Continuing The Vacation

This next part of the vacation is a little more vacation oriented (but there is also some quilty stuff).

First up was hubby and his fishing obsession.  He caught this bass in the pond behind his dad's place.

It is a little difficult to actually see but if you look at the center tree, you can see the head of a crane.  They have made a nest in the top of the tree!  

We went to Venice beach for our first beach trip on Monday and the water was so pretty. 

 LOTS of people at the beach and it was by far the warmest of the days we were there.

After the beach we headed to the Daquri Deck for a frozen adult beverage and snacks.  

I had a wonderful handsome date too!

I had the pleasure of stopping at the Cotton Patch which is near my In-Laws place.  

It is the cutest little shop.  Very friendly and they have an adorable Bassett Hound named Fred!

Isn't this adorable?

Here is what I bought from The Cotton Patch.

One day there was a lot of rain and tornados. 

We set out to go to St Armand's Circle but due to the tornados, we scrapped that plan.

  We headed to Der Dutchman to eat lunch.  It was so good!  

Then we stopped at Alma Sue's quilt shop.  

Such an adorable shop complete with little Amish ladies hand quilting!  

You can see them on the right.

Hubby found this fish quilt that he thinks he wants me to make.  

I bought the pattern and a few "fishy" looking fabrics.  Into the que it goes!

Then we went to a shop called It's Sew Worth It.  They had a few more things for the fishy quilt.  

If you are into Batiks this place had a great selection.  

I can see these turning into fish.

 They did have some more modern fabrics. I found this Fox Field charm pack there.  

 I got to meet a friend from Instagram, Nicole.  

We met up at Panera and spent two hours gabbing and gabbing. 

 She is running an It's a Small World Quilt Along on IG and swims every morning at Siesta Key.  

We had fun talking and hubby was such a good sport!

More to come...

~XOP~

Want To Go To Saint Thomas For The Weekend?

That's what my hubby said to me last week.  His company had a trip and I got to tag along.  We were there just 24 hours but it was fabulous!

The day we arrived it was cloudy and overcast but so warm!  We headed right to our hotel and then to the pool.  Here is hubby and I on our balcony as we headed to the pool

I wanted to go to this pool, an infinity pool with a swim up bar.

There were these little birds there and the bartender was feeding them some kind of juice.

When I asked her about it she said if they didn't the birds would be in our drinks!

They were called Bananaquit birds.

They were like a cross between a golden finch and humming bird.

Quite charming.

As we swam around I noticed some odd things in the bushes

 As we swam around I noticed some odd things in the bushes.

There were Iguana's everywhere!

Sunset from our room after the rain.

There were some beautiful boats sailing around the island too.

We walked to the beach on both days but it was much sunnier on Sunday.  

The water is so amazingly blue!

~I think this was my favorite photo of the beach~

If you look closely you can see an amazing number of Iguanas hiding in these bushes!

Here were two of my favorites.  This photo almost looks fake with such blue water in the background!

The flowers all around were so vibrantly PINK!

I love this fellow's striped tail!

Well 24 hours was not long enough, but it was enough to re-charge my batteries.

This is out the airplane window as we were leaving.

 ~XOP~

More of the Ohio Trip

I know I promised more from the trip so here I go. We got up and left the Inn to go downtown, Berlin and do some more shopping.
First stop was the local cheese shop where we got to watch them making the cheese. I know the pics aren't the best but they were shot from behind the glass. all my pics of the big vats of liquid separating were blurry but here you can see the cheese curds being shot into the cart with boxes on it. Then you see all the curds in the boxes. They put lids on those boxes and press additional liquid out to form the cheese bricks.

We stayed until the in town shops were open and then drove into the actual town.
I went back to some of the quilt shops and found these goodies at the Helping Hands Quilt shop. Love the Lynette Anderson fabric!



We went to a place called Zinck's fabric outlet and I found some more LA fabric an additional 25% off if you finished the bolt (DH helpfully pointed this out to me!) I didn't want to disappoint him so I bought all they had, about 6 yards.

We went to several antique malls too where I found some "treasures" including these bags of feed sack fabric.

I love the little Japanese figurines out there and when I found this adorable basket of kitties I could not resist them. I know you can't see it very well but I have them perched on top of a vintage spool I also bought.

It was getting on dinner time and we had not decided where to stay. We ended up at the Berlin Hotel. I have to say this was a fabulous place to stay! The rooms were amazing and the 2 person Jacuzzi tub was heavenly. I told DH not to use any bubble bath or anything at the last place we had stayed but he wasn't thinking about that and called me in to a tub filled with bubbles, so proud that he had the tub ready for me. Only he hadn't counted on them "over foaming" when the water jets were turned on. Picture the dishwasher run with dish washing soap rather than soap formulated for the dishwasher!! Needless to say there were bubbles everywhere. It was pretty funny. I thought about taking a bubble bath pic but decided against it (there should be laws against that right??)

