Pixie Purls

It's our last evening at the beach, we have the doors open and the wonderful warm yet slightly cool air smells all salty. The husbeast is watching Indian Jones on TV and the baby is asleep so I'm relaxing and have a moment to blog.

It rained and was over cast for the first 3 days we got here, the first evening and then thursday and friday. I worked like a mad women on my Bolero Jacket. I kept thinking, how cozy it would be to wear given the weather. It would indeed have been perfect. I greatly underestimated how long the ribbing on the collar would take and it took 3 evenings and some daytime knitting as well. I even seamed for an hour in the car while BG slept on the way here. Alas I finished seaming late at night on Friday, which of course I knew Saturday was going to be all sunny and beautiful without any need for a cashmere/merino jacket. That's how things always work out right?

Saturday (today) has been wonderful. We went to the beach in the morning (BG even slept there, score!) and then later found a great sushi restaurant.

It's been fantastic to travel with BG, she's just great. She has had some issues going to bed at night but I think that's related to a "growth spurt" as she approaches 9 months which is a time of lots of growing.

So back to that bolero, of course I had to take photos at the beach, I would have loved photos on the actual beach itself but with how warm it was we just opted for in front of a beach-y looking tree!

Pattern: Bolero Jacket by Debbie Bliss (Smallest Size)
Needles: US 10/10½ Denise Interchangeable
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky

I knit the smallest size, it’s a tad big but super comfortable and the yarn is really nice and sooo much like clouds on your skin. It definitely needs a clasp on the front, the model some how looks great without it being pulled closed but I tried and it just was too bulky and frumpy looking unless clasped to be more form fitting. Now I have to find something to keep it closed with!

Posted by pixie at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Wow, okay I'm tired! Did I mention I was tired? My poor husband is exhausted too! He worked from the hotel during the trip and work was giving him a really hard time, drama etc. So he was just stressed out of his mind. We did go eat lunch two days in a row at a wonderful little Nob Hill Cafe that had pasta and it was BEYOND yummy. I also met up with Halsted, one of my oldest online friends. I met her over 9 years ago online and she taught me a lot about computers. I was about 18 at the time. I had always wanted to meet her and she took me to a wonderful restaurant but I was too shy to ask for a photo. She was wonderful, and didn't even seem to mind my awful babbling.

Top of Nob Hill:

I of course went to the conference, but I also stopped by Art-fibers. Okay ya'll all know how much I love Knitch in Atlanta? Well I must say I have found another yarn store that I adore, but in an entirely different way. Art-fibers hardly had anyone in the store. One women working, and a delightful older women from england who was walking around clutching baby alpaca and happily petting it. She was very sweet and we talked a bit. There is a nice section to sit in and a huge racks for "yarn tasting". Let me first explain, all of the yarn in the store is MADE for Art-fibers. You can't buy it any other place in the WORLD! So the yarn tasting racks contain a sample of EVERY yarn in the store and you may swatch ALL you want, and each yarn had several sample swatches. The swatches where amazing. I wanted to stay there for hours, but I only had 1 hour. I actually ditched out on 1 hour of the conference to go to this store (shhh don't tell my boss) but it was the part on paper prototyping and the only time I was actually bored at the conference, everything else was very interesting.

Art-fibers:

I spy a Marnie MacLean pattern!

Yarn Tasting:

So yeah, back to the yarn. They actually don't like people taking photos but she allowed my too and I didn't want to be impolite so I only took a few. I wish I could have gotten some of the swatches! They seemed to have hundreds of yarns of every time you could imagine. LOADS of silk blends. Oh and it's all on cones or these foam inserts so it keeps the cost down and is better for the environment. I bought two cones, each was $60 and contained enough yarn for a women's medium sweater. And it was SILK yarn too! I'll have those photos for you in a few days, I haven't had a chance to take them yet. In my view knowing how much say, debbie bliss yarn costs with a silk or alpaca blend etc, I think it was a great price.

Preview of Stash Acquisition:

At dinner with my Aunt Pat

The Hotel:

The Conference:

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D. who is a great speaker:

He used phrases like "it sucks" and "Suicidal rabbit"

Husband working:

We arrived back in GA at 5am so we promptly went to bed and caught a few hours sleep. On the airplane my feet swelled up horribly and it totally freaked me out! I've never had that happen before, so weird!!

Posted by pixie at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My copy of Wild Fibers magazine came in the mail. if your a spinner I highly recommend it, not very many ads and loads of good articles about different fiber baring animals. This issue has a camel on the cover. Camel hair sure is soft!

