Shaker Village 2013...

We enjoyed it so much last year, we decided to do it again this year.

Shaker Village is just an interesting place to visit.  Love going there in the summer and visiting all the buildings and learning how these people lived, worshipped and worked together.  Now I'm just thrilled they have added Christmas events as part of the Shaker Village experience.

We had this Saturday evening as our only available time to go.  So I made reservations for dinner at 5pm.  There was music in the Meeting House from 3:30pm to 4:30pm.  We would enjoy that first, then have a very nice dinner together.

We checked in at the Trustee's Office and got our stickers saying we could participate in whatever.

We were a little early for the music so we went to the Centre Family Dwelling and roamed the main floor.  I have been in these rooms many times but there is something a little different each time.  This time they had things about the men in the Shaker community in one room. Across the hall there were displays about the women who lived in the Shaker community.  Very interesting information.

Then we headed to the Meeting House to be entertained.

The Overtones were the musical group. They are a really good barbership quartet. They state that between the four of them they have over 200 years of vocal music education and experience. They sang traditional barbershop quartet music, Happy Birthday to a man in the audience, Christmas music and finished with 'My Old Kentucky Home'.  It was delightful.

We walked back to the Trustee's Office for dinner.  The Jingle Bell Shuttle was still running although it was really misting and he was not supposed to.  It still made a great picture.

We shopped in the craft store next door until close to time for our dinner seating.  The Overtones came into the Trustee's Office and sang by the Christmas tree as the dining rooms were prepared for the next round of dinner guests.

We were shown to our table and given menus and we started the decision process of which of these wonderful meals to choose.  After our order was placed and we were served all kinds of bread and veggies for an appetizer, I realized it was getting darker and the view through the huge windows was amazing. However, other diners were sitting in front of the windows so getting a full shot of outside with window all around would be just about impossible.  There was one window available so I told Claude I had to try.

I tried to use the window as the frame to look at what was outside.  That just didn't work.  It was dark enough I needed a flash and a flash showed a light spot in any picture.  I had one spot that I just couldn't get around in the picture.  Then I looked at the screen on my camera and realized it was the candle hanging on the all behind me reflecting on the glass in front of me with the winter scene behind it.  It was just a multi-layered kind of picture and I took several in hopes of getting one that wasn't too blurry.  The candle reflection in the center of this picture is actually layered over the Centre Family House.  I just find this picture fascinating and am really happy it worked as well as it did.

Claude and I totally enjoyed our dinner and managed to add dessert to the top of it. We waddled to our car and moaned a bit on the way home.  But it was such a delightful evening.  Even with the light rain and the cold.  It felt very much like a December at Christmastime in Kentucky long, long ago.