Hello Again (a little sooner than expected)

It seems there really aren't very many places to stay in the truck on this side of the country or this side of Dallas. So here we are at another hotel. Here's a couple of snapshots of our last few days. All starting with the beginning of Texas. It took three days to get through TX and it was all thorns, wind, and bad rest stops. There was this one old building in TX that was great, we stopped there shot some great pictures and found lots of treasures.


Me.... Treasure hunting.

The best part of Texas.





Treasures found - melted and broken glass, we're thinking the building caught on fire at some time.



Like I said.... Thorns

Pretty things too in Texas.


This is how we eat on the road.




It seemed that no matter where we went we followed the train.

Our pressed half dollar, thank you train.

Good bye Texas

Yes we're finally out of Texas. We now find ourselves in Tennessee. I like Tennessee. Since I succumbed to TV last night and...... Well this morning too, this is kind of a lame post. Check out time is technically one minute away. But real quick, we still have our friendly stow away eating a healthy varied diet. Andrew is currently learning about how to keep a wild mouse because we certainly can't release a wild desert mouse in the middle of a northeast winter, right? Looking for things to do in TN, since we still have 3 days til our destination which is only the state right next door. Hopefully the great Smoky Mountain national park will work out. Well, friends we must be shoving off, Until NC, farewell......


Memphis


Fireworks for my Dad.


Woah, crazy signs and their everywhere. This one was found somewhere around Arkanasas Tennessee area.

Mesilla

Currently we are in Texas. It feels like we've been here forever. I really don't like this state very much. Sorry to anyone is from Texas, I would love to hear about the good stuff in Texas. I'm betting it's prettty nice in southern Texas near Mexico. Anyone want to try to change my mind about Texas let me know. I don't like not liking a state, seems so judgemental or something. So far I've only found brambles and wind here in Texas, SO windy and everything has thorns it's so strange. A couple tumble weeds and I did get to see a Road Runner!! Very excited about that, they're very silly. We're about to pass through Fort Worth and Dallas and get the heck out of here. And on the Arkansas, on to new adventures. At least there are now trees, a sight for sore eyes.


What I really want to talk about is Mesilla.... In New Mexico about an hour before El Paso TX (if you want to look on a map) there is a city called Las Cruces. We wanted to stay in hotel to get cleaned up and online and some bathtub laundry. But if we're going to spend the money to stay somewhere, we wanted to hang out a little and see the place. Well... We randomly picked LasCruces because we were getting a little desperate. Well... We randomly picked an awesome little town. In Las Cruces there is a section of town called Mesilla. If you know Eureka, CA then Mesilla in like Old Town. Mesilla is so darn cute. Old adobe houses, bunches of dried chillies hanging in every ones windows, shops selling all kinds of local art, antiques store and great Mexican restaurants.



We stopped in this great shop - the Purple Lizard two great gals who work and/or own the shop, great clothes. I got stuck there for longer than expected and walked out with three awesome new articles of clothing. I had to... Everything in the front room was three for $20. Anything..... And we are not talking junk here. Great stuff, really. You must check it out, if ever in the area.


After my little shopping spree we stopped at this little place, I think part of the building is an antique store and the other side, not sure. But it was just great looking. This is the part of New Mexico I was missing. I never understood what was so great about New Mexico. We always drove through on I40 through Albuquerque. Albuquerque doesn't do much for the state, it's not very enchanting (license plates says "Land of Enchantment"). But, now I understand.


And last but not least the houses around Mesilla.

Friends.....

We are now off for the next leg of our trip - Texas. Forever we will be in Texas. Until we find online access again, farewell.

Oh, go here to read more about our trip and here to read a little about a little stow away.

And, here we are in Quartzite, AZ -- our favorite desert spot.

As Promised :: GREEN

Desert green, this was a bit of a challenge. It was pretty fun though going on a treasure hunt for green in the desert.

We interup this traveling broadcast to......

to show off some great pictures Andrew randomly took of our niece Kamryn. I love the innocent carefreeness in her face. Just had to show off.....

