Luca, Lititz, and "loss"

Last week my mom and I traveled to Lititz, PA (near Lancaster) to have lunch with my cousin and aunt. My cousin has a handsome little boy who was on his best behavior during our visit. Poor kid....he had to hang out with 3 chatty women.

Meet Luca - the adorable little redhead.

 

We went to this great place for lunch - Ten Thousand Villages - and had amazing turkey chili and quiche and yummy desserts. Ten Thousand Villages is one of the world's largest fair trade organizations; they sell wares of artisans from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Their goods are sold in North America and the funds are sent back to their countries to provide for things like food, education, healthcare, and housing.

It was so wonderful seeing the works of art that were contained within the store....beautiful pieces of jewelry, paintings, ceramics, baskets, kids toys, sculptures, and stationery. But I think my most favorite thing to see was the variety of nativities they had placed around for the upcoming Christmas season. There were tiny, delicate nativities from Sri Lanka, colorfully decorated ones from Peru, ornate ones from ...but my absolute favorite was this one entitled "Roly-Poly Felt Nativity" from Nepal.

Here's a small pic from the website:















But go to the link above and see it for yourself...you can click on the image there and see portions of it larger....the sheep are just so whimsical. The whole thing was crafted by using wool felt balls.

Isn't it just precious??

All in all, we had a GREAT time in PA visiting with our family. Upon leaving for home, we just haaad to stop at one of our favorite places to pick up some traditional PA food we like to get; the store used to be called Farmer Brown's, but years ago was taken over by a market known as Martin's. When we arrived, we were SHOCKED to see that our beloved Farmer Brown's is going out of business. The shelves were becoming bare and there was no fresh food. We came home sans everything we love but Herr's potato chips, made with the good stuff - lard. :-)

Martin's - aka Farmer Brown's - in Morgantown, PA

(Photos courtesy of Google search)

The building was also home to another favorite - the Country Porch Primitives store, chock full of country folk items. I was like a kid in a candy store every time we'd go in there.

So another era passes as we "mourn the loss" of childhood memories, of trips to Farmer Brown's so we could run around in the quilt shop upstairs, get a hot pretzel from the vendor on the way out of the supermarket, hit the bathrooms before heading on our (seemingly) long journey home to NJ when we were kids, and throwing our pennies into the water where a small waterwheel spun water into a pool of tiny fish.

But I'm sure as we continue to go, we will become fond of the places we now go, and look forward to the new places we've not yet been to.