Our way home...

On our last morning we woke early. The car was already packed so it was nice and stressfree.

I had just enough time before the kids woke up to head down to the walk at the end of our condo unit. Just me, my coffee and my notebook. I did my morning pages and sketched this scene in my journal. It was so peaceful. Just me and a man on the dock fishing nearby.

The most gorgeous tree dripping with spanish moss. Somewhere in Georgia outside of a Taco Bell~just after the sweet lady working there sugared the kids up with lots of free samples of their new icee things. I had to practically jog in place under the tree to keep the fireants from running up my legs.

(*bad experience when I was a kid with those suckers-ugh)

And here we are in Paducah, Kentucky. We stopped in since we were running good on time and kept seeing all these signs for the historic and arts districts. This was in the street by the Riverwalk.

Wandering the historic district...

Such a cool building-it spanned the entire block long.

Sunday afternoon~we are all starved and were so lucky to find a place open. Wow-this is someplace I'd definately go to again!!

The historic plaque

Ever since we were in New Orleans we've had to try other muffelettas when we run across them. I can safely say this is the best one this far north of Louisiana that we've had.

YUMMMMMMM!

(I wouldn't have taken it's picture if it wasn't awesome!)

And the adjoining bakery....just look what was screaming at me from the windows...

A drive looping throughout the streets in the historic arts area. Some of the coolest historic homes! All with working art studios and galleries...I heard they had done some special funding or incentives for artists to buy up the houses in the area to bring that area back to life.

As we walked around window shopping we kept finding all these neat short little alleyways that had cool finishes and the best light. Not at all like the alleys we have here in town. I lucked out with a pretty picture of Chloe-the boys weren't as cooperative.

Ok, so that was the longest run of vacation posts ever-lol. Thanks for hanging in there.

The vacation that never ends

Wouldn't that be awesome though? The never ending vacation...

Anyhow, here we are 2 months later and I'm still posting vacation pics! Only one post after this one to go!

These are from our last day. This is Nugget. He came along from Chloe's 3rd grade classroom to journal where he visited. Here he is hangin at Sand Key.

Gabe was much more confortable on the sand than in the water. He LOVED digging and building.
Shells, shells, shells.....


I want to do something with this picture-just not sure what yet...
Cropped and framed big over our bed? Maybe?

All of us as the sun goes down.

Trav and Sawyer

Sunset on the last night is always a little sad.

Everyone had to have sand names, of coarse.

Someone snuck in this shot.

Sawyer found this deep hole someone had dug and we couldn't get him out. He kept wiggling back down in there and was having a great time so we just let him play.

I'll have one more post with shots from our way home. We stopped in Paducah for lunch-it was a lovely town! We got a few good pics there...Until tomorrow.......

what i wore wednesday

A wee bit behind on these...you can tell since it's 90+ degrees here and I couldn't even tell you where my jeans are right now. I was thrown off by vacation-so these are the pics I took just before Florida and didn't have a chance to post...I'll catch up soon.

Sweater-consignment shop

Cami-Old Navy

Jeans-so old-who knows? They sport a big hole on the leg now though.

Sandals-Reef

Top-Old Navy

Cami-Old Navy

Necklace-bought in Greece on vacation 10 years ago.

closeup of the pendant


Top-Kohls (I've taken to making buns on my shirts with hair bands when they're too blousey-lol)
Jeans-Levis
Necklace-made by me


Closeup of the necklace


Blue/white striped top-Old Navy ( this is another shirt I've decided I can do without now that I look at this-lol)
Old jeans (I think I want to make a fun/funky patch for the new hole) You can see it started there on my left leg...

Shirt-Old Navy

Cami-Old Navy

Jeans-Levis

Sandals-Reef

Posy Pin-The Pleated Poppy

Cardigan Top-The Limited

Cami-Kohls

Jeans-Old

Sandals-Reef

Beaded scarf-Found in Chloe's room :) hehe

Closeup of scarf and earrings-a fave pair in high school-many moons ago. I love that they look like little lanterns :)

Hippo

Bet you always wanted to see hippo nostrils up close and personal :)

Artist market~week 2

My second week of the Artist Market was yesterday.

I decided to set up my tent in a different configuration than the week before to experiment..I'm not sure which way I like better yet. Each had their advantages/disadvantages.

There was quite a bit of foot traffic concidering how HOT it got. I met lots of nice people, had quite a few sales and was asked to wholesale in a gorgeous boutique.

Now I feel I can finally sit back and breathe!! That was a busy couple of weeks! Unfortunately yesterday ended in a migraine-either from the extreme heat or the lack of allergy meds. I'm just so glad it didn't hit full force until last night!!!

