Cotton Candy Skies and Happy Thoughts

I know I promised to do better and not be MIA for so long without an explanation, but in all truth, the past couple of weeks have been a little like a roller coaster. 

First we celebrated our son's 23rd birthday (the 8th)

reopened the restaurant for the season and jumped right back into that hamster wheel (the 9th).

 We lost a very close and dear friend on Valentines day unexpectedly and it's been a bit of a rough go.

I decided to think and share some happy thoughts here, the Peter Pan kind that can lift a person up.

The above picture is a shot of the castle in Disney World as the sun was beginning to set.

Isn't that a perfect cotton candy sky?

It's the stuff dreams are made of.

Don't you just love cotton candy?

Then it became even more candy like with the incredible Christmas light display

The light show changed the castle from one image to another almost too fast to take it all in.

Isn't this amazing?

It even became a gingerbread castle

The fireworks display is unrivaled in my opinion.

I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to share this with my family, my parents, husband, daughter , SIL and my grandchildren.

The bitter reminder of how short life really is hit us hard these past 2 weeks and when I said the winds of change were upon me this year, little did I know just how much.

So I decided to make one more small wish come true.

Silly I know, but I have always wanted a real cotton candy machine,

to enjoy with the kids, now grandkids,

and when I saw this one for 70% off, ( I got one without the cart) I went for it.

I'm sure there's a science lesson in there somewhere that we can even share with the kids' classes, you know, heating and spinning the sugar into glass like strands, has to be scientific right?

The name made me smile because I always say to a newcomer to the art/jewelry world,

"congratulations, you've been sucked into the vortex!"

I will be heading to Art and Soul Virginia Beach in a few days and look forward to reconnecting with friends, laughing and making some more memories and acquiring some new skills.

It couldn't have come at a better time.

Will you be there?

I'll post our adventures when I return.

Until then, thanks for being here, live and love each day, and God Bless!

Winds of Change 2012

Mary Poppins, Walt Disney Pictures 1964

"Wind's in the east, mist comin' in.
Like something is brewin' about to begin
Can't put me finger on what lies in store
But I feel what's to happen, all happened before"


First of all let me apologize for being AWOL with no explanation for the past 2 months.
You see, Ray and I closed the restaurant right after Thanksgiving for the first time in MANY years for a much needed break and went to Florida.
I had hoped to be able to blog without giving my location away for reasons of security, being in business I thought it wouldn't be a good idea to announce to the world that we weren't around.
The problem is everything I wanted to blog about would have done just that. Then the longer I went the less I knew how to say anything about it at all.


So, here I am, having arrived back home this past week, trying to catch up with my blog reading and getting settled back into a routine readying the restaurant to reopen on Thursday for the season.
As soon as i upload and process the thousand+ pics from 2 cameras I'll share some here.


In the meantime, thank you to those of you who wrote to me privately to check on my whereabouts and to keep in touch.


As stated above in the clip from Mary Poppins,  2012 is bringing with it some changes, I hope you'll be with me along the way.
Hugs