Centennial Part 6--Trolley tour to Germantown White House

Sunday we planned a day-long trolley tour of 4 locations that are a little more difficult to get to within the park. The Germantown White House (also called the Deshler-Morris House) is several miles from the visitor center and requires a lengthy bus ride to visit the house. I did that once, and realized as we were planning the week that a chartered bus would be the best way to see it all. Due to space at the various houses we were only allowed 35 people on the trolley.

This page is the kick-off to this part of the trip and so I'm highlighting the photo of our trolley and the photos I took inside. I had to merge them by hand and somehow they are both a little angled, but I think you can see everyone. The border on the left is one I had in my stash. I created the arrows and signs with a very old cutting machine called a Slice. It works in the same way a Cricut does but was a little more effort to place the blade in the right spot. I'm glad I have a Cricut now! The red, white and blue theme is very patriotic and I was trying to weave that theme through various parts of the album.

We arrived a little early so had time to wander the street a bit before the rangers opened the house. We still had to split into 2 groups so my half remained behind to view the lobby and stamp while the other group toured the house (which was actually next door).

I was still working on the virtual crop, and this layout fulfilled challenge number 4. The border was made by using 2 older "design lines" (essentially 12" long sticker strips in various colors). The medallions were taken from the Creative Memories patriotic tablet. This had two pages of die cuts in the front and the semicircles were part of those die cuts. I like that it looks like I cut them in half but I didn't have to! The mats were made with paper from a different patriotic tablet I had. The paper is 8 1/2" x 11" and matting is a great way to use up the smaller sized paper. The stickers are from an older CM Reminisce line and I thought they matched the antique elegance of the house.

Our group was then allowed to head toward the house. The back door is locked so we had to wait outside on the porch a bit until the rangers could let us in. There are many period pieces and quite a few actual Washington artifacts inside.

The left page was scraplifted from this border. I only had the 3 colors shown so I had to improvise a little. I was happy to use up some older flower stickers. On the right is another F2F page from the Travelers line. The light floral pattern was perfect to highlight the antique feel of the room. I love all the delft work in there!

I can't resist a good historic kitchen. I think I would like to time travel back and spend a day working in that environment. Probably the excitement would wear off quickly though!

This page reverts to wallpaper technique. I had a great paper with beans and wasn't sure how else to use it. I think it's one of those dishes that would have been made in the 18th century so it worked for me. I did want to mat the photos to get them to pop from the page and chose a deep brown.