A Trip to Pike Place Market

This blog seems to have evolved into a blog about many things. One subject that keeps coming up is the wonderful area that we call home. This Sat. the SBA and I took the ferry over to Seattle. It was kind of a dreary day and we hadn't been over there for quite awhile. It's fun to walk on the ferry(that's also much cheaper), then walk up to the market. It's about 1/2 mile uphill from the ferry dock. Today , the post will show things that we saw on the way up. Tomorrow, I'll show the market itself. It's a big complex and much of what I'll show today is attached to the market. I hope you enjoy this look at a famous part of Seattle.

This is quite a famous view. My maiden name was Pike(no connection to the market) so I do have fun with all the Pike words!

A really busy Sat.

On the way up to the market you see the Seattle Art Museum. The hammer moves.

This place has the best Reuben sandwiches!!!! I'll show more of this place tomorrow.

A tea shop.

Every kind of hat you can imagine!

This was in a typical t-shirt shop.

I always take a look in the window of this quilt shop. Aren't those Orcas beautiful!!!

I found this quilt amazing!!!!

The main part here shows the Kitsap peninsula. That's where we live.

See the little blue lake dot? Our house is between that lake and Puget sound.

This amazing carving is done on fossilized bone.

The native NW art is so beautiful!!

Tomorrow's post will start here with lunch!!! Thanks for joining me!

Bargains and cross stitch

Today was a very rainy day even for the Seattle area. The SBA and I needed to go grocery shopping. We decided to go for coffee at our favorite little shop in Poulsbo-Hot Shots Java. A great thing about the Pacific NW is we have lots of good coffee shops. Even our grocery stores have coffee bars. We're spoiled. When we travel out of this area , I miss the convenience of great coffee shops. Well, that's not the point of this blog. After our coffee, we went into a few shops in Poulsbo. I got two great bargains.

Here's a cute little candy box. I have a few of these. He was $7.50 had been $14.50.

If you have looked at this blog for awhile, you'll know how much I love Halloween and the fall. I also like mercury glass! The fall stuff was 70% off. I got this great pumpkin for $12.88. It had been $42.88. I use blue turkey plates at Thanksgiving so I know I'll be able to make use of this awesome pumpkin. All in all, a great shopping day!

Sorry for the wrinkles but I wanted to show my progress on the current cross stitch. I did the border. I'm always nervous as I complete the border. If you mis-count anywhere along the way the border doesn't match. I do a happy dance when the border matches just right!

The cinnamon color isn't showing up too well in the photos, but it does look very good. I like the way this one is coming out.
Thanks for taking a look.

Snoqualmie and the Cascades

We've had a busy day taking down lots of the Christmas decorations. I always have mixed feelings. Part of me likes to see some of the extra clutter(decorations) gone , but the house looks a bit plain. I've had things decorated since Halloween!!!! Well, I mentioned that today I would show you a bit of the little town, Snoqualmie. There was really no shopping to speak of but the town was nicely decorated for the holidays. A special thanks to the comments on yesterdays post. I'm so glad you enjoyed seeing the falls. The great comment from "Octoberfarm(one of my favorite blogs) makes me want to spend the night at the lodge next time we go up to the falls.

Each light post had these flags.

I thought the light posts were charming and they all had these decorations.

Can you imagine making the cross walks so decorative?

Lunch time!

This little brewery sells beer in many different places in the NW. Being beer lovers, we wanted to try the beer.

The food was also good!

This was in a park in town. Can you imagine seeing lots of trees this size? You can still see them in the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula. It's very near Forks(where the Twilight series supposedly took place). I think another trip is coming!! Maybe I'll wait till the rain slows down a bit!

This was a view from the town.

The beautiful Cascades!

Have a great week and thanks for looking!

New Year's Eve at Snoqualmie Falls

On the day of New Year's Eve, my husband (the SBA) and I decided to visit a place we have not ever seen before, not on any visit to the area or since we moved out here. We had lots of rain last week and Sat. was suppose to be sunny. Plus, we heard on the news that Snoqualmie Falls was really great to see because of all the water rushing down the river thanks to all the rain! We took a ferry to Seattle, had coffee and scones at one of our favorite bakeries(Cafe Ladro), and drove about 30 minutes east of Seattle to the falls. We had a great day. There has been no snow at all this year and we found a few inches of snow as we drove into the mountains. Tomorrow, I'll show pictures of the little mountain town but for today , it all about the falls!

This shows a post card we bought. There was so much spray that we took pictures but didn't leave the camera out long enough to see the quality of our shots. Thankfully we did get some good ones as you will see. The falls looked like this so we knew that if we didn't get good pictures, we could show this one.

Here is how the falls look in the summer when less water is flowing.

This is a foot bridge that you can take from the parking lot. Lots of folks must have heard the same news report that we did- it was quite crowded. Notice the snow.

I love to learn about the history of a place.

Here we are at the falls. The falls are 268 feet. According to the post card, 100 feet farther than Niagara.

Can you believe the spray- I had an instant BAD hair day!

This is a picture of the SBA's coat. I wanted to show how much moisture was in the air. This is not rain!!!!

Here's the river-far below the falls.

This lovely lodge and spa are located at the falls. I also wanted a picture of the snow

The lodge was still all decorated for Christmas.

Tomorrow , I'll be showing the cute mountain town of Snoqualmie. Thanks for taking a look.