Another Giveaway

At Make It and Love It she is giving away a great looking beaded watch. Enter today before midnight!

Musette Bracelet GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Musette Bracelet GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Over the past month I have been in a more creative mood and checking out things online, making a few things and finding that there are a lot of great sewing/crafting websites out there. Grosgrain is one of those great sites. It also so happens that they have a giveaway for a nifty bracelet. Check it out, my friends. Enjoy!

Blog Makeover

I found a link to free blog backgrounds. All you have to do is copy the text, go into your layout and add it to your gadget sidebar. I think it adds a bit of spice to the blog.

By the way, does anyone know how to get my banner to fit within the confines of that orange box. I have the simple blog layout that has a box at the top and I want my banner of the top of it. I shrink the image to fit and it hangs over the right side. So frustrating! I may need to change the blog layout once more, but I'm not having much luck with that. However, I did change the color around the banner from white to orange, which doesn't make it as noticeable.

Friendly Visits

I've had a great couple days with my college friend Lisa. Being in the same state warranted a visit, so she made the drive from Denver. Who knew Colorado was so big? It takes four hours from Denver to Grand Junction!

Lisa said she had never been to Arches National Park, so I was glad to take her. Even though the temperature reached 101, we managed with plenty of water and air conditioning between our stops.

The most spectacular arches of the park - The Double Arches

The most famous arch in the park is Delicate Arch. It's on all the Utah marketing material and the license plate. However, the hike getting up to view Delicate Arch is not so delicate. It's a pretty steep hike, and when it's hot ... whew! I think the disappointing thing was we made the hike instead of doing the lazy man's lower viewing area and we seemed to still be three miles away from the arch. My camera was zoomed all the way in to get this photo!

Here's the little friend we made on the Landscape Arch trail. It was much bigger than a gecko, but it still seemed harmless. Here, Leezard, Leezard, Leezard ...

Finally on our way out of Moab, where we purchased ice cold beverages, we stopped at this foot bridge that crosses the Colorado River. It's a really nice bridge and trail that only adds to the charm of the area.

For the men in my friends' lives ...

Space pictures along with ... drum roll, please ... photos of the Star Wars script and Indiana Jones stuff. I don't even know what they all are, but John sure did like them.

We went to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which has some great displays once you get past the kids play area. The one thing that creeped me out was costumed characters of Darth Vader and one of his white soldier guys. I steered clear ...

First, the Lucas Films display - George Lucas's handwritten Star Wars script. Oooo, Ahhhh

The typed script of Adventures of the Starkiller

Indiana Jones's motorcycle and the outfit worn by Harrison Ford.

At the Space Center they do have displays related to NASA. We took the tram tour over to Johnson Space Center and sat in Mission Control. It's much smaller than it seems on television.

We also stopped at Rocket Park. These rockets are massive. This is me at the bottom of the largest portion of the Saturn V. Can you imagine?

You can see how long the rocket is here. Horribly massive to get the small Apollo spacecrafts in orbit.

And finally we got to tour where the astronauts train for their missions. Our guide was the son of the upcoming International Space Station (ISS) Commander and knew that the facility was being used for training the day we were there.

Here's the 2010 ISS Commander Mike Fossum in the Soyuz portion of the ISS. It was pretty cool seeing the astronauts using the equipment, getting ready for their next mission.

Greetings from Galveston

OK, so we're not in Galveston anymore, but I sure do love alliteration.

John and I took a week and spent our time near the beach. It was a lot of fun. I had never been to Galveston, but I sure do love the water. You could go out in the ocean and get knocked around a bit by the waves. Fantastic for a land-locked girl.

I had to include this picture to demonstrate (1) the wind and (2) the messy state my hair remained in the second we stepped foot in Texas. (I'm lovin' the dry heat of Colorado!)

When exploring Galveston, we toured the Lone Star Air Museum. John was in seventh heaven. Because Hurricane Ike had hit the previous September, only one hangar was open. But still, John loved it; just look at his smile.

And as in previous posts, I just have to share again that I would be a great airplane model ...

From air to water we then went to tour the Elissa, Texas' tall ship with a sorted past. It hauled cotton, illegal products and many other things that I can't remember, but I'm sure you can find out here. It's unbelievable the number of people that got behind this ship to restore it to it's now fit condition. It makes me happy to know that there are still folks out there that have a passion to preserve our past.

John decided to tap into his inner pirate while on board.

And since I already posted the crazy hair picture, I'll post my picture not acting foolish in the Captain's saloon below deck.

The water levels of hurricane Ike are as much a tourist attraction as anything else. Here I am near the Elissa and you can see the piece of blue tape above my head. That's the 2008 water level. The white plaque above that is the 1901 hurricane that nearly wiped out the entire city.

We then ventured over to the Historic Strand District, which is the old downtown shopping area. They had a lot of cute shops, but there were still a lot of the shops that either were closed for good or were still being worked on due to Ike's wrath. Here's where the water stood in the downtown area.

To top off our hot day, we went out and bought Blue Bell ice cream. We barely got it back to the condo before it melted, but it was deliciously cold. Well, one more foolish picture won't hurt ... and from the looks of this picture my airplane modeling days are numbered ...