The Beauty of Christmas

Hello to you all!  I haven't published a single post this month, and before the blog pirates take over my blog, I thought I'd better put something up here.      

A Football Game and Leaf Season

Happy Monday dear readers!  I hope you enjoyed a lovely fall weekend.  The employees where my husband works were offered free tickets to a college football game this past weekend for making their United Way goal, so we spent Saturday afternoon at the stadium.  It was a beautiful day, but the wind blew during the entire game and it was much colder than I expected it to be.  Thankfully, I grabbed my coat on the way out the door, or I would have been a miserable camper.  :)   

Wisteria in Old Salem

It's been quite a while since I took you through our little community of Old Salem.  

It's Friday!

Hi there folks!  Have you had a good week?  The last two or three days have been beautiful here; the sun is out and the air feels fresh instead of heavy and humid.  Fall is on its way, and I feel rejuvenated.

October 2014

Living With History

My husband and I took a Beginner Digital Photography class yesterday at our local community college.  I've taken pictures with a digital camera for about five years now, but it's a point and shoot camera.  I was very comfortable with the point and shoot (too comfortable in fact); I felt like I could take some pretty good pictures with it, but they were never going to be as good as the photos Mr. Forest Manor takes with his DSLR camera.  I mentioned recently that Mr. FM got a new, even better DSLR camera, so I've decided that now is the time for me to learn to use his older camera.

My first pictures won't win any photography awards, but they weren't disasters either.

July Note Card Party

Hi everyone!  How's the weather in your part of the world?  The heat has finally arrived here in North Carolina and has joined forces with the ever-present humidity to make us feel like we're in a steam bath.  But...we have blue skies and sunshine, and for that I am very thankful.

Every summer on our local weather station, we hear the nasty D-word (drought) at least every other day.  Not so this year.  In fact, we are truly saturated.  I saw a disturbing piece on our local news last night that a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway between Asheville and Mount Mitchell is closed indefinitely due to cracks in the pavement.  The ground beneath the road in that section is completely saturated and they said the crack is five feet deep and 200 feet long.  Yikes!  Can you say sinkhole, or maybe, landslide?

Today, I've put together four pictures from some of my previous posts in order to join in with the other bloggers at Vee's monthly Note Card Party.  This month I was in the mood to use pictures of our American flag because July always feels like a patriotic month to me.  These pictures somewhat reflect the evolution of our American flag from early colonial days up to the 21st century.

"Continental Colors a/k/a Grand Union Flag"
A restored merchant's shop in Old Salem, N.C., circa 1776

Sky

How often do we find ourselves looking at the sky -- how many times in a day, a week, a lifetime?  The sky just draws our eye up and out.  In all of its many moods, it seems to fascinate us.

 Highlands, North Carolina

Thursday's Inspiration: Architecture

Because I love houses and interesting buildings (especially old buildings) I guess you could say I love architecture.  I was excited that Mary at Little Red House chose architecture as her cue for this week's Thursday's Inspiration.  I have a lot of existing pictures to choose from; and since I haven't had a chance to go anywhere this week to take new pictures, I'm sharing a few from the archives today.

Conservatory and greenhouse in Reynolda Gardens, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"Historic Reynolda Gardens"

July Note Card Party, Historic Old Salem

Hello everyone; I'm ready to participate in another one of Vee's fun Note Card Parties at A Haven For Vee.  If you've never visited Vee's blog, you should make plans to visit this evening, and maybe you'll be inspired to create some note cards with your own photos.  You needn't have a particular theme, but you do have to use pictures that have already appeared in your previous posts.  And you can only choose four photos.

For the July Note Card Party, I chose to make note cards of Old Salem, a historic community about twelve miles from where I live.  I love to photograph and write about Old Salem, and consequently, I had a really hard time choosing just four photos.  :)   **I edited this post after publishing to identify what the buildings in the photo are. 

Scenes From Old Salem, North Carolina

First photo is now a private residence, but I think it may once have been the gunsmith's shop.  Can you see the musket mounted by the door on the right?

