Jessica at Little Indiana does a great job of showing off small towns in Indiana. Her story about a produce shop in Madison Indiana caught my eye with her colorful photo of the store front. I am adding A. Dattilo Fruit Company to my list of future travel destinations. You can find the company online, but Jessica’s article makes me want to visit the colorful shop and experience it first hand. How about you?

My son and I got back from Texas very earlier this morning. We agreed that we were very glad we went, but it felt SO good to be home again.

We traveled through Oklahoma, Missouri and Illinois in between home in Indiana and Wichita Falls, Texas. I discovered how to put cell phone photographs on Facebook along the way there. Here are a few of my less than professional snap shots. I am rather proud of the Lamar street sign because LaMar is my sons, Ronnie and Nathan, last name.

Nathan had to be at work early today. I felt sorry for him because he did more than 12 hours of driving after we ate breakfast with Ronnie in Texas. I stayed up awhile, after getting home to Indiana about 1:30 a.m., to make sure all packages were ready to ship out so I could allow myself to sleep in. (I was still in my pajamas when I did make it back to my keyboard many hours later.) I know I do not sound very inspiring…but times like these are when working from home advantages mean the most. I was able to spend time with family and then re-enter my work week at my own pace. I am most grateful!

Coupons can be great for unplanned purchases or to add to vacation activities. McDonald’s buy one get one Frappe coupons added a frozen treat to our lunch stop on Thursday. A Bath and Body Works coupon for a free Fragrance Mist with any $10 purchase added some fun to my mall shopping on Friday. Since the mall is next door to our hotel we are going back on Saturday to use my Victoria Secret coupon. (My son is shopping for his wife and is using a VS coupon, too.)

We don’t necessarily plan our activities around coupons, but they sure help to stretch our travel dollars. Do you use coupons when away from home?

My current vacation days were prompted by my older son being sent from Germany to Texas for Air Force training and my younger son offering to drive me from Indiana to see him.  Now I am in Texas spending time with both of my adult kids.

I have to admit that one of the major perks of my work from home job is the vacation day “request” process that I do NOT go through. I have to plan around appointments and responsibilities, but there is nobody to approve or deny my days off even though this trip was planned on very short notice.

Of course, this road trip interrupts my income. That would be the big vacation drawback of working from home. Not home? No pay. I am now in the process of putting my listings back online so customers can buy items for Monday shipment. A few late night hours spent in my hotel room with my laptop and then I am back to vacation mode until Monday. There will be extra work to do when I return to my office, but as I recall – that is the way it is for other jobs, too.

For now I am enjoying 90 degree weather in April and there is no packing tape in site!

I do not always get a chance to go to the Covered Bridge Festival, but this October I was able to go twice!  Once to Mansfield and then to Bridgeton, Indiana.  Part of the attraction, on the first trip, was yard sales and barn sales along the way. We took more photos the second day when we spent more time at the actual festival.

Scott and I had a great time with friends, Carol and Yvonne.  We all ate too much, bought interesting items, did a lot of window shopping, and made plans to go again next year.  I am adding captions to the photographs to give you a mini tour of our day.

Bridgeton Covered Bridge, over a waterfall

food stop, Walleye Fish

Grist Mill store front

Bridgeton Country StoreI loved the fact that some of the town people raise chickens!

Bridgeton 1878 House

Collums General Store - full of treasures!!

wood carver's wares

I came home with a new found love of pumpkin ice cream and Amish hot pretzels as well as a renewed appreciation for indoor plumbing.  Notice there are NO photographs of porta-potties One stop that got the females in our group excited was this scrapbook supply booth in the general store. I plan to write more about the store, based out of Muncie Indiana, at a later date.

a wonderful assortment of scrapbook supplies

Today my husband and I went to the Covered Bridge Festival in Mansfield Indiana.  We took our time getting there, stopping at yard sales and barn sales along the way.  More about that later…this post is really just about the nuts.

We don’t do a lot of shopping for new items at the festival.  We mostly look for old books, antique photographs, and a few types of collectibles. Today was hot for October, so we invested in cold drinks - a personal God bless from me to the man keeping bottles of Diet Pepsi on ice! We bought some cheap kitchen spices and a couple inexpensive homemade candle melts. I am sure there was more, but our only annual splurge is the pecans.

