Vacation!!!

I am back from our Florida vacation! 

 It was a great break from my work.  

I brought a quilt to bind and only got half of it done, YIKES!  

We sure did have some fun though.  

We drove from MI to FL.  

We stopped in Georgia for the night on the way down and KY on the way home.  

There were several quilt shop stops both ways.  I am going to concentrate on the quilt shops here.

This shop was in glendale, OH It is called Stitches and Stuff.  

A very cute little shop.

I would go back here.

They had a pretty extensive collection of fabrics. 

 I found some of the new Kinder line by Heather Ross. 

They also had these giant fiberglass squirrels all over the town.

 This one is in front of the bakery

This shop was in Berea, KY  The shop was quite small but the lady working there was so nice.

This town had these odd fiberglass hands all around it.  

Now you will see I found LOADS of these gigantic fiberglass oddities on this trip!

We also stopped at Stitches N' Stuff in Powell, TN.  

This shop was so cute and she had a very nice selection of modern fabrics.

I really loved this shop!!

She also had a blind rescue dog in the shop that greeted us.  

The owner does a lot of work with this particular rescue.  

It was nice to hear that.

Isn't this peacock great?  I think I know someone that would like this on a quilt!

 Now I have the usual Florida photos and many look like previous years, 

so I am not going to bore you with those.  

Well, maybe just a few highlights.

We went to the strawberry festival in  Plant City.

 It was just a glorified carnival, but we had fun.  

Look at the strawberry hot seat amidst all those fresh berries.

I asked hubby if this was the strawberry festival or the whipped cream festival?!

I do have to say this guy is pretty special.

He plans all of the shop stops for me.

Then he walks around the town while I shop.

He always encourages me to buy at least one thing at each shop too.

This guy is a keeper!!!

This quilt shop, in Plant City, was probably one of my favorites in our line of stops.  

There was a HUGE selection and many of my favorite designers!  

I would love to go back here.

There were lots of little antique/junk shops in this town and at one of them I found this. 

 A Featherweight (in really rough shape, but they still wanted $250) 

and the FW folding table ($350).  

That table is on my wish list but that is a bit over my price limit!

For me, one of my favorite parts was going to visit my husband's sister and brother-in-law.  

They bought a place on Bird Key and it is so amazing! 

 In this photo hubby was trying to fish 

(he had on his "lucky" hat and everything) 

and everyone was crowded around watching 

(and offering helpful advice).

This is their pool.  Our niece got them the Flammingo.

Their house is so beautiful!  

We walked around St Armand's Circle and went to the Wyland Gallery

 where I saw these amazing peacock sculptures.  

They were made out of crystals and real peacock tail feathers!  

The crystals alone cost over 24K!!

We did eat at the Salty Dog, one of my favorites.  

One of their daily specials were Grouper egg rolls.

Let me just say, these were amazing!  

We got them as an appetizer and I could have eaten them all myself!!!

We stopped at Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati on our way home. 

 It is a gigantic store with all kinds of amazing foods and stuff in it including this fiberglass Rino!!

The last stop before home was the Fabric Shack. 

 I forgot to take photos of the shop, but this shop is well worth the stop.  

Tomorrow I will share my purchases!

Hope you enjoyed the virtual shop hop.

~XOP~

I'm Back From Vacation

I wonder if you even noticed that I was gone?  LOL  

We took a road trip from MI to FL and just got back.  

I have lots to share with all of you about the trip so here goes. 

First few days we spent by the pool.  

Ahhhhhhhh.

On Monday I visited the Cotton Patch and bought this adorable Sea Horse quilt pattern.

Fred is the local inhabitant at this shop.  He was very friendly and helpful!

 I found the perfect backing for my newest project too.  

Aren't those fish adorable?  

The 2 FQ I will use for a fishy or two.

One day we drove down to Venice Beach and it was the absolute perfect beach day!

What a crazy surprise when I walked into the local quilt shop and saw one of my patterns hanging!

Even my hubby was enjoying the warm weather with a drink at the local Daiquiri Deck!

I got the shrimp tacos and they were amazing!!!

I spent a little more time at the pool over the course of the week.

One day we drove to the area that Mote Marine is and walked out into the bay.  I found these shells.

and these weird little tube worm things.

