Chuckles & 5 Floor Book Store | Day 5

Today was much more relaxed and much needed. It can be tiring running around a lot of the time. 

Started the morning off with fruit. How I missed fruit. The pears were sooo good there.

I may have dipped into my candy from the Village...

 

I'm a sucker for gummy candy, especially fruit flavored things.

It never tastes as good as it looks though, I always end up being disappointing by it. It just doesn't measure up to real fruit. I took a small bite of each, but finished the cherry, don't know why. The lime one was the best. Grr Amber!

 Early mornings + reading outside + quiet =  bliss

Me and my friend got a surprise to a book store. My Mom and Aunt told us that it was a very small place that could only hold a few people so we'd have to be right in and right out in about 20mins. That seemed completly unrealistic. 20 minutes in a bookstore? Is that even possible?

When we pulled up to the house it was kind of in the middle of nowhere and older, with stone walls, and it when you walk in the front door it was so hard not to grin. It was not small at all. It had five floors of new, used, and rare books.

The bookshelves are made of wooden crates stacked on top of each other. Throughout the store they have little hooks of paper bags. So sly.

And they have a black cat. 

She/he helped me out in the music room. Sweet as pie [:

After, we went into town to see if any of the other bookstores were open but they were all closed due to it being a Sunday, sadly. 

We stopped at a coffee shop named Philter and I got an iced mocha, which was ssuuupppeeerrr strong.

They also have gluten free choices too. The apple loaf is really good. I should've got something else though, I didn't think that there'd be cinnamon in it. Oh well.

After that we hit the park. I love this place so much. It was a goal to run there, but never managed to make it happen unfortunately. It's absolutely stunning though. Everything is just so green and beautiful. If I lived there I would walk there every day multiple times a day, without a doubt.

Exploring Stoudtburg Village | Day 4

This was the main reason for the roadtrip, Stoudtburg Village. I came across it surfing Pinterest and, being who lived in Germany for said-years, I told my Mom about it. We were pretty excited. We looked it up, my Aunt lived not too awful far away from it and so we went.

After much research, and finally arriving from what seemed like a HUGE town, turned out to be very small, and not quite as German as my Mom and Aunt remembered the pictures being on the website. We went on Saturday, when either the website, or their Facebook page, said they were only open on the weekend, and after contacting them and getting no reply, almost all the shops were closed apart from, like, three, a candy shop and two antique stores.

The fountain was pretty though.

We were pretty disappointed, it was still pretty cool to see what it was like.
Moral of the story, don't believe everything on the internet... obviously.

Mom, being the Master Gardener she is ( :P ) was wanting so badly to go to a nursery and we found Esbenshade's Garden Center. Many many acre's of everything flowers. Fair warning, if you get lost from the Village trying to find the place, use a GPS. My Aunt called because we got lost from the sign (that's says 'Just down the road) to the place being PAST the road that you actually turn off of, they didn't know where we were, or where they were and it was a mess. However, they were very kind and the people at the nursery were so very nice. Plus... you can hear frogs croaking from a little swampy area behind the one green house.

Blue Hydrangea's are just so gorgeous. My future home will have these out front. I promise.

After a sticky humid morning and hours in the sun, what better way to cool off then with some ice cream?

We stopped at Boehringer's Drive-In. Which, apparently, was featured on a tv show? Best Ice Cream across PA/America? I don't know, but it was delicious. I got the Mint Chocolate Chip, and there was rainbow sprinkles too. Don't ever forget the sprinkles.

After we got home my Aunt took me to the grocery store so I could get a couple things and we found these cute little pineapples in the produce section. I love them so much, they look tasty too!

Me and her both made dinner, and what better way to finish off the night then with a bonfire and s'mores? 

Also... if we're gonna be completely honest... I stayed up late to read my Deadpool comic... It happens... [:

Comic What?! | Day 3

They were calling for rain over the weekend so our garden tour plans got put on hold and we went shopping instead. We went to Sally's Beauty and got hair dye for my hair which also ended up being in the same shopping center as a COMIC BOOK STORE. OHMYLANTA!
Where I live, there is no comic book stores. Barnes & Noble is the closest thing we have to one and their comics are $16.99 a piece, which are a liiiittttllleee out of my price range.

It was probably the coolest thing on the face of the earth. They had a Predator costume along with Batman. My friend tried to convince the guy working to let him wear it, he said on free comic book day he could try it on ;]

I only got two comics this trip. A Hawkeye, and Batman for my one friend. He's not much of a reader at all (I know, I told him we can't be friends anymore.), but he also said he wants to step up his comic game. Now he can do so :]

We also discovered a big Cabela's, of course we stopped there too.

There's no more pictures to share, but lastly, in the same lot, there was a Barnes & Noble that was two floors and huge and amazing and we spent a good while in there. It was wonderful!

