Road Trip

Road Trip! Thursday morning, Allen dropped me off at Shannon's office over in Hampton Cove, and we piled in the company Sequoia to head to the Country Living Fair in Columbus, Ohio. We'd been waiting all year for this after having such a good time last September. We had a fun, happy ride north with lots of laughs. Lunch was a silly meal at Cracker Barrel, and then we headed on to the outlet malls just this side of Columbus. Shannon and I got shoes, but we drooled over plenty at the Pottery Barn Outlet. If only we lived closer. Then it was on to Columbus. With "Samantha" the Garmin's help, we navigated our way to the hotel without getting lost like last year. Friday morning, all five of us were anxious to get to the fair. The weather could not have been more perfect, and the sunny skies just highlighted the fall festival decorations everywhere.
I enjoyed browsing and wandering around with Shannon. We did our share of buying, but neither of us went overboard. My big splurge was, surprise of all surprises, quilting supplies (several kits from Country Threads) and a couple of small pieces of pottery from a Cincinnati area potter. The biggest thing we all brought home was a healthy dose of inspiration. I am ready to get out the fall quilts I've made and the rest of my autumn decorations.I think that one of my favorite parts of the trip was Saturday night. We went out for pizza and a quick trip to JoAnn's (why we don't have one here in Huntsville, I do not understand), and then we went back to the hotel and had a craft night. Leighann settled in with a pile of craft magazines, while Vicki showed us her stash of wool from the fiber fair she attended Saturday, and she demonstrated her spinning. Fascinating! Christa opened her paper making kit and fired up the new blender to make a few sheets of paper. Shannon made a good start on her punch-needle project -
and I started on one of the quilt kits I bought. This project has 128, no, make that 256 of these squares, and it will be my television watching project to hand piece them. I wished that I had cut enough pieces so that I could try sewing on the ride back, but oh well, I just watched out the window while it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. What a ride back. I don't think we drove more than thirty or forty mph all the way home from about Nashville. Driving in driving rain for hours is not fun. We've heard that maybe the Country Living Fair will not be in the same place next year, but if it is within a reasonable driving distance, we'll surely want to go again.

The big news since then is that our new puppy was born Monday. I guess it will be two or three months before we have him here, but we're excited. We miss Louie terribly. The house is not the same without a dog. I didn't say I missed walking the dog in the rain or early, early in the morning, or late at night, but I guess that's a price I won't mind paying too much.

I'm looking forward to Allen coming home and Saturday football. Roll Tide.