It's Snowing!

It is so pretty outside this morning! It certainly adds more of a festive feel to my present wrapping, cleaning ect... It is a great day to stay inside and enjoy looking out the window. I was going to head out and do a few things. I don't mind driving in the snow, but I worry about the others on the road, so home I will stay!

I hope everyone is getting their Christmas duties wrapped up! I am sad that the season seems to be just flying by. I love this time, the decorations, music, commercials.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and if you are on the East Coast be safe!!!

It is starting to look like Christmas

My dad's high chair

This is my dad's high chair that I have had for about 28 years. It was his since he was a baby and it will be 78 years old on Dec 3! We have pics of him and his twin brother sitting in them also! I may have painted it at one point I don't remember

Our Tree

I took all the prelit white lights off. I like it so much better now, I was in the mood for colored lights this year!

Tuesday Thrift Store Finds!

I decided to pop into the thrift store on my way by today, and I am glad I did. I got this for $6.75. I collect vintage table cloths, and the snowman had a whole in the bottom so I stuck a battery operated light in it, and the tree topper was .50 cents and it works!!! My granddaughter loves to play with boxes so I am going to give her that. It has a vintage santa on it.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

I can't wait to start decorating tomorrow!

Gettysburg Remembrance Day Parade November 21st

If you are near Gettysburg PA this Saturday, Nov 21st you should go to the Remembrance Day Parade for the Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address!
If you have never been there it is something to see. The first time we went, I thought it would be just a regular parade floats ect!!! LOL Well was I wrong! We went the year before we joined a reenactment group so we had no idea what it would be like. Let me say we were under dressed!! Everyone was in their reenactment clothes. We felt so out of place! haha. All the parade consists of is 100's and 100's of reenactors. It is something to see. It is an awsome way to spend a fall day! If you go, go early so you can get a parking place and have time to visit all the stores!! I can't wait!
Sponsored by the Union Veterans of the Civil War
Saturday, November 21, 2009

Time: 1:00pm

Parade Event
An annual event held in conjunction with the Gettysburg Address anniversary. A parade of Civil War living history groups begins at 1:00pm.

The parade will form at 12:00 PM on Lefever Street and move at 1:00 PM sharp. The route of the parade will be as follows; Exiting Lefever Street onto East Confederate Ave. and turning west onto East Middle Street. Upon striking Baltimore Street the parade will turn south and then veer south west onto Steinwehr Ave where it will terminate at the National Park.

Thrift Store Find

I found this at the thrift store for $3.00. I was going to redue it and maybe sell it, but my granddaughter who is 4 1/2 saw it and started playing with it right away. She always plays with my tinware, old books and stuff, so she fills it up and carries it around! So I quess it's a keeper! Now it sits in my living room so she can use it and one day I will fix it up

Yard Sale Find!

I found this last weekend at a yard sale for $4.00! I was thinking about sprucing it up, until I brought it home like the old, beat up look to it!

A few Civil War Movies

Gettysburg
Cold Mountain
Andersonville
Andersonville Trials
Ride with the Devil
Glory
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
Civil War (4 movie dvd)
Gettysburg (140th 3 Days of Destiny)

Reenacting part 1

I don't know if I can describe what it is like to be a civil war reenactor. I think it is one of those things that you have to experience! Our group Coopers Battery B is light artillery and we have 2 cannons. We do alot of living history, which may be for a day or a weekend for a church, girlscouts, whoever may ask us. And then we do 2 big ones Gettysburg and Cedarcreek in Virginia. Events start in April and end in Novemeber with the parade in Gettyburg for the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

When we first arrive for an event we have to get all the tents set up the small A frames and the two big ones (cook tent and Captain's) We have a huge trailer that is packed full with everything. Luckily, we all pull together and everyone helps set it all up. People have no idea what is really involved in pretending you live in the 1800's! lol My hubby and I start the week before making our list and getting everything around. Our personal pick up truck is packed full back seat and bed. Cots, bedding, wooden table, chairs, candle lanterns, candles, uniform, dress, hoop, shoes, fake hair, and accesories, civilian clothes, baskets, food, coolers, batteries everything you can think of that will help you to portray a time when it was suppose to be simpler! Keep in mind everything that you take has to be to that period. Spectators come through the camps so everything in your tent or sitting around the camp has to be authentic or replicated to that time.

