Some trip photos.....

Some photos from the recent trip......in no particular order....a few of them will enlarge if you click on them. Can you tell everyone had a wonderful time?

I'm back!!!

We are back from a fantastically fun family trip to Walt Disney World.  Many photos of that...and reviews of things we did there....will pop up in the near future.  For now, here is a photo of my daughter and the grands with Mickey & Minnie!!!  Gotta love all of them!!!  (Notice Mickey playing with Jessica's pig-tails!!!)  :)

Back to vacation photos.....

Okay....back to some vacation photos.  Quilty things have taken place but I want to go through more of the vacation photos in the next few posts instead. Sorry for the interruptions in that.   The photos today were all taken at a really pretty place in Sarasota, Florida......Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.  I am not going to write captions for them, but just let me tell you that their display of orchids and tropical plants is amazing and there are many other beautiful things to see there.  It is right on the bay and there are benches to just sit and enjoy the atmosphere. The day we were there, they were setting up for a wedding that was to take place later that afternoon....what a location for it!  (I'm sure it costs a bundle to have a wedding there, but.......it sure would be dreamlike...as long as the weather was nice, of course!)  So......here are some of my favorite photos from that day.  I think you should be able to click on them to enlarge them...and maybe even click a second time to have them show up GIGANTIC sized.  I have about 200 photos from there, but I restrained myself from showing all of them!!!  We really enjoyed the time we spent at this pretty place and I hope I captured the peacefulness of the gardens for you. I have no clue why Blogger is putting a big space after this written part and before the rest of the photos...sorry about that...just scroll down to look at the rest of the pictures.

Spencer was excited.....

My little pal, Spencer, was very excited to go on our recent vacation.  He enjoyed reading my Kindle and really loved Florida. He wanted a picture the minute we arrived, as you can see.  He also enjoyed visiting one of the big citrus stores.  I hope we didn't spoil him on this trip, but I suspect we might have!

Lest you think I am a slug.....

Yes....I was on vacation for over 3 weeks, but I want you to know I didn't totally forsake quilting!!!  I did manage to get to a quilt shop I'd heard about....Rainbow's End in the lovely town of Dunedin, Florida......huge inventory but (as with many large quilt shops) it was a bit overwhelming.  (Funny thing...on way out from shop, I kept setting off the detector device.....I offered to empty out my entire purse but the gal just kept taking my wallet and holding it and making me go back through....this went on for about 5 minutes and the check-out line was building up, so she finally just told me to leave.....very odd as, with the exception of the things I'd paid for and she checked out for me, I had the same things on me when leaving as when entering...and I didn't set the device off when I walked through it entering the shop.  The whole incident was a bit annoying to me AND to those waiting in line behind me!!!  The first photo here shows part of one wall of the shop and the second photo shows some fabrics and quilting related supplies I bought on the trip....including a stitch-in-the-ditch foot for my machine.  I then went to a couple of quilt shops with Kathy (my quilting partner-in-crime)...although I can't recall the names of those shops...one was in Englewood and about to go out of business so not much left there and the other was a tiny shop in North Port.  I also went with Kathy one afternoon to her little sewing/knitting group and did a bit more work there on my English paper piecing circles (which are shown in the last photo here). That project is moving along slowly, but it is very portable and I'll try to push myself to work more on it again soon.  I see a notice today that Blogger is getting a "NEW" look in April and they are encouraging people to update now. Great...just what I do not need...is Blogger changing things yet again!!!  (I'll cross my fingers this update works better for me than the previous one!)

Some vacation photos......

These are some photos from one leg of our trip.......a stay on Clearwater Beach with a balcony room that looked out over the water at Clearwater Pass....nice beach and pool where we stayed, too.  The weather was wonderful and it was a very enjoyable time there. You will notice my little sidekick, Spencer, enjoyed the view, also.  Blogger didn't allow me to post the photos in the order I wanted them to post.....sorry about that.  I think you can still get the idea, though, of how pretty it was there.  (I think the photos will enlarge if you click on them.)  I'd like to go back and stay there longer next time.

Back to reality.....

We got back home day before yesterday from a trip of 3+ weeks to Florida.....visited some friends as well as did a wonderful week at Walt Disney World and a nice stay at both the Sarasota area and on Clearwater Beach.  I am very behind on blog-reading and realize I will never catch up with that, so will just start fresh now.  (Excuse me for missing some of your posts while I was away.)  I am going to share many photos from the trip in the coming weeks.  I am going to start out with photos of drawings I did in the free animation classes offered at the Hollywood Studios part of Walt Disney World.  I really enjoy those classes....20 minutes of working with one of their artists and they get even a terrible "artist" like me to draw something very cute.  I am going to collect a few more in subsequent trips and then mount them all, collage-like, in a frame.  Here are the three I have done so far..... Dopey from Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs......Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.....and Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio (that I did last year).  Of course, Blogger did not let me position the photos where I wanted them........GRRRRRR.....but at least all 3 of them posted!  I think you can click to enlarge them if you wish to see them in greater detail.  It is amazing that the Disney animators get a group of about 50 people from age 5 to VERY old (and with varying degrees of ability) to do something so cute in such a short period of time!  If you ever go there, try it....you'll have a great time.

