July Nails

Design by Jaunty Juli on YouTube. 

New "All Ears" glitter polish on yellow nails.  Love them!
Lots of Mickey Nails on the net. 

Pacman! They looked so good!
The Nailausaurus did these, but I got a lot of ideas off YouTube.

These? Not so good. The purple polish was too
 thick/textured for what I was trying to do

Love my peacock nails. Used Stamping plates then hand-colored them in. 

Busy September

We had a busy September.

I took my first flight EVER with my husband.

Our house

St. Augustine and the Fort, Castillo de San Marcos

Then the very next day, David flew us north to surprise relatives (I already blogged about it.)

We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary with a lovely dinner at Ruth's Chris.

Rehearsal dinner 12 years ago

Proud to say I am 45.

My gal and I went to Cirque du Soleil's traveling show, Verekai, with tickets I won off the radio.

After that, I carved a stamp for a friend of a friend,

and got completely spoiled by my oldest nephew and his fiancee when they spent the weekend at our place.

Early Birthday gifts from my nephew Jonathan and his fiancee Jessica.

On my actual birthday, we all had the evening off in the middle of the week, and went out for a fun family dinner.

(He did that face on purpose, the goof.)

We even went shopping for a Halloween costume for our gal already!

Hmm. I think her throat is "horse."

Peanut butter & jelly smoothies

Costume sneak peek

I can't remember a more fun September.  

Savannah-Bound: Savannah, the Next Day

Although the plan was to sleep in, Isabel's not really a late sleeper.  She woke, got dressed, and in the process woke me up too.  We left David sleeping and went to explore the hotel and maybe find something to eat.

We found a Starbucks in the hotel, had some muffins and drinks, and then went exploring.

A gorgeous Chihuly hangs in the second floor entrance to the hotel's restaurant.  My favorite colors.

Decoration for an Indian wedding taking place that morning.

The view of downtown Savannah's waterfront from our hotel.

After exploring, we woke David, got packed and left out beautiful resort, to head back over hte bridge to Savannah.  We parked in the visitor's center, where parking was free on Sundays. Hooray.

We entered the visitor's center, got free maps, bought a Self-Guided Tour of Savannah book and headed out on foot.

I took WAY too many pictures. I'll post the ones that I like most.

Sorrel-Weed house.

Guardians of the Nicholas Kruger House. Each of these birds is holding a round stone between its wings.
If the bird would fall asleep. he'd drop the ball on his foot, waking him up to continue his vigil.

Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church

Hamilton-Turner Mansion, believed to be haunted by the Hamilton children.
 The house was featured in the book "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil." The Hamilton-Turner
mansion was visited by Walt Disney. It became the inspiration for his "Haunted Mansion."

We walked for almost two hours before FINALLY stopping to eat at the waterfront.  I was cranky and hungry and tired.   Being Labor Day weekend, it was crazy-packed.  We waited an hour and 10 minutes to eat at the Pirate's House.  Memo if visiting: MAKE RESERVATIONS!  If you make reservations, you get seated immediately.  I wasn't greatly impressed.  Tourist restaurant with tourist fare.  

After eating, we continued on our tour, heading back to the car in the process.  Savannah has SO much history.  It was beautiful.  I can't understand anyone being in Savannah and not loving the history and the gorgeous buildings everywhere.

We drove home that evening, Sunday, because David had to work Monday night, and we didn't feel like spending another night in a hotel.  

What a fun, spontaneous weekend getaway!

Savannah-Bound: Savannah First Night

Back to the Labor Day weekend vacation:

We drove over the bridge that goes from Savannah to a small island between Savannah and S. Carolina to get to our FREE hotel, the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa.

Driving over the bridge to get to our hotel.

 There was ZERO parking.  The parking lot, usually a fee-to-use lot, was wide open and there was NO WHERE to park.  Cars were double-parked, parked in fire lanes, etc.  I know it was Labor Day weekend, but what the what?  David dropped us off while he went back to circling.

We learned that there were not one, but two weddings being held this evening. Hence the free parking / no parking situation.  We ended up parking on this bridge, pictured above, until later in the evening (way later) when the wedding guests had gone.

Our view from the room!  Wedding party # 1 on the left, leaving. Wedding # 2, nit started yet, on the right.

We decided to give Isabel an hour in the pool before we jumped on the free ferry to take us across to the historic Savannah waterfront for dinner.

The waterfront of Downtown Savannah is behind us. We have to take a ferry to get there.

The hotel as seen from our deck chairs.

We went upstairs so Isabel could change and then caught the ferry over to the mainland.  It was busy. Lots of traffic, lots of people, and in my opinion, not very kid-friendly at night. I was a little disappointed at my first taste of Savannah.  

We were starving and EVERY restaurant we stopped at had over an hour-long wait.  Isabel was sagging.  It was past her bed time.  We ended up at Tubby's on the second floor of a building.  The wait was over an hour. We had no choice.  Tons of people, some getting seated way before other's who had been there longer, making people angry and leave, and then suddenly, random young staff guy walks over to us, sees Isabel lying on my lap, and whispers "Just the 3 of you?"  I nod.  He says "I got a booth, want it?"  DO I?  I get up, call David and hurry after the young man before anyone notices that we just jumped ahead of a bunch of people who are downstairs listening to live music and watching artists paint.

Two very tired ladies.

David plays games with Isabel to distract her from being so tired.

We had a good dinner. Mine was the best meal of the three of us.  Parmesan chicken alfredo over linguine with mushrooms, spinach and garlic.  SO GOOD.

The building the restaurant was in had many levels.

We walked back to the Ferry stop, took the ferry, David moved the car to a real parking space, and off to sleep we went.

Our hotel, from the ferry.