Lifestyles

Dave Kidder doesn’t remember when his father started collecting his artifacts of Yankee ingenuity,Dave Kidder or where they all came from, but somehow it all ended up at New London’s Ice House.
Kidder’s father, Bill, who owned Kidder’s Garage, purchased the Ice House in the forties, after WWII because he needed a place to start restoring ‘stuff.’
“Stuff became more stuff and more stuff,” Dave Kidder says of the expansion of his father’s collection, which now fills up half a dozen buildings on the downtown property and continues to grow.
Among the collection are items like a hand-crank corn shuck and an animal powered revolving wheel connected to a butter churn.
“Nothing too serious, just clever,” Kidder explained.
The collection also features old engines, stoves, wagons, washing machines, and ice saws.
There is even a pair of men’s underwear on display, which belonged to New London resident Osmond Sargent.

The home in which former President Franklin Pierce’s half sister once lived is historical both inside and out.Windsor Cottage (Kathryn Hayes photo) Built in 1807, the large white Hillsborough house with an attached barn is an antique in itself. What makes the old landmark more unique, though, is that within it holds a wide variety of antiques dating back to the mid 1800s.
Windsor Cottage Antiques is located in the historic home’s attached barn and is run by Linnea Steeves. Being a site for antiques and collectibles is nothing new to the property, however. Dick Withington used the estate, then called Withington Antiques, for a place to sell antiques as well after he purchased the property seven years ago, and did so until his death last year.
Upon Withington's passing, Steeves carried on his tradition of selling timeless pieces while making it a place of her own.

Cake is always on the mind of Kristy Stephens Ammann, the owner and founder of the newly opened Soirée Cakery.Photo courtesy of Joanna Puza
The daughter of a Navy cook, Stephens Ammann has been baking and cooking ever since she can remember. Throughout the years she has done culinary favors for friends, and baked wedding cakes as gifts. Then, six months ago, she thought she could turn her favors and gifts into a business that would also allow her to be home with her young kids, Paige and Bronson, full-time. This thought turned into the official launching of Soirée Cakery in March of 2009.
When Stephens Ammann ventured into the world of careers, culinary arts was nowhere in sight. Instead, she graduated from New Hampshire Technical Institute with a degree in Graphic Design. Stephens Ammann quickly found that she wasn’t the type to sit behind a desk all day; she belonged in the kitchen. So, she went to back to school. This time to Southern New Hampshire University’s culinary school and achieved her degree in 2002.

Joanna Puza spotted the location for her new, urban chic photography studio last summer during a visit to the Farmer’s Market in Henniker one Wednesday afternoon. Ready to take the next step in her career, Puza took a leap, moving her business from a small studio space in her parent’s home to what is now a place of her own.
The studio is a perfect reflection of Puza, with its funky vibe, furniture, and color combination. The atmosphere of light blue and green striped walls, colored ottomans, and multitude of props is nothing short of what one might imagine in a true Manhattan living room.
The space, which was previously a hair salon, was a clean palette.
“It was my opportunity to be chic, modern, and crisp – all while a mother of three boys,” Puza said.
The inspiration for her studio was her desire for customers to feel transported into a city-like world -- one that starkly contrasts from the slow paced, country New Hampshire lifestyle.

The unit which the newly opened Henniker Riverside Artisans shop inhabits, at 58 Main Street in Henniker,Ruth Garrison Funk has been on Ruth Garrison Funk’s walking route for years.
“We always looked at this one particular unit and said—‘What if?’” Funk commented. “When the opportunity came I just jumped in with both feet without really ever thinking about it.”
The shop, which sells homemade and locally made goods, opened on August 1, during Old Home Days weekend. Funk, who has lived in Henniker for 20 years, knew the event was going to be big, and she knew her shop had to be opened by then.
“The shop was pretty empty, it didn’t look anything like what it does today but we just said we had to get open. It’s really evolved since then,” Funk said of the shop’s development. “It’s been a lot of fun.”