So I am getting extremely excited about Australia. I have to finish my presentation materials in the next few weeks. It's just so terribly exciting and I'm nervous too. It turns out I am the only female speaker which i find terribly amusing. I have gone to many conferences with my husband over the years and I always feel like the token wife (and most times the people don't realize I am in the industry too). So it's going to be really nice to be "Official" and I'm going to totally geek out on getting a badge that says "speaker" on it. Would you make fun of me if I framed it?

Two years ago when we went it was like beautiful late spring weather. I could wear jeans and tank tops and not be too hot or too cold. The average temperature is 62 to 75 degrees and it's very sunny so it feels even warmer. That is perfect weather as far as I am concerned. I am extremely determined this time to find some sort of mom-and-pop yarn or fabric store. I also want to go shopping more then last time to get some stuff for the house for memories. It's not a long trip because my husband and I aren’t huge fans of being gone very long but we will be there about 7 days total. We plan on stayed at Bondi Beach after the conference. After this trip we really need to invest more money into improving the house so I am thinking we may not go out of the country for a while. I am so happy though that I got to keep my goal of going out once a year after we got married. Now I can cross that life long dream off of my list!

Okay I'll stop ranting and day dreaming. I owe you guys a day 3 AKG Retreat post. We got snow and I have a few picks taken in the wee hours of the morning. I'll post once I get them off my camera.

Posted by pixie at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

We have been back a few hours and I am we are fairly wired which means tommorow we will be very tired! I'm nestled in bed surfing the internets while the husbeast plays his beloved video games.

Here I am on the first day in london, wearing a hat hand knit by claudia for me, just for the trip. It was lovely and light and very warm. I wish I had a better photo of it, but I have like 6 roles of film to develop so maybe there are closer ones. That's big ben behind me.

If you want to view all the photos here go on ahead, or read my little summary below.

After the first day in london we left for Paris and spent 3 days in each city. I can easily count atleast half a dozen things we didn't get to do in each city. We stayed very busy and most of the shops I wanted to shop at (yarn stores and smal antique or artist stores) didn't have open hours on XMAS eve and XMAS day in paris, and london had it's busiest shopping day EVER the day I went out to get yarn. I wasn't up for fighting crows so we didn't do much shopping, and stuck to the museums and such.

First night of the trip, in London after sushi.

Our hotel room in Paris (Victoria Palace) the most wonderful hotel EVER (except the bed was way to hard). I adored that hotel, the staff was so helpgul and the location was perfect. I loved speaking what little french I knew.

View from our balconey (we had two small ones!). Lots of motorcycles below, seemed like the best form of transportation.

At the lourve we started with the Egyptian stuff, and moved on to the paintings. I wanted to see the sculpture and greek stuff, maybe another time!

This mummy was wild looking, so tiny and it's fingers.. chills!

Me next to a Botticelli! Jesse had to sneak the photo and so it was blurry. I got to see so much wonderful art by many of my favorite artists, and when we came to the giant napleon coronation portrait I actually had tears in my eyes. I was surounded by such beutiful works of art, I was simply in awe and the Lourve was by far one of my most favorite stops. It was so huge.

Art can never properly be shown in photos, it's so much different when you see it inches from your nose and eyes.

We took the metro all places, and liked it a lot (unless we had luggage which beyond sucked so in London we just gave up and paid the nearly $200 for a black taxi to Gatwick when we left).

Here we are at a wonderful little french resturant that actaully had Creme Brulee, I'm wearing my husbands cloths, it was soo cold but we made it around just fine even walking. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, but it was still damn cold.

We went the The Lourve, Stonehenge, Windsor, Bath (freakin mazing), Norte Dam, Tower of London (wouldn't let us in!) National Gallery (monet and picaso!), Eiffle Tower and other places my brain won't remember. Oh and we saw Tim Curry in Spamalot at The Palace Threater! Timy Curry! The husbeast loves Monty Python and it's basically a play on that so he was very pleased.

Most of the outside pictures of buildings I took with my film camera and I'm going to get the developed and digitized right away. Sorry for the spelling errors but I gotta try to go to bed!

Posted by pixie at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Last night I submitted a proposal to speak at webDU which is a Web Developers/Designers conference in Australia. I'm nervous and excited and I think I find out in 2 weeks if I have been selected or not. Please cross your fingers for me! I have a fairly good idea that there won't be that many proposals of my type, or even more realistically none of my type so I think that gives me a pretty good chance! If it doesn't work out I think the husbeast and I will just go some other place.

