Share Your Story with Photobucket Stories

Photobucket launched an awesome new way to share your life stories digitally through their new Photobucket Stories. From everyday events to epic milestones, turn these events into a digital storybook to share with family and friends. 

I absolutely love this idea. Having friends and family spread out in different cities and states, I found this to be the perfect solution to sharing. And since I'm not a traditional "scrapbooker", I found this to be an easy solution to preserve our family's memories! You can share your story on Facebook, Twitter or even email your story. 

I recently created a story of our trip to Paris, complete with text narrative, photos and even a few videos. Want to see it? Click below to check it out... 



It was so easy to create a story and I entered mine in Photobucket's Life's an Adventure Story Contest for a chance to win a $25,000 grand prize or be one of five $500 prizes. You can too. It's simple and easy. 




1. Create a Photobucket account
2. Upload your photos to Photobucket from your computer
3. Choose which photos you want to include in your Story
4. Add captions
5. Photobucket Stories allows you to customize by: resizing images, adding text, changing themes, etc.

Hurry up and get started! No story is too ordinary and you can enter as many stories as you want for a chance to win! 
The contest runs through December 9, 2012. Be sure to vote for your favorites too!!  For official rules, click here. 

Oh ... and if you haven't already, be sure to become a fan of their Facebook page. And if your story happens to be chosen as a winner, be sure to stop back in and let me know!! 

*I was asked to share on behalf of Photobucket.  All opinions are 100% my own. 

Weekend trip: Pittsburgh and the Steelers

Well ... if you didn't know before, you will now. Our family is comprised of STEELERS fans. Hopefully you won't hold it against me! :D My husband and I had been to several games and last fall we took our girls to their first game. They absolutely LOVED it! It was so much fun - they were totally into the game. We decided to do a repeat this year and made a weekend of it. 



The weather was perfect and a gorgeous sunset greeted us as we entered the city.



Pittsburgh is known as the "City of Bridges." Literally, there are hundreds within the city limits and almost two thousand in Allegheny County. Some say that Pittsburgh boasts more bridges then Venice, Italy. Crazy, right? Well, I guess there has to be some way over the three rivers that flow through the city. 



Once we settled into our hotel, we took a shuttle over to the Strip District to what is now one of our favorite restaurants, Lidia's Italy, where we had a reservation for 8:30 p.m. This would only be the second time we've dined there, though we did eat at Becco, in NYC, Lidia's son's restaurant, and enjoyed another amazing meal there last December. At both places, I've ordered the Pasta Tasting Trio in which you get an unlimited amount of three types of pasta, a salad and a dessert. The pasta is creatively prepared, tastes amazing and the atmosphere is great. I would highly recommend checking either one out.  


After our meal, we went back to our hotel to catch a good night's sleep before the big day. We headed back to the Strip district for breakfast at De Luca's, a popular Pittsburgh Restaurant. We arrived early, because there is always a line on game days. We had a little extra fun that morning because we met some good friends of ours from our hometown. I ordered a pumpkin waffle and a side of bacon. They are known for their breakfasts and you always leave filled. I certainly would recommend that pumpkin waffle!  

The game didn't start til 4:30, so we had plenty of time to wander the city. 



We crossed the Roberto Clemente bridge (also known as the Sixth Street Bridge) to walk into downtown. 



We walked around PNC Park, home to the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.



We stuffed ourselves for lunch again with sandwiches from Primanti Brothers, because, let's be honest, who can be in Pittsburgh without stopping into Primanti's. 


And finally, it was time to get ourselves to Heinz field. The girls were so excited they could barely stand it. It is pretty exciting when you're in a sea of black & gold jerseys filtering into the stadium. 



The girls supported with some fancy face paint topped off with sparkles. 


And finally ... it was game time!! We never sat in the end zone before, but really, our seats were fantastic! I took these photos with my iPhone, so you'll have to excuse the quality, but what a view! 




The Steelers played the Jets and ... please don't hate me if you're a Jets fan ... the Steelers played a great game! The game was intense at times which made for an exciting game and our guys pulled out a win 27-12! 



It was a terrific day and a wonderful weekend away with our family. 



I guess this was a "Wordy Wednesday" post, which is about the norm for me. :) 
Happy WW! 

xo, 

Tish

Wordful Wednesday | The Western Center

This weekend we traveled to the outskirts of Pittsburgh for our girls' gymnastics State competition. The meet itself was held in Washington, PA. We spent two nights in a hotel in Canonsburg, PA. It was a beautiful hotel built on a hill in a developing business area. As we were driving up toward the hotel, a rather large complex of old brick buildings caught my eye. I pointed them out to the girls and my husband and immediately we all began to speculate about their origin and purpose. They looked old, and we all agreed a bit eery. Our interest was piqued. What was this complex of old brick buildings sitting alone at the top of this hill? We all seemed to come to the same conclusion, it must be some condemned, decaying mental hospital. 



On walking into the hotel, we asked the hotel staff about the buildings. They informed us that it was indeed an old mental institution and that there are those who believe it is haunted. In fact, we were told the television show "Ghost Adventurers" traveled here and filmed a segment on it. We didn't believe her at first, but we googled it and found a lot of information as well as "ghost stories" about this establishment. I must state, we do not believe in ghosts, but even prior to learning this information, knowing we were right, gave us an uncanny feeling.


