Portsmouth NH Homes Condos - Ann Cummings New Hampshire REALTOR®

Kittery Maine Real Estate - Coastal Scenes Along Kittery Maine's Shoreline


What a gorgeous area of the country I'm so fortunate to live in! I live here in Portsmouth New Hampshire, which is right on the border of New Hampshire and Maine, and we're also here along the tiny coast of New Hampshire.

It's just beautiful here, and we have so much to do and see and experience, both in coastal NH and southern Maine coastal areas. Being on the coast, we get to enjoy the soothing sights and sounds of coastal living every day, if we choose to. My favorite drives are those that hug the coastline in both New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast areas.

Kittery Maine's waterfront areas provide for lots of picture-taking opportunities of boats, all kinds of boats - lobster boats, sailboats, dinghies, row boats, etc.

Enjoy these pictures of the variety of boating along the shores of Kittery Maine!

And if you're thinking about buying or selling real estate in the Portsmouth New Hampshire areas, send me an email or give me a call - I'd love to help!

Do you have some Seacoast pictures you'd love to see posted here to share with others about our area?
Send them along and we'll post them for you.

To view New Hampshire and Maine Scenic Posts, check out these posts:

• Historic Portsmouth NH Churches
• Lighthouse Lovers Paradise
• Historic Downtown Portsmouth New Hampshire
  

Ann Cummings, New Hampshire and Maine REALTOR
Real Estate Broker - NH and Maine
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
Portsmouth NH
ann@anncummings.com
888-349-5678 x 3839
Servicing the Coastal Areas of NH & Southern Maine

Living here in Portsmouth New Hampshire is a pretty wonderful thing. We're right on the coast, with the Atlantic Ocean at our door and Portsmouth Harbor right here as well. Our coastline is very picturesque - sandy beaches, rocky points, small cliffs - quintessential New England coastline.

Because of our location, we're blessed with some beautiful landmark lighthouses. I thought I'd share with you some of the wonderful lighthouses we have here along the coast of New Hampshire and along southern Maine's coastline.





Nubble Lighthouse, as most know it, is the most famous lighthouse here in this area. It's real name is Cape Neddick Lighthouse, but I've never heard too many call it that.

Isn't it beautiful? It's just gorgeous to see in person! It's in York Maine, actually Cape Neddick Maine, which is part of York.

In Portsmouth, we have a Lighthouse Lover's Cruise that the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company does during the summer months. That's really nice cruise, if you get the chance to take that. You'll see several of our beloved Seacoast lighthouses on that cruise. We even had one of them put up for sale this past year, too.

If you love lighthouses, you'll love this area! And you'll never get tired of looking at them either - I promise!!

Here's a picture of an old postcard (below) I found of the White Island Lighthouse. This probably dates back to the late 1800's or early 1900's, looking at the color texture of the postcard.

If you love lighthouses, you'll love living here in our beautiful Seacoast areas of New Hampshire and Maine. And if you're thinking about buying or selling real estate in any of these areas, send me an email or give me a call - I'd love to help!

Ann Cummings, Maine and New Hampshire REALTOR
Broker - NH and Maine
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
Portsmouth NH
ann@anncummings.com
888-349-5678 x 3839
Servicing the Coastal Areas of NH & Southern Maine

Historic Portsmouth New Hampshire - Scenes Around Downtown Portsmouth



I am lucky to live in such a beautiful and historic town as Portsmouth NH! And I wanted to show off some of the wonderful and beautiful places and people and things that I love about living here in the Portsmouth Seacoast areas of New Hampshire and Maine. I love living here and making my home in Portsmouth NH, and sharing pictures from around the area.

I hope you'll enjoy these pictures today that show off our beautiful and historic downtown Portsmouth New Hampshire!

We have a lot of old brick buildings downtown, most are the homes of restaurants, shops, galleries, boutiques, and more. Those are on the street level floors, and most everything above the street level are residences - condos and apartments, with a few offices mixed in. If you love being right in the heart of all the action, then you'll love living in Portsmouth's Market Square area, which is the heart of downtown.

All year long, we have all kinds of fun events and activities that go on in the downtown area. Some of those fun family festivities are: Market Square Day, Bow Street Fair, Portsmouth Criterium, Portsmouth Jazz Festival, visits from Tall Ships, various holiday parades, a variety of races - walking, biking, running, Historic Portsmouth Walking Trail, Chowderfests, Chili Cook-offs, concerts, and more.

Portsmouth NH is full of history, and we've got some beautiful buildings and historical homes right downtown as well. The riverfront in downtown is always bustling with activity, and you can take cruises and tours from the docks downtown as well. Portsmouth is a real working port, and we see ships from all over the world pull into port here year-round.

Enjoy this pictorial tour of downtown Portsmouth New Hampshire - even better, come for a visit! If you do, I bet you'll want to make this wonderful area your home, just as all of us who are fortunate enough to live here do.

And if you're thinking about buying or selling real estate in any of these areas, send me an email or give me a call - I'd love to help!

Do you have some Seacoast pictures you'd love to see posted here to share with others about our area?
Send them along and we'll post them for you.

To view previous Seacoast Sunday Scenes, check out these posts:

• Historic Portsmouth NH Churches
• Lighthouse Lover's Paradise
  

Ann Cummings, New Hampshire REALTOR
Real Estate Broker - NH and Maine
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
Portsmouth NH
ann@anncummings.com
888-349-5678 x 3839
Servicing the Coastal Areas of NH & Southern Maine

Okay, I admit it, I'm not very green at this point - or I should say, I'm VERY green at being green.  BUT I've learned an awful lot reading all the really cool posts in this ECO-friendly and Green Group.  And I've found that there really are things I can do that are little by little making my world and my life a tad bit greener along the way.

