Red Door Studio with Tracie Huskamp

When I left Colorado, amazingly the mountainous driving turned to flat plains. It was a nice break from curvy, winding road! My next stop was in Wichita, Kansas to visit with friend, Tracie Huskamp. What a long day that drive was. I got lost as I came into the area as my gps just couldn't locate her neighborhood. I arrived exhausted and road weary.

Tracie's house is just lovely. I enjoyed every second of it. Nests everywhere along with her art and illustrations of birds. Very natural museum history-ish, which is what I love. Tracie's studio is just beautiful, would have loved to have played down there! We had a nice dinner and I got to meet her husband, Earl and their furbabies. It wasn't long before it was time to turn in though. We had some playtime in the morning to hit a couple of her favorite antique stores and had a delicious lunch before I was on the road again.

Tracie and I will meet up again late January when we attend the NYC gift show together.

Littleton, Colorado

even though i am home, i have a few visits to blog about- so just playing catch up!

After Boulder, I started making my way to Littleton, Colorado, to visit with friend, Maija Lepore. Such a beautiful drive (although admittedly, I was tiring of mountain driving!)

We had a great time. We walked the darling downtown of Littleton, perusing antique shops, gift shops and more. We stopped for a jalapeno martini (not bad!). We also hit a flea market while I was there and found some really cool things. We got to run into pal, Jeanne Oliver, and her kids, so that was fun as well. Al and Maija took me out for a lovely dinner at The Melting Pot before I had to leave in the morning.

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After saying goodbye to Maija, I did a quick drive (about 45 minutes) to Boulder where I was staying the night with art friend, Jill Berry. It was a quick hit, so not many pictures, but Jill took me on a little tour of the area (beautiful) and then we walk around the little downtown area (also very fun!), wish I had planned better to see that area a little more extensively. (guess i have to go back!) We had a lovely dinner and sat outside enjoying the sunset. Jill's dog, Teebo, a standard poodle, was so cute. so gentle and kind. would make a wonderful therapy dog. I got to snuggle with him for a little bit at bed time. I left early in the morning, so there wasn't time to ask Jill to pose with my heart

update

still on the road! haven't had wifi for the last few days. I'm in Pennsylvania; spending the night. Tomorrow I will go to Shupp's Grove and then it's 1.5 hours til home. I'll be updating my blog after i get home!

Boulder City, Nevada

I spent the night in Bakersfield after driving down hwy1. I was sad to realize I still had another 3 hours to drive to get to my hotel (and maintain my schedule!), but I drove on and finally arrived around 8:30pm, but I was exhausted and worn out. As I was driving through the desert, it was clear as day, but all of a sudden there was a rainbow. And then as I drove on, there was a double rainbow.

I arrived in historic Boulder City, where I was staying with facebook and Artfest friend, Carlanda. Her home is one of the original houses built for men working on the Hoover dam. The cute little town is chalked full of history. We spent some nice quality time in her backyard, which is very comfortable and sweetly decorated. It reminded me a lot of my grandmother's backyard in California. Welcoming vistor's to Carlanda's house is a HUGE heart shaped rock. It's just cool. Her home is decorated with beautiful antiques. I especially loved her kitchen and dining area filled with beautiful Fiesta ware and all sorts of wonderful vintage kitchen ware. We did some painting on the back deck which was really fun. I was painting on a used canvas that I picked up at a flea market for $3 somewhere along the way. While we were painting, I noticed a little hummingbird who sat on a branch, watching us, the entire time we were out there.

Carlanda and her darling husband, Lee, have two sweet little, adopted fur babies. Rudy and Tootie. Rudy took a shine to me and would snuggle in deep under the comforter and stay with me all night. such a great sleeping companion!

One day we ventured into Las Vegas so that I could go to Gold and Silver Pawn, the pawn shop featured in Pawn Stars, my husbands favorite show, next to American Pickers. We didn't get to see any of the stars and I suspect that they don't actually film the show there. The staff was a bit on the "could care less side", so that was a bummer. I'm sure they tire of all the questions of excitable tourists, but still...........Afterwards we went to Fremont Street for a bite to eat and I got some fun pictures of some of their awesome vintage signery (I call it Doo Wop)

On our way home, Lee decided to drive over to an area where the big horn sheep are known to come down from the mountains to graze. Boy were we in for a surprise! there was a huge flock there and not only that, there was the sweetest little baby big horn. how exciting!

One night we decided to head over to what is called a Pioneer dump. Basically, it's in the desert where after some rain, a bunch of dumped items were uncovered. It was near an old tent city (from the days of building the dam), so we thought it'd be fun to take some shovels over there and see if we could uncover anything fun. We found a bunch of old glass in blues, greens, pinks and purples. Some of the glass was fused to one another. very cool. I'm going to put my treasure out on the back porch in an old metal collander.