Mother's Day 2017 - Grimsby Victorian Painted Ladies and Little Libraries

2 sisters on a Mother's Day adventure in Grimsby Ontario. Our goal was to visit Grimsby's little travel secret: the Painted Ladies by the beach. What a great visit.

We found 8 Little Libraries from Grimsby to Hamilton.
Went to 2 coffee shops.
We survived Hamilton's one-way streets and we clocked 18000 steps, 12km on the fitbits.

A Victorian bird house to go with the sunflower house

This is the man, Ed, whose restored Painted Lady vision

has spread to the other houses in the area.

[Not my photo]

More about Ed and the houses

Our first Little Library visit.
A perfect little Victorian library.

We each took a local magazine and left our hygge booklet

Tin roof. Scalloped details.
A pitcher, teacup, pot lid, glass and ceramic steeple
for the library.

Coffee at Station 1 Coffeehouse in downtown Grimsby.
It's use to be a firehall.
We had lattes and a delicious coconut vegan macaroon each.
[Not my photo. I forgot to take one.]

From the coffeehouse we walked over to Murray Street
to this pretty yellow house with matching little library.
There's a pretty fish pond behind the fence.

A big little library on Morrison in Grimsby

I had seen these elephants on the web but had no idea where in
southwestern Ontario they were,
then lo and behold we drove down Watercress Drive in Stoney Creek
and there they were. Serendipity.
A family of elephants on a residential lawn.
This is the second set of full size lawn elephants (well almost full size)
we've seen on our Little Library hunting expeditions.

Palacebeach Trail and Watershore Dr, Stoney Creek
We didn't see a camera.
The sign was likely used to prevent vandalism.

Palacebeach Trail & Watershore Dr, Stoney Creek.
Beautifully painted.

This is an octagonal side table turned into a Little Library.
On Brentwood Drive in Hamilton.

Nice stuff inside.
Besides the great books, there were handmade bookmarks.
The owners had a guest book. I love guest books in little libraries. Signed it. :)

We took one as a momento and left our booklet. 

We drove on to the Gage Park Delta West area,
where we did most of our walking and visited 4 little libraries.
This one was temporarily closed, despite books inside.
We didn't open it or leave a booklet.

Wexford S in Hamilton
Our first newspaper box little library find.
Nice friendly family lives here.

Some cool cruise ships on this veranda.

There's supposed to be a Little Library at 81 Graham Ave. S, but there is no 81 Graham.
There's 79 on the left and 83 on the right.
Where's house #81? Why is 81 missing?
We continued down the street and saw....

85 Graham Ave South
There was a box on the porch step and it turned out to be a little library.
But it turned out not to be the one that was supposed to be at #81.
We lucked out to find a little library on this street,
but still....what happened to both a house and a LFL that are supposed to be
between house #79 and #83????

A cute schoolhouse little library on Grosvenor South.
The double doors have tiny little door latches.

Before heading home we decided to stop for coffee.
We battled the streets of Hamilton and almost gave up.
But we managed to make it to the Locke Street area
and someone was leaving a parking space
so we took it and headed over to  Finch Coffee.
Nice little coffeehouse.
We sat out on the back patio and drank lavendar lattes
(and I munched on chives growing in the herb garden that was right next to where we sat).
P.S. Someone needs to make "I survived Hamilton's one-way streets" t-shirts.

Finch Coffee on Locke Street

We spotted this Little Library on Poulette Street
 while driving over to Locke Street, it ended up being close to where we parked,
so after coffee it was our last Little Free Library visit before heading home.