PICTURES! (Wicked)

When we first booked airline tickets to London, I knew I wanted to see a show...

and I knew it had to be Wicked!

I've heard so many GREAT things about Wicked and have been wanting to see it for awhile, but living in Idaho doesn't exactly present great Broadway opportunities :)

So we booked 4 tickets as soon as we knew the dates we would be in town!

It was everything I thought it would be and more! It was AMAZING! If you haven't seen it, and ever get the chance you have to go!

PICTURES! (London)

London was definitely at the top of my list! I could have stayed there for weeks & been perfectly happy.

So we move from the country to the city! One of the most expensive cities in the world and our accommodations jumped WAY up! Don't ask me how that happens, cause let me tell you, we are cheap :)

This washer/dryer came in real handy after 4 days in the country :) Although, we're not sure anyone actually has the time to use a dryer here! Let me tell you, takes FOREVER!

We even had a view...yup, right on the Thames!

2 Bathrooms...

And even 2 bedrooms!

PICTURES! (Part 4)

Between Bath & Cotswolds we drove over for a quick trip to Wales.

Had some awesome fish & chips...

And spent the afternoon at the Wales cultural museum...all outdoors. Just different buildings from different time periods in Wales history. This is the inside of the castle, in the servants quarters...so they knew who was calling them :)

The Castle Gardens...gorgeous!

PICTURES! (Part 3)

From Bath we went on to the Cotswolds...little, charming villages

None of the homes have numbers, they are all named

Yup, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore!

Gorgeous thatched roofs!

Yummy restaurant across the street from the "Crown & Cushion" (where we stayed :))

PICTURES! (Part 2)

From Windsor Castle we went on to a B&B in Bath, where we spent our first 2 nights

We had the "loft", it was pretty cool, with 4 beds, our own bathroom & an added bonus: purple wall!

The Royal Crescent

Gotta love the architecture :)

Driving on the wrong side of the car, the wrong side of the road & add in multiple scary signs like this...definitely an adventure!

PICTURES!

We started our trip at Windsor Castle, a few miles west of Heathrow airport. It is also the castle where Henry VIII lived...

What used to be the mote

The parking garage :)

This Holiday will never end...

This holiday will never end, yes it goes on and on my friends.

Some people started planning it not knowing what it'd be, hired a car, drove to Wales & Bath in the west country.

And now to London we did go, took in the sights and saw the show.

From car, to tube, a boat and then a double decker bus, after 7 days the mountain blew and grounded us.

So it was off to Scotland we went, and then returned right back to Kent.

It was at the Dover cliffs we ferried across the sea, and traveled thru a darkened France right into Germany.

We may not understand much French, with Leslie's help we've no more stench.

It was a high speed road trip as we tunneled thru the Swiss. And crossing into Italy so Venice not to miss.

Bright brellas dotted ancient Rome, and praise the lord were headed home!

Enjoying sunny Naples as we toured near not far, pizza & gelato, mozzarella, cafe bar.

Our last day to amalfi coast, with Billy as our able host.

4400 pictures, 4000 miles, 18 days, 10 hotels, 9 modes of transportation, 7 countries, 4 currencies, military bases, & rental cars, GPS yes!

Mom, flowers & projects

I live 450 miles away from home so seeing my mom on mother's day isn't something that normally happens. But this year my cousin graduated from NNU on Saturday so my parents were here for the weekend...and mother's day!

I picked up some flowers for her on Friday before they got into town & decided to grab some for my house also. This is her bouquet. Love that color!

I love fresh flowers inside but never seem to spend the money to actually keep them around very often. It was fun to take a small $3 bouquet from Fred Meyer & turn it into 3 different arrangements around my bedroom.

I also like to take advantage of any time my dad comes to town to get some help around the house (yes he still loves me anyway) ;) I don't think he knew any one person could have so many different projects always in motion in a 1500 sq ft house! But even though he doesn't think he's the handiest man alive at least he's a good sport :) We worked on a board & batten project (in my stairwell) I've had brewing for awhile. It's not done by any means but we got a great start on it!