We had the company of this heron.  A black heron maybe?

I thought it was interesting to see this large footprint with the smaller ones imprinted in the mud.  There was water covering these! 

 It was fascinating that the mud held the prints even under the water.

Then there was this elegant fellow.  He let me get really close.

He stretched out his very long neck when the fisherman on the next pier caught a fish!

We drove to Anna Maria Island and walked out on the pier.  We even saw a dolphin!

My SIL and BIL bought a beautiful home on Bird Key.  This is on their patio overlooking the ocean.

We had a fabulous time!  

We stopped at a few quilt shops on the way down and back and I will write about that in a future post.  I picked up lots of goodies along the way. 

 I am hoping to do WIPs With Friends tomorrow so please stop back to link up!

Have a wonderful day!

~XOP~

Our Trip Continues

The vacation in Florida was a lot of fun.  

If you know anything about me at all it is that I have no idea how to relax. 

 I'm totally serious here. 

 Sitting around doing nothing is next to impossible for me. 

 I was actually forced to do this on this trip. 

 I don't mean it in a bad way but it was not easy for me to do. 

I actually sat by this pool for several hours one day, all alone, nothing to do. LOL

 It was not actually very sunny while we were there nor particularly warm 

(for Florida) being in the upper 60's to low 70's.  

We did determine that from the day we left Mi to the day we got to FL 

there was a 90 degree temperature difference!  

Anytime my in-laws mentioned that they were sorry for the bad weather we would respond with, "Well, at least it's not - 17!!"

I did get some pool time.  

One day I actually swam in the pool and the other just sat by the pool as it was misty

 and kind of chilly.  

My view of the pool.  

My In-laws live directly across from the pool so all I had to do was walk across the street to get here.  

Well, hello everyone!  Here is my terrible attempt at a selfie!  

This was my view of the sky when I finally decided to pack it in and go inside!

We took this day to go to Mote Marine Laboratory.  

It is an aquarium but also a research facility. 

 I LOVE this place and the things they are doing to rescue animals and re-populate the coral reefs, just to mention a few things.  

As you go inside there is this giant quilt.  It was pretty amazing.

One of the most beautiful exhibits were these Jellyfish.  So beautiful, but so painful if you get stung!

They have a Jelly Fish Reproduction Lab and you can see it here.  

I had to shoot through a Jelly fish tank to get the photo!

I found a clear spot so you could see the baby jellies.  

They look like Dandelion seeds floating as you blow them off of the puff.  

Very small and very delicate.

This Lion fish looked like a grumpy old man to me.  Hahaha.

I love Sea Horses and this little guy did not disappoint.  He looked like seaweed!!

For real, seaweed.  It was so cool!

This was a Stingray in a giant take full of other fish, Stingrays and sharks.  

They look so gentle but watch out for that barbed tail!!

Upon entrance to the rescue facility is a mural painted by Wyland.  

We have pictures of our kids standing in front of this. 

 It is GIGANTIC! 

 It takes up an entire building, but so beautiful!

There were some Sea Turtles in the facility and I am always amazed by them.

This is one of the 2 Manatees they had here. 

 It is difficult to describe how enormous these animals actually are.  

This was the smaller of the two and it was HUGE.

This exhibit was very interesting to me as a scientist.  

We watched the movie presentation on how they grow coral 

and are repopulating the reefs then saw this.  

You can see on the left little chunks of coral attached.  

That's how it begins.  

They string it on that "tree" looking thing and it branches out and grows more.  

Eventually it looks like small trees as you can see on the right. 

 They can repopulate a reef much more quickly then they had thought doing this and study how coral grows, what effects it all while rebuilding the reefs.  

The presentation was amazing!  It's probably on their website too.  

After our tour was complete we walked to The Old Salty Dog and had lunch.  

This was our view from our lunch table!

A lady sitting behind me was drinking a Key Lime Pie drink that was as big as my head.

It had graham cracker crumbs around the rim too.

I wanted one but knew it would be too much for me to drink so I admired from afar.

We ate so much good seafood while we were there.

I found that I love Mahi-Mahi.

As much as I loved Florida I really missed my sewing room and the cats!

I will continue with my travels in the near future and then on to quilty related content.

So if you are looking for quilt related things you may want to skip a day or two.

~XOP~