Bargain Find

I found this vase a few weeks ago and just had to have it. It was a garage sale find. I have black and white in my living room and decor that has swirls, so I thought this would fit in nicely. It is sitting in the center of my coffee table in my living room (except when my granddaughter is visiting!).

After looking at this picture, I believe I need to cut away some of the wax on that candle!

Bargain finds at garage sales are probably done for the year -- too cold. I'll just have to move indoors to antique malls!

New Fav

I just found this soda. Caffeine and sugar free - yeah! I tried it and really like the flavor. I had not seen this before, but I think it comes out around this time for the holidays. I need to stock up on this so I can have it year round! My other favorite soda is Sunkist Diet Orange. It is zero calories but does have caffeine.

It's the little things in life sometimes - and finding a zero calorie, no caffeine, taste good drink is a good thing.

Coming Home

My husband is coming home today from Kenya. He has been gone 10 days on a mission trip. He is flying from Nairobi to Amsterdam to Detroit to St. Louis.

I'm anxious for him to get back home. It has been a long 10 days. I'm also anxious to hear about his trip and all that he has learned about the country of Kenya.

My SIL is going to Haiti next week on a mission trip with his church. My daughter and granddaughter will be coming to stay with us for a few days while he is gone (yeah!). Haiti has had a lot of destruction recently from hurricanes and needs a lot of help. Please pray for his safety during this trip.

We're thankful for these opportunities of service, but we will also be glad when they are both back home with us.

Movie Review

"The Secret Life of Bees"

Loved it, loved it, loved it!

Cry, weep ... cry some more.

I read the book and really liked it as well .

Great acting and just a great story. Not sure my husband would have liked it though ... actually pretty sure he would not have!

Great movie to go to with your girlfriends. Get out and see it as soon as possible.

Quilt Show

I attended a quilt show on Saturday with my parents. There were many beautiful quilts. They had different categories (i.e. machine quilted, hand quilted, wall hangings, etc.) and you voted on which quilt you liked the best in each category.

I have personally quilted one quilt top given to me by my great aunt and am currently working on a baby quilt from scraps of material that I have in my closet. That will be my first quilt top that I have made. I thought a baby quilt would be a good place for me to start.

The quilt above was on display and not in the running on the voting. The quilt on the left I thought was really interesting. The material in the circle area has raw edges.

While I was at the quilt show I ran into one of my High School teachers. That was fun to catch up with her. During lunch at a local restaurant, my waitress was a past classmate that I hadn't seen since graduation. Her twin sister lives nearby me, unbeknownst to me, so we are going to try to have a small reunion when she comes through my town.

Good weekend for visiting and enjoying the wonderful fall weather.

New Toy

This is my new toy! My cell phone was broken and I decided to jump into the SmartPhone arena. I am receiving my e-mail, surfing the web, reading my fav blogs and oh yeah, it is also a phone! I'm still figuring out many of its features, but so far I'm happy with it.

I bought the red one from SAMs. What was nice about buying the phone from SAMs is they sell the product at the price after rebate. If I bought it at AT&T I would have had to pay $200 and get $100 rebate. But SAMs sells it for $99.99 and no rebate needed - yeah!

I'm still trying to figure out how to blog with my blackberry. Hopefully, I will get that figured out soon.

Last Leg of Trip

On our last day in the Seattle area, we rented a red Ford Mustang and made a trip to Idaho for my cousin's son's wedding. The wedding coincided with our being in the area, so we felt we would take the beautiful Washington drive to Idaho and congratulate the young couple. The Mustang was fun and it was installed with Siruis radio, so we had fun playing with that as well. On the way back from the wedding we were able to listen to the Mizzou football game!

We crossed the Columbia River and stopped at the scenic overlook to get this beautiful picture. So much beauty in the state of Washington.

As we crossed into Idaho, we continued to see beautiful lakes and gorgeous skies.

The wedding was in Kellogg, Idaho, and was suppose to be outdoors, but the rain stopped that and so they quickly moved everything indoors.

The picture on the left is the wedding site. We enjoyed visiting with our family and was happy to celebrate in this important event in my cousin's family's life.

Seattle Public Market

If you haven't been to Seattle's Public Market, it is a bustling, bright, exciting market.

Every fruit, vegetable, fish, and flowers that you could want. The flower bouquets in the picture only cost $4.90!

Pike Place throws their fish from behind the counter to one of their employees walking around in the crowd. That employee interacts with the crowd and everyone has a good time.

There are music performers all around the market. On the ground there are musical notes painted into the concrete and that is where the musicians can play for one hour. The musical group in the picture played folk/bluegrass music and while I was standing there two people bought their CDs and others put money in their banjo case. I enjoyed their music and I think others did too.

The upper left picture is me in front of the entrance to the market. The bottom left is a bakery that I really liked called "The Three Sisters". Their cookies were scrumptious.

If you ever get a chance to visit Seattle, by all means don't miss out on the Public Market.

Seattle at Night

While in Seattle we took a 3 hour cruise (but unlike Gilligan, we did make it back). As we were leaving the habor, this is what we saw. It was a beautiful evening and was a little hazy so we couldn't see Mt. Rainier in the background, but still a beautiful night.

The cruise was with my husband's conference. They had an amazing dinner for us on board and everyone relaxed and visited and took in the fabulous sights.

I used about every function on my digital camera trying to get the best night picture. This is one of my favorite shots. I really love city skyline pictures. I tried my night landscape, fireworks, sunset and candlelight options on my camera. I used so many different functions that now I'm not sure which one I used that worked the best!

I zoomed in close to get this Space Needle picture. Several of the pictures I took ended up blurry because of the distance, but this one turned out really well. I love digital photos -- you can just keep taking pictures until you get the one you like.

The next post will be pictures from Seattle's Public Market. The Market is rich with color from flowers to vegetables and interesting people from many cultures.

Back from Seattle

We had a great time in Seattle and the surrounding area. Beautiful city and many interesting sites and people in the downtown area.

My husband and I had some trouble in changing time zones. We would be tired around 8:30 p.m. and wake up at 4:00 a.m. I definitely had plenty of time to exercise and get breakfast before the stores opened!

The picture to the left is Mt. Rainier from the plane. When we were in Seattle a few years ago, we did not ever see it. This time it was hazy and cloudy, but I can see at least part of the mountain.

The picture to the right is our view from our hotel room. Gorgeous! Puget Sound and beautiful mountains in the distance.

We spent Tuesday through Sunday in Seattle with a side trip on Saturday to my cousin's son's wedding in Kellogg, Idaho. We rented a red Ford Mustang and drove through Washington and a few miles into Idaho to celebrate this occasion with them.

I'll be posting more pics and fun stories about our Seattle trip soon. Stay tuned.