He also submitted to speak and we decided that if we both got selected then we could justify the trip. This would be his 3rd trip to Australia if we go so it was more about my opportunities this time around vs. his. He already has like 5 conferences on his resume and I think this would be very good to have one on mine. Also after going to Las Vegas I was deeply depressed because very few people at the conference seemed to have a solid grasp on what a "User Experience" designer was, or even what an Information Architect does.

Combine that lack of knowledge with too short of deadlines, budget cuts and scope creep and then you know why 70%-90% of IT projects fail (I can't find that number with Google but everyone seems to agree about it).

Last night we cleaned like crazy people so the house is sooooo much better. All of my fiber is now in my crafting room which looks like a tornado hit it. We havn't cleaned that well from back before we left on all those weekend trips so it's going to be so nice to come home to tonight and I'm sure it will fuel more knitting and spinning.

Posted by pixie at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

SAFF was my second fiber fest, but my first time to SAFF. It was not as huge as MDS&W but it was a bit more enjoyable because your not bumper to bumper with people, and you can enjoy shoping more. I didn't see any golding spindles at all, in fact there wasn't a lot of spindle selection compared to Maryland. I saw a lot of wheels though.

A nation of Lendrums all came together and I have no idea why.

The Peachtree Handspinners Guild was there but I was too shy to say hi to anyone but Heather and another very nice women whose name I can not remember.

Roll Call!

The blogger meetup went great, however Jen says I scared people because I made a nasty face when i frst came to sit down because of a person trying to pass me in the stands, plus I was not so happy with my spinning class. Sorry, I didn't mean to seem grumpy. I really don't remember half the weekend.

I took a Camelid spinning class and I just don't think I care fo camelids and well how can a person be expected to spin well on Jet Lag after a Red Eye. I was toast, and not much help to anyone. Luckily I am surounded by the most wonderful women ever and despite being out of it I very much enjoyed myself.

Alpaca and Mohair seemed to be the fiber of the day. It was everywhere we looked in yarn, roving and live animal form!

We had lots of parties, a dinner the first night that Claudia Hosted, The Blogger meetup I round-up and then Saturday night Jen/La had the party at the bar. I think we drank more water then beer, arn't we such wild and crazy fiber women?

My good friend Brooke came up with her son Nicky because she doesn't live that far from Asheville.

Claudia and I got to share a room with Jen and La, which meant we slept in the same bed. I am happy to say Claudia isn't a sheet stealer!

I spun up a bit on my spindle, and I finished the heel on my socks.

I *think* I have a name for the socks now, "The Charlie Socks" after the King Charles Diamond Brocade and because I had a cat named Charlie. I just adore these socks.

I wish i could have beem more awake for everything, maybe next time huh? I'll show you my stash as soon as I photograph it. I got some Finn, an Alpaca/Mohair blend, some Superwash Merino and Mohair to blend to make socks. Oh yeah, and a carder to blend them on! :D

I am pretty sure that Claudia & JenLa will have some funny photos once they post, we all got very silly in our hotel. I got razzed a bit because I am the youngest. Ya know what I have to say to that? "MUHAHAHAHA!"

Posted by pixie at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Well we are in vegas on our 3rd day. It is certainly not a place we would ever go on vacation on purpose. My husband is speaking at a conference (Adobe MAX) and it's just like one big sales meeting. I don't mean to knock it (maybe I do) but MXDU in Australia was WAY better. My husband and I are in the same inustry, but this is not a conference I would ever want to pay for. However I guess I have to make the best of things, so I did get a massage and get to go clothing shopping.

Grand Canyon:

On the plane:

Oh and don't be mad, but I ripped the sock. It's good new though because I decided to go right back to the only sock that has ever made me happy. I also realize this is the *only* sock yarn I ever want to knit with (Curious Yarn).

Socks on a plane!

Ready to turn the heel:

Landing in Vegas:

The view from sitting on my butt right now:

(above center is my husbands companies booth)

Posted by pixie at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

On Saturday night October 28th I plan on getting tippsy with Jen of Jenla, at SAFF in Ashville NC.

Now for those of you who are just coming up for the day, we will have a blogger meetup from 12 Noon until 1pm durring the class breaks. I only have a morning class so I won't be in a rush to leave. All are welcome.

