Why I Oughta...

We lived on Indiana Street in Elmhurst for almost ten years.  In two houses.  One of our own .  And one of Equation Boy/Man and my Sister Vic's .  Our last few years there, we lived next to a couple named Wes and Susie (hmmm...maybe Suzy?  Or Suzie? Who knows...I never asked how to spell it) who were good neighbors.  They had a hot tub and some nice Japanese Maple trees.  Wes was an artist who loved dogs and liked our little puppy (at the time) Lizzie.   One of them spent time in the garden.  (see Japanese Maples) And they had a front parking spot (not quite a driveway because they used the alley behind the house and had a garage back there) that was lined with Bearded Irises.  They always put on a nice show.   Fast forward to this Spring and Wes and Susie have moved out and someone is tearing down the house to build something new.  My Sister Vic was able to grab some of those Bearded Irises from the front and save th...

We brought just a little bit of Indiana Street with us to Downers.  Over the weekend, we put up our trees inside the house, but we also went to Menards and bought a small 5' Fraser Fir to put up in our front yard.  Just like we did on Indiana Street.  Starting with our first Christmas in Elmhurst (in our first house), we participated in the tradition of erecting a 'front yard tree' along with our neighbors.  My sister Vic told us about the tradition before we moved in and sure enough, we fell in love.  The street(s) always looked so great when all of the homes had a uniquely-styled and lighted tree.  You can see the C7 bulbs I put on our tree this year out in front of our #newoldfarmhouse.  Nat did a great job doing 'classy' decorations on the porch with garland and lights.  And wreaths in the windows that you can see above.  So, while we have moved out of Indiana Street, we still wanted to bring some of that tradition with us in our...

About three years ago, we stopped at an Estate Sale at this beautiful white house on York Street in Elmhurst, just south of St. Charles.  After looking around, we were told that the house is the old "Hill Cottage Tavern" that was once located on Cottage Hill Avenue but was - at some point - moved to it's current location .  The house was up for sale and if not for the location, would have been SUPER hard for us to pass up . We bought a few things at the Estate Sale, but one of them is this plate that you see above.  We bought it and then 2+ years ago, it went into storage only to be unwrapped and discovered as we unpacked our stuff at our #NewOldFarmhouse. On the back of the plate are the details:  it was made by the York State Bank and Trust Company and this plate was made for their 55th year.  They made 1000 of them and this one is #538. Once we saw it unwrapped, Nat knew immediately what we needed to do.  She quickly came to the conclusion t...

This one feels different than the last time .  I posted a similar picture and post back in 2015 when we moved out of our first house.  Today, we're living in our #newoldfarmhouse after moving out of this sweet house that we've been fortunate to live in for two years.  I'm so grateful that Equation Boy/Man and Vic were so generous to host us while we were homeless in their house.  We were just down the block and our family felt normal - somewhat.  This home provided us shelter and a place to grow our family.  Most of all, it provided us peace of mind.  We were safe and sound and we had the time to make a new, new plan and execute that plan. I know we can't ever likely say 'thank you' enough to Vic and Equation Boy/Man, but I hope they know how grateful we are for their hospitality. So long, Indiana Street.  This certainly isn't a good bye.   Just a 'see you later'.

Pay no attention to the various bag chairs and blankets and strollers and softball gear in the trunk of the minivan in the photo above.  There are two things in this photo that I'd like you to focus on.  First, the big, box from Da-Lite that includes a Slide and Movie Screen on a tripod.  Second, the angel topiary frame laying on it's back below the box.  Both of these items were scored at an Elmhurst Estate Sale recently when I was out with the kids on a Saturday morning.  The screen was just $2 and is in perfect shape.  You pull it out of the box, flip down the tripod and yank up the screen.  It isn't HUGE, but I think measures 48" tall by 48" wide.  And it is a silver screen - which, evidently is 'made for color'.  Kinda love that. This thing was made for home use and was probably meant for people to show off a slideshows of their vacation when that was a thing.  For us?  It will probably replace the bedsheet and become our ...

If you get a chance, take a walk by the Elmhurst Police Station on First Street and get a view of a newly installed/created 'demonstration rain garden' that they've recently built out front.  As of the past few days, the construction fence was still up around the project, but it appears that all of the work is complete and now they're just wrapping up the project.  The City of Elmhurst is - kind of - putting their money where their mouth is on this.  I say 'kind of' because they, ummm, didn't use their own money I don't think; they got a grant.  Details on the garden can be found here on the Elmhurst Storm Water Plan site  where they describe the project: The Project Involves the construction and maintenance of a rain garden, sized between 800 and 1,200 square feet, to include an engineered soil mix to promote infiltration, as well as a variety of native shrubs, grasses, and forbs, immediately south of the Police Station. The goal is to reduce...

