You Can Call Off the Search Party!!

Hey guys, remember me? lol Sorry I have been so out of touch lately. Things here are just crazy busy right now and I can't see it slowing down anytime soon! I've definitely missed blogging and more importantly I've missed reading all of your blogs! I need to find time to catch up with you all soon!

So, the last week of my Jackson trip was FAB! Will and I took a sleigh ride through the elk refuge, which was both thrilling and a little scary! Those animals are huge. And they have very pointy looking antlers! It was amazing seeing them that close though. I'd obviously never been on a sleigh ride and while fun, I'm very glad that is not our main source of transportation these days. It was cold!! And very bumpy! But it was a wonderful experience, something I'm not likely to do again for quite some time.







After the sleigh ride, Will and I went back down to the Gros Ventre Road where we saw all the bison during the summer. Didn't see any buffalo this time but we did see these instead:






Will and I also went snow tubing, finally. Kind of like the ghetto mini-golf experience we had last summer at Snow King, the snow tubing proved to be about the same. That was really disappointing. There were only 3 lanes and the rope tow thing was not set up very well and it was just...ugh. And the ground was pretty much a complete sheet of ice, which was nice for the ride down the tubes, but so not nice when you tried to walk. I almost broke my freaking neck, more than once, and I finally told Will that I was done! We have plenty of snow tubing here on the East Coast at resorts that are much better equipped and a lot less slippery! I did get my picture taken with the biggest snowman I've ever personally seen:

(please ignore that shadow under my nose which makes it look like I'm sporting a moustache!)




Our last night in Jackson, New Year's Eve, we went to dinner at this place that all the locals rave about - The Gun Barrel Restaurant. Personally, I thought it was just so-so. It was okay but certainly not as good as I expected it to be after all of the bragging everyone was doing. Later that night we met up with one of my internet friends that I've known for over 10 years. I keep in touch with this person a couple of times a year through emails and I just happened to check the email account we chat through the day before I left to go out to Jackson. I asked this person how their wedding went and if they were looking forward to Christmas and I mentioned that I was flying out the next day to Jackson to spend the holidays. I received an email back a few hours later telling me that he and his fiance were flying out to Jackson the following Saturday to spend a week! How freaking crazy is that?!?! I mean of all the places in the world they could've chosen to spend their vacation, they picked Jackson. And it just so happened that I was going to be there too? So, we met up with my friend and his fiance and went to the Tavern bar that night and shared a couple of pitchers of beer and caught up on the last 10 years! It was an excellent time and the band was really good.

My flight out of Jackson the following day was entirely too early! I had to be up by 5:00 but didn't get to bed until 1:30 and then I couldn't sleep. You know how it is when you know you have to be somewhere and you wake up every.thirty.minutes? Ugh! I have decided that I will never fly again unless I can get a window seat. My flight from Salt Lake back to Dulles was absolutely miserable. I was in the middle seat and couldn't get comfortable at all. I couldn't see out the window and kept getting motion sickness and thought I was going to hurl! It was horrible. Add to that the very little sleep I had the night before and I felt like I was going to DIE!

I was so glad to get home! I love Jackson but I really missed my thrift stores! I want to amend my statement that I could move there and be happy. It's beautiful and peaceful and so much fun but I definitely couldn't survive without access to better thrift stores!! I spent the majority of my day yesterday thrifting and it was quite successful! I found lots of goodies which I'll be listing in my store soon. I also went to a great yard/garage-ish sale on Saturday. I was looking up something on Google Friday night and came across an antique store in Gaithersburg, which is a good 50 miles from here, and noticed that they were having a HUGE sale the following day. Will was gone again (go figure eh) so I decided I'd drive over and check out what they had to offer. That was the best sale I'd ever been to! It certainly made up for all of the crappy yard sales I went to last summer! I asked the owner(s) if they were relocating or not and he said they were just closing their store due to their rent going up 25%. They said they'd still run their online business though.

I'm trying to be very productive today and get some items listed in my store but I have so much other stuff I need to be doing as well. Will and I (and the doggies!) leave tomorrow to drive down to SC to spend some time with my family. We'll be doing Christmas (which I have yet to shop for!) and we'll be there for my niece's 2nd birthday. I cannot believe she's 2 already. It feels like it was just yesterday that we were all at the hospital waiting for her arrival. Wasn't she adorable? This was our first picture together!!



So, that's my 2+ week update! It's been insane around here but hopefully after we're back from SC things will slow down a bit! I hope you all are doing well and enjoying 2009 so far!

