My Birthday Stuff

I have mentioned before that I have a secret pal at my church. This is what my secret sister gave me for my birthday. The lettering on the gift bag looks strange because it one of those images that changes as you move it. It does look kind of weird in the picture. This is what was inside the gift bag. A charming basket filled with jams and spreads. I have not tried any of them yet. I thought that was a good gift. I have not decided what I will use the basket for next. I am sure an idea will come to me eventually. It has a divider in the middle that does not come out.> My husband decided to treat me to a weekend away from home. We were not that far away. Only the next town north where I work. But we got a really good deal at the hotel we stayed at courtesy of our daughter. She works for them and she can get us a family discount. This particular hotel was part of a special deal where we got the rooms for very cheap. We could not have done this otherwise. Even though it was quite cold this weekend, we had a great time. We went Friday after my husband got off work. I had been off on Friday due to a low caseload. Other therapists had each taken a turn at taking an unpaid day off. They had me take Friday. Other than not getting paid it was nice to have a long weekend. I was already scheduled to be off on Monday as my birthday holiday. We get a paid day off for our birthday as one of our perks. So I chose Monday not knowing I was also going to have to be off on Friday. That made it a 4 day weekend for me. I have not had one of those in a long time.> On Saturday we bummed around Railroad Square. I was aware of it, but we had never taken the time to check it out. It was within walking distance of the hotel. The banners hang on lamp posts around the area. We looked at the Basement Antique store, but the prices were quite high. Nothing there I wanted bad enough to spend the money. As I told my husband, nothing was calling my name there. However at the Furniture Depot store in the top right picture there was a cake plate calling my name. We did get that at 20% off. I have it pictured later in this post. There were 3 different Thrift stores, each one benefiting a different cause. I did find a gravy boat at one of them and hubby found a couple of shirts to use for work. We also checked out the Whistlestop Antiques. Lots of stuff in there. There were several dealers with spaces in there. You could tell where one started and ended. It was laid out very well. Did not get anything there though. Did not want to spend to much money just yet. But we plan to go back sometime.> The Charles Schulz museum is in this town so there are Peanuts characters all over. These are the ones we found in Railroad Square. I am posing in the picture in the middle which is in Depot Park. Near where the old train depot used to be. It is now a visitor's center. We ate lunch at the Omelet Express. We did not have omelets though since we each had one for breakfast at the hotel cafe. So we had sandwiches. I had the Grilled Cheese with Tomato on Rye bread. It was yummy. My husband had the Reuben also on Rye bread. Inside this restaurant there were this car fronts hanging on the wall. Hubby said all three were from Jaguars. I thought that was interesting so I got pictures of them. That is him taking a break from chewing down his Reuben sandwich.> After we ate we went on a carriage ride. The ride was free, but we gave the driver a tip. The other guy helping was gracious enough to take our picture with my camera. I had never been on a carriage ride so this was fun. It was also short and sweet.

This next shot includes the horse. Did I tell you it was fun? Yeah I guess I did.In this collage, the picture on the left is where we had some coffee. Well, I had a mocha. The upper right is the street where the shops we went was on and you can see the sign for the Omelet Express where we had lunch. The table made from a slab of slate or something was outside of another coffee shop. There were several of these tables outdoors. Interesting tables too. But no one was using them. It was too cold. We checked out this coffee shop on Sunday morning and it started raining while we were in there. We got wet walking back to our hotel.

Saturday evening we went to my work staff Christmas party. It was held at a bowling alley. We had a great time. And it was a short drive from our hotel instead of about a 40 min drive from home. That made it nice. Inside was this Snoopy. Look at the size of his shoes. 23 !/2!!! I couldn't resist getting a picture of that. I did not do very well. But someone else did worse who got the low score of the evening. There was a good turn out. Dinner was pizza and then we could bowl as much as we wanted until the ending time of the party. This was more fun than the two previous years where it was dinner and dancing. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it this year!!

This collage I took mainly for the benefit of our daughter. That way she could see what this one looks like inside and out. In the top left picture, our room was on the top floor in the window to the left. It was a nice room. Thank you to our daughter for the discount.
This is the cake plate I bought at the Furniture Depot store. I have never had a cake plate before. I finally have my first one. Can you believe that? It is Vera Bradley Majolica in the Red Sunflower pattern. I think I have that right. I want to eventually get the plates, cups and bowls too. They also have chargers in this pattern. I hope I can accumulate them over the next couple of months or so. But I do love this cake plate. When we got home on Sunday, I baked some cookies to put on the plate. Doesn't that look yummy?! In the background you can see a cookie jar lid I painted quite a few years ago. Also the bird on the wall too. I know it is hard to see. I will have to post a better picture of those sometime.
In one of the thrift shops we found this cute little gravy boat which is something else I never had. When I saw this one I just had to get it. It was only $3. Can't beat that! So that was my birthday weekend. It was wonderful even though it was cold. But that is what happens with a December birthday.