Just beachy?

I recently completed a room re-do and am so excited about the results. Even though all I've done so far is paint, I'm loving it.

The color is my new favorite- Fostoria Glass by C-I-L paints. It's a light gray-blue, and the bottom is just white. I know the look is maybe a little dated for some, but I love it! The sunlight floods this room and makes it look so airy and bright. Still need to do the decorating, curtains, pictures, etc. But that will come as I think about it more.

I started with this little vignette, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to give it a little bit of a beachy, cottagey feel. Any hints/ideas/ etc. Jenn suggested I use my big brown frames over the bed as sort of a headboard, and just put pictures in that reflect some of the colors and feelings I want. Good idea- just might be tricky to find such pictures- maybe I can use some of my photos and edit them to get what I want. Easy peasy, right? Oh well, wish me luck. I don't want to spend much money to finish it up so we'll see what I can come up with on the cheap. Thanks to some thrifty, shanty, clever, and addicting blogs, I'll happily keep searching for just the right stuff.

I'm Melting... cake

Today I made Warm Chocolate Melting Cake, inspired by the Favorite dessert on our Cruise (Carnival's most popular dessert). I googled that and found recipes which claimed to be the exact ones from the cruise line. So I made it and ... Delish. It was pretty easy and turned out great. Just take butter, chocolate, eggs, a little flour and sugar, and voila! you have it!

The recipe said it would make 4 ramekins but it seemed to be much more as these are 2.5 to 3 inch ramekins and it did 6 large and 2 small. My theory is that I cooked them a bit too long as there wasn't very much of the molten chocolate left in the middle. Sad, but I'll just have to try them again to get it right. They still tasted great.

fabric

So here is the fabric that I like --hopefully.. the white fabric with the black pattern is the one I need more of. If you do find a stripe one I'd only need about 1.5 yards of it

It is definitely white background, not really cream.
Thanks a ton Jenn.

more island hopping

Our next stop was Tortolla. Dad is pointing to the place in the bay where he did his dive. He dove on the Wreck of the Rhone- a ship that went down in the late 1800's in a hurricane. He said it was a great dive, they saw lots of fish- some huge- and the tour was interesting. This island was a favorite for me. It was more developed than Antigua, less population than St Thomas and really pretty- lots of hill with houses built up the sides. The house all look huge but that's because people build one level at a time. As they pay off or can afford to to build up, they then rent out the floor below and move up into the next floor. So many houses are 3 or 4 stories, plus built up on stilts. While Dad was diving, we took a taxi and went on a little tour and to a beach for the day. It was a really nice beach, but the water was not as clear and even though I took my gear, there was NOTHING to see in the water- it was murky and there was nothing growing there. But we sure enjoyed the sun and sand.

Our last stop was Nassau, Bahamas. This is the famous Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island. We took a "little" tour around the island with "sexy Mary" that was kinda weird. she took us to the sights- such as the high end neighborhood- which was pretty ordinary by our standards, and to the ghetto neighborhood, which was too long. But we did get over to the Atlantis for a little while. the world's largest indoor aquarium is inside. We only saw the lobby- it was HUGE and very impressive. The bridge between the two towers is actually a suite that costs $25,000 per night. Other rooms start at about $600. (Just ask Mary!)
This shows the 14K gold ceiling in the lobby of Atlantis. All around in were these murals depicting the history of the Bahamas. It's hard to get perspective of how massive everything is there.

This is called the Queen's Staircase. It took 16 years to build, by 600 slaves and has 66 steps. It wasn't just a staircase. they carved out this staircase and a walkway that goes from the high point on the island down to the main port. It was built in commemoration of Queen Victoria who abolished slavery there. It was a neat area. The walls were tall and lined with plants and trees, and quite shaded. It was really pretty. At the top was an old Fort, used to defend the harbor. Quite interesting.
What would any cruise be without the towel animals? ( I actually went to a towel folding class that was interesting for about 10 minutes- then not so much) this little monkey was on our last night- Buddy was our steward and did a great job for us. But he wasn't very happy with us when we were still on board by 9:30 on the last morning and he wanted to do up our room for the next cruise. We had a great time- especially being with our cruising buddies, Barry and LuAnne, and Tom and Jane. And we're already talking about our next one... Mediterranean anybody?...

just trippin'

Thought I'd try to add a new post with pictures of our trip. I wish I had better pictures, but , oh well....
This first one is a picture of the old Fort in Old San Juan-Puerto Rico. We were there only in the evening and had a walking tour which was really interesting. Lots of buildings dated to the 16 and 1700's. Interesting too was that almost every island we visited on this trip claimed that Christopher Columbus first stopped there so almost every one of them has a statue of him somewhere.

