Friday, April 25, 2014

Of Storybooks and Babbling Brooks


Do you live in a particularly pretty neighbourhood, where
  window framed, 'still life' petals, scent the morning breeze?



Unionville, where my sister lives, is such a place, where picture 
perfect houses seem like they've popped out of playful fairy tales.


Other abodes, appear to have multiplied in size,


 from their mini, dollhouse dimensions,
 to square footage fit for human lives!


Friends and family know about
 my obsession with amazing architecture.



 I sometimes forget that not everyone shares this sense
   of wonder, admiration and respect for 'buildings'.


In fact, they often have fun with my enthusiasm for this art form by performing little sketches, spoofing my excitement over porticos, 


wrap around porches, and other 'Poppy Passions',
 like those of the interior design and decor kind!


Unrelenting, I continue with my observations:


'Brick, stucco, wood, and stone are materials that co ordinate well
together, creating interesting complements to each other.', I assert.


The house above can be found in the little village of Brooklin, Ontario.
 Isn't it the epitome of whimsy and architectural flair?


And, if this isn't enough to make you sigh, surely
 the sound of the brook, (hence the name of the place),
situated directly below it, doesHow enchanting!


I leave you with another Brooklin beauty, 
characterized by a lovely blend of styles and materials.


And so, off I go,
 to dream about this hamlet's leafy lanes, 
its heritage homes, and historical bones,
where, a part of my own heart, still remains. 


I'm curious...which is your favourite?

Thanks for visiting!


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65 comments:

  1. Oh Poppy, what a beautiful town with all the lovely houses. I love old houses and quaint villages with brooks, trees and shady streets.
    Hope your having a grand time on your vacation.
    Mary

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  2. Poppy - I want to live in one of those!! Any one of them - I'm not particular. They are just breathtaking.

    Judy

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  3. Those homes are absolutely stunning - thanks for the tour - felt as though I was taking a walk right along side you, my friend! : - )

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  4. Hi Poppy, In my dreams I live in such a town. I love that kind of architecture and very well understand your enthusiasm about all the wonderful details and drool with you over all those gorgeous houses :).
    Julia

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  5. Had a pleasant day walking out and about watching the houses in which I can only dream of living in. Thank you Poppy for sharing us a glimpse of this beautiful side of the world. The houses and their surroundings are truly fairy tale like.

    Hope you have a good weekend.

    Hugs

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  6. I have dreamed of living in a storybook house like the one in your picture of the yellow Queen Anne house in Brooklin, Ontario. I would feel like a princess in a castle. Beautiful pictures of beautiful houses. Have a great weekend..... Candy

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  7. I love homes like that too. Those are wonderful. I have a tiny, modest cottage, but on my way home I pass through a neighborhood of old estates with trees, and I ooh and ah every time that I am not driving.

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  8. Love these old and stately homes, Poppy! :)

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  9. Piękne domy i architektura, ja z chęcią mój dom też bym jeszcze upiększyła i staram się to robić;) pozdrawiam:))

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  10. So beautiful! Alas I live in a huge city with thousands of blocks of flats everywhere!AriadnefromGreece!

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  11. Poppy passions are soooo interesting and I would share them with you with a great pleasure! I also love observing buildings and houses and those are so paricularly unique! Thanks for sharing, your sister is so lucky to live in such beautiful neighborhood.
    Enjoy and take care!
    Olympia

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  12. Oh Poppy, I love all of your Poppy Passions! Thanks for sharing your awesome photographs! All just fabulous!

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  13. Poppy I DO love the whimsical , lovely houses in this neighborhood.
    What a lovely stroll you took us on !!

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  14. You can show architectural gems anytime, Poppy. I love seeing beautiful and charming homes. For many of my school years, I lived in Kingston and a friend and I would pedal our bikes around town. I'd dream of living into an old limestone house with romantic turrets and gardens. Either that, or Bellevue House, where Sir John A. Macdonald once lived while in that city. Then again, I often thought I'd like to live in a yellow house with a big porch, or a century home with a big window seat. So it goes . . .

    Karen

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  15. LOVE this Poppy! I share your passion.
    I hope Canada is treating you well...and you're savouring every wonderful frosty minute.
    The grass is slowly turning green! Yay!

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  16. I totally get a love for architecture. I've been chided for taking photos of architectural detail instead of people.

