Country Home, Bay View, Abandon Farm

We saw an old friend on the newsstand the other day. It would seem that Country Home is back on the newsstands. I remember the days when my magazine highlight of the month was the arrival of Country Home and Country Living. I was sorry to see it disappear and am now delighted to find it again.

We made a trip north to Petoskey this past weekend. We spent Easter with CJ's family and spent a couple of days restocking our booth at Then and Now and stocking a new expansion
 to our space.
While we were their we made a trip to the north end of Petoskey to a small community called Bay View. The Bay View Association was founded in 1875 by a group of Methodists to be a summer retreat center. It is listed as a National Histric District and consists of almost 500 building and cottages built primarily in the Victorian era. Today it is a fine example of preserved Colonial Revival and other late Victorian architecture. The cottages are now privately owned with a number of the community buildings commonly owned by the members of the community.
The community is only open during the warm months of the year because the water is shut off to the community during the winter months. Many of the houses are not drywalled or plastered inside since they were built as true cottages. If you are an old house lover of the Victorian era this should be on your list of place to see. Just to tempt you we are posting a few pictures from our visit.

                                        Ornate pink and white dripping gingerbread!

                               A classic white with green shutters. A tried and true tradition.

                     Another neo-colonial in green and white that just happens to belong to an aquaintance of our here in Grand Rapids.

                                       This picture explains why the coumnity is called Bay View. What a wonderful view of Lake Michigan and the bay many of these cottages have.

                                                This is the Post Office!

                                                 Even the garages have character and charm.

                                                              Love this tower.

                                  Which porch do you decide to sit on?

                                       I think I would love to spent a whole sunny summer day reading in the open turret.
.

                                              Very Queen Anne.


          On the way home we drove by this wonderful empty farmhouse. We drive by this every time we go north and since it was should a sunny day we had to stop and take a few pictures. I am quessing that based on the wonderful brick construction and ornate wood trim that this farm must have done very well for himself to be able to built a house like this. This first picture is the front view. I took this picture first and then walked around to the right hand side and took a second picture.

Based on the porch left on the back side of the house one can only imagine what the original porch on the front of the house must have looked like.

                                     Acrossed the yard from this house stand a wonderful barn pictured here in the last picture. I loved the patchwork metal on the roof and the glazed tiles used to construct the silo.

We loved our weekend away. It was good to be with family even though we worked hard for two days filling our space.

Now back to work! We are getting into our busy time of the year CJ is very busy with lots of design work and I am busy with projects in the shop trying to anticipate the rush we get up north as the cottage season begins.