Part Two - Nashville Eateries

I mentioned in my last post that we ate at a fabulous local restaurant. Saturday evening we ate at "Monell's". It is an older home decorated with antiques and really large tables that guests sit down together for dinner (people that you do not know) and pass the food around. They served cucumber salad, brocolli salad, rolls, cornbread muffins, slaw, fried chicken, pulled pork, fried catfish, corn pudding, green beans, turnip greens, macaroni and cheese, peach perserves and a dessert with graham crackers, pudding and chocolate. Everything was really great! Great experience dining with other guests and breaking bread together.

They also have really pretty gardens outside that we enjoyed. I highly recommend stopping by Monell's if you are in Nashville.

The next evening we ate at Jackson's Bar and Bristo's that is very close to Vanderbuilt University. It was very good as well and we ate outside and enjoyed the weather.

Part One - Nashville Trip

We drove into Nashville around 1 p.m. on Saturday. The first sight we visited was the State Capitol. I enjoy visiting capitols and taking pictures of them.

I currently have visited and have pictures of: Austin Texas, Topeka Kansas, Salt Lake City Utah, Frankfort Kentucky, Annapolis Maryland, Boise Idaho, Charleston West Virginia, Oklahoma City Oklahoma, Jefferson City Missouri, Helena Montana, and Washington DC and now Nashville Tennessee.

We also drove by Vanderbilt University and looked at their beautiful campus. There were nice shops and restaurants in that area and really neat bungalow homes.

Next we visited the downtown area of shops and bars on 2nd Street and Broadway. This area was very touristy. We went back to this area in the evening and everyone was enjoying country music and karaoke.

For supper that evening we went to a fabulous family style restaurant that was very local. More about that in the next blog.

Return from Nashville

We had a great Memorial Day Weekend in Nashville. Hubby, daughter and son-in-law all went to Nashville from Saturday through Monday. Had a great time and enjoyed the music atmosphere. I will be posting pictures and describing our fun times soon. We had terrific weather - 90's and no rain! Hope you had a great Holiday as well.

Congratulations Baby!

My sweet daughter is graduating this weekend with her Masters in Public Health with Honors (4.0). We are very excited for her. She has worked very hard to get to this point.

Her hubby is throwing her a party after graduation. I'm bringing a black bean dish (recipe in this blog previously), rice dish with mushrooms, gooey butter cake and fruit kabobs. I'm wearing my new J Crew sweater (picture in previous blog writing) to the event with a pair of grey slacks that have a thin blue stripe down them and my powder blue open toed shoes. Tonight we are going to spend the night with them to help them get ready for tomorrow as well as going to my son-in-law's venue. He plays guitar/violin at a restaurant/bar every Friday night.

Quilts

This is my beautiful quilt that my mother made and gave to me over the weekend. It is quilted by hand. She let me pick out what colors I wanted and then she chose the fabrics and the design and worked on it all winter. This picture really doesn't do it justice. I would love to make my own quilt someday. I have quilted before after someone gave me the quilt top, but I haven't picked out my own colors, picked the design, pieced the top together and then quilted on my own. I would like to start with a baby quilt and see how that goes. Take the material from the clothes that I made my daughter growing up and make a multi-colored piece.

This is the quilt that I helped with. My great-aunt made the quilt top and my mother-in-law and I quilted it. It will be a nice piece to hand down one day. The craft that I do the most is crocheting. I enjoy making afghans for my friends and family. I just completed a cream color afghan for a upcoming wedding. I'm getting ready to start on embroidering some pillowcases for my bed. I haven't embroidered for awhile, so this should be interesting! If I didn't work outside the home, I would get a lot more fun things like this accomplished.

Cell Upgrade

I bit the bullet and upgraded our cell phone. We have stayed with the same cell phone for a long, long time! We use Cingular service and I upgraded to the LG CU400 phone. It has speaker phone, camera, blue tooth, push to talk (which we don't have that service), video, and all the other fun features. We've stayed back in the ice ages too long! I'm going to enjoy using these features. I'm going to take a picture of those in my saved phone book and connect them together so when they call I can see their smiling faces. I've made a few calls on the new phone this evening and everyone's voice was very clear. I love new tech toys!

Oh, and I also ended up getting it free after all the rebates and discounts but did sign up for 2 more years with Cingular. We have a good plan and don't ever seem to have a problem with their service. So I'm happy with this. Next, I need an Ipod! More gadgets, more fun.

Vacation Dreams

I'm dreaming of going back to Hawaii. We went to Maui last summer it was really great. Loved everything about it. We've decided the next time we go, we want to also see The Big Island. We also didn't get a chance to see Pearl Harbor when we went, so that would be something fun to do as well.

We have so many vacation plans ... we just need to be retired and vacation all the time! I'm sure that's not how it works ... but it sounds good! We may end up going to the Grand Canyon this fall and hike to the bottom. That has been a goal of ours and we need to get to that! I better pick up the pace of walking soon to prepare for that though!

We've also talked about going to the Northeast. We would love to visit Maine and Vermont in the fall. I'll just continue dreaming today and see if I can also get some work done! Where's your favorite vacation spot?