When we first moved to town, t here was an Anderson's bookstore right in the Elmhurst City Centre .  For real.  Then they closed down, scurried back to Downtown Naperville and a weird hookah place opened up in the same location just north of Francesca's on York.  Today?  That tobacco/hookah place is now closed and gone with the windows paper'd over and a 'for lease' sign up in front.  We lose another retailer and the associated sales tax, but we get a brand-new opportunity for something great.  I would think that parking is one of the tough parts with this location, but with the new apartment buildings gaining occupancy just north of this, there should be some demand for the space, right? But then again, right across the street from this is that other newly renovated set of storefronts ( where the old Salt Creek Pottery was located on the east side of York, just south of City Hall) that are all totally vacant, too.  Perhaps, retail isn't in the E...

Earlier this week on my walk to the train, I noticed this "Office Suites Available" sign at 152 York Street - right sandwiched between the Gaming Goat and the York Theatre .   The door leads to a 2nd floor suite that used to be occupied by the Theatre Historical Society of America .  Yeah...the Elmhurst City Centre used to be home to them.  And they were tucked away in a 2nd floor suite above the York Theatre.  But, now they're gone. Turns out, last summer, news broke that the group was moving to Pittsburgh .   Somehow, I missed all of this.  And that, right there, might have been the problem.  We just weren't paying attention: After more than two decades in Elmhurst, the Theater Historical Society has decided to move its headquarters to Pittsburgh.  In a newsletter published on the organization’s website , the board of directors said the move is motivated mostly by the space limitations of their location above the York Theater, 150 N. Y...

In today's Daily Herald, Robert Sanchez covers Elmhurst School District 205 and their facilities .  It appears that the School Board is going to come to the taxpayers soon and ask for even more money.  Elmhurst Unit District 205 has released preliminary cost estimates for up to $151 million in building projects that could be included in a future referendum question. By more money, I mean...simply more.  The School District in Elmhurst appears to have an insatiable appetite for taxpayer money.  From 2007 to 2015, spending in the district increased 41%.  In just 8 years.  In 2007, they spent $78M.  In 2015 they spent $111M.   Source . That's $33M more EVERY YEAR in spending for the schools.  Did Elmhurst grow over that period of time?  The answer is no.  But the tax bill for the schools and their pensions sure did. And what did the average Elmhurst property owner get during that same period of time?  A 25% decrease i...

Last year, I picked up a few plants at the Elmhurst Ladies' Garden Club annual sale including the Hosta Venusta miniature plant that we're fostering out in Naperville ( posted about it recently here ) and what was billed as a Cinnamon Fern.  I planted that here in Elmhurst at Equation Boy/Man and Vic's house  with some help from the Bird as a "Mother's Day" present to her God Mother.  (and a little, tiny token of gratitude for having us stay in their house!)   I put it along the south property line in one of their landscape beds that had some nice groundcover and a few other shade plants like hostas.  It looked great when I planted it ( see pic here ), but it didn't do that well after the transplant.  Must have had some serious shock, because it withered and just about looked dead a month or so after putting it in the ground.  I looked earlier this Spring and didn't see anything emerging, so I assumed that it wasn't coming back and had died, u...

If you walk by the construction site of the new Beerheads Bar on the Northeast corner of First and York in the Elmhurst City Centre, you'll see a bit of progress on the building.   I last posted about the status of the project here on the blog in February .  You can go down the whole rabbit hole of posts related to the site here on the blog . But, in addition to seeing the exterior construction progress, if you look inside one of the new doorways, you'll also see this - the photo above. It is a relic from the past. And was a stonework 'welcome mat' for Burny Brothers.  I had never heard of Burny Brothers, but 'teh Googles' quickly educated me. From this Burny Brothers archive site : Burny Brothers Bakery was founded in 1910 in Chicago, Illinois by a working-class immigrant family, and grew to become a successful, uniquely American enterprise. The founding family sold its interest in 1963 to Beatrice Foods Co., which in turn sold the wholesale divisi...

(image removed by me in late 2022 because it showed kids faces) Six years ago today, I posted her on the blog about our friend and neighbor Dannee Polomsky winning her first seat on the Elmhurst City Council and I showed a photo of the then 2-year-old Babe who came with us to vote.    Fast forward those six years and you'll see this animated image above of me and all three kids outside of our polling place from Tuesday.  We didn't get to vote for my sister (she's up north from here), but we did have a handful of races that were contested. Glad to have brought the kids along and they got to wield their own dry erase ballots to vote between the Cubs and Sox and Leno and Letterman.  I think we've brought them to the polls every time we've gone, so we're doing our little part to do as Neil Steinberg called it yesterday : our little 'act of faith' in democracy. My little sacrifice of time, some drops of routine life sprinkled on the altar of democracy...

If you haven't been in the Elmhurst City Centre in the past few weeks, you have likely not seen the progress being made at the old Plass Appliance site on the west side of York Street right in the heart of the City Center.   These concrete block structures are the elevators, right?  They're set way back from York and rise vertically in the middle of the site. We last covered this project back in January of 2016, more than a year ago when they tore the old building down . If you haven't been following along on the blog, here's the site concept for the location :  it is a terraced building that will have offices/commercial on the first floor and I think it started as condos up stairs, but now is going to be offices?   They're calling it the York Building and it will border both York Street on the front, but also that "Schiller" alley thing that connects the new parking deck over on Addison and includes Nu Crepes (who, somehow has survived all of the...

