Beer Fest

Short post for today, but I wanted to share a photo from last night. Carl, Sean, Christy and I went to Beer Fest at Jungle Jim's.  It was a lot of fun.  When we arrived we were each given a small beer glass, and then we spent the next 2 hours walking around sampling different beers.  There were way over 100 to choose from - breweries from as close as right here in Cincinnati, and as far away as Belgium, Germany, and England.  Most of the booths would tell you a little bit about the different beers they had. My favorites were from Ommengang and Unibroue.  I meant to try one from Scotland even, but forgot about going back when the line was shorter until I was beered out!  I think I only sampled about 10 or so before I decided just couldn't do any more (especially since I was driving).  Christy was done about the same time.  I think Carl and Sean sampled a few more than we did.  After checking out what Jungle Jim's was offering for dinner (barbeque sandwiches and potato chips), we decided to go to Gordos and have a good burger (amazingly enough no one wanted beer to drink).  And who should walk in  while we were waiting for our dinner to arrive but our friend Tina Schroff,  her husband and friends!!!  What a coincidence.  We knew they were at the Beer Fest but hadn't been able to find them, and then they picked the same place to eat dinner. 

Hope you're all having a nice Father's Day weekend!!!

 

Busy Week

This is a busy week at the Wilkerson House.  Christy and I are doing some major purging trying to get ready for a garage sale.  I really don't like having garage sales, but the deadlines help me get motivated enough to keep going with the purging.  I'm even hoping to get rid of some of the stuff in my scrapping/stamping stash that I know is never going to get used. We made some good progress yesterday, so hopefully by the time next weekend rolls around we'll be ready.  And if I'm lucky anything left over will fit in the van to go to Goodwill!!!

Just a couple of cards to share today.  The first is the card I made for Carl for our 36th wedding anniversary last week.  I used the June card kit from Simon Says Stamp.  Love that kit!!

The other card is a birthday card for a dear friend.  It didn't quite turn out how I envisioned it, but sometimes that's the way it goes.  I still like it.

I apologize for the poor pictures.  I really need to remember to take them when the sun is better.  Well, back to my cleaning out of closets!  We're making progress!  Hope you all have a fun weekend!

Concours d'Elegance

We've been having lovely weather here lately.  I've really been enjoying spending lots of time out on the patio.  And Kira has been enjoying that also, especially since she can now come off the leash - vets have declared her bone healed from the surgery and she can start working back up to her normal activities.  Other than her days of high impact activities like leaping into the air to catch frisbees and jogging with Carl or Christy.  But, I think we can all live with that.

Yesterday Carl, Sean and I went to the Concours d"Elegance at Ault Park.  It was a beautiful day for a car show.  Here are a few of my favorite pics:

 

Christy, I thought of you when I saw this one!

 

 

 

 This last one brought back memories for Carl since he used to have one of these, and had totally restored it.  Though his was red.

This week is going to be consumed with getting ready for a garage sale - it is time to de-clutter and de-junk the house.  And the garage!  So, that is what Christy and I are going to be doing.  We have this week and next week to get it all done!

See you all again in a day or 2 - with a card to share (can't share yet because the recipient has seen it yet!).

It's been a long time since I have posted on this blog, but I have decided that it is time to resurrect it, and begin sharing again. So, we will start off with a card I made to welcome the sweetest little baby  into the world.  Baby Lila Grace, daughter of Jennifer and Ken McGuire is 2 weeks old, and I send my best wishes to them on her birth with this card.

The card was made using the June card kit from Simon Says Stamp and a House Mouse stamp. 

I'm going to try to keep up with this blog now, and like before it will be a mix of what I am creating, what I'm cooking, and anything else that comes up in my life.  Hopefully you will come back again!

And if you want to see more cards made to welcome little Lila Grace into this world, check out Jana Millen's blog.

Wedding and beach - great family fun!!!

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy. Over Labor Day weekend, my nephew Nick Noe got married in Lynchburg, VA, to Shannon Saunders. They have been together for about 7 years now, and we all love Shannon, so I am so happy to welcome her into the family! She was a gorgeous bride, and the wedding was truly lovely - it was held at the Trivium, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect for an outdoor wedding. Congratulations, Nick and Shannon!!!







After the wedding, Christy and I headed off to Holden Beach with my Mom and sisters Cindy and Kim. It was the smallest group we've ever had at the beach - just 7 of us - but it was so nice to just relax on the beach. And since it was the week after Labor Day, it was not crowded at all.









Since then, things have gotten quite hectic. We have been dealing with mice in Christy's apartment for about 6 months now, and the problem is getting worse instead of better, so we have spent a lot of time the past week dealing with the apartment management. Hopefully they are finally taking things seriously, and the plans they have implemented will solve the problem. If not, we may be looking for a new apartment for her - she won't even live at her apartment right now, and I don't blame her. Mice are just totally gross and icky!!! So we will see how all of that goes.

Europe - Part 6

In Stuttgart we visited the Porsche Museum. Carl and the kids had really wanted to visit the factory, but it is closed for factory tours in August, so we settled for visiting the Museum. The building is absolutely incredible - very modern. And inside were more Porsche's than you can imagine - everything from the first Porsche ever built to race cars and current models. After the museum, we spent a few hours walking around the Schillerplatz seeing the Altes Schloss and Neus Schloss. The gardens were lovely.