Travis has been out jackhammering our driveway and has found a driveway underneath our driveway-that's always a fun find-not. It's been raining on and off all morning so we may run to the video store and just hunker down and relax today...hope everyone has a great Sunday! :)

First outdoor art fair

Let's see how much my van can hold without bursting, mmmmk? Eep-I didn't think the tent was going to fit. We had to rearrange three times and slide a seat over to wiggle it in.

Here's my tent all set up. I ran out of room for a few busts and rearranged the set up a couple times to make room for my checkout area. I think I'll switch something around next week and see if there's any better way to arrange it all to fit. Overall I thought it was ok though? :)

Table shot

How about we take a little tour from the back table working our way up to the front, shall we?
Travis made my pendant board...

My funny little easter egg tree turned keychain hanger.

Travis made me my copper earring holder-love it. I got tons of comments on that thing-lol.

I only wish now I'd had him build it 2 or 3 tiered...

Maybe I can talk him into another one? You reading this, honey?

Moving towards the inner corner...some glass rods shown for people who don't understand that the beads are actually handmade by these rods of glass.

Screened frame for pins and extra earrings. Burlap bracelet rolls.

Checkout area

The front. I love how my glass cases turned out! They were these silly candle holder things I bought a couple years ago-I think I may have actually blogged about them when i found them. Glass was restored, metal painted, foam was cut in wedges and slipcovered in burlap and necklaces easily pinned into place-I had many compliments from other jewelers on them.

The framed photos of past custom work actually was a bigger hit than I expected and had quite a few custom orders from people already thinking ahead for Christmas. Christmas already? Eeep. that reminds me I was thinking about home parties for the holidays. Now all of a sudden I feel overwhelmed-lol.

I'm signed up to do the same show next weekend as well. It was nice to have a smaller venue to be able to concentrate on the set up and tear down timing as well as tweaking presentation. Next week I plan to play with the set up again as well as more outdoor/close-up's of my jewelry to get any extras added into my Etsy shop. :)

Random Friday

My camera is all packed up. These were taken a couple of weeks ago after our bad flash flood here in town. Our yard was still waterlogged-so once the sprinkler came on it turned into a mudpit-Chloe and her friend had a blast going down a wet slide landing in a pond or swinging on the rope seeing how high they can splash. *Trav had fun scrubbing the side of the garage after that...: headache today
: soooo humid out
: fed the geese today and walked the trail by Trav's work
: the sunroom is lined with totes for the art fair tomorrow.
: Can't believe how much stuff I have/need for it.
: it's going be hot tomorrow. bad
: I want to go buy a battery operated fan tonite somewhere

: visited my dad and stepmom this morning. he may have refractured his pelvis :(

: it's going to be a long summer for him

: i reallllly need to vacuum

: hoping to go to a little art thingie at Norb Andy's tonite

: trav's taking the kids swimming after work so I can finish packing and wrapping up loose ends

Kids art projects week 1

I've had the urge to paint lately. Not quite sure what it is...I painted in school- a ton. Why don't I ever do it anymore? Honestly-to the point that the other night at a stop light I gasped at how gorgeous the sky was and tried picturing the colors I'd use to paint it...Guess that should tell me something. (?)

So I saw this blog post about weekly art projects with your kids for the summer and got inspired-I could do this! Chloe's been talking about signing up for art camp-maybe she'd get a kick out of trying some new ideas.

Our finished pieces laid out to dry.

Gabey's-not bad for a 3 yr old with no help

Chloe's friend, Shaylee, who had spent the night

Chloe's

Mine

Chloe's talking about how she wants to start over and make her petals brighter-I said that's the beauty of watercolor-just put some more right over the top-wahlah! We're going to work on that today. I am envisioning big white mats, black frames and a gallery of bright flowers on the staircase wall.....Wouldn't that be pretty?

These are the blogs for inspiration I found this project through here and here.

They were so easy! Just pencil in a "bee's eye view" of a flower, trace w/ a sharpie then fill in. They feel very "stained glass" feeling when you're done. Make sure each side is touching the edge or running off...that's it! :) I pulled up Georgia O'Keefe paintings in Google images for the kids to go through before starting to give them some ideas and off they went.

Summer has begun

And with it comes the emergence (and obsession) of silly bands. Couch cushions all over my living room for sommer saults and forts
Dirt under my fingernails (and mosquito bites!)

All 3 kids wearing birthday hats as unicorn horns and making up unicorn sounds

One summer birthday done-2 to go...I'm not feeling very creative this year and would love to do what we did last year-by combining Gabe and Chloe's in the backyard with neighbor friends. I wonder if she'd let that happen again?

The kids have been playing outside all morning finding roly polys and centipedes to put in the little bug catcher box with neighbors. My legs stink like bug spray and itch. lol. They'll love me in class tonite ;)