Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Mt. Dora and Deltona 12/8 - 12/9

A local trip, only about a 2 hour drive Northeast.  Sue drove and Vicky, Becky and I left early to get to Mt. Dora early.  Found a nice little coffee shop and got recharged after the drive.  We headed to the Renninger Antique mall - a very large indoor and outdoor area that sells just about anything that you might be interested in -- both old and new.  Sue bought an old milk can and I bought figurines for my friend who collects the French bakers/cooks.  So many types of items to look at and it was lots of fun.

Around noon we headed to the Windsor Rose Tea shop for high tea.  I had contacted two of my friends way ahead of time to see if they wanted to shop/meet for tea and it was a happy group of 8 women that we ended up with.  Vicky's daughter joined us, an old friend from my area who moved to Tavares, and my long time friend, who I had met in Boise, Idaho and now lives in Oxford came to tea and brought her twin sister.  It was a fun reunion and I had a great day seeing my special friends.  We had a mini feast and it was nice since each person could order the flavor of tea they wanted.  We never ran out of things to talk about and before you knew it, poof, time was over.  I think we all had a good time, at least I hope so.

After this long day, the four of us headed to our hotel room.  We had such a beautiful view of a lake right outside our window.  We had planned to go to the park that night to watch "snow" and kids sledding, but we were too tired and just ordered pizza, salads and sandwiches and stayed in the room.  Not a late night as we had all arisen so early.

Mt. Dora is close to my area and I hope folks will go visit.  It is a great little town, beautiful architecture, history, and the interesting "Starry Night" home that raised some real controversy for the little town.  We were parked almost on top of it and didn't see it and then Vicky remembered "something about it" and we turned our heads and there it was.  I can't imagine if we would have missed it.  I had never heard of it.  (Always sad when you go someplace and then people say, "Oh did you see such and such" and it was something amazing that you missed.  Anyway we all loved the place.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-florida-mural/florida-family-allowed-to-keep-starry-night-house-mural-idUSKBN1K82JF

Hotel provided breakfast and we all had some food to start out day.  We then drove up to Becky's sister, Ginger's house in Deltona to spend the day working on and learning some new crafts.  We first made rings out of wire and we all made quite a few.  Then Ginger and Sue both taught us different ways to make earring wires.  Had some lunch and then we headed out to Ginger's shop to learn how to work with copper.  Oh this was the best.  So fun cutting it, staining, tumbling and shaping it.  I really enjoyed doing this and hope to get to work with copper some more in the future.

After a little rest, and some coffee, we went into our last project, crayon art on canvas.  We all watched a few videos and then all did our own thing.  Everyone had their own idea and with crayon art you can't ever be too sure of what you will get as the medium sort of has a mind of its own.  We all had fun and enjoyed creating our masterpieces.

Spent the night, up pretty early for visiting and coffee, Ginger's husband Casey made us pancakes.  The family, Ginger, Stacy and their daughter Natalie, were so hospitable we all felt at home.  They have a beautiful and noisy, funny parrot named Star, and a really great dog (I didn't get a picture, darn) named Fender.  It was hard to leave.  We had a great time and it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long, long time.

So we hit the road, stopped at Applebees for a nice lunch and got home around 3:00 p.m.   We brought home several rings, several pairs of earrings, cool cactus cuttings, and Ginger gave us each any pair of earrings we wanted to pick that she had made.  What a treat.   So glad we had our "girl" trip and I just had the best time.  We hope to do it again.

BBQ stand, cute smoking pig, sure smelled good.



On a door in Mt. Dora, cute technique.

Starry Night house






We were so lucky to have this lovely lake view


View from our hotel room


High tea




I've got a piece of this to grow, hope it does.  So pretty.

Star, a huge parrot, beautiful and loud.


Natalie, so nice meeting her.

All about peace, great picture and meaning.

Who took my picture -- too much wine?
Mine is "Love is the Answer"

Great colors

Becky - the artist in the group

Splashes of color.  I myself blurred Vicky, sorry.

Ginger, her butterfly and flower is beautiful.

We all had a super fun time making these.

I made these, I really did.  Copper leaves, look better
in person.  I love these and I'm very proud of them.  So if you
see me in these earrings, please compliment them, LOL


Two other pair I made, harder to cut them than
I would have thought.  So fun to make these.

Wire ring, first one.

The wire rings I made.

So on one short weekend we all had a great time and had our fill of crafts, learned a lot, ate a lot and especially and most importantly laughed a lot.

* spelled checked, but not proofread, sorry.