Need a Vacation?

Do you need a vacation? I can honestly say I don't "need" one, but they sure can be fun.  I've been to quite a few places over the years, on all sorts of vacations:  the coast of Florida to sit on the beach and play in the ocean with my friends; to Venice for sightseeing; to Sweden for my friend's wedding (in August, which was much nicer weather than when I visited her in November!); to the Cayman Islands for some of the most wonderful SCUBA diving anywhere; to Sedona, Arizona, for hiking and sightseeing, including a trip to the Grand Canyon (which is where I took the picture you see here); to Bonaire, for more SCUBA diving of a completely different sort than what I experienced in Cayman; and even on a Caribbean cruise!  There are more places on the list, but those are some of the standouts.

Our most recent trips were to Hilton Head, somewhere I never would have thought of going, but a place that turned out to be pretty relaxing and enjoyable.  We went in the off season, so we just tooled around the island, visited some galleries and museums, and ate.  Lots of seafood.  It was wonderful!

So why am I talking about vacation?  Well, honestly it's for a contest... 

This is my version of a perfect 24 hours on a Spanish Island. This post was written as an entry for 24 hours on The Balearics contest sponsored by OnTheBeach.com. The prize is £500 in Amazon Vouchers and the contest runs until August 17, 2012. Please visit BeersandBeans.com to learn more about the contest and how you can also enter.

I've never been to a Spanish island, and I must admit that I didn't know anything about the Balearics, other than the names of some of the islands, before I saw the post on BearsandBeans.  The names of the four largest islands are Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, and Formentera.  A quick Google search for information and images demonstrates just how easy it is to learn about this island chain.

So let's see...  a perfect 24 hours on The Balearics would begin, of course, with a trip to the beach.  It really doesn't matter when the plane lands on Majorca.  It's an absolute necessity for me to get my toes into the sand and to feel the salt air rolling in off the ocean.  Since these islands purport to have 300 days of sun during the year, it's a pretty safe bet that that first foray onto the beach would be wonderful.  I could spend hours on the beach, especially if there are seashells to be found, but my husband would soon be clamoring to do something else...

The something else would probably be exploring.  Rather than driving around, we'd probably choose one of the island on-and-off tours that hits all the high spots and still gives you time the stop and visit anything that's particularly intriguing.  It looks as if there's no shortage of sights, either!  With beautiful scenery, mountains, Stone Age ruins, Gothic cathedrals, and villages all over the island, it's a pretty safe bet that we'll find lots of places to take pictures.  I always have at least one camera with me, and sometimes as many as two or three (especially after having our new digital video camera break on the first day of our vacation in Venice!), so the drive would take a long time.  I've been known to return from a vacation with more than 800 photos.

I'd have to be able to spend at least some time on or in the water, so I think we'd probably sign up for a catamaran cruise and snorkeling trip.  Although I've been a SCUBA diver for years, snorkeling is a nice, relaxing way to see some reefs and fish without having to haul all that heavy equipment around.

If we're not too tired from the cruise and snorkeling trip, we'd head out for the Majorca evening tour:  horseback riding and dinner!  Rancho Grande is located at the north coast of Majorca and has a 1.5 hour horseback tour followed by a barbecue dinner.  Yum!

Next on the agenda is a trip to one of the other islands, Minorca.  A lot of people will like Majorca, which apparently has more clubs, restaurants, and bars; but my husband and I are much more in tune with the laid back vacations where we can just look at sights and visit historical areas.  From what I've read, I think we'd take a ferry to travel from the larger of the islands to Minorca.  I believe my husband would like this island more, not only because it's less crowded but also because it supposedly has an almost constant breeze and is a bit cooler than Majorca.

I haven't kept track of the time spent, but I'm pretty sure that at this point we'd be pooped and ready for a good night's sleep.  We might stop at one of the local bars or restaurants for a beer or a glass of wine, but not too much -- with all the things to do and see in The Balearics, we're going to want to get an early start on the next 24 hours!

Nope, I don't "need" a vacation.  But reading all the articles I found and looking at the pictures makes me want one!  :-)

Best. Stick. Ever.

Seriously. Who comes back from a vacation on Hilton Head Island with a picture of a STICK?!?!

Me. That's who. Because this is the best stick ever.