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  17. Good morning Poppy! What a feast for the eyes this morning! Lovely!
    xo Kris

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  18. oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh what a lovely place. what lovely homes. oh be still my heart. i'd be head-over-hills in love with this architecture too. oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! i mean it!

    and completed, with a babbling brook. -happy sigh- simply perfection.

    makes me want to get out and about and take pictures, of some of the so pretty homes, in my city!

    tessa~

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  19. Oh I do love these beautiful older homes, Poppy! I am like you and love architecture in homes and buildings. I'm always noting them or photographing them in my travels. Thanks for sharing these lovelies with us today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Hugs. Pam

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  20. Gorgeous! I swoon over homes and their architecture as well. Luckily Mr. Exquisitely Unremarkable does too! That makes it easier to go looking! ;) Thanks for sharing these beauties!

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  21. What a pretty town. I love, love, love old houses. It's one of my favorite thing about reading blogs, seeing the old and interesting regional styles in architecture around the world.

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  22. oh poppy!!!
    i too share your delight in architecture. old and quaint and even new and inspiring.
    but old and quaint will always win me over. thank you for this wonderful tour.
    what an enchanting place to live! even the name. and the little singing brook of its origin.
    i just loved it. xo

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  23. Today is the first time I have visited your blog... (via My Romantic Home) ... so many gorgeous and quaint homes!! I love every single one of them.... my personal fav though... would have to be the white one with the bluish shutters!!! Just look at her!!! the screen door in the back ground ..yep.. love it!!

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    1. Hi Terri,

      Thanks for stopping by! So nice to 'meet' you! Hope you see this, as I couldn't find a webpage for you. Glad you liked these beautiful homes; they are very charming, indeed!

      Poppy

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  24. A feast for the eyes Poppy! Enchanting is right.. absolutely gorgeous homes. It's hard to believe this is actually a real place. I've never seen anything like it. Thank you for sharing! I hope you have a nice Friday and weekend ahead:) xxleslie

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  25. Such charming homes to admire. I love architecture, too. Enjoy your touring!

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  26. There are some beautiful old ladies in Unionville. Hope you are still enjoying your stay and have a fantastic weekend. hugs. Jen

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  27. The houses are just beautiful, especially the first one with the blue shutters, it looks so inviting.
    Thank you for taking us on a lovely poetic tour !

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  28. What a wonderful neighborhood. I love all those houses with character and the window dressings.

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  29. I've visited your blog a few times but have never commented before. I live in Whitby and drive through Brooklin a couple of time a week and have been to Unionville many times. Both towns have just beautiful homes and I totally understand your enthusiasm for them. I know exactly where that yellow house is in Brooklin and have admired it many times.

    I also read your post about the get-together at The Old Curiosity Tea Room in Markham. I've been there a few times and always enjoy my visits. The food is delicious and I love their Ice Wine Tea...yum! Isn't the decor wonderful?

    Thanks for sharing the beauty from my part of Ontario. It's a wonderful to place to live!

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  30. They don't build many sweet little homes like those much now in my neighborhood. All the new stuff is 3 story Mc Mansions. I love all the homes you shared.

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  31. This is a test and I will write more later, if I see that I can post a comment once again...oh please let this work ;)

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    1. Yea it worked, I can comment on your blog again. I have had a couple of quiet days and then this evening, I thought...I wonder and there it was my test published. I adore driving along and viewing homes as well and love taking photographs and hope the owners do not mind if they happen to see me. Your home shares are all so beautiful and I am thinking if I could choose just one, it would be the yellow one that you set aside toward the neding...but there is a white one that really captured my attention as well...sigh...I have some that I should share some time that are in the old neighborhood where my mother lived for 36 years...those are my favorite residences anywhere...feels like home, but then...I am home ;)

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  32. These are all so pretty, but I'm truly drawn to the ones with big wrap-around porches. It was always my childhood dream to live in a big two-story home, but that never happened. Now, with age and arthritis, we could never consider such a thing. There are very few AZ desert neighborhoods that can boast such old and well-cared for homes such as you've shown. Sad but true. Thanks for sharing, Poppy.

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  33. Hi Poppy, wow what beautiful homes! I love the big yellow house best but like them all. Thanks for the lovely tour of your sisters town. Have a nice weekend.
    Julie

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  34. Dear Poppy
    I'm just like you! I would be in seventh heaven in such a neighborhood!
    The gracious homes of yester-year - are what I love.
    The last one is my favorite - I could pack up sticks and move in there any time!!!
    A Photographers dream!
    Hugs
    Shane

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  35. I truly cannot decide which one I like best because so many of them appeal to me. I like the wraparound porch, the one with the upper floor that only has a gable with a open-shuttered gothic framed window, and all that beautiful woodwork trim. I'd love to spend time wandering around this village and wished that my neighborhood in Texas was as charming. Lovely all around!

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  36. These are absolutely adorable and you've described it well when you say out of a fairy tale. I've become so accustomed to stone house and the cubist whitewashed ones in the Cyclades that these really do show another side of the world!