The next day we spent driving through the Black Forest. The views were spectacular!!!! We stopped in Triberg and had lunch and visited several cuckoo shop clocks. Of course, the ones I liked were extremely expensive, so all we bought was a watch for Christy. It was too bad that it was such a rainy day - some hiking would have been wonderful. After we drove out of the Black Forest our route ended up taking us past Lake Bodensee. We didn't know we were going to see it but Tom Tom took us on a different route than MapQuest had suggested. Despite the rain it was an awesome sight - just miles and miles of lake!! It would be a lovely place to spend more time if the weather were nice.

And then it was on to The Castles - Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. Our hotel sat right under Hohenschwangau and our rooms had balconies that looked out on it. From the dining room we could see Neuschwanstein. They were as fabulous as I had hoped. We took a carriage ride up to Neuschwanstein. It is much newer than you would think (built in the late 1800's), and actually had a telephone system built in to it. Most of the rooms in the castle were never even finished. Hohenschwangau, on the other hand, is quite old, with the oldest parts dating back to the 1200's. Between visiting the castles we had a nice lunch of brats and beer in Schwangau at a little beer garden, and walked down to the edge of Lake Alpensee.

And from there it was on to Munich. Our first night in Munich we were able to meet up with one of Christy's friends, David Meirose who is co-oping in Munich and eat dinner at the Hofbrauhaus. I'm not sure I have ever drank such a large beer before! We spent the next day seeing the Glockenspiel and the rest of the sights in downtown Munich in the old city before dropping Christy off at the hotel where she was going to stay since she was spending the week after we left seeing Munich, Innsbruck, and Berchtesgaden with David. I would have loved to have had more time in Munich. But all good things must come to an end, and it was off to Frankfurt for Carl, Sean and I to catch our plane home.

It was a fabulous, once in a lifetime trip! And someday I hope to be able to return to Europe to see more!!!

The first picture is of Carl at the Porsche Museum in front of the model of Porsche he used to have. The second picture is in Triberg, and the third is of Lake Bodensee. The fourth is of Christy and Sean on the Marienbrucke bridge with Neuschwanstein in the background, and the last is the Glockenspeil at the Neus Rathaus in Munich.

Europe - Part 5

The countryside driving from Koln down along the Mosel River is just beautiful. A lot of the crops are being harvested now, so there were tractors in the fields, and cows with cow bells. We made most of this drive on country roads instead of the autobahn, so we saw it all close up. As we got to the river we started seeing the vineyards. I knew from reading about them that the hill sides are very steep, but I still was amazed at how steep they are. It's really hard to imagine how people will pick those grapes come October. And seeing mile after mile of rows of grapes is quite amazing. Our hotel in Muden, Germany, The Hotel Sewnig, has a vineyard also. We sat on the patio after we checked in drinking several of their wines while eating dinner. Later that evening, Christy, Carl, and Sean took their laptops down to the hotel bar to get on the internet (I just read while we were down there), and we got quite a kick out of the locals that were at the bar drinking and singing drinking songs. The next morning we headed to Burg Eltz Castle. It wasn't very far away, and the guidebooks all said that the parking lot was an easy 10 minute walk away. Well, their time estimates were just a little off - it took about 15 minutes, and it was a STEEP walk - maybe easy on the way to the castle, but definitely not easy on the way back to the car. The castle has been standing since the 1200's, and never been damaged in a battle or war - it is still owned by the Eltz family. The picture on the front of my Shutterfly account was taken on the walk from the parking lot to the castle. We really enjoyed our tour. We were reminded again of how little history we Americans have compared to the European countries.

Then we headed off to St Urbans Hof winery. It was so different from any of the other wineries I've been to. We were the only people there at that time, and they took us upstairs to the tasting room, which was a lovely room with a large table that could have seated about 20. She brought each wine out one at a time, and was very knowledgale about the different wines and how they were grown. It was quite interesting, and relaxing (especially compared to the last winery we had all been to in Virginia). I had not realized how different the different types of Rieslings could taste depending on the type of soil, etc. We ended up buying 7 bottles, and could have bought a lot more if we could have figured out how to get them all home! I sure hope I can find a way to get some of their wines here in the states.

Then we headed off to Trier, a city full of Roman ruins dating back centuries. It was getting late when we got there, so we only had time to visit the museum before things started to close. (That is one of the things it would be hard to get used to in Germany - things close at around 6:00 pm every day, and on Sunday's most stores and all are closed). The next day was kind of rainy, so we ended up taking the little train tour instead of walking - made it hard to take pictures, but we stayed much dryer. If it had been a sunny day, we definitely could have spent more time exploring all of the ruins like the coliseum and the baths that we only saw from the outside.

The first pciture is some of the fields and cows we saw on our drive, and the second one is vineyards along the Mosel River. The last one is one of my favorite photos from the trip - the 4 of us along the trail to Burg Eltz castle, with the castle in the background.

Next up will be Stuttgart and the Porsche museum.