Has anyone ever lived in one of those small, Hallmark style US towns?

[BabyLlamaZen]

I know it's not real, but I do have a guilty pleasure watching them all around Christmas. Think 'My Christmas Inn', 'Christmas made to order', that sort of thing.

The romantic in me loves the idea of swooping into one of these gorgeous towns, (local hunk on hand of course!), set up my own coffee/bookshop, that kind of thing. Live at the local diner.

Has anyone actually stayed in one of these places or know what they're really like?

Not a chance I could live under a HOA. The stories I have heard about those make me shudder!

There are neighbourhood associations like this in the U.K. My friend lives in a very nice area of London, bordering Surrey and had to run her garden design by then before she was allowed to do it. The first one was turned down as too "modern" and not in keeping.

They always look incredible don’t they. Every year I watch those crap films and think I want to live in one of those towns.

They’re boring. You have no idea of how BIG america is - how far these towns are from good theatre, galleries and museums. They are very conservative and everyone knows everyone’s business. But on the other hand, strong sense of community. It’s not for me.

I had a lovely Christmas stay with friends in a small town in NY state and enjoyed a really lovely Christmas Parade night. There was snow, carols in the park bandstand and a nativity. It was thoroughly charming. It’s also a quirky little town and fun to stay in at anytime. You can buy pies, fresh corn and produce at roadside honesty boxes. My friend ended up buying a house there after spending weekends there then being caught up in the local community so quite Hallmark!
Talking of Canada and ’Schitt’s Creek, I also spent Christmas in an Ontario small town and loved strolling through the park to see the Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, a town tradition. I lived for a long time in N. American city and many of my friends grew up in towns like this. Quite a few have now moved back out again. There are a lot of genuinely lovely places within a few hours of the major North American cities.

This is reminding me a lot of Christmas when I was 16 visiting my Dad in the States in Virginia. We went to a quaint shopping outlet that had music pumped all around and I got a haircut in a really sleepy town and there were insane nativity scenes in gardens.

Also discovered cookie dough icecream which was frankly the best thing about the whole trip. I couldn't understand why the same programs were repeated constantly on TV, we didn't have that back then though of course we do now.

The California town was on the ocean, an area that is one of the most beautiful places on the planet

Carmel?

My own favourite is beautiful Venice, on Florida's gulf coast. You don't get the "Christmas card scene" with snow, but by heck you get everything else

I used to spend a third of the year there and yearn to get back once allowed

Carmel is my California town that I mentioned above! Solvang is nice too and Monterey. I LOVED Santa Barbara too.

Venice is nice...lots of lovely places in that vicinity. Marco Island, Naples, Siesta Key etc. I adore St Augustine as well.

Celebration in Florida, the town that was planned by the Disney Corporation is well worth a visit OP. Across the 192 from it there are some really deprived areas but Celebration is like a different world. Very strict rules for living there! But if you ever visit Disney World you could go for the day (or stay there!) and sit on the rocking chairs by the lake eating Kilwins ice cream, pretending you are in your very own Hallmark movie.

There's a you tube channel called it's a southern thing, and I sort of want to live there, sweet old fashioned people, gentile manners.

As long as your not brown and/or atheist

@Seychelles98

We're all British. DH's job relocated here 12 years ago and we just kind of stuck. All our family are back home in the UK which is tough right now as my father is very elderly and unwell.

The social lives of teenagers is different. Therte far less hanging round outside, particularly in winter. They are more likely to gather at a friend's house and parents do an insane amount of driving teens to and from places. DD has autism so she not very social, particularly now, but even so there were 3 or 4 days a week when I had to leave work to drive her somewhere. In families where kids play sports they can have practice several times a week so they they can literally spend from 3 until 8 pm driving various kids back and forth then waiting for practice to finish. Kids frequently do homework and eat dinner in the car. That's the mc white normal, of course. All these things cost money, but those are the kind of people who live in small towns and naice suburbs.

I refer you to the X Files episode where a mud monster killed people in a gated community who put plastic flamingoes on their lawn etc.

OP I was actually wondering the same thing myself after the umpteenth Xmas movie I've watched lately!

This thread has been a bit of an eye opener ...

Yrs I've stayed in Stowe Vermont and ut is lovely. You could walk from one end yo the other in ten minutes. Inghink they must coordinate their Christmas decs because its all natural real greenery eith red bows and white lights. Really pretty. This is a typical house on main st.