We got up the next day and visited a few shops and headed out of town. We passed by this scene of a boy helping his dad on the farm. We also went by this cool old church and graveyard.

We were going to visit the Longaberger basket place. We found it with this HUGE basket. The HQ is in Dresden and the HQ building is a giant basket too.
Here is DH inside the factory outlet store and me in a basket outside the big complex

Passed by this one on the way out, notice the street light height and then you will know how tall that apple basket really was

This is actually the HQ building, amazing huh?

Last stop on the way home was a quilt shop in Mt Vernon, OH. It was called the Paw Patch Quilt Shop and they had lots of cool stuff and the owner was so very nice! This is what I picked up.

Alright, it is really busy at work at the moment so I need to go and take care of some of that so I will talk with you all later. Quilting tonight with the Canton ladies.

We're Back From Ohio

Did you miss me? I missed all of you but I took loads of photos to share the trip with you all. If you just can't wait you can go see them all on my Flickr account. You will miss all the lovely stories though, but it's up to you. First of all let me say that I had a fabulous time with my hubby. We decided to take a mini vaca to Berlin Ohio. The heart of Amish country. I found out that the largest population of Amish are located in Berlin. We hopped in the car and as we got underway we stopped for a light and this is what I saw.

What in the world??? Your guess is as good as mine, but at least you have to believe me when I say I saw this oddity!
The first place we stopped was Lehmans. A HUGE, gigantic everything shop. I don't really know how to describe it other than that. It just kept going and going. Kind of like a hardware, country store, feed store type of a deal. Just look at what I found in the candy department!

Ok it was really my DH but I think they made that candy bar for him! We bought some stuff. I was especially fond of this owl cookie mold, which may (or may not) have found it's way into my shopping cart!

We went to the quilt shop right behind this gargantuan shop. I bought a few things there, but not too many. I need to get pics of the things I got here. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow, it's too dark right now.

I don't even know how long we were there. I just bought the new quilt shop finder book on Monday and where was it for this trip?? At home on the couch! BOO!! I had to wing it. We stopped at the Lone Star Quilt shop(mt. Hope, OH) on the way to Berlin. I made a few purchases. I am going to have to show you the purchases tomorrow as I still need to photograph them and also I can't remember what I bought where, mostly. When we came outside these adorable Amish children were just down the sidewalk. So cute!

All the quilt shops I will talk about can be found here, at their shop hop page. It is easier to just have them all in one place for you to go and visit if you wish to.
We did a lot of driving and saw a lot of beautiful scenery too.

Lots of buggies too

We made it into Berlin and is it ever a hoppin place. Lots of shopping and lots of antiquing and a little quilt shop shoppingand LOTS of Amish! We went to this cool shop and got a few new additions like this Carved and lighted Jack-o-lantern gourd.

and this wonderful Amish hand made sewing basket.

One shop had some awesome fairy garden displays.

I *will* be making one of these! Just stay tuned!! Aren't they adorable??
Now how could I resist this photo op? Too funny!

Went to the Country Craft Cupboard and found these goodies plus a fisherman pattern (poor photo of that, so no pic) It said something like give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day but teach a man to fish and he will be gone all weekend! LOL

Oh yeah and this too. A little for PTM?? I think so.

Everything closes up at 5pm so we headed out to our B & B, Hasserman House. What a treat! We stayed in the boys room and it was fantastic. Here is our bathroom, and our bed and our room.

The blue pillow on the bed is mine, I can't sleep without my own pillow!


They are owned by the same people that own the Amish Door. Which is where we ate dinner that first night. We shopped at their little shop too and DH said, "Hey I found the perfect mug for you". I went around the corner to see if he was joking but he was right it was the perfect mug for me, so I bought it.

Ok, I have to stop here and go and throw in some laundry and then pay some bills and pack my gym bag before heading off to bed. I did weigh in on Sat and thought I would be up but I was down another 0.4, so good for me!

Oh and if you made it this far I have a treat for you. I FINISHED MY DESIGN STAR CHALLENGE QUILT TOP TODAY!!!! I don't think I should show it until McCall's shows it on their site though, but PHEW am I ever happy to be done. I LOVE how it came out too. You will have to wait until September 15th to see it finished though. I also labeled the monster rag quilt and wrapped it and the chenille blanket for gifts to be given this week. Off to make caramel brownies too, almost forgot!!