I loved Liz Foley's winning post last year - "Kermit Had it Right - It ISN'T Easy Being Green!"  And I learned a few things from her post as well.  I just went back and re-read it again, probably for the 10th time because I really enjoyed not only the content but her sense of humor as well.  If you missed it during the last contest, take a look at it now - it's worth a read!

Anyway, back to me being a tiny bit green here in my world in Portsmouth New Hampshire.  With all the reading I've done here of posts that deal with green, being good stewards of our world, being eco-friendly, etc., I have become MUCH more aware of things green around me, and have found little ways I can improve things as well.  I had always thought 'those kinds of things' were very involved, very expensive, time-consuming, etc.  But I've learned differently, thanks to the AR members who continue to educate us all here.

Here in Portsmouth, we have a fabulous new library that is the only LEED green public building in New England at this moment.  There are others in the works, but great effort went into the planning and building of this beautiful building.  The first day they were open, their 'soft opening', I went to see it and ended up getting a personal tour of all the sections on each floor - what a beautiful place our new library is!  

In my own personal world - what have I done?  Well, little things here and there.  I have stopped having my groceries at any grocery store put in those plastic bags that are so much easier to carry, and I've been requesting paper bags instead - not easy to carry, just so you know!  I know, some bring their own canvas bags for their shopping - I have plenty of those, but I haven't gotten there yet.  Paper bags are good - a small step but a good one (I think!).

I've switched just about all the light bulbs in my house that I can over to the super duper energy saving kind of bulbs.  Unfortunately they don't make those in 3-way bulbs yet, or not that I've found here. 

We went to a home show up in Portland Maine last year, and Central Maine Power, the electric company for most of Maine, was giving them away.  We brought home 2 cases of them, and have made it a point to replace burned out bulbs with these energy-saving bulbs.

Portsmouth residents were provided 'Water Saving Kits" by our municipal water/sewer department this past fall, free of charge for each address you had a water/sewer bill for.  These kits included water-saving showerheads, a thing that helps reduce the amount of water used by toilets, water-saving faucet heads, and a guide on additional ways to conserve water.  We got several of them and they were FREE to us - how cool is that?

We have a terrific Seacoast Portsmouth Farmer's Market that starts in the spring and goes until November.  All the booths have to be only locally grown or locally made products, and I love shopping there as soon as they start back up each year.  A couple of years ago, a small group was started, "Buy Local First", that promoted buying, shopping, and eating locally grown produce and locally made products.  What better place than at our local farmers' markets?  Yummy fresh food!

I was in the downtown Portsmouth Post Office last week, waiting in line to buy some of those "Forever Stamps", and happened to notice a little dispenser I hadn't seen in there before.  Upon closer inspection, I noticed that it was little bags that you could take to dispose of your used ink cartridges for printers. 

I looked at it for a bit, and then took a few for me and for my office.  You just put your used ink jet cartridges inside this bag, seal it up and pop it in the mail.  They go to a recycling company, and the postage is FREE!!  How about that!?! 

Another simple little thing I began doing this past spring and summer was putting out containers to collect rain water for watering all my plants and flowers.  Now, mind you, I'm not totally efficient at this one yet, but I did remember to do that most of the time, if I knew in advance it was going to rain. 

So, those are a few of the simple little things I've been doing to find my way into slightly greener pastures up here in Portsmouth NH!  And I admit it - some of the things I've been doing really came about because of trying to save money here and there, but in doing so, I realized that being green doesn't necessarily equate to costing more to be so.

As Liz said, "it isn't easy being green"..... but we're trying!!   ;-)

                                  
  Ann Cummings, New Hampshire REALTOR
  Broker - NH and Maine
  RE/MAX Coast to Coast
  Portsmouth NH
  ann@anncummings.com
  888-349-5678 x 3839
  Servicing the Coastal Areas of NH & Southern Maine                    



                                    

Portsmouth NH residents celebrate the spirit and cultural traditions of Mardi Gras around the Seacoast in a variety of ways.

Come celebrate with us and join in the fun - something for everyone, kids and adults alike!

Feb. 5th- Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras celebration with the Jumbo Circus Peanuts Band at The Press Room in downtown Portsmouth. Show time is at 9pm, and there'll be plenty of food to eat and libations to consume. And don't forget the music and dancing - Jumbo Circus Peanuts is an AWESOME band. We've heard them several times, and you won't want to miss this celebration.

Feb. 5th - Crescent City's Fat Tuesday Festivities in Dover. Take part in the 7th annual Fat Tuesday Pub and Grub Crawl. Five local downtown Dover restaurants and pubs are taking part: La Fiesta Brick & Brew; Cartelli's Bar & Grill; The Barley Pub; Kelley's Row; and Blue Latitudes. Indulge in New Orleans style food and drink, along with some incredible music at each location. Cost for the Mardi Gras crawl is $20.00 and begins at 5:30pm. What a fun night, and the food menus look just awesome!




Feb. 9th - The Children's Museum of Portsmouth joins in the festivities and fun with its third annual "Family Mardi Gras Celebration". Celebrating the cultural traditions of Mardi Gras, offerings include live Cajun music, New Orleans-style foods, other entertainment, as well as a cute children's parade through the museum. Family fun time is 10am to 5pm.

As you can see, Mardi Gras celebrations aren't just for those living in and visiting New Orleans - we've got plenty of fun and festivities right here in the Portsmouth NH Seacoast areas.

Get your beads out, your masks and costumes on and head on out for some great fun!

Ann Cummings, New Hampshire & Maine REALTOR
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
Portsmouth NH
ann@anncummings.com
888-349-5678 x 3839
Servicing the Coastal Areas of NH & Southern Maine