Friday, January 24, 2014

Eastern Shore winter birds...

With all this wickedly cold weather of ice, snow and wind lately reminds me of a couple years ago when I captured these photos of the birds that visit our beach home in the winter... All birds certainly do not go south! Every year we've been lucky to see the large amount of birds come to visit...


Seagulls...

White snow geese and I believe Mallard ducks  Canadian Canada geese...
Okay, seriously I just may have ALL this wrong! 
Check back later for the correct identification of all these birds!
Thousands of snow geese made a visit for several days...

At night the snow geese are so LOUD I doubt anyone nearby can get any sleep at all! I know I didn't, but it was somewhat peaceful to hear them....

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Interesting attic find...

This is a great find in the attic! Through some research it may have belonged to someone quite famous in the area.

If you live in Maryland or have ties to the Army there's a good chance you've heard of Fort Detrick (United States Army Medical Command Center). The location is a hop, skip, and jump from this home...

Medical/Medicine/Pharmacy Balance Scale

The box was filled with all sorts of items...

Items found inside the box...


 It didn't dawn on me to who it might belong to until I looked into some names from the "folder" that was found in the kitchen cabinet. You can read that post here.


Inside of folder that was found inside a kitchen cabinet....

One name inside the folder may be the clue to the "who" the medical/medicine/pharmacy scale belonged to...

Marian Douglas Detrick....



Marian Douglas Detrick was the wife of Frederick Louis Detrick

Fort Detrick, the United States Army Medical Command Center in our area was named after Frederick Louis Detrick. This was a great find!

I see on record that Frederick L. Detrick passed in April, 1931. If this is correct and Marian D. Detrick purchased this home in 1933, then she purchased the home after her husband's passing.

I have some homework to do, but will keep you updated!


Thursday, January 16, 2014

Do you believe in ghosts? Part II....

What do you see this time?

Today a friend came over to see the "mirror". If you don't know the history of the mirror you can visit the post here. I took out my camera and started taking some more pictures... AND what we saw once the pictures were downloaded were chilling....





If you see something in any of these photos, please let me know.

I'll post later what my friend and I both saw that sent chills through us, and made hair on our arms stand up....

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

A treasure of history was found!

About a week ago here, I posted that there was a "find" behind this door...
Top cabinet above the stove...
Several days after moving in, it was time to clean the interior of the kitchen cabinets to unpack some more boxes.

To say the least I was very surprised to find a folder, tucked neatly on the top shelf above the stove...AND to my surprise it was filled with all sorts of treasures about the home and its history.


I had a feeling the previous owner left it for me to find...especially the way it was tucked up in a cabinet, a cabinet that would not have easy access, and probably used the least. 


The picture shown is the folder, but since has been emptied out, and contents placed in a large binder with protective sleeves. Inside the folder was: Lots of pictures, some of the previous owners, but unfortunately the pictures are NOT dated, or tagged with names. I did recognize one picture of the previous owner.

There were also permits, and a written history of ownership back to 1866. BUT the home was built in 1790, so I still have some digging to do about more history of this home.

Picture taken of the living room. On the left is an exposed cabin wall. One section of this home is cabin....

Closer view of the cabin wall....

Written history of some of the ownership of the Circa 1790 home.

Host of info about ownership of home...

Several names I will be looking into to that was written on the other side of the folder...

Love to learn more about the Booth and Talbolt families!

There are lots of pictures of "people", but for privacy I won't be able to show you most of those. I believe some are of the previous owner and maybe family. Not sure because they are not dated or labeled. I wish they were.  BUT I will share this one in the folder since you can't see a face. I think it's kind of an eery picture.

Who was this girl?
A previous owner had made cards up of the house many years ago. There were a handful in the folder...

Lots of permits of work that had been completed in years before...
AND the previous owner had even tucked in the "For Sale" info about this property...

And today ALL the contents and more have been placed inside a binder with protective sheets, and will be placed at some point, on the same shelf, for the next homeowner to find!

New and updated folder will be placed in the same kitchen cabinet for the "next" home owner to find and treasure!


