For the longest time, long before Tony and Brendan set foot into the Greene House Inn, Brendan has been fascinated with sewing and more specifically, quilting. 
Tony has been stuck many a time patiently waiting when Brendan stumbles upon quilts. Whether it be in a store, an auction, or worst, the quilt displays at the New York State Fair, Brendan needs to look at the design, construction and color palette. 
Well he finally took up the mission to learn how to sew and quilt. It started off with simple valance curtains (which have been posted on our Facebook page). But after a quick small quilt made as a gift for close friends who are expecting their first baby soon, it was off to a big project.
The design was inspired by the Missouri Star Quilt Company and a YouTube video (which is at the end of this post) that Brendan saw. Using fabrics that would compliment the room (from many different locations). The top quilt was done (with the exception of the borders) and displayed below. It took a while, but we finally found a place to machine quilt it. (We've been a little lax in posting pictures.) For now, when you visit, you can take a peek at the finished product.

It's been a while since our last blog post. With Brendan's day job picking up a bit, the recent holidays, and life in general, we've been remiss. Apologies for that as we know you all have been waiting every day just looking for that new posting from the Inn.
​We'll try to post more and keep you mildly interested in our pretty average lives here in Fort Plain.

It was a year ago today that Tony and Brendan put the offer in on what is now the Greene House Inn. In some ways, we can't believe that it's been a year already. Some days it feels like it was so long ago.
The "busyness' of closing on a home, moving in (part-time, at first), furnishing it and opening up in time for our first guests during Hall of Fame weekend made the Spring and early summer fly by. 
And to say we're proud is an understatement. We cannot believe how nicely the rooms are furnished (we still look for "better" pieces for places throughout the house), how amazing our first six months of Innkeeping have been, and how wonderful this amazing little town and its people have been to these "foreigners" from the big city.
So to our friends, old and new, who have supported us; to our guests who have been all so fantastic; to our families who helped out and made this such a warm, loving place, especially during the holidays; we thank you all.
(We also thank you for dealing with that ridiculous run-on sentence.)

We are looking forward to another year of great guests, great times, and a good life. 
Again, gratitude abounds.

While doing research for our What's Around pages, Brendan stumbled across this link to an article written back in 2010 which talks about the varied styles of Victorian houses in Fort Plain. There's the future Greene House Inn right there in the article. We are so proud to own and preserve, in our way, a little piece of this great village.

One of the great things that we honestly didn't expect was the amazing diversity of the guest we've had this far. Let's face it, when you open up a Bed & Breakfast near Cooperstown, NY, you would think that you'd get a lot of Baseball tourists up here visiting their Mecca. 
And yes, we've had a good amount of baseball tourism going on, but we've also had opera fans, a guest who happened to be doing a mini-family reunion in Cooperstown, but this weekend brought a new and differently awesome group. All of them headed down to Brewery Ommegang to see a band called Brand New. 
We weren't familiar with the band and Brendan, as usual, went into research mode. He found out that the band, like him, is from Long Island, and were/are part of the wave of punk rock/pop bands from the turn of the millennium. He described them to one of the guests as a mixture of Blink 182 and Muse thrown together. She said that was pretty accurate.
It's not our exact cup of tea, but it was worth a listen and since some of their albums are available on Amazon Prime, we can listenwith no monetary effect.
Either way, good conversation, and new friends were made. Each one of the guests were a pleasure to be around. We hope Brand New makes Ommegana an annual event.

A few weeks ago, as many of you know, we welcomed a houseful of opera fans to the Greene House Inn. Anne was one of our guests. She is not only an opera fan but also avid blogger. Earlier this week, she wrote about her experiences here in the Central Leatherstocking region, and wrote a wonderful review of our place. Please, if you have the opportunity, check out this link and see the kind words she had to say about us. You also get to see one of our first public pictures of our mascot, our 11 year old Chihuahua Pomeranian mix, Sasha.
Thank you Anne for such a great review. We hope to see you again soon.

The hibiscus plant in the front is amazing this year. Here's the proof.

Admittedly, Tony and Brendan are not golfers. Unless it's got a windmill, and a 19th hole where you can win a free game, we personally never found the allure of golfing.
But we realize that there are many folks out there who would love to take a road trip and sample some new courses. For you, we present some of the public golf courses in the area. Obviously, Brendan and Tony cannot vouch for the quality of the courses, but they are nevertheless here. 
We will be adding them to our What's Around By Activity section of the web site. So please investigate, and book a night with us and golf to your heart's content during the day.

Another great weekend is finishing up here at the Greene House Inn. On Friday night, we had a wonderful mother and son come and visit us from Boston. Their full intent was to visit Cooperstown on Saturday. The nine year old son was chomping at the bit to head out, but still wanted to show off his wonderful baseball card collection. We are pretty confident that they had a great time, and even more wonderful time at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
After they headed out, we were getting ourselves ready for our opera fans. The Glimmerglass Opera is celebrating its 40th year with a wonderful festival this weekend. We welcomed our first international guests, from England and Canada, as well as a couple of gentlemen from New York City. A great mix of folks with a lot of good company, and once again, we made sure they were well fed and well rested for their adventures in Operaland.
Of course, as you can see from the pictures, we welcomed them all in typical Greene House Inn style.
The Glimmerglass Opera summer season continues throughout the rest of August. Please be sure to check out their website to see if there's anything of interest for you. And of course, if there is, come by and stay with us.

During the wonderful craziness of last weekend, Tony and Brendan forgot to post the pictures of the new headboard, and box spring and mattress in the Blue Room. The headboard is uncharacteristically brand new as it is very difficult to find queen size headboards that are actually vintage Victorian. The mattress is, of course, brand new. It arrived here a week ago today. Our first guests who slept on it noted how it was a great combination of soft and firm. We hope that all visitors to our Blue Room find it as comfortable.

Brendan and Tony hear from many friends in the New York City area that there's nothing to do upstate. We'd like to dispel that idea by listing some really cool things to do near the Greene House Inn now that summer is in full swing. All of these events are within a 90 minute drive.

139th Schoharie County Sunshine Fair
August 1 through August 8
Cobleskill, NY

Utica Zoo 17th Annual Brewfest
August 1
Utica, NY

Paris Couture and Cuisine
August 6
Utica, NY


44th Annual Madison Bouckville Antique Week
August 10-16
Bouckville‚ NY

Herkimer County Fair
August 18-23
Frankfort, NY

NYS Woodsmen's Field Days
August 21-23
Boonville, NY

10th Annual Clinton Art & Music Festival
August 29
Clinton, NY

173rd Fonda Fair (The Fulton and Montgomery County Fair)
September 1-7
Fonda, NY

8th Annual Utica Music & Arts Fest
September 11-12
Utica‚ NY

Central New York Stair Climb
September 11
Utica‚ NY

Harvest Festival at The Farmers' Museum
September 12-13
Cooperstown, NY

But we can't forget the grandaddy of them all:
The Great New York State Fair
August 27 - September 7
Syracuse, NY

If you are a New Yorker and have never been, you must go. 
If you're not a New Yorker and have never been, you must go.
If you've already been, you must go...again.

We love the State Fair... the midway, the displays, the animals, the people, the MILK.
Brendan and Tony are looking forward to spending some time there again this year. 

If any event seems interesting and you are thinking about visiting us, please let us know.