My Visit to The Fabric Shack

The last stop before home was at the Fabric Shack in Waynesville, Ohio.  

If you are ever in the area it is certainly worth the stop! 

 Not only do they have a shop but a warehouse too.  

You can't go to the warehouse but if you see something they have online and you don't see it in the shop they will walk over to the warehouse and pick it up for you!  

They were super friendly too.  I walked away with this amazing stack of fabrics.

I found this xo fabric that I thought would be fun to add to the next wedding quilt I have to make.  And see that blue one in the middle?  I have used up all I had of that for several bindings. 

 I was so happy to find more of it!

Plus Vikings!!!  I have wanted this line for a long time but was hesitant to buy it online. 

 I bought quite a bit o f the dragons intending to make some pillow cases for my daughter out of it. 

 I am also thinking about stitching a version of "Toothless" from How to Train Your Dragon for her and this would make a lovely border or back for that.  

Plus, well my own Viking heritage!! 

 I will make a spectacular Viking quilt one day.  I might even need a little more of this line.

I loved this line.  I don't have anything specific in mind for this but it was so beautiful in person.  

The hand of the Art Gallery fabrics is one of my favorites to be sure and this did not disappoint!  Someone needs to have a baby!!!

That concludes the Lincoln Vacation portion of the blog for the minute. 

 I know I am "over blogging" but I have so much more to write about 

and needed to get this out of my system too.  

I hope you have enjoyed our trip as well and found some new must see places to visit yourself!

~XOP~

Jungle Jim's - The Adventure Begins

We did make a few stops on the way home from Florida. 

 We spent the night in Lexington then got up and made our way north.  

First pitstop was Jungle Jim's.  

I can't stress enough how much I really didn't want to go to a roadside safari place. 

 Boy was I mistaken! 

 It's a ginormous grocery store.  Imagine 5 or 6 Sam's Clubs or Costco's all in one store. 

 I understand that we went to the smaller of the 2 also.  I can't imagine.  

We spent over 2 hours in there and could have spent more but we were on data overload!  

Sorry for the crappy pic but it was so sunny it was difficult to get a good shot.

See that monorail up there? Well at the other store it actually works to get you around the store!

They have an international section that is as large as my regular grocery store.  

There were two whole shelves of these prayer candles.  

I almost picked up this love one for my daughter.  Maybe I should have gotten one for my son too!

Then there was this. 

 Another grocery shop sized area full of nothing but hot sauces, rubs, salsas and BBQ sauces!

I took pics of some of the ones we found amusing.  

Notice the butt in the one on the right.

Could not stop laughing!

Those "fish" on the far right were Skates.  I have never seen Skates this far north. 

 You know how most grocery stores have a live lobster tank?  

Well this store had that but also one with live Catfish, Bass and one other one I can't remember. 

 I didn't take a picture though.

Or perhaps Octopus is more to your liking?  Look at the size of those "shrimp" on the right!!

They also had this freezer full of weird (to me) meat.  Camel, Python, Ostrich, you name it and they seemed to have it here.

Now what store is complete without a carnival fun mirror? 

 Hubby could not resist us taking our picture in front of this one in the candy section 

(which in and of itself was an experience!)

Does this mirror make my look fat?  ROFLOL

 Next up my trip to the Fabric Shack in Waynesville, OH

~XOP~

Last Of The Vacation

I will finish talking about the vacation and 

I thought I would share with you the fabric I purchased while on the trip down.

We stopped at 2 quilt shops on the way down. 

 I don't remember the name of the one I bought the purple and grays at but 

the other one was in Wytheville.  

How do I remember that town.  This, I remember it from this office supply shop.  Hilarious!

We did go to a hot sauce shop in St Armand's circle.  My daughter loves really hot things. 

 We found these hilarious hot sauces.

Once were were in Sarasota there is a quilt shop quite close to my in-laws place.

 It is called the Cotton Patch Quilt Shop.  

 I took my MIL there and found some great Tula and some Bonnie and Camille fabrics.

Love this purple and blue for binding!

Day Sail 

A Little Salt Water.

Livin' the Salt life (tee hee)

I used some of the B & C already to send off for the charm swap I am in.  

Those went out in the mail today!

Next up our trip to Jungle Jim's.  (I thought it was a tacky roadside safari deal, but NO, it is a GIGANTIC grocery experience!)

More later!

~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~

VACATION WOOOOO!!!!

I just returned from a week long vacation.  It was fabulous!  

With all of the things that went on in my life for the past year I think it was long over due. 

 We have not had a week long, travel to somewhere farther away then our own back yard 

for over 15 years! 

 Hubby and I packed up our car and headed to Sarasota to see his parents.  

We stopped in NC to visit with out daughter.  

I had to have her try on the dress I was making so I could make adjustments 

and then make the actual dress.  

I know it looks weird but it pretty much fit.  

Only a few minor adjustments.  

Yes the seams are on the outside, so I can make the adjustments. 

 This was just the "muslin" mock up. 

(I actually used Kona so she could use it as another dress eventually)

We continued on to Florida and stopped at this hilarious place to use the bathrooms!  Pedro's.  

We arrived in Sarasota on Sunday and Monday was probably the best day we had the whole week.  On Monday we went to Siesta Key.  

It is rated one of the 10 best beaches in the world and one of our personal favorites.  

Both of us remember visiting grandparents and going to this beach.

These pole people were all over the city too.  

I thought this one looked cute holding up the rescue board.

It was rather odd but by the time we left this is what it looked like and it was just a few hours later!  Sea fog began rolling in.  The Gulf coast had this happen most of the week while we were there.

The next day we drove down to Venice Beach.  

It was pretty chilly for there and the water temp was in the 50's so no swimming for us. 

 Look at the difference of the sand between the beaches.  

The sand here looked like pepper where the sand at Siesta Key looks like fine sugar.

Venice Beach is the shark tooth capital of the world, 

but we couldn't really brave the water to look for any, brrr.  

We did see some brave people in the water though.  

We didn't have any kind of sieve either, so there's that.

There were many of these crazy birds though.  I have since found out they are Royal Terns. 

 Their black feathers reminded me of Einstein's hair!

We stopped at a little quilt shop in Venice and I found these OOP Tula Pink prints.  Yay, Score!

This was the shop, Deborah's Quilt Basket.  Nice little shop very friendly people!

Chris was in his glory fishing all the ponds around the houses where his folks live. 

 He caught a lot of Bass.  

There is more to share but I don't want you to have too much excitement so will save some for later.  

I probably should talk more about the drive down and I will in another post. 

 I bought some fabric at the 2 shops we stopped at but I need to take some pictures 

so will stop here for now.

I hope you had a good week while I was away being totally lazy!

~XOP~