We may have, by accident or habit, bought the nuts from the same vendor each year, but after this year we will insist on it.

When we were ready to head back to our car, we looked for one of the nut stands.  We were tired, hot, and ready to leave.

The nearest place had a big banner, plenty of product, and it was a great location (probably perfect). They were prepared…to annoy.  One of the young men was heckling young women as they walked by.  He was loud and obnoxious as he tried to get them to come over for free samples, and doubly rude when yelling at them as they bought ice cream from someone else.

We trudged up a hill to find our treat somewhere else.  We found a vendor we now realize we had bought from last year.  A nice couple about our age.  They work full time jobs and have sold at festivals for many years. They were very polite and helpful.  It turns out that they are putting two kids through college by giving up their free time to sell nuts to people like us.  They thanked us for our business.

Their banner was smaller.  Their location wasn’t convenient. We were tired and could have bought at the bottom of the hill.  But they had the right attitude (perfect actually) - which was underlined by someone else having the wrong attitude.  We didn’t even compare prices. The attitude turned out to be more important than anything else.  Isn’t that often the way it is?

I wrote about the road construction earlier this month.  Mustard Seed traffic has been very slow since the road work began. 

An article in today’s local paper tells the story from the neighborhood perspective.  I am very careful when I drive the side street detours – as I am in any neighborhood.  All of us will be happy to see the roads open for good in a couple weeks! The businesses that are being hurt financially, the residents dealing with increased traffic on side streets, and commuters driving the longer routes instead of taking Indiana 38. 

Indiana 38 project takes toll on Dayton’s traffic flow

http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20109270315

Our antique shop, Mustard Seed, is in the small town of Dayton just outside of Lafayette, Indiana.

We have an excellent location on Dayton Road about a block from the state road that runs through town AND near the interstate 65 exit.  An excellent location, that is, until road construction started.

Since early summer it has been increasingly difficult for people to detour around the road work to get to any of the local shops.  People in town do not want traffic on side streets so road closed signs are in place even though there is a way to get through.  No detour signs are posted other than those leading away from town. It gets more confusing for our customers with each passing week as the construction progresses. As of this morning, with no warning, the detour involves an alley!

The new road is sure to be great when finished, but right now the progress is a huge challenge for all of the local small businesses. We will have a celebration when the road is open in late October. (fingers crossed)

From Scott – I recently had the pleasure to read an account by the first man to sail around the world by himself on a boat named the S.V. Spray which was a 36-foot-9-inch (11.20 m) oyster sloop that this man rebuilt from a broken down wreck and then proceeded to sailed for many years. His name was Joshua Slocum and his account was titled, “Sailing Alone Around the World”. The book was very well written and the humorous way that Slocum painted word pictures within his narrative was very enjoyable. He was a very interesting man and was 51 years old at the time that he started his 3 year journey in 1895. One thing that I found compelling while reading this book was the fact that my grandfather was born the same year Slocum started on his circumnavigation and would have been an infant at the times that were being spoken of in the book. Slocum was an experienced seaman and made many voyages around various places in the world during his life until he disappeared at sea in 1909 at the age of 65 while sailing the Spray. He, experienced as he was, was not able to swim, so any wave action that could have capsized the craft or swept him overboard would have been his doom. All in all, this is a great read from the public domain. I am finding that I really like the older public domain books that are available to read or listen to for free. There is adventure waiting and knowledge for the picking!

Being task oriented is not entirely a bad thing, but it does not allow much time and energy for gaining new knowledge or ideas. When we work with our heads down, in nose to grindstone fashion, we do not see much except what is directly in front of us. We miss a lot of opportunity and adventure-and people!

Life should not be a cage where we are all like hamsters on wheels with our lists of chores, grocery lists, lists of calls to make…and lists of more lists to write. If we are going to be like rodents, then let’s be like Stuart Little driving around and seeing the world in his red convertible.

Then let’s share our stories of adventure with each other. When was your last Stuart Little moment?

~ Leah (a hamster learning to live like a mouse)