There is nothing else like it!

Something I found at the thrift store I am going to repurpose.

Housing in Camp

Union Army Camp in Virginia
Camps were packed with tents housing 5 or 6 men. This is a Federal, or Union, encampment at Cumberland Landing, Virginia.


Log Cabins at Confederate Winter Camp in Virginia
Log cabins were used in winter months to provide insulation from the cold. This picture shows Confederate winter quarters at Centreville, Virginia.


Union Army Officer's Winter Log Cabin
The Union army also used log cabins in winter months. Chimneys would be built for a fire to keep warm. The picture shows an officers' winter quarters at the Army of the Potomac headquarters.

Source: Library of Congress

Family life during the Civil War

The Union army recruited about 2,500,000 men, while the Confederate army had about 1,250,000 men. This was a significant part of the population during the Civil War. Many families were left with only mothers and daughters to run the household and earn money to feed and clothe the family. This picture shows a family in front of the house in which General Charles S. Winder died. Cedar Mountain, Virginia.

Ghosts of Gettysburg Books!!

I love these books! Written by author Mark Nesbitt, who also worked for the National Park Service as a Ranger Historian for 5 years. These books are written of stories told by visitors of the strange encounters while visiting Gettysburg. These books contain history of buildings, battlefield ect..

Ghosts of Gettysburg Tour

Gettysburg is known to be the most haunted place in the United States! If you are planning a trip there, be sure to check out the Ghosts of Gettysburg tour!

For years we went to Gettyburg on Halloween weekend. That was the good old days when you could go on the battlefied after dark, but thanks to vandals the park closes at dark.

We did this tour one year and found it to be alot of fun and definately puts you in the Halloween mood

Sachs Covered Bridge, Gettysburg PA

Built for the County by workers under David Stoner in 1852, the Sachs Bridge is an Adams County landmark. It was crossed by both armies during the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, and carried parts of the Army of Northern Virginia as it retreated. Before its 1996-97 rehabilitation, its deck was supported by a truss-lattice based on a design by architect Ithiel Town. After it washed nearly 100 yards downstream in a flooded Marsh Creek on June 18, 1996, workers salvaged the Sachs Bridge. Within a year it again bridged the creek, with over 90% of its original truss and lattice intact.

It is rumored that deserters have been hanged here, and many people have reported odd happenings, such as smells, feeling sick, coldness, seeing soldiers, ect...

I have never experience anything here, but it is something to see and to look up at the truss lattice and think of those who may have been hanged.

Sachs Bridge, also called Sauck's Bridge, spans Marsh Creek at 100 feet long. The bridge is owned by the Gettysburg Preservation Association and is open to pedestrians only as it was closed in 1968 to traffic. A bronze plaque located near the restored bridge states: "In 1938, the Pennsylvania Highway Department determined that the Sachs Bridge was the most historic covered bridge in the state.

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
wikimapia

The American Civil War

The American Civil War (1861–1865), also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). Led by Jefferson Davis, they fought against the United States (the Union), which was supported by all the free states and the five border slave states. Union states were loosely referred to as "the North".
In the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, had campaigned against the expansion of slavery beyond the states in which it already existed. The Republican victory in that election resulted in seven Southern states declaring their secession from the Union even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Both the outgoing and incoming US administrations rejected the legality of secession, considering it rebellion.
Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a US military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state, leading to declarations of secession by four more Southern slave states. Both sides raised armies as the Union assumed control of the border states early in the war and established a naval blockade. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal[1], and dissuaded the British from intervening.[2] Confederate commander Robert E. Lee won battles in the east, but in 1863 his northward advance was turned back after the Battle of Gettysburg and, in the west, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River at the Battle of Vicksburg, thereby splitting the Confederacy. Long-term Union advantages in men and material were realized in 1864 when Ulysses S. Grant fought battles of attrition against Lee, while Union general William Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, and marched to the sea. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
The American Civil War was the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Its legacy includes ending slavery in the United States, restoring the Union, and strengthening the role of the federal government. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war decisively shaped the reconstruction era that lasted to 1877, and brought changes that helped make the country a united superpower.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia