Great Day In Rochester!

On Thursday, a bunch of ladies from work and I took a little road trip to Rochester Michigan to Meadowbrook Hall-aka the Dodge Mansion. Just like the Ford mansion, they didn't allow pictures of the inside, so I'm sorry that I don't have any to share with you.  I did take a couple from the outside, that I'll show at the end of this post.

It was gorgeous! Completely decorated for Christmas, in every room on every floor. I would have enjoyed it even without the decorations. If only the walls could talk!! I liked this tour much better than the tour at the Ford mansion because the docent's stayed in rooms or areas,and we were able to move about at our own pace and didn't have to follow as a group.

It was incredibly hot with all of the fireplaces going, and since it was in the fifties outside, they had several windows open throughout to help cool it off. I loved hearing the stories about the family as we went room to room. I'm thinking of going back-in February they are having "Downton Days", and there is also a behind the scenes tour, that sounds awesome too!

After the mansion tour, I picked my SIL up and we went to Washington, Michigan to a Fiesta seconds dealer's house. I found her a year or so online, but didn't have anything that I was looking for in P86 Fiesta, that would warrant such a long trip to get.

This time, I needed to replace the broken mug from Kohl's for my son's new condo. She had the mug and SO much more!! It was a ton of fun chatting Fiesta with her and her husband, and I ended up getting a few other things as well.

Back at my SIL's house, we watched some old, old videos of her boys and my oldest when they were very little. We figured the videos were about 23-24 years old. What FUN that was!!! I'm still smiling and still thinking about watching the boys playing and wandering around without a care in the world.

We were joined by her husband and had a great dinner out and a fun time wandering around The Village looking at the Christmas lights. At one area, we stopped because the people in front of us stopped. We didn't realize they were filming a commercial,and almost walked into the shot!! We started walking when the people in front of us started walking, and didn't register the words..."and ACTION!" until we almost messed up their shot!

We turned around quickly and got out of there, so hopefully we didn't cause them extra work! It was so beautiful walking around! We also went downtown and looked at all of the lights there. There were tons of cars and tons of lights. It was pretty, and unique, but I really liked the simplistic beauty of the lights at The Village much better.

What a great day!!!

Since then, I've just been working on getting the trees up and decorated, and all of the other decorations out, as well as wrapping presents. Other than needing a few stocking stuffers, I think I'm done. I had wanted to get Lucy a new bed, but that can wait til after Christmas--she's a dog---she won't know if she got it on Christmas or not, so I'm not gonna stress about that!

Hope you are having a great weekend!
Here are some pics from my week...

Sunrise on the way into work early in the week

Some repurposed license plates at the gift shop for Meadowbrook

hmm...maybe an idea to try with all of the silverware I picked up at garage sales...

A napkin that was stiffened into a bowl

The front entrance

Might go back for this!

The Village

Look closely, you can see the camera crew  middle right

A carpet of lights to drive or walk under

Tools embedded in the cement of the sidewalks

Heading toward downtown Rochester

Picked up for a super deal in Washington, Mi

 Our second latte mug

 Replacement mug-check!

What else is in the box...6qt scarlet mixing bowl-he now has a complete set in scarlet.

Tinsel LOVE!