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  37. These homes are absolutely lovely!! I love them all, but for different reasons. My fav would have to be the first one. It very much reminds me of a house that has been converted to a restaurant that I posted about last year, and in fact went to dinner there last week. Twenty years ago, I would have said my favorite was the yellow Queen Anne, and I still do love that home, but at this stage in my life I would be far happier living in a more diminutive home such as the first one with the blue shutters. I love the white one with the gothic window too! Oh heck, I will take one of each, tyvm ;).

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  38. I loved turning the pages of that fairy tale book with you. I was oohing and aahing at each picture. But the first one might be my favourite after all, very cottagey. And how perfect would that be to live on mapple lane in Canada???

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  39. I would fall into a daze after viewing these lovely houses and can imagine dreaming about them, trying each one on for size, a different life to be lived in each one. Perhaps I would reinvent myself and turn into a prim and proper lady, hairdo and wardrobe to match, and choose the tall cream stucco one with the slate mansard roof and the quietly restrained front with two doors.

    Unionville, Ontario. That could be my new address. Thank you, Poppy, for leading us on this dream tour of houses.

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  40. Those are some beautiful houses! My favorites are the first one (the white house) and the last one - the big, yellow house. Thanks for the tour!

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  41. What lovely homes you've shared with us, Poppy! I like them all! Blessings, Bess

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  42. Oh I love all of these houses. We don't have too many of these style here in Australia. I wish we did! My fav would be the white houses pic 6 & 7! Have a great week.

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  43. I never tire at looking at old beautiful homes! This weekend our town has a house tour of some of our own lovely homes and I always try to go. Thanks for sharing.

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  44. Hi Poppy, I'm back to look again at those beauties. I really like the first one and also the blue one but I'd be happy to move in any of them.
    Have a great week :)!
    Julia

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  45. I love old houses hope to own one someday soon thanks for sharing these beauties have a great day

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  46. Well you know this is right up my alley - OMG - just gorgeous Poppy - what a perfect way to describe it Storybook indeed - these houses are what dreams are made of !
    ( saw this at Southern Savvy Style - and wasn't sure if it WAS a dollhouse lol but I was so intrigued )
    XOX

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  47. Thanks, Poppy. I share your sense of wonder for these charmers.

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  48. I love the architecture and character of these older homes and would love a wrap around porch to sit on in the evenings. They just don't build them like that any more, unless it's a custom job or quaint village being built to charm the buyers - that would do it for me.

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  49. I could look at houses like these all day long, and never tire of it, so I enjoyed this tour that you put together, Poppy. My favorites are the white with black shutters, and the yellow one in Brooklin. I wish I lived in a particularly pretty neighborhood -- mine is very nice, but more "cookie cutter." Surely it doesn't have the charm of this lovely little town.

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  50. I had two favorites. First, I liked the front view of the white house with the gothic window on the second floor, although I didn't like the side view as well as the front, oh-so-symmetrical one. I loved the house in Brooklin. I liked the way the house was nestled into its setting.

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  51. These houses are all gorgeous Poppy! They are so full of character and charm. Thanks for sharing your home tour post at the Say G'Day Saturday party. I just shared this on Google+.

    Best wishes and hope to see you again Saturday.
    Natasha in Oz

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  52. Beautiful homes!! All in my style but my favorite is the yellow Queen Anne!!

    Thanks for sharing!!

    Hugs,
    Debbie

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  53. They are all so beautiful, I couldn't choose a favorite. The details are amazing! Thank so much for sharing at Amaze Me Monday...
    Blessings,
    Cindy

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  54. These are storybook beautiful - love the name of the street too! I do appreciate you sharing with Home and Garden Thursday,
    Kathy

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  55. I would take any one of those houses in a flash but the little board and batton with the odd additions is my favourite. It's so quirky that it steals my heart!

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  56. They certainly do not build houses like they used too. There used to be so much pride in construction. I am looking at building a house and there is no comparison between it and the beauties you have shown here. That said, my favorite house was the towering bird house. That is just too cool.

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  57. Wow Poppy what a storybook place to live! I love all the architectural features too.

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  58. I love the architectural structures so much. I like all of these but seem to favor the one you use in your link thumbnail. :)

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  59. Oh this post is right up my street! I love architectural gems like these! And the blue one is my favorite but I'd happily live in any of them!
    Have a great day!

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  60. pretty indeed! We live in a pretty area as well - but these homes are just fairy tale pretty! Thanks for sharing.

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  61. What a gorgeous neighborhood, just my style! My favorite is the yellow house (above the picture of the brook)... Thank you for joining the Art of Home-Making Mondays this week Poppy! Always a pleasure :)

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Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment. I really appreciate hearing from all of you! Have a great day!