While my parents were here visiting for a few weeks this summer, my Mom was plugging away on a lovely shawl. And lo and behold, it was for me!

It’s a big rectangle, with some seaming up the sides to create sleeves. It allows you to fold over the collar any which way and change the look quite a bit (as a side note, every single time I try to type “quite” I do “quilt” first. Ha.)

Excuse the bizzaro look on my face. My neighbour was looking for me and came around the back of the house to find me with the camera propped up on the BBQ taking pictures of myself. She must have thought I had lost my marbles.

I can see that I am going to get lots of use out of this one, particularily when we are all cuddled up on the couch in the winter. We keep the temp really low (68F) to save on heating costs, but it means when you sit still it tends to get really chilly. It will be just like a big hug from Mom! Thanks again Mom, I love it.

Last Tuesday was, quite unbelievably, our 5 year anniversary. In some ways it seems as though I have known and loved TJ my entire life, and in other ways I can’t believe that we have been married for 5 years (together for almost 9, holy cow). We decided to celebrate we would rent a log cabin in the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. A little tour, shall we? (as always, click on any picture to see it larger)

The front door of “Copper Ridge” in Cobbly Knob, TN.

Awesome full kitchen

Living room where we spent lots of lazy mornings relaxing.

Nook with water feature (and an antique yarn winder. That gave me a chuckle)

Pool table. It was sooo great to play pool again. It has been much too long. I love pool, and I am not too bad at it. TJ fondly reminded me of the time we went to the pool hall right after we started dating and I smoked him. He was duly impressed. Someday I will have a pool table of my own, someday.

Awesome bedroom with huge windows and giant beams. Seriously, look at the size of these things! They run the full height and length of the house. (also notice the tile on the right? That was the huge jacuzzi tub. In the bedroom).

Everything in the place was logs. It was quite the thing to see. I would definitely go again, maybe in the fall so I could see the colours. We also spent lots of time in the hot tub out on the big wrap around deck, and in the little screened in enclosure.

We did some touristy things, like shopping the outlets and driving the strip. And mini golf – what US destination vacation spot is complete without mini golf?

Adventure themed mini golf at that. I had my first hole in one, so I was in a good mood. We checked out the upside down building thingy too, cause, well, it was pretty neat.

We did a lovely drive on the Arts and Crafts trail, where I got some Alewine pottery and also my first cola in 8 years. And not just any cola, a Vanilla Coke Float, made with real fountain coke and amazing ice cream.

If you are going to do it, do it right!

After the touristy stuff, we really wanted to explore the national park.

We drove some really amazing mountain roads:

saw some incredible views:

and wished that the camera would do them justice.

TJ mentioned before we left for the trip that he remembered swimming in the mountain streams along the roadside of the park . Once that was in my head I was determined to go swimming, no matter how cold that water was. The first day we swam near a pretty waterfall in a well known swimmin’ hole.

The second day we decided to try out this place we had been told about, that was much more remote and farther into the park.

It was absolutely gorgeous. There were literally hundreds of butterflies all over the place. Flying, landing on you, in big clumps on the ground

We did have a very very scary moment though. TJ slipped on a rock and put his hands out to stop himself, and has he did his wedding ring went flying off his hand into the fast moving, very rocky river. We FREAKED out. TJ was shaking, I just kept saying ‘oh my god, oh my god’ over and over again. I managed to sort of block the flow of the river and flatten out the water so we could see, and after too long searching TJ’s eagle eyes spotted it between two rocks. I dove down and got it – I swear I have never gripped something so tight in my hand in my life. The weirdest part? When I went back up to the car to put in, I looked at the time and realized that it was almost 5 years TO THE MINUTE from when we had said our vows. Isn’t that insane? Good omen that we found it I think.

After that we did take some time to relax and calm ourselves down while snapping some more pictures and having a dip.

The next day we went horseback riding, which was my new years resolution for the year – to ride a horse. Horses sort of make me nervous, so I was glad when they put me on Moseby, this completely relaxed former dinner theatre performer. He was great. We rode all around the trail in the national park and had a great time. There also might have been copious amounts of eating on this trip, including a brownie the size of my head. (Thanks Robin for the recommendation to the Park Grill!)

While all of that was amazing, it was truly made perfect by the fact that I shared it all with my hubby. I love you so much! Let’s do it all again next week, k?

My friend’s little guy turned 3 a couple of weeks ago. How did that happen? It seems like it was just yesterday that I was at their house taking care of their dogs while they were at the hospital.

As usual, a little gift was in order, so I thought I would include mom in this one.

I used the freezer paper method to make a template for this shirt. Sorry about the icky colour, red is really hard to photograph (an aside: I bought a new camera! I just have to learn it and then hopefully my pictures for the site will be much better).

And you can’t have a gift for a little monkey without a card!

I have made a shoe card like this before – I got my inspiration from a card magazine that I have.

Mom sent me a note that she wasn’t sure who liked the shirt more, her or her son. And she had to put the card up on the shelf because the little one wanted to play with it. Maybe I need to make him some play shoes for his next gift.

I received a couple of comments on my last post that I should not have posted the quilts I saw at the show without the quilters name. As I did not write down the names of every quilter, I have removed the post. I apologize for my mistake, it won’t happen again. Live and learn!