If you walk past Hartmann Jewelers on the east side of York Street - just across the tracks - in the Elmhurst City Centre, you'll see this:  papered up windows.  And a little note that says that they're closed.  The note says that if you left a piece with them, they'll be in touch to get it to you. There were once three jewelry stores in the City Centre.  There's Cottage Hill Diamonds (still there!), plus this place Hartmann and one other.  Can you remember? Well, it wasn't so much a jewelry shop as it was a pawn shop.  Yep, for a sad period of time, we had a "GoldMax" on the west side of York Street in the City Centre.  This was back in 2012 . We've been in Hartmann a few times, but it was ONLY ever on the downtown Trick-or-Treat days when the kids wandered in there to pick up a lollipop or Tootsie Roll.  Oh well, I guess part of why they're closing is the community didn't support them. There was once three.  Now there's just o...

Over on Addison Street in the Elmhurst City Centre, there's this place called Undercover Upholstery.  It is located south of the new parking deck with Orange Theory Fitness in it and north of the Coldwell Banker office and Pizza Palace on the east side of the street.  I parked over there recently when I was getting my haircut at JMC Barbershop . I never thought much of the Upholstery shop and neither saw anyone ever go inside nor did it ever really seem open.  But, it must have been because it's been there for a number of years. It caught my attention this time, because of the numerous flyers on the windows of the place that you can see in the photo above.  There's seven of the same flyer hung up in the front window. And here's a closeup of that flyer.  It is pretty cute and reads:  "Save this town - snow village." "All these buildings and homes must be moved to make room for another seven story parking deck.    The Historic So...

Back in December of last year, there was finally a flurry of activity on the structure that sits at the northwest corner of First and York (just on the north side of the tracks) in the Elmhurst City Center.  I covered it here on the blog and at that time, Alderman Dannee Polomsky of the 3rd Ward shared that there was a new business going into the spot called Beerhead Bar & Eatery.  If you head to the Beerhead site, they now even have a page up for the Elmhurst location . For the better part of the past 60 days, there has been scaffolding up on both sides of the building as they do some exterior work on the facade, but as I walked by it earlier this week on my way to the train, I noticed the scaffolding was all gone. And the building looks great!  They added some black stone to the top and down the sides and cleaned up the brick it looks like to me.  The building, which if you look back thru the archives was a hodgepodge of a bunch of different uses inclu...

In a bit of a bummer, the MOD Pizza place on St. Charles near Route 83 is closed up and gone.  This place was right next door to the big hockey store on the south side of the road.   I covered the opening of the store back in September of 2015 and I really liked the place .  I guess that the people of Elmhurst voted with their wallets and decided to support other places. The sign in the window claims that they 'moved', but we know better, right?

It has been eight months since the storefronts down at the corner of First and York have sat gutted and boarded up.   I last posted about them here on the blog back in March .  And that's when the rumor mill was saying that it might end up being a Rosebud restaurant going in there.  But, I have no idea if that was real or just idle chatter. Whomever is moving in, there's suddenly progress going on with the building.  In that photo above, you can see a crew working on the exterior installing steel beams that look like they'll be creating an awning/little roof of sorts that sticks out from the brick facade.  Anyone know what's going in this spot?  A guy can keep hoping for retail, right? Update:   Alderman Dannee Polomsky of the 3rd Ward pointed out to me this am via email that this location is for a new craft beer place run by 'Beer Pros' called Beerhead Bar and Eatery .   From the City of Elmhurst's site : The City is excited to announc...

Last night, Indiana Street in Elmhurst looked like a winter wonderland.  With the big snowfall, we went out to clean the sidewalks and driveway and while I was out there, I snapped this photo of our Front Yard Tree.  This is the seventh Elmhurst Front Yard tree that I've posted on the blog and the second one in front of Vic and Equation Boy/Man's house down the street from our old place. Although you may not be able to tell, this year's tree is a really nice-sized tree in terms of height.  I put one strand of C9 LEDs on it, but Nat didn't think it was bright enough, so she went out and picked up two more strings of C9 LEDs and now there's 150 lights on that thing. Here's the post showing our 2015 tree out front of Equation Boy/Man's house. Here's the post from our 2014 tree out front of our old house (sad face). Here's my post from our 2013 tree . There's no snow in the photo of our 2012 tree . Here's my post from our 2011 tree ....

Have been here for more than 15 months and never paid much attention to this doorknob before Halloween this year.  That's when I spent a bunch of time out on the front porch of Vic and Equation Boy/Man's house handing out candy.  In fact, I don't think I've sat in that front porch ever.   Their house is old - not sure exactly - but likely the early 1900's or 1910's or 1920's.  And the front door *has* to be original.  On it, is that knob.  And, it is a beauty and one of the relics that is remaining from the house when it was built originally.  Just look at that knob and think about how many hands have been laid on it.  Very pretty door plate, too, with that huge keyhole.