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The Summer O' Fun

School's back in session, which is always about the time of year I remember I'm an adult and have things to do.  You know, things that don't involve playing with Sam.  Because for the summer, I pretty much just play with Sam.  Particularly this summer - he's 12, and sometime around mid May it hit me that the summers when he thinks it's fun to hang with his mom may be limited.  That meant that for the past few months, no matter what the question was, the answer was yes.  "Do you want to play tennis?" yes.  "Do you want to go run in the woods?"  yes.  "Do you want to watch me do baseball drills?" yes.  "Do you want to learn to play Call of Duty with me?"  yes.  (full disclosure - that one started as "do you want to learn to play Madden?"  and I tried a yes, but it turned out that game sucked.  So I moved on to throwing C4 and firing fake artillery, and created my own Call of Duty avatar (named Beastly), and discovered that I'm way more Call of Duty than Madden.)  So with all of those yeses, this was very high on my all-time list of favorite summers.  Maybe my favorite one ever.


Photographic proof of the summer of fun:

But all good things eventually transition a bit, and school started, and I'm back in adult land.  Well, sort of, since I still tend to have a lot of the aforementioned fun.  But it also includes making jewelry, which is also high on my list of fun things.

I made quite a bit of jewelry over the summer, I just didn't actually do anything about letting anyone else *know* I was making new jewelry.  Until now, when I listed the new rings on Etsy.

I wore these all summer, and people would ask where to get them and I would say "ummmm….."  So it feels a little less loserish to now have a real answer.  "In my Etsy shop." 

Bead Style

Thanks to Bead Style magazine for using one of my bangles on their blog!  

Woods Wanderings

Lots of time spent in the woods here lately.  Someone asked me how I spend my time, and I said watching baseball, working, and running in the woods.  And that's actually a pretty fair assessment, with a few side excursions now and then.  And some Pilates.

It's that time of year when Biltmore gets beautiful again.  And this isn't even the acres of flowers and towering castle - even random river banks are beautiful!

Turkey Pen.  Kelly and I have memorized Bent Creek so we've decided to venture out for Adventure Tuesdays.  In which we. . . you know, try to find some adventure.  If you consider wading across a freezing cold yet beautiful river adventurous then Turkey Pen fits the bill.  

Baseball player.

The baseball player and his elder have somewhat surprisingly turned into fishermen here lately.  Yes they have waders and everything.  Which is fortunate because mountain rivers in the spring = really cold.  Sam can state that with certainly, having fallen in a few times last weekend.

Who me, fall in?

Pack o' Boys in the creek.  The essence of youth.  If you're lucky.

Cattail Creek.

My main running buddy.  Unbeknownst to me, poodles are kick ass trail runners.

Mountain to Sea trail near Craven Gap.  A lot of rocks, not so much actual running.  But lots of fun.

If you look carefully you will see my friend's son's Flat Stanley enjoying the view.

Flat Stanley's legs are short.  He sometimes needs a ride.

Random parkway panorama.

Mountain to Sea trail at the Haw Creek overlook rock.

HGTV!

Remember back in January when I had the "hi res photo" fire drill?   Turns out it was more than just a fire drill - HGTV Gardens posted the article on garden gifts for bridesmaids - and my necklace is front and center!  Woohoo!

The Big City

Things have been slightly manic around here for the last couple of weeks.  First I was getting ready to head out of town, then I actually was out of town, and then I was playing catch up from the out of town.  So basically a 4 day trip ended up having two weeks worth of effect.  But it was totally worth it!

Leslie, friend since the first day of college, is getting married, and so a group of us head to NYC to do some wedding dress shopping.  Because that's how she rolls.  Ok, that's a lie.  Heading to NYC to shop is kind of the opposite of how she rolls.  But her sister lives nearby in Pennsylvania, and there was a designer that she liked with a showroom in NYC, so off we went!  Like we were living someone else's life.  Which is totally fun every once in a while.

Here's what Lancaster, PA looked like when we arrived.  I'll be honest, I wasn't quite expecting this.

But then by the time we got to NYC on Saturday the weather cleared up and turned beautiful.
We hit the Northeast-in-February jackpot.  

After the (successful!) wedding dress shopping, we went to dinner at Becco.  Best.  Food.  Ever.  Then we went to see Kinky Boots.  I am not known for my great love of theater, but it turns out I made a major discovery.  I don't hate theater, I just hate bad theater.  Since this show just won a Tony Award, and featured actors that also won Tony Awards, this was not bad theater.  And so it was great.

Then, on Sunday, we headed to Philadelphia to see Leslie's nephew's band play.  If you would like to feel very, very old I suggest you go to a college bar.  But before we went to the bar we went to a very good Mexican tapas restaurant.  I can't remember the name, but I did take a picture of their impressive collection of Mexican wrestling masks.

And then it was back to Lancaster for a run on Monday morning before we flew home.  In the distance is an Amish farm.  I was a little surprised to see the Amish family unloading groceries from Costco out of a friend's Prius, but apparently that's a thing.  The Prius doesn't negate the Amish-ness if it belongs to a friend and not to the Amish themselves.  Convenient, yes?

Lancaster is beautiful.  Better than the first picture.

With the bride-to-be.  We are expecting to do our hair just like this for the ceremony.

Snow Day. For Real.

We finally got our snow day.  We were predicted to get at least 8", and on Wednesday school was canceled preemptively.  And then. . . nothing really happened.  It flurried.  It was cold.  That was it.  Sam and I walked to Pilates, had fun, flittered about.  But no real snow.  I got cranky.  I walked around declaring "This storm is a DUD!"  And then. . . natured payed me back.  It *really* started to snow.  (Well, for Asheville, which doesn't generally get much.)  By Thursday morning we had at least 8".  I was supposed to be working, but instead I tried to just enjoy it.  It's beginning to occur to me that, at age 11, my time is getting shorter rather than longer for Sam to want to play with his parents, and I better soak it all in and have fun.  And that's what we did.