Tennessee Trip - Part 1

Earlier this year I planned a trip to Tennessee to visit my sister and to see my niece graduate high school. My sister and I decided to take part of the week and turn it into our sister trip and planned to spend a few days in Nashville.

I left early Saturday morning on May 10th for the long 10 hour drive to where my sister lives. Here are some pictures driving through Georgia.

Last time I drove up there I ended up stopping in Valdosta, Georgia for some BBQ at the Smokn Pig. The food here was so good, I looked forward to stopping there again. I ended up buying some bbq sauce to take home with me.

I finally got to my sister's house about 7:30pm.

The next day was Mother's Day and my sister, niece, and myself drove to Chattanooga to go to the mall to do some shopping.

Monday morning my sister and I got up and and headed to Nashville to spend some sister time together. I love all the mountains. It is so flat here in Florida that it was a nice change of scenery. Although going up and down the mountains killed my ears because they kept popping.

I found this quite amusing that there was huge strawberries on the road.

Our first stop was the Belle Mead Plantation. The main reason we wanted to go here was to try the wine at the winery there. The grounds were absolutely gorgeous though.

This was the outside of the barn. Inside there were old horse drawn carriages.

This was the neatest flower. I thought it looked like something out of a Dr. Suess book.

This is a view of the other side of the barn.

Here is front view of the mansion.

The slaves and workers quarters.

There was a mausoleum onsite. It was beautiful from this distance. As we got closer and looked inside the gate, it was kind of creepy inside.

Some beautiful huge trees.

Last but not least the winery. Inside was just a gift shop and where they did the wine tasting. I have to say most of the wines tasted like what we have here at my local winery in Florida. Except for the Blackberry wine, it was delicious, but a bit to sweet. I ended up buying a bottle to bring home to the boyfriend.

This place was really beautiful and full of history.

From there we headed to downtown Nashville. We decided to get a bite to eat before we did anything. My sister had never eaten at Margaritaville, so we stopped there and got a burger.

We then headed to the Johnny Cash Museum. If you are a fan, this place was awesome, with all kinds of artifacts from his life.

This was a custom motorcycle built for the museum.

Johnny throughout the years.

All his singles in 45s.

The covers of all his records.

Gold and platinum albums.

This was a drawing he did. Where he rubbed the pencil to cover the page and then did the drawing with an eraser. I didn't realize he was also an artist.

I took more pictures but some didn't come out as well as these did.

After that we ended up just wandering around the downtown area.

The football stadium where the Tennessee Titans play. The boyfriend is unfortunately a Titans fan.

There was this neat walkway and we decided to walk it and get some pictures from it.

They call this the Batman building because it looks like Batman's cowl. I got several pictures of this for the boyfriend because he is a big fan of Batman.

The Country Music Walk of Fame.

There is this alley called Printer's Alley. It seemed like it was mostly showgirl shows and things like that down this alley. It was to early still for all that. Lol.

We found the pot of gold in Nashville. This seemed kind of random to us but awesome at the same time.

A beautiful statue. To tell you the truth I forgot what the significance of this statue was.

Well we ended up stopping at a place called Dick's Last Resort. I wasn't sure what this place was about but my sister said her friends said to check this place out if we got the chance. So we stopped for dinner. While we were being seated the table next to us left a tip and all the coin spelled out the words "Fuck you". My sister asked the hostess what that was about, and she said it was part of the experience. We looked at each other like what did we get ourselves into. Basically the waiters are kind of rude to you but in a fun sarcastic way. At one point I took my feet out of my flip flops and set them on top of my flip flops. The waiter yelled at me and said "Put your shoes back on hooker, who do you think you are Brittney Spears"! I couldn't stop laughing. We ended up getting drink's, mine was called Angry Balls, and it was Angry Orchard with Fireball Whiskey. My sister got a Pina Colada that was called "Blow your wad Pina Colada."

Then the waiter made us these lovely hats!!!

As we were leaving we asked the hostess to take our picture with Dick and they decided to take a selfie first.

Coyote Ugly was just next door so we had to stop in and have one drink to check it out. It was Monday night so there wasn't to many people in there. The girls got on the bar and danced a couple of times while we were there.

Here is the strip at night. As we were walking back to the hotel every bar had live country music blaring from inside.

We had such a great time but it was a lot of walking!

Look for Part 2 coming soon!

May Adventures

Wow May had been super busy! Work has been crazy trying to get our newest books off to the printer. We still have quite a bit to get done to finish off the season. I didn't get any art done at all this month, although I did start a sketch for one of my LifeBook lessons.

There was an Air Show that was going on near where I work. The Blue Angels were flying over practicing for the show that was starting that weekend. I was able to get a few shots of them flying by.

I was super busy preparing for my trip to Tennessee at the beginning of the month. I just couldn't wait to get out of town for a little bit and see my sister and niece.

I took some pictures on my trip up there. Look for some blog posts coming up all about that trip.

I took this picture from my sister's back porch.

When I got back home I finally finished the Flat Sally project. You can read more about that here.

I had bought some Blackberry Wine while up in Nashville. The boyfriend and I decided to drink it one night. It was so sweet, but delicious.

