I speak quite often of our home in NJ, and about how much I loved it ...

and I promised one of you that I'd find a photo. Here is our last home, in Ewing, NJ ... taken at a rather dismal time of the year, but what a great house this was! (Time dims the memory of the new furnace we needed almost immediately, the re-ducting that had to be done prior to adding a/c, and the English Ivy that was actually growing through the basement window frames :-) ...)


I LOVE houses built in the 1950's. So solid it was, and so much storage. The loft above the garage stretched across the breezeway, with a staircase to the top. A full, unfinished basement. Knee-wall storage along half the front of the top story, and almost all the way across the back. Three pantries in the kitchen (two closets, one built-in hutch). Cherry trees, holly trees, different varieties of maple trees, a mulberry bush (just like yours, Janna!). Oh, and poison ivy!! Yuck. The grass on the front is not dead, nor is it even grass, but a plant called zoysia grass that is extremely heat tolerant and stays green without water all summer. And although you can't see in this photograph, the entire left front of the house is covered with massive rhododendron bushes.

I was talking to the kids the other day though, and we realized that this house would likely feel quite small if we still lived there. The girls shared the masterbedroom, which was a good size, but the living areas were fairly poky and small. Still ... awesome memories.

I am going through the filing cabinet, and have come up with all sorts of gems in the process ... AND considerably slowing the whole process as I do :-).