We are going to meet at 12pm Saturday the 28th, just inside the vendor building there should be a consession stand. We will meet right in that area, and we'll bring signs, maybe something we can hold up so people know we are there! Here is a map of the vendor building. Jen says there are big cement steps people can sit on to eat. So that way we can all relax and sit down. Regardless we will have some sort of sign to hold up that says "knitting Bloggers" or something to that effect!

Please comment and let me know if you plan to be at the meatup so I can try to plan for space etc.

See you at SAFF! Remember, it's inside the vendor building.

Posted by pixie at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

This weekend my husband and I travled to Boston for a Family Wedding.

Guess who I got to see while I was there? Monica! She and her husband drove an hour to come see us in umm... Rhode Island? Providence? I am not sure where we even were!!

The 4 of us went to Panera's (a cafe in most states in the US) and talked shop. Monica and I about Drum Carders and the boys chatted about computers. Four Geeks all together, lots of room for conversation! Monica's husband was a sweet heart and it was very evident how in love they are. So sweet! I was so happy to get to see her again, Hi Monica! I also got to see the shawl she is working on with her handspun and it was simply beutiful.

My husband suprised (?) me with FIRST CLASS! I have only maybe once flown first class (I think on airtran) and I have always wanted to on delta. It was *nice*. Did you know you get to wait in a shorter line for security? I had no idea! We got a meal even though it was a 2 hours flight, and a water is in each seat waiting for us.

It was a very busy weekend, and I am very tired and glad to be home with my puppies! Everyone had a bath while we were gone so they all smell clean! We left the hotel at 5:45am even though our flight was not until 10am because it meant a free ride. So we acted silly at the aiport and I knit a bit.

Bye Boston!

Posted by pixie at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just read the 300+ blog entries in bloglines that I have missed all week, *whipes sweat of her brow*.

Here is me with a few georgia girls;

Mouse, me, Jane & Sandy. Mouse got a WHEEL at the festival, go on over and celebrate with her!

and me with Monica;

Meeting Anne Marie & Cara;

Happy me;

View Vacation Gallery >>

Posted by pixie at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I got home all i wanted to do was squeeze this face:

My husband, knowing how much I love to "open presents" brought a package addressed to me to the aiport for me so I could open it in the car :)

Sockapaloooza Socks! Thank you Liz!! I love them, and they are soo stretchy! I am guessing they are not wool, but maybe cotton and something stretchy? It's neat too because she sent me some Cascade Fixation which is cotton and elastic.

This is not somethiing I would normally buy myself and I love that it's solid and I can't wait to make some cute little footsie socks with it! These socks are a PERfect fit, liz you done good!

While I took photos, willow ate a Suzan Bates Crochet needle package.

My sister and her family!

I spent the majority of my time chasing this little guy, 3 years old.

That's Brett again with my father.

That's Laurel and I outside the middle school she works at (she teaches band). Laurel and I have known each other sence she was born! We lived across the street from each other for 18 years, I dragged her to MS&W and she seamed to anjoy it very much more then I thought she would.

We both laughed because any time she would ask me a question, anyone standing next to us would answer for me, so I never had to say anything!

I guess I will go ahead now and talk about Maryland. First off, next time around I'll go with knitting friends for the full effect. It was simply not enough time for just that 1pm meetup to speak with anyone. I said hi to Cara and Anne Marie but I would have liked to have spoken with them both more. I was too shy to say hi to a few others. I went all paparazzi on Eunny, and well I just was so happy happy to meet Monica from My Two Left Needles, and both Laurel and I both walked away adoring her and wishing we had more time to spend with her. She was just like she was over email and I felt like a good friend the moment we hugged. I got to speak with her the most and I am so happy I did, Monica you rule!! It was so fun to see all her handspun knits in person.

Also, probably best to get there at 9am I guess, but by 10am everything was so packed you couldn't see half the fiber availible and honestly it was stressful. I enjoyed it far more after the blogger meetup when the buildings were about half as empty, but then a lot was gone. I was disapointed in how crowded it was in all honestly. It was still a complete blast to go to and I had a fab time! Another thing was the blogger meetup was kind of funny, because when you walk around it's all familys and some much older peopple, but then the blogger meetup was a sea of young to middle age people with no kids in tow, so it was just such a funny contrast to walking around. I'll talk about it more in my podcast.

I took my annual trip to the Eye Doctoer in VA, I have seen this doctor ever sence I was 2 years old!

I got some extremly cute blue-ish glasses and spent near a fortune on that, contacts and the eye exam.

