Design Wall Monday - Hexies

I did not get as much hand stitching done in the car as I expected on my trip.  One day I got engrossed in a book that I finished.  (Good thing I have a kindle app on my phone with more books.)  I usually have to read before going to sleep, but with the time change and keeping so busy, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!  There was also a lot of scenery to look at, and not to mention I have a habit of falling asleep in the car.  Squeekie likes my flowers.

I did get 5 1/2 flowers stitched with the navy blue sashing.  The one in the upper left corner just needs the sides sewn up, the two in the middle need sashing, and there is 12 in the upper right corner that will be attached between the ones with the sashing.  I think attaching the flowers together is going to be the hardest part.  I have all (I hope) of my navy blue hexies cut out.  Here is a finished flower.

Pippi decided to just watch from my her box.  That tub is supposed to be for material, but Pippi won't let me have it back.

Maybe I'll be able to do some more hand stitching this week, but I need to finish a friend's dress, another friend's capes, and another friend needs some mending done.  I also have a cheesecake order for Sunday.
This past weekend my friend ordered a cake for her daughter's sixth birthday.  She loves to read, so she wanted a book cake with letters on it.  The icing is Italian Meringue Buttercream which I can't get perfectly smooth, and I also messed up the ribbon for the middle of the book, aside from that I was really happy with it.

Her name is Obadiah and she is called Obi for short.  I hope she likes it!  It is my honey spice cake recipe from here, but I used half wheat and half whole wheat pastry instead of unbleached all-purpose cake.
Thanks for stopping by!
Missy

Grand Canyon

I wanted to share another part of my trip with you!  We also went to the Grand Canyon.  I had wanted to get there first thing in the morning, but miscalculated things.  When we stopped the night before in Seligma, AZ, I did not realize we were still 1 1/2 hours away.  After looking at all the Rte 66 shops(you can see that article here) we got a later start than we expected.  It was 11:30 by the time we got to Williams, AZ and we wanted to get to the canyon, we watched the IMAX movie of the Grand Canyon (it was really good except that the first five minutes has topless Indian girls)  They had this fun 3-d spot in the courtyard to take pictures.

It was after 1:00 by the time we got to the Canyon and it started storming as soon as we got there!

 It stopped raining just long enough for us to walk one of the trails.  As you can see, everything is very cloudy, but gorgeous!

 Doesn't this picture look fake?  LOL

 This is one of my favorite pictures of the storm rolling in.

 It had started raining again by the end of the trail.  I didn't realize until later that my hat was covering my eyes in all the pictures, the wind and rain kept blowing my hat off!

 We meant to drive out the other side of the canyon and get off at the different trails, but somehow missed the turn and ended back up on the road to Williams instead.  It's a good thing we did, since we had a flat tire.  It would have been a lot farther to the next town and I would not have wanted this to happen at the canyon.

 See the split in the tire?  It cost us over $200 to get a new one!

Maybe one year we can go back and spend a couple of days there instead of one afternoon.  I would love to go rafting the Colorado River through the canyon!
Missy

RTE 66 Trip

I know I have been pretty quiet lately, but I was on vacation for two weeks!   I had planned on blogging some while I was gone, but my laptop died the day after we left.  I think I lost all of my pictures, PDF patterns (some I bought) and all of my files!  I'm having to use my husband's laptop when I can.  He had a work conference in CA and we decided to make a road trip out of it.  On the way up there we went to Carlsbad Caverns (unfortunately the photos were lost on my laptop), San Diego Zoo, and ended in Anaheim where his conference was, we took RTE 66 home stopping at the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon.  Today I want to share with you my Rte 66 photos and my thoughts on some of the places we stopped.  We only had five days for this part of the trip, so I'm sure we missed some great things.

Our first stop was at the Rte 66 museum in Victorville, CA.  It was free and has some great photo ops!  Here we are in an old Model-T Ford.  

 They even provided wigs (which needed a good brushing) and sunglasses for the VW bus.

We ate at a historical diner for lunch, Mr. D's.  I had a black cow which is chocolate ice cream in a coke, I thought it was really good but Chris did not like it.  The diner was in Kingman, AZ at our next stop.

Our next stop was in Kingman, AZ for another museum. They had some great murals drawn on the wall.  It was $4 each to get in.  My husband decided to "take a nap" for this photo.  He's wearing a Rte 66 camp shirt and baseball hat!

 They also had fake store fronts, and the "buildings" were filled with all kinds of antiques and stuff.  They had a really good museum and gift shop.  A lot of displays and historical information.

Excuse this terrible picture, but it was the best one of the earrings I got there.  They were hand crafted by a local resident.  Yes, they are hot dogs!  Click on the picture for a better look.

Our next stop was Seligma, AZ where the first picture was taken.  We stayed at a car motel, it was very clean and a big part of that era.  Although we did notice the next day that there was a hotel a couple of blocks down with themed rooms, I would have liked to have seen those!  This was our hotel.

This town had the most stores with Rte 66 stuff, I even bought me a bandana there!

They had old store fronts, outhouses, an old jail and more!

We even ate at the Roadkill Cafe!

Here is a picture of Rte 66 at sunset.

We stayed at the Wigwam hotel in Holbrook, AZ the next night.  I highly recommend this, it was so much fun!  The buildings look like teepees and they have vintage cars displayed in the parking lot.

Here is the inside of our wigwam.

You can even buy their key fobs from the wigwams, which my husband did!

The next night we stayed in Grant, NM.  They do not have anything of interest except maybe some abandoned hotels.  We stayed at a cheap car motel.  At least it was clean and my husband got a great picture of the rainbow, there were actually 2 rainbows!

There is a Rte 66 car museum in Santa Rosa, NM.  If you like vintage cars you will love it!  We don't know much about cars, but it was still interesting.  Their gift shop has the best prices too!

We wasted three hours in Albuquerque, we did not find anything historical there.  I wish we had not stopped there, we could have spent more time in Tucumcari, but everything closed at 5 and it was almost 5 when we got there.  They are trying to get an official Rte 66 museum there.

Our next stop was Tucumcari, New Mexico.  They have murals all over town, at least two old gas stations, old semi's on display and more.

They also have the historic Blue Swallow motel.  Unfortunately, they were full and we could not stay there.

Our last stop was Amarillo, TX where we caught 287 to head on home.  They have a few blocks on 6th street dedicated to Rte 66, but it is just antique shops with a few souvenirs thrown in.  

 They also have the Cadillac ranch, but it is not history anymore, it is now "tradition" to spray paint it.

I'll have to share picture from other parts of the trip at another time.  We are going to have to finish up Rte 66 from TX to Chicago sometime - we had a blast, and the t-shirts to prove it!

I hope you are having a great summer too!

Missy