Back to reality......

The vacation is over and I'm back to reality.....kicking a bit and screaming because I miss seeing the friends I saw on the trip......Sharon and her hubby, Carolyn and her hubby, Julie, Jackie, Nancy, Pat, Gene, Michelle and Vito.....and I miss the warmer weather and the palm trees and the whole Disney experience. But......back to reality I must be. I have to tell you that I have fallen so far behind on reading blogs over the past 3 weeks that I'm not even going to attempt to go back and read what I missed, so I hope you will all forgive me for that. (If you know there is something that happened that you blogged about and really wanted me to know, please get in touch with me and fill me in on your news.) It might help me get back to reality if I post an occasional picture from the trip, so.....for now, I'll post these two. I do get a kick out of Chip & Dale!

St. Augustine and the beach.....

We went to the old town area of St. Augustine yesterday and then walked by the ocean and found some nice shells on the way back to our friend's house. The air temperature was 70 but the water was cold.....we put our feet in anyway. Loved the blue skies and warm sun and will miss them as we drive up to the Atlanta (Georgia) area today. It will be tough putting a winter coat back on...that's for sure!Me and my friend, Nancy, braving the chilly water but enjoying the sunshine!

Managed to get this photo posted.....

Yesterday I had the chance to meet a blogging friend, Jackie, for lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. She had been kind enough to mail me a specialty ruler to try out....and I had the chance to return it in person. We had a very nice lunch and a good time chatting. The weather was beautiful and we walked back to the parking lot together, along with my friend, Nancy. Here is a photo of me and Jackie that Nancy took after we finished lunch. It is so nice to meet up with people we have come to "know" in Blogland!!! (And this Thursday, I should meet two more......Pat Wys and Gene Black.)

Missing for a few days....

I'll be missing from Blogland for a few days. I don't have wireless internet access at the house where I'm staying until Tuesday morning...and I don't want to tie up their computer. But....I hope to get online again by Wednesday morning. (I'll continue with more about my trip at that time.) Going to be 70 and sunny today........will HATE to leave this kind of weather in a couple of days. *sigh*

Like a slap in the face.....

We made the most of our last several hours at Disney yesterday.......saw a couple of things in the Magic Kingdom that we'd not seen yet and did some shopping and ate lunch there. Then...it was time to move on to our next stop. We stayed last night at a place that was SO different from our beautiful hotel at Disney....it was like a slap in the face or having cold water dumped on me. LOL I think after staying in a nice place like that, I need to be certain the next stop isn't so drastically different.......I think I need to have a gradual adjustment back to reality. At least the weather was warm and I sat out by the pool for an hour reading my Kindle. Today we are going to stay by a friend for three days and her house is nice, so we'll be comfy there. (The weather is also supposed to be nice in the daytime while we are there...so we'll still be in warm weather for another few days...YAY!!!)

Here are a few photos from yesterday.....this shows 9 snack items we got before we left Disney. We had a dining plan and had 9 unused snack credits.....so we got cookies and fudge and stuff like that. The item in my hand is ONE cookie (that one is white chocolate/chocolate chip flavored). We will try to be very good and will eat these items slowly.......I hope!
We passed a lot of orange groves and some pick-your-own places. I suppose the driver of this truck had gone to a pick-your-own grove......what fun to see a truck filled with oranges driving along with us. It makes me forget it's the end of January and COLD back home!Oh, yes....me and my Kindle reader by the pool yesterday afternoon. If the pool water had been heated, I'd have been IN the pool.

All good things must come to an end....

*sigh* I guess the saying is true: All good things must come to an end...and I guess we'd not appreciate them as much if they lasted forever, would we? So....today we move onward from Walt Disney World. It has been an excellent trip. The only daytime rain we had was the first afternoon we were here...and it was only for a short period of time. One day it was windy and chilly (but sunny) and the rest of the week had nice daytime temps and plenty of sunshine....the one bad night storm was when we were eating dinner. The weather, overall, was extremely pleasant for us...considering the cold, wintry weather back home.

Yesterday we spent time in the Magic Kingdom and the crowds were low when we first arrived. We walked right onto most rides. Funny thing, though, I realized as we were breezing into them, that we didn't get to see all the fun things Disney usually has along the way when you are waiting to go on a ride. (I'm not complaining....would rather miss them and get right on the ride than to stand and wait!) The weather was wonderful....crystal clear...and down to shirt sleeves by lunchtime. Here are a few photos......

Love the topiary work on display here....Mickey and Minnie....Alice and her tea party friends....just a small sampling of the beautiful work done to keep this place so pretty and magical.