Old Salem at Dusk, Part 2

Hi folks!  I don't mean to bore you all to death with my posts on Old Salem, but I wanted to share the rest of the pics that Mr. Forest Manor took earlier this week.  Overall, I was pleased with my pictures, but he took some really awesome photos that I just have to share.

The community of Old Salem is such an integral part of our town.  It is where we began; and even though progress continues all around it, Old Salem remains like a small bit of history -- preserved and restored.  All the power lines are buried underground, so except for the cars you see there, you do get a feeling of having stepped back 200 years in time.

I took a photo of this stone wall, which is in my previous post.  My husband took this picture at the end of the wall, showing the intersection of a brick sidewalk and path.  I like the two different patterns of brickwork here.

Old Salem at Dusk

Hi everyone!  Are you enjoying these pretty spring days?  It sounds like some folks are getting late snows in their part of the country -- I hope it melts quickly for you.

I want to share some images of Old Salem with you.  I wrote about this historic area of our town last summer, which you can read about HERE and HERE.  Yesterday, hubby and I took some pictures there as twilight was falling.  We hadn't exactly planned it that way, but by the time we ate dinner and got to Old Salem, it was almost dusk.

This time around, we mainly took pictures of the church and the college.  The first photos are of  Home Moravian Church.  The church was built in 1799 and dedicated in 1800.

 

Old Salem, North Carolina

I had planned to save this post for a later time, but I decided to go ahead and publish it now, because it has some pretty summer flowers and gardens, and it is definitely still summer around here.

I'm trying to learn about photo composition, and I have a lot to learn.  So, I've been practicing.  I have learned that light, too much or too little of it, is crucial to good pictures.  And we all know that the quality of light is different at different times of day, as well as different times of year.

On Monday of this week, I went to Old Salem to take some more photos for a follow-up to a post I did a few weeks ago, which you can read about HERE.  I started taking pictures at about 10:30 a.m., and it was already pretty bright outside at that time.  I got some good pictures, but when I looked at them on the computer, I realized I wanted a softer light.  So, I went back in the evening with my husband and took a few more.

Then on Tuesday morning, DH had to be at work at 7:00 a.m., so I took the camera with me, and after dropping him off at the office, I went straight to Old Salem, and started photographing around 7:15 a.m.  I found the light to be much better, and the quality of the pictures to be better as well.

There's so much to photograph in this small, historic community.  There are colonial merchant's shops with wonderful, painted wooden signs.

"Little Williamsburg"

I'm celebrating Independence Day all this week -- at least on my blog.  Mr. Forest Manor had his out-patient surgery last week, and thankfully, he's doing well.  After I picked him up from work this afternoon, we drove to Old Salem so I could take some pictures while they still had their historic flags out for the Fourth of July.  I grew up in this area and have pretty much lived nearby all my life, and I never get tired of Old Salem.  I LOVE it there.  Years ago we read in a local newspaper or magazine (can't remember which) that Old Salem is like a "Little Williamsburg".  That was probably a tad ambitious :)  Old Salem is quite a bit smaller than Williamsburg, and they don't offer as many events; but it is quite old for this country, and I think it's charming.  You can read my second post about Old Salem HERE.

Old Salem was built in 1766 and features a living history museum that interprets the restored Moravian community. The Moravian church has its origins in ancient Bohemia and Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic.  To escape religious persecution, the Moravians came to America, where they settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Salem (now Winston-Salem), North Carolina.  Like Williamsburg, Old Salem does historical re-enactments, and the tour guides and interpreters all wear 18th century traditional Moravian costumes.


George Washington visited Salem in 1791 and slept at the Old Salem Tavern.  And this has nothing to do with Colonial America or July 4th; but... the first Krispy Kreme store opened in Old Salem in 1937;)  The doughnuts were made using potato flour, an old Moravian practice.  So that's it for facts in this post; let's look at some pictures.

Hanging in front of this shop is the Grand Union flag, commonly regarded as the first (unofficial) American flag.