Of course, we were curious and wanted to get a closer look. 

The cloudy skies coupled with the old barren trees and branches broken on the ground added to the creepiness surrounding these old buildings.



As we neared the buildings, we noticed doors were open. We learned people were in there working. These buildings are all that are left. Originally, there were 37 buildings on 304 acres. This facility was a place of treatment for mentally ill individuals, however, as I read more about this facility, I found there are horrendous accounts of isolation, neglect, accounts of experimental drug therapy, poor treatment of both residents and faculty and even rape. Prior to housing the mentally ill, this campus was a reform center for delinquent boys. It was called the Pennsylvania Reform School at Morganza. Sadly, there is also a small cemetery on this property with 35 headstones, all young boys who died while at this facility.

The Southpointe development, the new development where we were staying, is required to "maintain the cemetery containing about 35 graves of children who lived and died at the reform school known as Morganza. The cemetery, surrounded by a white picket fence, occupies a knoll outside Holly Cottage at the edge of the 200-plus-acre Southpointe II tract. The gravestones, which are level with the ground, are made of concrete. Flat aluminum rectangles top the stones. Thirty-three of them bear the names of the deceased and the message "Rest in Peace." There are crosses on the metal plates, but no dates."   -http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njm1/05Morganza.html

All the buildings have been demolished on this campus except for the buildings in my photos. Apparently these were the historic Administration buildings. These are to be kept intact and restored to function as a future cultural center.

I found plenty of "ghost hunters" on the internet who have visited this site.  There is also a plethora of video clips on YouTube of people documenting noises and such inside these buildings. If nothing else, it makes for interesting reading and viewing.
One more interesting fact I learned ... "The exterior of the administration building can easily be recognized as the Baltimore State Forensic Hospital in the film Silence of the Lambs (1991)." -//www.opacity.us/site108_western_center.htm
(We have never seen the movie, but with what we've heard about it, it seems rather fitting that this place was used in the filming of it). 

I took this last photo (above) on our way out of the development. This was apparently the old bridge and entrance to the campus. I was not able to photograph it, but the cement pillars read, "Pennsylvania Reform School at Morganza". 


A last interesting tidbit ... after we left Canonsburg, we drove into Pittsburgh for breakfast. Circled at the bottom of our bill, probably the waitress' initials, were the letters RIP. Weird, right?!  ha ha


Hope I haven't creeped you out too much!! Our family enjoys traveling and we just found this all very interesting and I thought I'd share it. :D 

-tish xoxo

Midwestern Sky: Project 64 Linkup for Melon

The skies were breathtaking as we passed through Ohio into Indiana. 

We were traveling to Chicago for a family member's wedding. 

This photo is straight-out-of-camera and taken literally just a few minutes 

before a huge storm rolled through. The weather service put out a warning

for deadly cloud-to-ground lightening and "hen egg-size" hail! We pulled our car over

at a rest area and decided to wait out the storm. The lightening was truly 

cloud-to-ground, but we didn't quite see hail the size of hen eggs, only about

 quarter-sized. The storm passed relatively quickly and we were able to 

continue our journey through the midwest.  

                              

Click on the link and check out more great linkups for Melon.

Ithaca, NY

Ithaca, NY. The town in which my husband asked me to marry him! We hadn't

 made the trip back since that day, so we decided to take the girls and

 revisit this beautiful town.

It rained, actually poured, the entire drive up to NY and we wondered if we were

making a mistake in going. We decided to continue on and I am so glad 

we did. It ended up to be such a lovely day! 

We started out at the Ithaca Farmer's Market. You know how I just love markets!

The produce and flowers were so colorful against an otherwise dreary day. 

We met up with some sweet friends who graciously took us out in their 
boat onto Lake Cayuga for the day. What a wonderful treat!

After docking at a restaurant and eating lunch, we continued up the lake to the
Taughannock falls, the very same falls my husband and I walked 
up the day of our engagement. It was still a bit drizzly on the way to the falls, 
but nothing we couldn't handle. :D

Because of the recent lack of rain, we could walk right down in where the water

normally runs down. The girls had a blast splish-splashing through.

Everything was so plush and beautiful. 

Even found some Green Yellow  ...  this week's color at Project 64! 

We climbed back up the path for the rest of the walk to the falls.

I saw this person standing with their umbrella and couldn't resist the photo op! 

About an hour later, we made it to the falls. It was a little sparse due to the lack of rain,

 but even still, it was beautiful. 

I took this shot before we crossed this little bridge on the hike back. 

As we walked, we witnessed a chipmunk wrestling with this poor lizard-type

creature. The girls felt the need to rescue him. He was bleeding when 

we found him, not sure if he ended up making it or not. 

We did a little puddle-jumping and wading before we boarded the boat to head back to town.

And to top the day off ... it stopped raining and the sun even made an appearance. 

It was the perfect day to revisit our engagement location. The girls enjoyed 

it and hopefully it won't be so long 'til we drop in again.