Then I dragged my mother to Lettuce Knit in Richmond, VA.

Rowan Natural Silk Aran

Freakin. Lovely.

Karabella Breeze

Oooh.

The last "bad" thing I bought was to complete my Blue Java collection with a smaller purse for work.

Posted by pixie at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Jesse and I spent the weekend with the dogs at the Cataloochoo Ski Area in Maggie Valley, South Carolina.

It's about a 3 hour drive up in the mountains. We got there very late at night. I had taken the day off work but i wound up having to go in, and Jesse couldn't stop working until about 6pm.

Willow went straight over to lay down by the fire Jesse made.

Toby went straight for the couch with no intentions to snuggle with us.

The next morning was beutiful and sunny, the cabin was perfect. It had big giant glass windows all the way around.

We went skiing as soon as we woke on Saturday.

No that is not me snow plowing, that guy kept doing that straight down the mountain over and over. Me and Jesse wanted to yell "Turn!" lol. If I had done that my legs would have given out after the first 2 runs.

We enjoyed the trip, but it was a little bit shorter then we would have liked.

I managed to do a little drunk knitting last night on a sock with my Secret Pal yarn. That was the only knitting there was even though I brought a few things along.

Posted by pixie at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All day Saturday was spent at The Biltmore in North Carolina. Check out that website, it's a pretty neat place. Basically it's a castle built in the middle of the Carolina's by the Vanderbilt family, 100 years ago.

I got a really neat book that is letters from the 1900 thru 1999 and some wonderful Rose' from the Biltmore winery (mm and some smoked samon and Amish chesse!). Wine tasting is always fun! It is called "Biltmore Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc De Noir" but I can't find a link for it. SO yummy, nearly as much as that Rose' from Wolfville we loved so much.

I imagine it's very pretty in the summery with all the flowers in bloom and everything green.

I loved the view of the mountains from the balcony.

Everything felt magestic and anchient. Not something I have seen a lot in the US, normally more a feeling I have gotten when in another country.

Posted by pixie at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I was unable to finish the binding on the quilt for baby nick in time for the trip today. I will finish it when I get back I guess. Nick and momma don't seem to mad :)

Nick is such a complete doll, such a very good baby.

Nothing more perfect then kntiting for babies while around babies!

Me and Nick, he fell asleep on my chest, soo sweet!

This is Nick's proud momma.

Posted by pixie at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The evening in Seattle started like this:

9pm and headed to the airport to catch a red eye to Atlanta (after one yummy glass of wine from the tap house thingy in bellevue).

THe flight was on time but horribly over booked

My manager spotted a man sitting on the floor very close to us. Somehow her "celebrity-radar" new that was the lead singer of train. She very quietly asked him if it was so and he was sweet and said yes, and my name is... whats your name..... etc... Then I popped in and said "I love your band!" like a total dork, he was sweet and smiled.

I then attempted to get a picture of him for proof

However my stupid moto phone cam was FULL and wouldn't fit the picture and he moved!! AHH!! (picture of empty carpet for evidence of celebrity sighting angst!!)

Then I spotted him, so I snagged a photo of him on his gizmo. I am still not sure what kind of device he was starring at the whole dang time.

THen I got brave and asked if I could take a photo of him with me!

He was sooooooo nice! He put his arm around me and then put his head against mine for the photo. My camera first took a crappy one, and then he let me take this one. He even offered to let me take a 3rd cause I was out of most of the frame, but I said no thats great, I don't want to bother you. I thanked him and walked away. I don't think anyone else recognized him.

This is a good picture of the lead singer of train (found via google image search).

So now I know, I am a giddy little school girl when it comes to hot band leader men!! WOOT!! Looks kinda like my hubby (well the hair anyways!!).

So then I picture on the sly took a photo of him waiting for his luggage, as proof that celebrities wait for cruddy luggage too, even if it takes 20 FREAKIN MINUTES!! lol

Oh and I learned a new word in Washington. "That's scetch"

Posted by pixie at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

(FYI I know my spelling is jacked up but its' technically 2 am east coast my neck and back hurt and i have no energy to even slightly improve my spelling!!)

The company I work for, their logo is on this wall. Can you guess which one? :)

We are staying at the Red Lion in. It's not the snazzies hotel ever, but I really like it. The beds are superb and just beyond comofortable. You get 4 fluffy white pillows on each bed!

One of our "clients" saw my muli-directional scarf, the colorful skinny one. Well turns out she knows how to knit to and we talk about knitting a bit and she kinds of mentions there is a yarn store around the corner. I didn't think anything of it, thinking I wouldn't have time to go and it was probably to far.