Having officially opened Dec. 22, A Precious Pet Resort in Henniker is the fulfillment a lifelong dream for owner Mary Green.
For twenty years Green has been working in grooming salons, shelters and rescues, and after relocating to New Hampshire a year ago she decided to build her dream kennel.
The resort is located on Old Concord Road and, according to Green, is a high-end kennel geared toward a stress free vacation for the pet, like their owners will have when they go away.
“The whole kennel was designed so it would be a place where I would want to leave my dog, because I’ve seen the kennels around and I wouldn’t want to leave my dog in any of them,” Green explained.
Currently, Green and her husband are parents to a mastiff, two cats and an adopted one on the way, and 17 rescue birds, from macaws to doves.
Having exotic birds, Green has found it difficult in the past to go away because no one could take care of them. Because of this, Green decided the resort would be open to boarding exotic birds and cats as well.
Although she’s constantly surrounded by animals now, Green maintains it’s not stressful.

In the past two years, Deering Town Clerk Nancy Cowan has brought in nearly $23,000 through three grants with the purpose of restoring and preserving Deering’s town records and stage curtain.
“If anything, far beyond just preserving history, it’s given us a heritage that we are all part of,” Cowan said about the restoration projects. “Because so many of us are not long time family residents, we still take a very deep interest in where we live and what happened here and that gives us a commonality.”
The first grant came from the Division of Vital Records, in the amount of $10,000. The purpose of this grant was to restore Deering’s vital records and preserve them for future generations.
Cowan says the grant came from money that Town Clerks statewide had been paying in for years, to go online. After Vital Statistics finished outfitting all the town clerks with the capability to go online, in order to cut down on paperwork that needs to be stored in office, there was money left over, so they started a grant program.

More than thirty years ago John Sheehan asked his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Early, what she wanted for a wedding present.
"I told her I'd give her anything that I could," he said.
Early asked him to quit smoking, and after just one trip to a hypnotist John was through with cigarettes.
Flash forward to 1999: the couple is reading the paper and they breeze over an advertisement for a hypnotherapy class coming up. A pair of life-long learners, Elizabeth says the class fascinated both of them, but she took the class solo as her husband had traveling conflicts.
"It was really exciting to learn something new that I could use to help people," Elizabeth noted.
In 2003/04, working as a Consulting Ethicist, John found himself sitting at a US Airways Club in New York. He realized he didn't want to spend his time staring at the walls of clubs anymore, when he had so much to go home to.

Although Barbara Zerillo is well-traveled in Nicaragua and Europe,Barbara Zerillo she only knows a few phrases in Mandarin, and is a little nervous about submersing herself in the culture of Taiwan. She will be teaching English at The American International Language Academy in Hsinchu. After a 24-hour flight, she arrived there last Tuesday, Aug. 11.
“When I went to Spain, I had Spanish, but now I only know a few sentences in Mandarin,” said Zerillo. “You hear people speaking in Chinese and you feel at a loss.”
But not for long.
Zerillo will not only be teaching English during her year in Taiwan, but will be taking lessons in Mandarin. Her curiosity for languages and different cultures began at Clark University, when she went to Central America.
“I went to Nicaragua my freshman year in college,” she explained. “Before that I really didn’t have an interest in languages.”
Sustainable agriculture was the focus of that trip, with an organization called Bridges to Community.

Over two hundred Hillsboro-Deering middle school students gave disabilities’ activist Keith Jones a spontaneous standing ovation after speaking with them on Monday.Keith Jones and his fans: Emma Veazie, Cameron Oliver, Alicia Letourneau, Hazel So, Kody Milette, Nicole Hemingway, Josh gould, Tyler Schulte and Jenna Cote all pitched in to present disabilities activist Keith Jones with a T-shirt they made for him. (Michael Pon photo) Clever, sharp-witted and most importantly humorous, Jones had the students laughing with him and getting his message.

“I am a person with a disability and I am devastatingly sexy,” said Jones, catching the students off guard and sparking a wave of laughter.