Yesterday Tim and I had a date and it was so nice..nice and relaxing. We drove down to Paradise...a small town outside of Lancaster. We needed to pick up a few things at The Amish Trader, a wholesale store. Then we went next door to Cackleberry Antique Mall.After the antique shop we went to IN GRANDMA'S ATTIC in Kinzers..Love that store especially the barn out back filled with lots of goodies!
On the way to Paradise we drove off the beaten path...we do this a lot. We love taking the "scenic drive" and let me tell ya..it was scenic! We left our home and got on RT 501 to 322 in Brickerville...drove through Ephrata...love that town! Then we decided to take Route 897 to Route 30...what a nice drive. I had my camera with me but I never did take any pictures. I was too busy just looking at everything and soaking in the beauty of the area. Tim and I were so impressed with how beautiful all the yards and gardens were. And the Amish were busy cutting hay ( I think it was hay!) and also planting. We saw an Amish family planting PLANTS of some kind in a big field. The dad was riding on an Amish piece of machinery driven by HORSEpower. It looked like this machine was making a hole in the dirt, then the Amish children were taking a plant and placing it in the hole. It was a hot day in PA yesterday and these kids had to have been hot and tired..it was a big field. We left IN GRANDMA'S ATTIC and got back on Route 897 and headed back to Ephrata. Tim found a restaurant in Ephrata on the Internet that he wanted to check out, LILY'S ON MAIN...SO glad he found it! It was so nice....http://www.lilysonmain.com/
The bottles we found...I love the little one...wonder what it was used for?
This bottle has the words WIZARD OIL...Hmmmmm?
I hope you all are having a nice weekend and if you have some sunshine to spare can you send some our way? It is raining... AGAIN! It is really coming down...so tired of this rain....yesterday was nice but today..UGH! I have a feeling The Brickhouse will not be seeing much business today. While I have been writing this post I have been dealing with a nasty Blue Jay...why the birds are picking on my sparrow family I have no idea..but I am getting tired of playing referee. I was sitting here in the kitchen and heard some birds yelling..birds yell don't they? I went to the porch and there is this big ole Blue Jay with his head in the hole of Mr and Mrs Sparrows home and he is ripping the nest apart..the Sparrows are yelling at him..I go out a number of times to chase him away...If you remember the post I made a few weeks ago about the BLUE Birds picking on the sparrows...now it is the BLUE Jay....Poor sparrows! And to think that BLUE is my favorite color!!!
Doors 2 and 3. The door with the stocking is our pantry and the other door leads upstairs to my craft room.
Close up of the stairs.
And a little hiding spot under the one step!
The latch on the doors to the pantry and upstairs.
This is the 4th door that leads to another porch on the East side of our home. I love watching the sunrise from this porch and Tim and I eat some of our meals on this porch.
And now some other pictures from our kitchen.
This rug was made by my Grandma "Mom" Hunter.. I love it and I loved her and miss her so much
And this is an old chamber pot holding a bird's nest!
I hope you enjoyed the tour of our kitchen. 
I had trouble taking a picture of this in the house so I ended up taking it on our porch. I really am so happy that I won this...Now I need to find the PERFECT place to hang it...Maybe I should have Tim build me a TROPHY case...since this is the first thing I ever won!
I was tired of how the porch of The Brickhouse Craft Shop was looking....so I rearranged some things. When we have the Shop open we put some of our merchandise on the porch. It has been a windy year here and I am constantly picking up things that blow over and then when we open and close the shop we have to move so many things around. SO from now on all merchandise will be IN the Shop and the porch will be for PORCH SITTING only! I am going to encourage our customers to sit and relax on our porch.
Here are a few pictures I took today.
Thanks for visiting our Porch...please come back again. AND if you visit our Porch please leave us a comment...we have been telling our customers/friends about our blog so if you visit our Porch please leave us a comment..we would love to see that you visited us here at The Porch.
If you've been following Patti's recent postings though, you know that I've been a bit busy making bird houses for customer orders. In my last posting I told you how Patti and I finally took notice to the Summer Kitchen on our property and 'discovered' our Craft Shop. I also told you how we realized that it was going to take a lot of work to renovate the Summer Kitchen in order to transform it into the Brickhouse Craft Shop but that we had the most important tools we would need to get the job done: the Passion for making crafts and our Vision of the Craft Shop experience.
When you walk into the shop, one of the first things you might notice is the aroma inside the shop. This isn't really anything unique - most craft shops Patti and I visited had some sort of aroma when you first walked in. I would always say to Patti, 'there's that aroma!'. It may have been different in every shop but it was always calming and relaxing. As is the case in most shops, this aroma is a mixture of candles, soaps and other crafts - and now we have our own!
And on the center of the wall you will see an old black and white photograph. The man in the center of the photograph is my great grandfather, S.R. Masser.
He started Masser's Store and eventually my grandfather, Paul Masser took it over. It then went to my parents. I spent many years working there until I left Pennsylvania to go to a trade school. My grandfather taught me a lot about working in a store and how to treat a customer. Masser's Store was a General Store and was one of those stores where you could catch up with old friends and chat for awhile. You could buy just about anything there too, from washing machines to shoes and any groceries you could think of.
I remember getting molasses from a barrel for customers who would bring their own containers. I also used to work in the 'deli' area where we sold meats and cheeses. I will never forget how my grandfather taught me to wait on the customers there. He told me, when you give the customer the meat they ordered, always say '...and what else can I get you?' - never say 'is that it?' - that sounds like you don't want to wait on them and you want them to leave. Patti and I have met so many nice customers, some were friends we already knew and some we met for the first time. We love talking to them and it has been amazing how much time people will spend just chatting. We have a sign outside by the door that says 'Come as customers, Leave as friends' and that is usually what happens. You may also notice that you will not find a clock in the craft shop - the amount of time you spend isn't important - how you spend it is.
