What's on My Kitchen Counter

Hello friends. In today's post I have the last days of our trip to New Mexico (USA), the cover of my newest art journal and a few cards.  One of the things on Allie's New Mexico Bucket List was to visit a hot spring.  New Mexico is full of hot springs and they are really beautiful.  She found the Hot Springs Day Spa at Jemez Springs.  They have 4 mineral pools containing 17 healing minerals.  She said it was an unbelievable experience soaking in each pool (they were all different temperatures).  She bought the rose at a convience store in Albuquerque before we left on the trip (she is a great picture planner).  We ate lunch at a great cafe across the street.  It had a vine covered patio overlooking the street and the mountains.  Many of the locals were there playing cards and talking. Everyone was talking and they talked to us as well.  I haven't had many experiences where people were that friendly at a cafe.  I want to go back!  It was a relaxing and fun experience and the

Hello friends. Posting Day Three from our New Mexico Trip.   When  I was 26, I was on a hot air baloon team.  Our lead pilot back then was awesome and was asked to do a lot of commercial flights and invitationals. My favorite experience was at an invitational in Telluride, Colorado.  Flying down the middle of that city was amazing, but flying around Albuquerque was always wonderful as well.  Anyway, I wanted my daughter to experience the special feeling of being in a hot air balloon in Albuquerque (the balloon capital of the world).  Her son was a bit afraid so he stayed with me. Allie was lucky to have the owner of Rainbow Ryders as her pilot and she met a wonderful woman who is an established travel blogger (I will try to get her contact info and share it because she was very interesting and I bet her blog is interesting too).  They hit it off really well, and she was so encouraging to Allie who wants to get into Social Media Marketing.  For the travel blog video they got to go insid

Hello Friends. I am excited to share a few pictures from last week's trip to New Mexico.  It was great to go "home" after almost 20 years and to be able to share some of my favorite places and foods with my youngest daughter, Alex.  To keep this post from being super long, I am going to share my trip in installments.  This post includes pictures from our first two days.  My daughter and her son came in on a later flight so I picked them up at the airport (one of the coolest airports ever by the way - full of Southwestern archtecture, art, and avaition history), and we immediately drove to the foothills so they could ride the Sandia Peak Tram.  It is the third longest tram in the world - it was the longest until 2010.  It takes you to the  10,378-foot crest  of the Sandia Mountains.   The views are wonderful, but my pictures didn't turn out very well as my fear of heights kicked in.  I started hugging  the walls closely and not worrying about the views.  When you get t

Hello friends. This week my youngest daughter turned 26.  I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she told me she wanted to go see Black Jacket Symphony's Eagles cover concert in Birmingham, AL and she wanted me to go with her.  It was an outdoor concert in the Alabama heat, but since that is all she asked for, I had to go.  Here we are a the concert.   We got our tickets from StubHub and had problems with them. Two hours on hold at their site and they never did ansswer the phone.  The people at Ticket Master were so wonderful and took care of us. We will always get our tickets from Ticket Master in the future!  What great customer service.  Here is Allie right before going into the concert.  My daughter is way cooler than I ever thought of being! Here is our view at the concert.  I love the Eagles and it was fun that Allie knew all the words to all the songs.  The concert was at the Avondale Brewing Company Ampitheater  in downtown Birmingham.  We even tried their peach b

I shared my pictures of the town of Spectre on my Tuesday post, but today I am sharing the pages I did in my Hometown Tourist Book using those same pictures (plus a few more).  I cased last week's Featured Stamper on Splitcoaststampers.com - Diane Malcor and THIS is her layout.  The **Art*Journal*Journey* theme Mia selected is butterflies so I added some on my pages. I added in a few extra ones in vellum to go with the ghost picture  - they say this area is haunted.   I also have another card made with the new Push Pin image from DRS Designs.  This time I made a wreath out of it using the flowers from the Girly Swirly Birthday Cake image and a Friendly Note Greeting too. Thanks for stopping by! Hugz, Nancy

I dare you to say my title fast three times - definitely a tongue twister. My husband encouraged me to get out this weekend and not to do any work - it cost him big as I bought a new car - lol!   Saturday, I went out with my Sister, Sharon, and our friend Michele.  We saw all kinds of cool things that tourists visit in our local area.  I will share those pictures in another post because I want to spend some time getting some details together on the sites so I can get my facts straight. Sunday, my hubby drove me out to Jackson Lake. This is where the movie The Big Fish was filmed.  It is a gorgeous place built on an island in the middle of a private lake/offshoot of the Alabama River.  Here is the facbook site link if you are interested in reading more about it JACKSON LAKE .  The town set they built for the movie is still there and is a big attraction.  You can walk down the street and throw an old pair of shoes over the line just like they had in the movie.  A recent tornado took out