This stick is so great it makes me wish I was going to Chicago to take NanC Meinhartd's Art Sticks workshop. I'm not sure what kind of wood this is, but I found this near the beach on Hilton Head Island. There's a serious lack of driftwood there (at least on the beaches we visited), but this is just cool.

Best. Stick. Ever.

Let's see... What else did we do on vacation? (Yes, Bev, it IS a vacation even if we're retired!) We ate lots of really really good seafood. Filet Oscar (filet mignon topped with crabmeat stuffing), roast oysters, clam chowder, seafood chowder, shrimp, crab cakes, mahi mahi, lobster. Yum.

We went driving around the island a bit. Saw lots of birds. A few turtles. Even an alligator and a dolphin (not at the same time).

What we didn't do a lot of was shopping. There's no shortage of places to shop, but we didn't want to spend all our time (or money) in the stores and shops.

We did find a place that had BEADS.

:-)

I picked up a few semi-precious rounds for a custom order, and I also bought a BUNCH of four-ply silk thread that I can use for bead crochet.

Isn't this gorgeous?

Yards and yards and yards of silk. I can crochet for years without fear of running out of thread.





Having never crocheted with silk thread before (I've used some heavy weight stuff whose name I don't know and nylon upholstery thread), I wasn't really sure how I'd like using silk. Turns out I like it. A lot.

I had a request to create a bead crochet rope using some vintage beads (sent to me by a very special customer), and I decided to try out the silk thread. It worked great! And now I have a brand new bracelet, created from a long length of bead crochet rope and then knotted in a very special way before doing an invisible join.



So now I know what I'm going to be doing with all that silk thread. I just have to figure out what to do with the stick. :-)

My Southern Accent's Back

Thanks for all the birthday well wishes! This one came and went with no aluminum foil or balloons (of course, I don't work in an office any more, and it would be kind of silly for my husband to do that to our house!). Actually, my whole birthday was spent on the road -- we drove 700 miles, from Illinois to North Carolina, to visit the site of our future home. The only bad parts of the birthday were when we stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast, not realizing that smoking was allowed (Pew. We walked out of there smelling of cigarette smoke.); and when we hit the Smoky Mountains and had to drive through fog while navigating the twisty, windy roads.

All in all, it was a great trip. We met Dan and Marcella, who are building a house across the road from us and will be our new neighbors. We got to explore the area more, since we asked a local realtor to show us some houses (thinking we might be able to find something we liked that's already built rather than spending the year or more it will take to build our own house). And best of all, my husband finally agreed that we couldn't do better than to build on the land we already have. So now we're back home, finalizing the house plans and making lists of the things we need to do to prepare for the move. That picture up there is the view from what will be our front yard. If you want to see more of this beautiful countryside, click here.

The southern accent thing? Honestly, all it took was about five minutes before it came back full force. Maybe it's a good thing. Since my husband grew up in Illinois, I have to be able to translate for him. :-)

Since I didn't have very much internet access while we were gone, I wasn't able to show off one of my newest beadweaving designs. I created this piece (Maelstrom in Mauve and Plum) and listed it in my Etsy shop before I left. I haven't made it in any other color combinations yet, but I know I'm going to be making more of these. I just have to figure out how to fit all my packing into my beadweaving schedule. :-)


If you feel like checking out some other beadwoven goodies, as well as some gorgeous bead art (maybe for your own jewelry-making activities), check out the Bead Art Originals Items of the Week! Every week there are new specials offered by some of our members, so in addition to being able to find some beautiful pieces you can pick up some great deals along the way. The mosaic of this week's listings is shown below, and you can visit the BAO Blog to find out the details of the specials.


That's my Copper Vine bracelet in the upper left corner of the mosaic. This week I'm offering coordinating pendant AND free shipping on the entire order with the purchase of that bracelet!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Now where the heck did that come from?!?! Some old nursery rhyme that somehow infiltrated my brain as I was typing the title. It's amazing the things that are stored in my head.

So, I'm home. Back to the cold weather, with the snow on the ground. Back to the house that needs to be cleaned and tidied, laundry that needs to be done, meals that need to be cooked. It's nice to be back, though. I'm about theme-parked out. SeaWorld... Epcot... Animal Kingdom... Universal. That's a lot of walking and standing. The economy has obviously had an effect on all of the parks. While it was nice to be able to walk around the parks without feeling like sardines, it was kind of strange to see so much open space. At least we didn't have to stand in a bunch of lines.