Merry Christmas

Hey guys! I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas Eve with your families and friends. Will had to work tonight so I've been keeping myself occupied watching HGTV and Food Network! He'll be off at 10:00 though and we've got plans to drive to the Town Square (which really is only 2 blocks away but it's too cold to walk!) and take some pictures of the pretty lights and the snow.

Yesterday morning after Will came home from work and caught a cat nap, we got up and headed to the DQ for some lunch and then drove up to Grand Teton park. It was deserted and simply amazing. I cannot believe how much more beautiful the park is in the winter than in the summer. I mean I thought it was absolutely breathtaking in August, but that was nothing compared to yesterday. Everything was coated in thick, powdery snow and it was just so pretty. I almost thought I'd cry! I was really hoping we'd see lots of wildlife but no such luck! We saw this guy right before we left the park though.



After the trip to the park, we came back into town and tried to find our missing package that is being held hostage at the local post office but that was pointless! After standing in line for half an hour, we got the same answer we received on Monday. Basically, our package is here at the post office, it was marked undeliverable to our hotel (this is after we called before ordering and confirmed w/ the hotel that we could have something shipped and checking to see if we had the right address!!) but the Post Office has told us that our package sits among approximately 1000 others that have been marked undeliverable and that they don't have the time to search for it. UUUUUUGH!! I hope they make time to search for it before we leave!!

Anyhow, after the Post Office fiasco, we came back to the room and rested for a while before heading to another one of our favorite restaurants, Teton Steakhouse. Our plans were to eat dinner and then head over to the Snow King tubing place but we ate so much that the snow tubing didn't happen! Our dinner was fabulous though and we'll go snow tubing later this week!

We had a nice breakfast here at the hotel this morning and then went walking around downtown. The stores are all having fabulous sales which is nice but there weren't many people out shopping. Will had to go to work at 2, so we didn't have much time to hang out downtown but in that short time we were out walking around, my face managed to get wind burned and I look like a big old lobster now! Take a look at the friend we made today down at the Town Square:



Here are a few other pictures from the Grand Teton Park that we took yesterday.

A couple of pictures!

Hey y'all! Will and I had a wonderful day here in snowy Wyoming. After breakfast and running a couple of errands, we headed out to the Gros Ventre Road that we loved traveling on last summer. It's the area we saw the most buffalo and the charming little barn on Mormon Row. We drove down the road for a couple of miles before we hit a little buffalo-jam and had to turn around! We drove down the road a couple more miles and stopped into the Grand Teton Visitor Center and took some pictures and threw some snowballs at each other! We came back to town and headed to Bubba's BBQ for a late lunch and then came back to the room and took a nap! Will is working an 8 hour shift tonight and the weather is still cold & snowy but it's so beautiful! I read earlier that another huge storm is coming this way and should arrive on Christmas Eve and stick around through Christmas Day and that night too and they're expecting a lot more snow than this storm produced! Eeeeeeeek! I am so in love!! Anyhow, here's a few pictures I was able to take today. They aren't the best quality but I hope you enjoy them anyway!!

Greetings from snowy Jackson Hole!

Hey y'all! I made it safely out here and I am having a great time. I've come to realize that I could definitely move here, even without Target and good thrift stores because it is just so beautiful here that I'd gladly sacrifice those things in exchange for seeing these views every day!

My flights were both on time yesterday, which is a miracle and I arrived out here about 12:30. Will and I went and grabbed a late lunch at one of our favorite restaurants here, Sidewinders, and then we came back to the room so I could take a much needed nap. At that point I had been awake for 30-something hours!! We ran to the grocery store last night and came back and sat in front of the fireplace and watched the snow fall.

Speaking of snow, we're supposed to get another 10-18 inches today and I am so in love! I've never seen so much snow before in my life and this place looks like a total winter wonderland. This is the best Christmas EVER!! We're heading out in a bit to run some errands and then we may drive up to the Grand Teton Park today and do a little sight seeing. I'm hoping to see a lot of animals and have lots of photos to share tonight! Here's a picture from our hotel room window yesterday of the slopes over at Snow King Resort. Add another foot (yes, foot!!) of snow and that's what it looks like today!



Hope you all had a great weekend, full of holiday festivities and time with your families!

I Bought the Dresser!! Oh, and I'm heading to Jackson for Christmas!

Amazingly enough, the dresser was still there! And I bought it with my 25% discount so I only paid $23 including tax. Man I love a good bargain. I've already started loading it up with all of my stuff and I took my work table out of the room because I don't really use it. I mean the top is always full of junk but I needed the storage from the dresser and I can still use the top for crafting or wrapping up purchases!

And I finally broke down and bought my ticket out to Wyoming today too! I'm glad I waited because I found an even cheaper flight out there. I double checked a few things and found out that for $28 dollars more I could stay a day longer and fly home the same day as Will!

