What I have been up to......

The Travelers...well three of them are off shopping somewhere else while we toured the gardens....

We have been in the mountains at Cashiers..this is the lake near Illes House ...Whiteside Mt in the background(Highlands is on top of that mountain!)and then to Asheville and Gatlinburg for the last couple of weeks….the first two were my favorite…the last was bumper to bumper people BUT the Great Smokey National Park is a truly awesome place.

In Cashiers we painted and sewed and painted some more, went to galleries and antique stores and for hikes and drives...a truly lovely place...this is a little quaint charming church between Cashiers and HIghlands...

Also to Highlands to check out the chic(K):> shops and terrific art galleries...we got a couple of cute t shirts with wine and grapes and paris printed all over them at a cute clothing store...they had some great "wearable arts" and reasonable prices....

And our hands down favorite was a shop called the Nest full of antiques and other interesting things for the home all crammed into a fascinating victorian farm house...set on point if it were a quilt block..

and onto Franklin to see Illes friend Anne at her quilt store...a sweet lady...she let us put Charley and Jazz in her office...and to visit Dry Falls on the way...an awesome place with a hike under the falls ...you can walk at least one block from one side of the falls to the other under the falls...that water feels good...WHO named it DRY FALLS...should have been damp falls..Dry Falls IS NOT to be missed......and Bridal Veil Falls....also on the way to Franklin...you used to be able to drive under it till the big chunk of rock on the left fell..

A day trip to Asheville to my some of my fav spots...the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway and some new and old fav shops Waechters silk shop, Chevron Trading Company, Tops Shoes and a Piece Gardens….a fascinating quirky quilt shop on the same block as Chevron….and IF you have NEVER been to Chevron…an awesome assortment of beads at reasonable prices…

Then we went back to Cashiers to sew fast quilt tops together on the back deck of the mt house over looking a trout stream…doesn’t get any better than that…no wait that darned family heirloom featherweight was OOHHHH sOOOOOO SLOWWWW…..This quilt was discovered at Piece Gardens...made almost .completley out of Rowan fabrics...not bad for an afternoon...even with a SLLLLOOOWWW sewing machine....

Then off with my family to spend the fourth with my parents in their condo overlooking Gatlinburg…WOuld you believe 11 kids lived in this tinnny cabin....abandoned by the family when the US bought the Great Smokey Park...hand hewn beams....incredible place...but sooo small and only one room...

An awesome overlook on 441 in the Great Smokeys National Park....

Found a cute little quilt shop(fabric kind) in Gatlinburg on waht is the artist row. or street in Gatlinburg right next to the pet photo place and the ice cream shop…called in quilts or in stitches or something…very nice lady…been there thirteen years…while it was a little
traditional for my taste I did manage to find one piece of klimt fabric I could not live without…and the owner was really a doll...very helfpful jam packed with fabric..

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Today we went to Fiber on a Whim to visit with Ms. Jan Girod and her two side kicks, her sis and her daughter…..Jan is a hoot and starts the postcard of our day in Atlanta off in the upper right hand corner.....if you ever get a chance Go visit…just a really fun store…full of stuff we all love…today we worked on foiling, dolls, dyeing and embossing velvet….and oh yeah embossing peltex…some really neat effects….

Then it was off to the races…fast trip by Pearl Paint on Roswell Road where I managed to add a few more Derwent watercolor pencils…my new fav toy and some watercolor postcards….

then off to the Pie Bar restaurant on Munroe where it hits 85-N (right corner of the postcard)…What can I say about the Pie Bar...totally awesome unique Mediterranean food...and the setting is also out of the Jetsons...from the building to the table settings and chairs...its in an old 60s trust company bank building…round concrete derelict that has been redone into one of the new hot trendy places to eat in Atlanta….FABULOUS odd ball pizzas cooked in a big open oven in the middle of what used to be the bank floor…I had a duck confit with grapes, blue cheese and arugala pizza, my son who met us had a shrimp and cheese grits pizza with pineapple on it…and there was a wild mushroom with feta cheese andwhite truffles pizza…all were just incredibly yummy….and WHO would have thought of putting GRITS on a pizza…but it tasted like a thick cheesy pizza with shrimp and pineapple…

Then we raced off to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see the Nikki in the Gardens art exhibit …by Niki de Saint Phalle…huge zany overblown mosaic statues all over the gardens….these huge zany women who were definitely FULL figured….and a 15000 pound skull, totem poles to name a few…oh yeah a Michael Jordan, baseball players…Louis Armstrong to name a few of the statues….oh a 25 foot long alligator …all done with her mosaic technique…Now we want to go back and night and see the statues which glitter in the spotlights every TH nite…and it will have the advantage of being cool..

The flowers were truly AWESOME in their depth and variety...

as well as some incredible plants and a couple of chiluhy glass piece...

This one that emulates water...

Here are some of the highlights of the permanent gardens...

.The flowers and plants were AWESOME….a jillion different orchids…

South American poisonous frogs in terrariums...no they could not get out...and they were sooo tiny Anne and I stood there for a long time to find them...we never did find this one... They are about the size of tree frogs.....MAYBE one inch...and one was the most gorgeous blue-iridescent....gorgeous....

Bromeliads with incredible blooms all over them….

Water lilies near the conservation area....

Bog plants...pitcher plants and more that grow in the conservation area...

We finally left there at 6:30 pm and headed for home but not without a stop at Hobby Lobby in Conyers where we loaded up on Grumbacher watercolor paints at ummm lesstha n hmmm I got 18 tubes for $10…not a bad deal….

after that a fast burger at Burger King and a long much quieter drive home…we were too tired to talk although Margaret and I regained our energy about half way and managed to solve who we thought should be famous in the art world ...as if anyone but us cared...good to know we had like minds though....Our major decision was that sometimes fame came from societal trends instead of being based on abilities....

SO what about this blue frog??? I played with the original in paintshop pro and got this one...isnt he fun???