn’t quite tourist season yet.  I assume it gets quite a bit busier on nice summer weekends.

Have you ever been to New Castle, Delaware?  Or do you have another favorite historic town?  Leave a comment and let me know.