Trip Highlights

Finally stealing a little time this morning to post a few photos of our recent trip. We started by driving towards New Orleans where John was a voting delegate at a convention. Our first sightseeing stop was at Vicksburg, Mississippi to see the Vicksburg National Military Park. We only spent a half a day seeing the monuments and areas where the fighting took place during the Civil War but it was very, very interesting. Standing on ground were so many men died was sobering and the gray misty day helped set the mood. My husband is one of those people that want to read everything, and I mean everything written in a museum so he could have spent days there.

Before you look at the next photo I want you to know these are not tainted beads. I caught them during a daytime family parade so didn't show any of my body parts to get them. We were in New Orleans the first weekend of Mardi Gras and got to see a couple of parades - at least I got to see the parades. John was in meetings during the day times so missed out on them but there were a couple of other friends I hung out with and we took in the sights. A fun time but guess you have to be from there to really "get it".

Some cousins that live down there took me to see the Laura Creole Plantation west of New Orleans. Again John didn't get to go as he was in meetings. I loved the history of the place and seeing how they might have lived.

No trip to New Orleans would be complete without riding on the Street Cars. My friends and I got pretty good at riding and transferring between routes.

Guess that is all for now - I am really playing hooky from what I should be doing which is getting ready for a pot luck dinner at my house tonight. I need to mop my kitchen floor and dust the furniture yet.

Maybe will get to start sewing next week - I hope!

Lynn

Paducah AQS Show

My two sisters, a college friend and I drove to Paducah, KY to attend the AQS Quilt Show this last week. I had never had the chance to go before so was absolutely thrilled to be able to attend. We kind of did a hopscotch to gather the 4 of us into one car. One of my sisters also lives in Nebraska so we met in Lincoln, traveled on to Lenexa, KS to our friend's house where we stayed overnight on Tuesday. The next day the three of us then drove to Columbia, MO to pick up my other sister then on to Paducah. We were lucky to get to stay right in Paducah with the mother-in-law of our college friend. The friend is the one with the dark glasses in the photo.
The dogwood trees were just gorgeous. I had never seen dogwoods blooming before so was amazed at how large the blossoms were. The homeowners had spot lights on their trees at night and it was like a fairy land. The azaleas were also in full bloom. Was a real change from Nebraska. By the way our daughter got 2 inches of snow in Nebraska while I was gone and enjoying the beautiful weather in Paducah.

We really enjoyed walking through all the many vendors at the main site of the show plus the other venues. We didn't just walk through though - had to leave a little of our money here and there too.

The quilt show was magnificent! The wining quilts were stunning and the workmanship was so fantastic. I could go on and on about the quilts and keep adding adjectives and it wouldn't describe how great they were. Check out the pictures of the quilts on this website.

http://www.americanquilter.com/ Just click on "View 2008 Paducah Winners" to see the photos.
This photo was taken from the underside of a white dogwood. You can see how many blossoms each tree had.
When we got home I made postcards for the 4 of us and our hostess as a remembrance of our trip. I did a shadow applique with pink fabric as the background, batting flowers and fabric leaves. I topped it all with pink organza and machine quilted it. I did notice after I was finished with them I should have stitched a little brown at the dips in the petals to make them look more real.
It was a long drive down and back, lots of standing and walking but I would do it again in a minute!
Lynn