The pictures have been removed from the new digital camera. I love the camera I use most of the time, but for vacations it's quite bulky (it's a digital SLR, and I have several lenses that I always want with me). I decided to travel light this time, so I bought one of those tiny Olympus digital cameras. I've figured out so far that if I take a picture of something that's being absolutely still, and I'm being absolutely still, it works quite well. The moving shots? Well, not so good. I'm sure there's some setting that will allow me to get better pictures of moving things, but I haven't found it yet.

Of all the pictures I took on vacation, these are my two favorites:

The Killer Whales at SeaWorld

Baobab Tree at Disney's Animal Kingdom

Now that I'm back, I'm catching up on all sorts of stuff. I have a list about a mile long of things to do, and I'm whittling away at it. One of the things on the list was to update the Bead Art Originals Holiday Gift Guide with Valentine's Day items from our members. There are some beautiful pieces, all of them perfect for the impending holiday of romance, and in a variety of price ranges. Check it out!

Although I have quite a few beadwoven creations finished and waiting to be photographed, I only managed to list one new piece today: Ironman's DNA

I designed this DNA pattern a few months ago and created one version of the cuff in blues and violets, but then my metallic beads began calling to me. When beads call out to you, you just have to listen! :-)

Most of my posts to this blog are about my creations. I guess that's only natural when I spend such a significant amount of my time creating, but I also do other things. I read loads of books (check out the Shelfari display at the bottom of my blog to see a small fraction of them. I'm still uploading.). I do some semblance of housekeeping, although I'm sure Martha Stewart would be appalled. That's not a problem, though, as I'm not really a Martha fan anyway. I manage to keep the dishes done, keep the dust down to a manageable level, do the laundry, and the other "regular" chores, in addition to doing yardwork. Truth be told, I prefer yardwork over any of the indoor chores.

It doesn't seem like someone with my kind of life would need a vacation, but sometimes it's just fun to go somewhere new. So my husband and I traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia, last week. It was too late in the season for Busch Gardens to be open, but we did get to see some other cool places.

The Virginia Living Museum was really nice. It's geared a little more toward children than adults, but it was nice to be able to walk around outside to see all the animals they've rescued and housed on the site. It was rainy, so I didn't carry my camera with me; but we saw foxes, wolves, bobcats, eagles, and a bunch of other critters.

We also went to see Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. Yorktown (for me) was the least interesting. I'm not a big history buff anyway, and seeing Yorktown meant driving around a 16-mile auto tour in the rain, reading the signs that described the battles that took place there. Colonial Williamsburg was nice, even though some of the buildings we wanted to see weren't open when we went there.

By far the most interesting place was Jamestown. We went to both the state and the national sites, two very different depictions. The state site is a reproduction of the Powhatan village and the Jamestown fort, and although that was pretty interesting both my husband and I were fascinated with the real site. Since I'm not a history buff, I had no idea that the original Jamestown site was uncovered in 1994. Prior to that, it was thought the site was washed away into the river. There are archaeologists working on the site now, and visitors are able to watch them while they work on the excavation. More than a million artifacts have been recovered so far, and they're still working away. I think I'd have made a good archaeologist - I love looking for things like that!

So, instead of showing you pictures of my creations today, here are some pictures of Virginia in November. Enjoy!

Is this a vacation? We've been driving and driving and driving, covering about 1200 miles in six days. Granted, that doesn't sound like a lot, but we were on a quest to find property in Tennessee near one of the big lakes there (Tellico or Douglas), so the 1200 miles included about 600 miles of windy, twisty, gravelly, steep roads. It looks so easy presented there on the map as A-to-B-to-C-to-D, but it wasn't! Tuesday or so we'll head back to point A. :-)

After all that, it appears that we've decided not to live in Tennessee, but to continue with our plan to live near Waynesville, North Carolina, on property we purchased a few years ago. It's such a pretty piece of property, with gorgeous views and in a nice rural area where it's peaceful and quiet, and we just weren't able to find anything better. My husband's urges to fish will have to be satisfied by driving to Tellico Lake or Douglas Lake.