Category: Warrenton

On Thursday, it rained like crazy. All. Day. Long. Sometimes it was a gentle drizzle. Other times, a deluge. Hubby has a fig tree outside his office window. He said the raindrops pelting the leaves sounded like a long, loud, drum roll.

Yesterday started off looking pretty wet. I think it even rained a bit. But then it cleared up. So around lunchtime, I decided to take a stroll. And I thought y’all might like to join me.

We’ll go out the front door because it’s a little bit shorter.

There’s no sidewalk on our side of the street, so we need to cross. Of course, we have to pause for a second to look back at the house. (I’m not sure if I’ve shared much more than porch pictures.)

There’s just a slight incline as we walk toward Fifth Street.

But, wait. Look at all those leaves! It’s REALLY starting to look like Fall now, isn’t it? Torrential rains will do that.

On we go, hanging a right onto Fifth Street. There’s my favorite office building. It’s that white building on the right.

One of these days I’ll buy the Warrenton history book so I know what these buildings are/were.

The little parking lot on the left is where they have the Saturday Farmer’s Market.

Of course, today it’s just a parking lot. It is Friday after all.

Come on, we need to keep walking toward Main Street. That store on the left (which I failed to photograph properly) is The Red Ribbon yarn shop. Apparently it just opened at the end of August. From what little info I saw on the Internet, they’re going to have classes. I’ll have to pop in for a visit when we have more time.

You can see the Presbyterian church from Fifth and Main Streets. I’m not sure what that cool brick building is on the corner (Annelies will laugh at that, I’m sure). It may be part of the church.

Also at Fifth and Main is the bakery (the Great Harvest Bread Company), which I mentioned here previously.

Here’s an archive photo to jog your memory…

We can pop in for a quick visit, but then have to head back home.

Oh, wait. I forgot to mention the cute little quilt shop that’s also on Fifth Street. Actually, it’s right across from the yarn store and mere steps from the bakery.

Did you see that nice old house on the way over? I forgot to point it out. I’m not sure if it’s a house or maybe apartments. It could even be office space, but it looks sort of lived in.

Once we’re back at our house, I’ll reveal the real reason behind today’s stroll. Other than to show you a bit of our new town, of course.

Are you ready for this?

Yep, that’s really why we walked over to Fifth and Main.It’s why I was anxious to get back home, too.

I’d just read the other day on another Warrentonian’s blog (if that’s what you call us townsfolk) that the bakery had started selling sandwiches. Since their bread is to-die-for, I figured their sandwiches would be good.

Boy, was I ever right.

I had a California Cobb on “grainy bread.” That’s what they called it. Really. The bread was moist, dense, flavorful, and had bits of grain throughout. It was delicious.

Sandwiched between two generous slices was a pile of smoked turkey breast, avocado spread, onion, tomatoes, lettuce, and some sort of flavored mayo. I honestly can’t remember if there was cheese. I do know, however, that the sandwich was delicious.

Hubby had roast beef and provolone on the same type of bread. He enjoyed his, too.

The sandwiches are served with a pickle. I had to provide my own chips.

That’s my only complaint. If you can call that a complaint. At a price of just under $8, which was totally worth it, the sandwich should also be served with chips.

I’ll still go back.

I hope you enjoyed the virtual stroll. I’m sorry you couldn’t actually join us for lunch.

This was quite an eventful weekend. It started with the First Friday celebration in Warrenton. On the first Friday of every month (May to October, I think) they shut down Main Street to traffic. Many of the Main Street area merchants stay open extra late, there was a bluegrass band in front of the post office, there were street vendors, charity groups, etc. It was like a mini fair.

We were quite tickled to walk to the event. And I was thrilled to finally get a peek inside many of the cute little shops that line or are close to Main Street.

Then we had our first visitors on Saturday. (I know the lighting is horrible. My Mom was tired so I didn’t want to make everyone move.)