A couple of years ago the boyfriend bought me a clipping of a yellow Frangipani. It looks like it is about to bloom. I can't wait to see it!

The other day coming home from work the sky looked amazing with all the clouds, and a storm coming through.

Look it's almost ready to bloom.

May was filled with so much going on it went by so quickly. I am hoping the summer will slow down a bit and I can get more art done. Keep on the look out for the posts about my trip to Tennessee.

Flat Sally

Some of you might be asking what is a Flat Sally. It is based on the children's book Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was flattened by a bulletin board that fell on him. After he was flattened he decided he would mail himself to his friends to see the world. They use this as a geography lesson in classes, basically you make your own Flat Stanley and send it off to a friend or family member. My little sister's class decided to do the project and she sent me a Flat Sally (named so because she is a girl). I was instructed to take pictures of the area I live in and send them back before June. I decided to make a book with a little story about Flat Sally's adventures with me.

This was such a neat project. Some of these picture are from my trip to Tennessee recently. I still plan on writing a post about that and explain the photos further.

If anybody has done a Flat Stanley/Flat Sally project let me know I would love to see your pictures.

April Adventures

April is over and it's already getting uncomfortably hot here in Florida. With that being said I will start off this post with the few Sun photos I have taken throughout the month.

At the beginning of the month was my cousin's daughter's birthday. I finished the painting I did for her, you can read all about that here.

I received a Flat Sally in the mail from my little sister. I plan on doing a whole blog post about those adventures after I finish it and send it back to her, by the end of next month.

As I was leaving the nursing home my mom is in a couple of weeks ago, these two cranes were right outside the door. I love these big birds, they are so beautiful. They let me get kind of close to them but warned me when I got too close.

On Easter we have a tradition of going over to my Aunt's house for brunch, do an egg hunt, then we fly kites. I just love this tree in my Aunt's backyard. It reminds me of my Nana's house. She had one in the front of her house. If you look closely at the picture you might be able to find some of the hidden eggs.

Just this past weekend I took the boyfriend to Medieval Times for his 40th Birthday. He had been talking about wanting to go there for his birthday since we started dating, and that he wanted to be Knighted. I thought this would be a great way to celebrate him turning 40, to experience something he had been talking about. He did get Knighted but I think because of his age they gave him the title of King. Wow did that go to his head! It was a neat little ceremony, and we got a picture of it. We had a blast! I did take more pictures but my camera doesn't take great pictures in the dark, and most of them came out blurry.

April was great. Next month, I am planning a trip up to Tennessee for my niece's graduation. While I am up there me and my sister planned our little sister trip, and decided to spend a few days in Nashville to go exploring.

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 6 ~ Spray Ink Love

This was so much fun to do! Messy but fun!!!! I am going to have to keep playing with this technique.
Basically it is just spraying down some spray ink than adding water and playing with the colors and seeing how they blend together. The face is in all acrylics. The hair line work I did with an acrylic paint pen.

I have decided that on these lessons I was going to just watch the lessons first. That way I can put a little bit more of myself in the finished piece. Although while I watch the videos I do end up making notes and making little sketches.

Also here is an in progress picture. I really should take more pictures of the process.

Liberate Your Art - Liberated

This is my first time participating in the Liberate Your Art postcard swap. This was so much fun. I will definitely be participating again. The only thing I think I might do differently is get my cards printed. I printed mine on my printer on thick paper. If you would like to see the cards I sent out check out my post for that here. I also meant to contact each of the people that I received a card from and didn't get around to it.

Here is a group picture of the postcards I received.

The first card I received was this beautiful one of little cocktail umbrellas. I just loved the darkness with the little pops of color. It came from Janice and had the note "Hope you catch some sunshine!" You can visit her blog here.

The second card I received is this really cool pinup style photo. The note on the back said "Are We There Yet? Enjoy the Journey" It came from Eva Creel Photography.

The third card is of this beautiful barn done in soft pastels called "Ominous". I love the colors used in this, just gorgeous. The note said "Thank you for feeding our spirits!" It comes from Marcia Hill and you can find her here.

The fourth card is this neat design from Ariel Sublett. There is a quote on the back from Francis David, "We need not think alike to love alike." I love that and wish more people thought that way. She explains that this represents the 7th principle of Unitarian Universalism: Respect for the Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part.

The fifth card is of this yummy picture from Helen. The note on the back says "Life is uncertain, eat dessert first!"

The last card came from Kat herself. This is just beautiful and I just love the texture to it. You can find more of Kat's photography and more information about the Liberate Your Art postcard swap here!

I enjoyed seeing all the art come in and look forward to participating again!!!

An InLinkz Link-up

"McKenna's Heart" Painting

Finally I can show off the painting I have been working on! My cousin's daughter McKenna asked me to paint her a heart for her birthday. It took me a bit to come up with the concept for this. McKenna had asked me if she could look through my sketchbook one night. As she was looking through it she saw I had a drawing of a heart with a sun in it. She told me she really liked that drawing. So I came up with something similar. This is what I came up with.

Here is her reaction to opening the gift:

She is such a cutie!!!