Sorry for the typos! It's a ski area quite wealthy and has a general store and lots of restaurants. Brunch is a big thing and we ate at three or four different ones.

@NameChange84 I had a hunch you were talking about Celebration!! Totally outing, but we have a holiday home there in the North Village. It’s like a cross between Stepford and The Truman Show and I love it!!

I live in the Midwest, there are definitely some lovely Hallmark-style towns with a few hours drive of us. There is also a whole sub-culture of people buying old mansions in more run-down towns to restore them and revive the communities.

One of DH's colleagues did this and recently sent us a recording of the sound of the meth addicts down the street at night and it was like a zombie apocalypse. It totally put us off the dream!

Love that this thread wound around to HOA's! We bought in a neighbourhood with one after asking current residents if it was a relaxed one. It is, but that still hasn't stopped the current all-out war over whether the big ugly broken fountain at the entrance should be torn down and replaced with landscaping or not.

@Cherrysoup, which brings us back to Vancouver!

I grew up in a New Zealand version of this. It was wonderful....

What part of the country? @IsurvivedbutdidI - I don't need to know the town, just the general area.

I have a friend who used to live in a chocolate box wooden house in the woods in Connecticut. I visited him and his wife there in the Fall, and it was ridiculously pretty.

They drove me around the area, and showed me the little towns. They were cute but there was a strong feeling of faux-ness to a lot of it - everywhere felt very curated and controlled.

Friend said that a lot of the big houses in the woods and on the edge of the water were all mouth and no trousers - the owners had spent all their money on the exteriors, to show off their wealth, but would rattle around inside in completely empty rooms because they had no money left to furnish them. But that was ok because nobody saw inside; the fancy exteriors were all that mattered.

[quote MotheringShites]@NameChange84 I had a hunch you were talking about Celebration!! Totally outing, but we have a holiday home there in the North Village. It’s like a cross between Stepford and The Truman Show and I love it!![/quote]
Yes, it is very Stepford/Truman! It wasn’t actually my place in Florida but I can see why you’d think that from my description. Mine is Winter Park.

All I want is a lovely porch with a swing chair,to watch the world go by.

Always liked the looks of Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives

@NameChange84

Yep, the HA where I lived was so strict.

It’s not a Housing Association like what you have in the UK as a form of social housing, it’s a Homeowners Community Association who dictate the rules of a housing development or community.

We’d get in trouble if our grass grew an inch over the acceptable height for our residential community. Or if we let visitors in the community pool or tennis courts. There was a list of acceptable paint colours for the exteriors of the houses. We were only allowed one style of roof. Someone got fined for having a windmill style decoration in their outdoor planters as it “wasn’t in keeping with the community” (because someone thought it was tacky), you weren’t allowed to park on the kerb. Parking on the grass in front of your own home could lead to eviction, even if it was a roofer’s van or something. It was an utterly insane set up.

You get a touch of that in the UK if you live in a town or city with listed historic period buildings, where your exterior paintwork has to be from an approved local palette and the council enforcement officers make you re-do it if you go off list. My friend lives in a conservation area and the council’s building control people made her rip out the newly fitted velux window in her loft conversion and relocate it to the rear elevation of her house. She’d had poor advice from the council’s own planning team when she had the plans drawn up, so was especially furious.

@NameChange84

Carmel is my California town that I mentioned above! Solvang is nice too and Monterey. I LOVED Santa Barbara too.

Venice is nice...lots of lovely places in that vicinity. Marco Island, Naples, Siesta Key etc. I adore St Augustine as well.

Celebration in Florida, the town that was planned by the Disney Corporation is well worth a visit OP. Across the 192 from it there are some really deprived areas but Celebration is like a different world. Very strict rules for living there! But if you ever visit Disney World you could go for the day (or stay there!) and sit on the rocking chairs by the lake eating Kilwins ice cream, pretending you are in your very own Hallmark movie.

Celebration is so lovely! Only ever been at Christmas when the fire department do artificial snow on one of the streets. It’s magical! And Kilwins ice cream is fab!

oh god that video you posted is really depressing mousehole, like in the background of her house theres a horrible block of drugflats and if you slow down the video of the 'archetecture heritage' theres adult video stores, rows and rows of empty buildings and stuff. I definitely didnt question the cheapness.