We are nowhere near being unpacked and settled. Two of the bathrooms, the family room, kitchen, master bedroom, and guest bedroom are in decent shape. There’s nothing on the walls yet, but there are no boxes scattered around and those rooms have been cleaned.

I’ve got lots more cleaning to do. The people that lived here before us were not the cleanest folks…

Anyway, as I was saying, we had our first visitors. My parents and Hubby’s Mom live close to each other. And they actually like each other, too. So they all drove down together for a visit. Even though the house isn’t exactly presentable yet, they were anxious to see where we’d moved. They were curious about the house AND about the area. None of them had ever been to Warrenton either.

Before they arrived, I did something I’d been wanting to do for months. I walked to the bakery and the farmers’ market.

That may not sound like a big deal to some of you, but it is to me. I’ve been living in suburbia since 1993. Where you can’t safely walk to anything. You’re lucky if you have sidewalks in your neighborhood. Main streets with sidewalks are very rare.

I got some blondies, muffins, and a scone at the bakery. Since we haven’t been doing much cooking yet, all I got at the farmers’ market were some fresh flowers.

Again, that may not sound super-exciting, but it made me happy. What made me even happier was seeing the parents when I got back to the house. They’d arrived a bit quicker than anticipated. We thought the drive would take them about 3 hours, but it only took 2.5 hours. An easy day trip.

Since today was such a pretty day (mid to upper 70s), I decided to spend it outdoors tidying up the flower beds and scrubbing the front porch. Remember I said the previous owners weren’t the neatest people? Apparently they weren’t very good gardeners either.

I also made my first trip to the nursery for some mums, pansies, and pumpkins.

As is the case with a lot of stuff at this house, the closer you look, the more things you see wrong. We haven’t noticed anything major yet, except for the dirt. These people were slobs! Cleaning takes about three times longer than it should because I really have to scrub.

The flower beds were the same way. What I thought would be some minor cutting back turned into a major trim and weed-pulling adventure. I never did get the pansies planted. But see how cute my flowers and pumpkins look?

Now that the parents have seen the place, I can share pictures. I LOVE our front porch. Here it is from a different angle.

Rounding out our weekend of firsts is this first group of house pictures.

There’s so much more to show and tell you about. Like this funky little table…

My friend Tracey would call this table a treasure. I was thinking I’d paint it. And maybe remove those furniture nails around the edges. But the more I see it, the more I think I like it just the way it is.

After what seemed like an eternity (four whole days with no internet, phone, or television – GASP!), we were reconnected with the broader world.

It’s not like we didn’t have plenty of stuff to keep us busy. And we do have cell phones, which we could use to call people. It was just sort of a pain. The biggest inconvenience was not being able to work from home. I had planned to just work from the town library. Until I found out they don’t open until 10:00 AM. Thank goodness there’s a Panera nearby.

That, too, wasn’t horrible. Especially since this is the month of the Pink Ribbon Bagel. You do know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, right?

One can only sit at Panera for so long, though. I moved to the library around noon on Monday. Yesterday, given that I forgot my cell phone, I came back to the house around 9, let the dogs out, grabbed my phone, let the dogs back in, and headed to the library. Since this is such a small town, after all that, it was still only about 9:35 when I got to the library. Which was still closed. Sigh…

To kill time, I walked around a bit. Lucky for me, I had my camera in my purse.

Warrenton really is a cute little town. Once we get more stuff unpacked and I have more time, I hope to get some more (better) images to share. For now, these few will have to do.

There’s so much to see and do here. And there are little surprises seemingly around every corner. Like this beautiful little garden in front of the library.

Then there’s the Old Warren Green Hotel, currently known as the Warren Green Building, which now serves as office space for Fauquier County.

The image shown below is one that always makes me smile. It’s just cool to me (and to Hubby) to be able to see the mountains from Main Street.

In case you’re wondering how to pronounce Fauquier… it’s FAW-KEER.

I hope you enjoyed that little peek. More will come one day…