So, I haven't even started my Christmas shopping and it doesn't look like I'll get much done before we leave. Just as well. We can do Christmas when we get back in January. I do need to go pick up a few things before I get out there. Like good quality thermals and some appropriate footwear for cold and snowy weather.

I think I'm done listing Christmas items in my Etsy shop. I hope I can find some time next week to do a little thrifting before I head to Wyoming. I need to find some new stuff to list when I get home. I would say I could do some thrifting while I was in Wyoming but I know how those stores are in Jackson so that's not looking promising at all!

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas...

But I still have a way to go before I get everything exactly how I want it. The tree in our foyer is up and half decorated. It looks great so far but I need to finish it tomorrow. And *MY* tree, the one in my scraproom/office is up and mostly decorated and I am totally in love. I went out and bought a 6.5' tall, white, pre-lit tree and it's decorated with all of my old Shiny Brite's and other vintage ornaments. I cannot wait to get it done so I can take pictures and share with y'all!

I cannot believe it's already 7 December either. This month is already flying by!! Of course I had a fashion crisis last week which had me at the various malls in the area shopping for 11 hours one day and another 5 the next. I was in desperate need of finding something to wear to the Holiday Reception we had to attend tonight at Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's house. Do you have any idea how much I hate to shop for clothing? Uh, I was so frustrated after spending 11 hours in the stores that I literally started crying. I was tired and ill and nothing fit right and I couldn't find anything I thought would be appropriate for this little shin-dig. Ugh. I didn't even make it to the Value Village on Thursday to try out my new card which gives me 25% off on Thursdays!

The aforementioned party was this afternoon and it was pretty swanky! Granted, it was held in a huge white tent but damn, that's the nicest tent I'd ever been in! The Air Force band (orchestra?) was playing the entire time, there was an open bar(!!) and the food was decent, although kind of weird for a cocktail party! I didn't expect to see mini cheeseburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs cut in half, bowls of popcorn and macaroni and cheese, but whatever. lol There were quite a few kids there so I'm sure the food choices pleased them but I think it was, I dunno, not tacky but weird. Even the port-o-potty trailers were all swanked out. Heck, those toilets in trailers were nicer than the bathroom of the first house we rented here in Maryland! We were shuttled in to the actual residence and then we had a photo with the VP and the Mrs and then went into the tent and socialized. I just assumed that the VP and his wife would come into the tent at some point but they never showed! Of course our party was their second of the day and at that point they'd shook hands with roughly 1000 people so they probably just wanted to go sanitize their hands, take some Airborne and get some sleep! All in all it was a nice time and I've figured out that NW DC is way nicer than the ghetto parts over near the Base!

I am still debating if I'm going to fly out to Jackson for Christmas. I've found an even better price for a flight than I found last week (and much less than the 2,200.00 one!) and I really really want to go back out. While at the party today, there were all of these pictures of Mr. Cheney out in Jackson during the winter, and just pictures of the scenery itself with tons of snow and I tell ya, I felt a tug in my heart because I really do want to be there. I told Will the other day that if I had known in August that I probably wasn't going back out for Christmas that leaving would've been much, much harder. If I had known when I drove away that that was the last time I'd see that area I would've been so sad. And I've been kind of in a funk lately because I thought I'd be here alone and my husband would be there seeing all of the beautiful snow and winter wonderland and maybe I was feeling jealous.

So, do y'all think I should go? If I have to stay home, I'll be sad but I'll make the most of it too. I can thrift as much as I want, I can hit up all of my favorite antique stores, I can go to DC and go ice skating or up to PA and go snowtubing. On the other hand, out in Jackson I can see so many fabulous things I just can't see/do here in Maryland. I can't drive down the road and see herds of buffalo or elk. I can't drive down the road and see the amazing Grand Tetons. And snow. I don't see much of that here, although it did snow (and stick!) yesterday. Ugh, I am just so cheap that I hate spending that much money on a flight. Not to mention the total pain in the ass that flying has become. If I do fly out, I'm sending all of my bags with Will on Air Force 2 just so I don't have to check any luggage or deal with any of that crap.

Anyhoo, tomorrow is of course Monday and we all know by now that the VV does 25% off on Monday which means I need to get to bed early so I can be up/dressed early. I also have to stop by the post office and mail off another package. Someone bought that totally cool Halo Tree Topper I posted last week on my Etsy page. I had almost decided to keep it and put it on my tree but I'm happy to have made another sale too!

I hope to get things somewhat organized tomorrow so I'll have time to visit all of my bloggy friends. I'm starting to go through withdrawals since I haven't had time to visit lately. Hope you're all doing fabulous!