Hagley Museum & Library | Day 2

On the second day of the trip we went to Hagley Museum. I took more video then I did pictures, so here's another YouTube video if you'd like to watch [:

My one friend came with us so we were sure to include him on the activities too, this one was mainly for him but we all ended up really enjoying it.
Hagley, owned by the DuPont's, was the place gunpowder was made. It turned out his son had learned how to do it before they located here, so he taught the others. And thus, they had gunpowder.

 This tree is 326 years old, one of the oldest trees left, tied with one other.

This is the DuPont family home.

We saw an eagle down near the Brandywine from the patio.

Finally, An Adventure! | Day 1

I've been waiting so long for this. My Grandma is a big traveler and it turns out that I've caught that gene and I've been itching so badly the past couple years to finally go on an adventure. My hold up was my anxiety. Car rides and people caused me so much stress and left me fearful of leaving the house. After about two years of fighting back, this summer I finally get to travel.

The previous night I did get some packing in, the majority of it. Then I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and decided to pack the rest of it. Ended up with 3 bags. A suitcase, my 'entertainment' bag, and my laptop/camera bags. If you call them bags.

Typical me forgot to take a picture of my suitcase and all, but here's what I packed:

 6 shirts, 3 for outfits 3 for sleeping, excluding the one I wore in the car. The weather was supposed to pretty warm so I packed mostly tanks, although, the one I didn't really end up wearing and the others were. But my aunt, that we stayed with, let us use her washer.

 2 pairs of leggings, and 2 yoga shorts. Mostly for sleeping.

Perfume of choice.

Bath bag filled with all the things.

The 'entertainment' bag

Top left to right:

Nintendo DS & Games
Sketch book, pencils, journals
Books. (Got to have the books)
Travel Scrapbook
DVDs

Items packed that aren't pictured:

2 Shorts
1 Pair of jeans
1 Hoodie

1 Belt

Socks
Under clothes
Vitamins

Of course we brought snacks and my backpack that I kept in the front. 

This was the only picture that I really took during the trip, I did take a video though that's on my YouTube if you'd like to see some of the view[: Something got messed up with the audio though.

 

These plazas seemed so fancy. Then again it was my first time being to one. They were a combination of Starbucks, Steak n Shake, a gas station and some other little quick food shop.
We only made two stops on the way and me an Mom got a coffee to trucker through the rest of the 6 hour trip.

We got to my aunts around dinner time and stopped at Chick-fil-a to eat. We were all pretty tired but it was definitely worth it, the ride was absolutely gorgeous. Everything there is so green and lush, and there was a lot to look at on the way down for it being interstate.

A Stressful 2 Weeks

Oh where to begin. It feels like lately it's been nothing but running around, which is super great in one way, and exhausting in another. Here's just a few pictures of some of the days.

A couple weeks ago I went to the mall and sat in Panera Bread with a smoothie and finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower while my mom was at a job. My friend ended up meeting me there and we shopped around until my Mom met us for lunch.

Tractor Supply got the chicks in. Oh, they are so cute!

We want chickens so badly, but we're not allowed to have them in our town. At least, the lady doesn't want them. We haven't received any proof that there is a 'rule' that doesn't allow them.

A perk of going to work an hour and a half early because you don't have a ride and don't want to get soaked in a rainstorm. It was so nice though getting to sit and read while it rained. A guy walked past that had a liver colored Malamute. It was gorgeous, still pretty young. I've never seen first-hand a liver colored Malamute. It came right over and wanted to play though.

This is the sad part. Because life was just funky the past couple weeks, I think I only made it to the gym, like, twice, MAYBE three times. It was sad. I felt gross and horrible and when I did finally make it, it was a hard workout between feeling stiff and sluggish. Although, my weight dropped, so that's great because I feel like I've been constantly hungry all the time.

This was a long time coming. Towards the end of last year I had begun working on it but my schedule with work had me tuckered out and never got around to finishing it. At the beginning of the week I managed to get it finished. This is the first portrait that I've ever done and I'm pretty pleased with it. Especially the Jack Sparrow part.

This just made me chuckle. "No fat and no cholesterol (means but hearts & small butts).

FINALLY starting House of Hades. My friend is probably about ready to strangle me because it's taken so long to finish the series. Had a hiatus there for a bit of not really being in the mood to read. Gasp! I know.

Thankfully, it left. It's becoming a saving grace again. Work has gotten busier and I've been getting stressed out a good bit from it. (If I haven't said this before, I'm a cashier). Introverted + HSP + Anxiety + Cashiering = STRESS OVERLOAD. Thankfully, I've been cross training again. I've fluttered around between 5 different positions since starting there, some were good, some didn't. But I'm so glad I got a chance to try them. Now, I've been helping on the floor and I absolutely love it. The people who work in the back are amazing and they have no problem laughing. It's just good vibes all around back there.
So on the days when cashiering, it's nice to just come home, curl up in bed with a book to be mentally somewhere else for a little while.