Weekend Happenings

With the end of Monday near (Thank goodness! Survival was questionable there in the beginning.) I’ve been playing the weekends events over in my little head, it helps to escape the stress of coming back to work ya know.

Pardon my grainy phone pictures, I finally remembered to bring my camera, but lo and behold, the stinkin’ battery died on me. Between Bubba and I  we’ve got a handful of point and shoots and two SLR’s in our house, but did we bring a back-up camera? Nope. So, I had to resort to my camera phone, I was actually surprised at how well some of these came out.

Saturday didn’t entail too much aside from doing the normal weekend chores, but on Sunday we took a little drive out to Edgewood. It’s a little town about 40 minutes from Albuquerque, a nice little drive especially if you’re ready to see something new.

Like a pay phone, I hadn’t seen one of these in years! Since everyone has a cell phone now payphones aren’t very common. Or maybe I haven’t noticed them much, since I am part of the cell phone carting masses. But I was pretty excited to see this one and his buddy outside.

After admiring the historic pay phones and receiving odd looks from the locals we indulged in a road trip classic, dipped cones from

Dairy Queen.  Mine was butterscotch, much to the dismay of my jeans, thank goodness for spandex riddled denim!

After a nice fattening ice cream break it was time to see the sites:

That there’s a meadow, with the stinkin’ camera phone I couldn’t quite capture the colors and the “lifeness” of it all.

Also….there were sunflowers.

Then it started to rain, we took that as a sign it was time to head back home.

Our casa is just on the other side of that mountain. I love summer rain storms in New Mexico, they smell so fresh and the air has an energy to it. But notice that patch of blue sky? Yeah, I theorize that’s exactly where our house is, because it was bone dry when we got home. No glorious summer rain storm for us that day.

With it still being dry and hot at the house, we decided to take a little trip to a local thrift store, just for grins and giggles, we didn’t buy anything. I don’t want my own episode of Hoarders thankyouverymuch. Here’s what I found:

These embroidery hoops are great for wall hangings, just group a bunch of them together with a graphic fabric or even paint them a cool color for some drama.

Sorta like this scene from Apartment Therapy:

Something similar could be done with these guys to add a little more texture to a room. They are meant to be used as paper plate holders, but I think they would be awesome clustered together for a focal wall.

But I don’t think this guy really liked that idea, either that or he was ready to get out of the bag. He kinda scared me…

What happenings from the weekend have you been revisiting to get through this Monday? Is there ice cream? Or a scary tribesman staring back at you from a plastic bag?

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The air up there

I am participating in a ” 31 Days of…” series for the month of October. You see a whole bunch of sweet blogger buddies have been getting together the past few years to do 31 posts in 31 days. The topic is always something they have a passion for. This year they have invited all of their readers to post 31 days of their passions. If you are interested in participating in the 31 Days of…series, or you’re just curious about what everyone else is writing about, please visit The Nester, Jen, Melissa, Sandy, Darcy, Emily, and Emily. I hope you enjoy my series on finding treasures both vintage and of the heart. Let’s hope I can overcome my inconsistent blogging habit and share those 31 posts within the next 31 days!

Well, after enjoying a nice weekend of  just being, I completely forgot that I was supposed to continue on with my 31 Days series even on the weekends. Oopsie! I’ll try to do better, promise!

Anywho, in keeping with my theme of treasures, and  the treasure of being, or the treasure of experiencing all the beautiful and marvelous blessings around us. Today, I wanted to share with you the joy of living in New Mexico. Particularly, in Albuquerque during Balloon Fiesta. If you are not familiar with the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, please visit their site. And if you are too lazy to click on the link, the Balloon Fiesta is a yearly hot air balloon rally held the first full week in October.  Over 500 hot air balloons participate yearly. Which makes for quite a display when you consider every balloon is different, and they even have special shapes. My favorite this year was Spider Pig…

via Balloon Fiesta

If you aren’t a Simpson’s fan then you probably didn’t get the joke. Just in case you haven’t seen the Simpson’s movie here’s a clip:

While running around town chasing balloons, at the begining of October (because frankly Bubba and I are too cheap to buy tickets to the actual fiesta), we had the great opportunity to see a lot of balloons hovering over our fair city. And you know the old saying, “What comes up must come down”, that includes balloons. So we get to see our fair share of balloons landing and deflating. It really takes all the air out of the experience! (HAR-HAR)

Here’s one we saw the first day of the fiesta…

Landing, apparently she must be caught and held down or she stays in the air. I’m certainly not a hot air balloon expert. I’m just an observer.

After she’s been caught a tarp is laid out and the balloon is held down by ropes.

Then they start to let the air out of the balloon. Air part of the balloon is turned off, and they start to pull on those ropes.

The balloon is still being held by ropes, but it’s mostly down.

It sort of looks like they are letting the air out of an air bed to me.

It was a lot like taking the air out of an air bed.

After all the air was squeezed out they rolled it up. Much like a sleeping bag.

See that guy with a group of kids? Yeah, they are sitting on the balloon. Apparently, there was still some air to get rid of before placing the folded up balloon in it’s basket. A good time was had by all, I’m so glad Bubba and I took the time to stop, and enjoy the treasure of being.

And Annie-dog got a little closer to getting over her fear of bouncy houses and balloons. I guess it helped to see one go down, you could say it took the air out of her fear!

Isn’t my Bubba a sweetie? He lets me take boo-hoos of pictures while he gets pulled around by our lovable but bratty poochies. By the way, he’s all mine, and no big sister, I will not let you have him when I’m done. Even though I promised to share my future husband with you when I was five!

The land of an unclouded day…

This weekend, I took a break from the casa. No painting, no patching walls, nothing home improvement or design related . Nope, I just chilled out with the sweetie and my Annie dog.  We did however go out and about to enjoy the sunshine. I took some pretty cool pictures of the sky yesterday. I love New Mexico skies! Especially right before we get a summer rain storm, or right before we get the promise of one. I swear mother nature loves playing psyche with us. Here we have clouds over the mall…

And here are the Sandia’s looking over Albuquerque…

And the crisp blue skies that we have 365 days a year in the Land of Enchantment.

Here are a few sunset shots I caught in my front yard last night.

Please ignore the power lines, I live in the middle of the city. Living conveniently so close to everything is great, but it’s not so great when you are trying to capture a great sunset.

And since we are talking about sunsets, thought I would throw in a shot I got a few months back on our way in from Las Cruces. These were taken right outside of Socorro. A little fuzzy, I had a hard time finding something to brace myself on.

Here’s how our skies typically look, very clear and very blue. This was taken in January in north Albuquerque.

I leave you with Willie Nelson’s rendition of the hymn, Unclouded day.

Unclouded Day

O they tell me of a home far beyond the skies,
O they tell me of a home far away;
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.

Refrain

O the land of cloudless day,
O the land of an unclouded day,
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.

O they tell me of a home where my friends have gone,
O they tell me of that land far away,
Where the tree of life in eternal bloom
Sheds its fragrance through the unclouded day.

Refrain

O they tell me of a King in His beauty there,
And they tell me that mine eyes shall behold
Where He sits on the throne that is whiter than snow,
In the city that is made of gold.

Refrain

O they tell me that He smiles on His children there,
And His smile drives their sorrows all away;
And they tell me that no tears ever come again
In that lovely land of unclouded day.