We were sad not to have more time in San Juan because it looked like a cool city, lots of interesting architecture.
This was the site of the last gate through the wall surrounding the old city. The wall was literally over 30 feet thick at the bottom, had lookout perches every so often around the perimeter and the door through here was huge and thick, and is inscribed 1742. Cool nails/bolts.


The streets were all cobblestones and quite rambling and hilly- we got a ride to the top of the one of the hills and then our tour walked down the streets to Columbus Square and from there we could walk to our ship.








This is the harbor in St Thomas. It was very beautiful , lots of sailboats and yachts in the harbor as well as 3 cruise ships that day. this was taken at sunset as we were about to leave.
On this island we took a cab to Coki Beach and Coral Gardens. Coral Gardens is a SeaWorld Wannabe. It has a shark,stingray, coral exhibit as well as a mini sea-lion show. Everything is pretty small and not in very good shape. There was an underwater observatory, but it only went down about 10 feet and there really wasn't much to see. I was glad we didn't pay for that excursion. ( it was one where they put the underwater helmets on you and then let you walk on the bottom.- rip-off)
If you can zoom in on this, this is the beach where we spent the afternoon. The picture is taken from the Coral Gardens side. With our admission to the Coral Gardens we could go in and out all day, and that's where the showers and restrooms were. The water was so warm and clear, the beach awesome, but lots of people, and it was a hot day. Some of us got sunburned-I did on the backs of my legs from snorkeling. The snorkeling wasn't fabulous- as in not lots to see, but there were fish and the water was clear and so warm. There were more fish near that rocky point. St Thomas was a nice island- not too poor, some good shopping it seemed- we didn't do any- and a nice port.
These were our waiters- Henry from the Philipines, if you need anything, call 1-800-Henry. and Armando from San Salvador. They were awesome and really took good care of us. Each night the waiters either sang or danced on top of the waiting tables. Henry was a pretty good dancer.




The next stop was the island of Antigua- pronounced "antiga" We took a tour here that took us to Lord Nelson's Marina- shown in the harbor of this picture ( bluish gray buildings) and Shirley Heights which was the high point of the island and had barracks, etc as these were defense and look out points to defend the harbor. The marina was where Lord Nelson repaired and housed his fleet. there was a little museum there and the original mooring "posts" or whatever they're called. From the lookout they could see in almost every direction so it was easy to defend the port. Just down below on the other side is Eric Clapton's house ( read sprawling estate on it's own point out over the water, no visible road in,) This island is much poorer and the tourism industry, even though their major income, is still pretty undeveloped. It didn't seem like there were very many resort hotels altho' they boast 362 beaches.

Just cruisin'

We just got back from 2 weeks in Florida and the Western Caribbean. We had a great time with our friends, Tom and Jane, and Barry and LuAnne. We enjoyed the weather, the beaches and the sights. I'll try to get some pictures going...

We spent a day at Key West.. a long day's drive from Miami, but interesting. The "thing" to do there is go to the pier and watch the sunset. Lots of people there with the same idea, but no sun. It was foggy so no sunset to view.Yup, it was cool. Dad was taking my picture and as he did I said we needed to get a picture of the Key West Sunset. A guy walking by did a double take- looked at us, then at the horizon, then had a little chuckle at us- obviously tourists


We went to the Everglades for part of a day too. We saw a couple of Alligators in the wild and road an airboat- with about 25 other people- so it was a big one- not one of those small quick ones. But this one has enough power to knock a person over if they're in the airwash.
These were big guys- over twice as big as the ones we saw in the wild. We also saw lots of different birds, but luckily no snakes, but there are lots of poisonous ones that live out there.


We went to South Beach one day and enjoyed the Art Deco district as well as the beach. The weather was cool again, and it poured rain for a bit, but still pretty nice. We ate lunch outside at the Carlyle. The Food Network was having their FoodFest right on the beach- huge tents set up- but it hadn't started yet ( and tickets were $1350)- so we didn't go.

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