So later that day another one of the clients and my manager want to take a walk and we get to talking about knitting and I repeat that there is supposed to be one close by, and they say okay well lets walk around the block (they had wanted to walk around the block anyways) and wouldn't you know, RIGHT THERE is a freakin yarn shop, attached to the same freakin block we are on!! OMG!! Here is the parent store, at the top of the page you can see it says they now have a location in the East. That is the one we went into.

We didn't have time for me to shop, but omg they have Rowan Felted Tweed, which I have never seen in person before! It just FEELS like harry potter sweaters lol (or weasley sweaters actually). Oh I can't wait to go back tommorow durring lunch to SPEND MONAY!!! YA YA!! lol

So tommorow night we leave back for Atlanta, I'll try to take pics at the yarn store tommorow and maybe some cool pictures of work.

Posted by pixie at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Cotswold Wool 60 yards each

I would love to make something cool out of this, but 120 yards is pretty skimpy. It was $12 canadian for each skein. So any suggestions are welcome! www.gaspereauvalleyfibres.ca

One of the sheep the Cotswold came from!

www.fleeceartist.com fiber was also being sold there so i got some!

I'm going to use this to make this: Garter Stitch Jacket

Fat Quaters - A few random ones I snagged near the check out counter

Some wonderful Northcott to make a Nova Scotia memory quilt from!

(Northcott Chantilly Lace)

I always get a tea/cofee cup any place I visit! This one was handpainted locally in NS.

View the photo gallery for all my Nova Scotia buys!

Posted by pixie at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jesse and I went to Nova Scotia Sept 7th thru the 12th. It was a really fun time so here are a few photo's and notes about our trip!

I have always dreamed of renting a convertable. We used Budget and their website said it would be like a Ford Mustang. We got a little shock when it was a PT Cruiser. It is suprising how comfortable it is to cruise in, however it has a crpapy turning radius compared to my element.

The first day we went to a winery and a fiber shop!

The Gaspereau Vineyards

This is Vanilla the sheep

We watched the sun set on the water at Halls Harbour

We Hiked Cape Split (8.6 miles baby!)

We drove a few hours to Prince Edward Island and stayed at the Rasberry Inn

...and we relaxed and made a mess of everything...

... and said hi to the chickens...

My life long dream comes true and we visit Green Gables and drink Strawberry Cordial (After being made fun of by a 17 year old gas station attendant)

We visited the beutiful sand dunes

and the red clay cliffs

On our way back to Halifax we visited a Gouda Cheese Farm

We spent the last night in a westin and ate the best food we had the whole trip. I had a crem brule sampler for a desert. I didn't take any pictures at that point because we just laid in bed and did nothing. We wanted to see Halifax, but instead we just laid in bed and got PPV on the TV and got room service.

View the full photo gallery

Posted by pixie at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am in australia! Been here nearly a week I guess. Hard to keep track of time. I adjusted to the time zone pretty well besides waking up at 6am AU time (8pm EST I think?). I can't seem to find my digicam cord to show you pics :( grrr...

Cultural differences so far...

They say "I'll call you on " vs. the way we americans say "at". Same for addresses like hotels on area's vs. hotels AT area's.

Toilets flush from the top with round buttons. Most offer two flush modes.. full flush for heavy loads and half flush for light loads lol.

Sugar somes in skinny yall "posh" paper instead of sqaures ones.

Driving on the opposite side of the road and have no yellow lines. All lines are white! EK!

Tea is availible anywhere you go. Earl Gray and Chamomile are in nearly all the hotel rooms (score).

Fries are called "Chips", only skinny "french fries" are called fries. They have something called "Happy Jack" that appears to be a burger king.

Everyone is so polite, southern hospitality ain't got nothin.

That's it for now! I'll probably write again sence we are now at the conference and have internet all day and my husband is busy preparing for his speech.

Update:

Posted by pixie at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Qantas Airlines if having a fantastic sale on it's tickets. Buy one get the 2nd ticket half price (round trip). DH and I are going to Austrlia in february and my dad called to let us know about this deal. We had been waiting to buy tickets hoping for something like this. Great deal! Only problem is when DH ran the credit card through the website, he got a blank page. Stupid websites, Qantas's is no exception. It's a fantastic example of bad web design.

So if you where looking for a cheap flight to somewhere in that part of the world, check out the sale

Posted by pixie at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)