Monday, January 6, 2014

Do you believe in ghosts? Part I

I recently took this picture of a mirror in our house. In fact I took several pictures, trying to capture a ghost-like face in the mirror. This is the only one, that perhaps you can see what I can...

Let me know if you can see something odd in this picture....
Since we live in a home that is over 200 years old, people ask if it is haunted- I always answer, "Not that I know of".

But several odd things have happened that I will share in some upcoming posts... Has anyone else had something strange happen in their home? Let me know!

Here's another view of the same picture- Just adjusted the definition, and added sephia color...

Wondering if adjusting the color into sephia gives a better view? The ghost like face is on the mirror, not on the wall or in the room. It's located on the left side in between the lamp and curtains. Do you see it now?



Sunday, January 5, 2014

Resident Snow Birds....

Six inches of snow resting on top of our backyard fence...
During the winter months some residents of this town go south and are called "snow birds".  But apparently that's not the case of some  local birds that stay with each season...

The weather here, in this part of Maryland, is extremely cold and upcoming this week will be record low temperatures that haven't been seen in a century. SO why are the birds still hanging around?

I'm not sure about the identity of these birds are (someone mentioned turkey buzzards). If you know, please let me know...
One of these birds about to land on a tree...

In the short distance, these LARGE birds perch on bare branches.
If you look at the top left and bottom left , it appears as if the birds are laying down on a branch... Why are they doing this? With the record setting  lower temps moving in, I'm wondering if the birds will take off to a warmer area?

I feel like I should go toss some breads crumbs under the trees....



Note: Someone has possibly identified them as Turkey Vultures. If this is the case, I don't think they are looking for bread crumbs.


Saturday, January 4, 2014

Easy DIY furniture leveling project...


Cost of DIY furniture leveling project: Under $5.00 to level one bed frame.

Two packs of 2"rubber furniture cups- $2.00 each pack of 4
Scrap wood: $0
Time it took: less than an hour


IF you live in an older home you may have some floors that are not so level.

This may NOT be a problem in some areas of a home, but can be a major problem while staging some furniture pieces, especially those pieces that require you to get a good night's sleep!

Our solution: Easy DIY furniture leveling project

One piece of furniture that really needed to be level was one of our beds.


As you can see in the picture above, if we left the bed frame "as is" someone may end up on the floor in the middle of the night.

Here's what we did:

FIRST: We purchased eight large rubber furniture cups. We'd use two for each leg of the bed frame.

Using some scrap wood, a piece was cut that would fit snugly inside the furniture cup shown below.



SECOND:  Place the wood piece inside the furniture cup as shown below...


THIRD: Place another rubber furniture cup on top of the wood that has the wood inside of it. As shown in picture below (bottom side up)...


FOURTH: Place in the center of each bed frame leg. As you can see in this picture, we still had to shift our DIY leveling project just a bit to center it...


FIFTH: Level measure again to make sure it's the level amount you were trying to achieve! As seen in the picture below, it's still NOT an exact level piece, but a whole lot better than when we started, and very livable.


Cost of DIY furniture leveling project: Under $5.00 
Two packs of 2"rubber furniture cups- $2.00 each pack of 4
Scrap wood: $0
Time it took: less than an hour

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

It's confirmed... We live in a tree house!

FIRST, I hope the New Year brings everyone much happiness and joy! Winter is here and showing it's true colors, as we've had snow, ice, cold rains, and more in the near forecast.


SECOND, we actually don't really live in a tree house, but this little green vine has made its way into our home along a crack in a floor board. Yep, one of those things that should not be too surprising in an older home...

The vine actually looks quite healthy, considering I've never had to take care of it.



NO watering, NO extra light, it just seems to be growing nicely all by it's lonesome self. My kind of plant, very self sufficient.



One of my granddaughter's periodically checks on it to make sure it hasn't been removed. AND my son-in-law suggested that it would be "nice" if it was allowed to grow along the fireplace mantel.... Hmmm.

So as you can see there are some surprises that almost any homeowner of an old home can find, at anytime.

My next post will be about a very unexpected "find" that was left by a previous owner behind the door shown below...

What's behind the door shown? It will be revealed in an upcoming post...