Lots of painting & the bottom paneling still left to do...but the center rail is up!

Ashes, Ashes...

So if you've been reading you know I recently returned from Europe. I so want to get picures & stories posted but I only took 4400 pictures! So while I'm sorting through those I thought I'd give you a brief background.

The plan was 2 weeks. First week in England & the second in Italy. However, God must have had other plans because the day we were supposed to fly out of London (for Naples) the volcano in Iceland erupted and grounded all flights in the UK. Well not only did this cause some lodging issues & expensive alternate plans...but, in case you missed geography, Great Britain is an island :-)

Yes its fairly close to mainland Europe, but you still can't just rent a car and get out of the country. So thinking that the volcano may not close airspace for more than a couple days we decided to make the best of being stranded & drove up to Scotland (Although we didn't think twice about driving 350 miles for 2 days the guy at the rental car company thought we were crazy :) "That's a long ways girls! It'll take you a couple days just to get there!") Another family we talked to in London felt the same way...they don't drive longer than 3 hours in a day. To them that is a LONG trip, so I guess on their standards we are pretty crazy, but it wasn't too bad for us used to driving between Wenatchee & Boise for the weekend!

Well returning to London 2 days later planes still weren't flying...and we are, mind you, still operating on sporadic, expensive pay phones & very rare internet cafes! Makes coordinating transportation and lodging tricky! Thankfully our families in the states helped alot & spent hours on hold with our airlines trying to get our flights re-booked. We decided on Tuesday that it could be awhile before planes were flying again & we might as well get headed in the direction we wanted to go...

We rented a car to Dover (yes they really are white cliffs :) and hopped on a ferry to cross the English Chanel. We then rented a car in France & drove to the border of France & Germany where my aunts friend picked us up. (They are very reluctant to let you take a rental car across country borders & it gets ridiculously expensive!) So we spent a day in Germany with their family and then drove through Switzerland down to Venice. We went literally right through (miles of tunnels) the Swiss Alps! Gorgeous!

So then we spent the night in Venice, my favorite Italian city. And drove to Rome the next day & spent 2 days there before finally arriving in Naples at my aunts home. The original destination planned :) We pulled into Naples on Saturday the 24th. A week after we were supposed to fly there and the day we were originally scheduled to fly home. But because of the airline fiasco our flights were rescheduled for Wednesday...

So we ended up with 4 days tacked onto our European adventure! And got to experience much more of Europe than I planned. It was amazing! What a place to be stranded!

We had just a 'little' bit of time in the car, so to keep us from going delusional we wrote a song about our trip...to the tune of "This is the song that never ends..." Maybe if you beg I'll post that for you to laugh along with :)

Giveaway

Check out this lovely GIVEAWAY!

99 Cents

In my search for cheap frames I came across these candlesticks at Goodwill. They were purple (which normally I love) but there are times when even purple can be done wrong! Shocking I know, but just take a look for yourself..

But even I could see past the chipping purple paint to what these could become, at least worthy of their 99 cent price tag! Nothing a coat of paint couldn't handle!

Speaking of cheap frames, this is also an old find painted white. However, this one was taken from my mother when I was in high school & painted at about that time also...I just threw a piece of "springy" scrapbook paper inside & made myself a nice little tray ;)

Happy (belated) Spring!

Tulips

They are my fav...I don't know why, but every time I see a tulip I can't help but smile! Last fall I finally got to plant my own!

But come April 9th as I left for Europe (more on that soon!) they were already starting to bud and I was afraid I would completely miss them before I returned.

Lo and behold there are still quite a few alive & well now that I'm home! Yeah! My roommate had cut some and put them in the house and there are still some out in the yard...it makes me happy!

2010-04-29 07.48.40.jpg, originally uploaded by meslonaker.