A little Hello from the desert

Well the New Mexico info center on I10 close to the AZ border has free WiFi if your ever in the area and need to get online. And it's a great rest stop too. We had an amazingly great stay in Quartzsite, AZ for a couple of days. Shopped a little at the Main Event, I show those pictures later since I have not yet downloaded them. Spent most of the time hanging out and hiking around the desert. Found a place where they were hounding for some kind of quartz so we found our rock hammer and Andrew went at it and got us some beautiful turquoise, smokey quartz and clear quartz, very beautiful and also not yet down loaded. Yesterday was spent frustratingly as we drove around in circles in Phoenix to try to get to see Body Worlds 3, in the end we gave up and left. Then to Tucson where we did the same darn thing - drove around in circles looking for a super market that we could actually park in (we are the size of a small RV and really hard to back up). Today is good though, just trying to decide on our next route since Louisiana seems to be getting some very ugly weather that we'd like to avoid. Anyway, here are some of the pictures from Quartzsite.

Family Goodness

Everybody but one, Andrew's brother Steve left early....


Cooking up a feast


Casey and Kamryn


Kai


All the ladies in the house

blogger lesson

Sisters :: from left to right Brooke, Jennifer, Me (behind Jennifer), Jolyn and than Jessica.

Hey everyone, I'm just showing Brooke about Blogger. Trying to convince her it's the way to go.... And since I want to show Brooke about linking here's a great site for really awesome socks... Sock Dreams

Last Day

Click pict. to see details

It was a rough ride but we made it. Almost all of our plans fell apart and had to be changed at the last minute. We had to miss our favorite bakery and may never be able to go again if we're not in the area. Didn't get to see Jason at Mount Madonna. We had to take a different route. We left so late, we had to drive separately the whole way down to LA from Arcata (12 hours). Lots of problems with the truck and it's fuel line. The cars tow bar didn't work, well it really didn't work it ripped the bumper off the car. Such a bad start, this has never happened. Oh and after we stayed in a hotel that night we woke up to see that the car had a flat tire. It was unreal. But, now we're in Simi and safe as houses. Hanging out with family, shopping, feasting, gossiping and all the good stuff. Warm, sunny So Cal....... Above is our farewell to Arcata, a hard place to leave.

Craziness

Well friends, things are getting crazy round here. We are getting to the final stages of taking our little nest apart and making ready for our exodus. So...... I may not be around much soon. But.... I will be keeping a travel photo journal. I decided to keep it here on the blog instead of Sqrl & Bee, it's just easier to up load and all. So.... Check in to see the adventures of Sqrl & Bee transcontinental, it should be fun.

~ And yes, there will still be a green collage coming, soon one day and then blue and than purple, I promise.

Bird

Look at this guy, he was such a ham this morning. Puffing his little chest out and fluffing his wings. I was out snapping pictures of a snowy egret that was visiting the field behind our home and this little guy kept chirping at me, he wanted his picture taken. I just love our sparrows, I'm going to miss them so much. Especially when they would bath, they would get so excited and dance around in their little bowl and sing. Sweet little things.....

Nesties

Finally some nesties.... These are so fun to make and I love using up my fabric scraps. I'm still deciding on what (if anything) to put it the nests. I made a ton of paper mache birds mostly for the wreathes and I have a lot left over. I was thinking though, that birds usually make nest that just fit their itty bitty bottoms with not much room to spare. These nest would be like mansions for my birds. So then I was thinking of just putting eggs in the nest, kind of like Momma just stepped out to get dinner. The Bee is dabbling in a little needle felting, which is very cool. So I was thinking of may be making some feltie eggs may be for the nests. I have some wool that a friend sent me dark chocolate brown and a oat color, I could do some spotted eggs may be.

Well..... We'll have to wait to show off these pictures because Blogger is not cooperating.

Mellow Yellow?

Is Yellow mellow? I don't know if mellow is the word that comes to mind when I think of yellow. I think of yellow as an intellectual color, a thinking color, an industrial color...... Well, last Friday we had yourselves a yellowie kind a day in Eureka. A perfect kind of day for yellow since the sun had temporary won the forever on going battle with the clouds. Today would be more of a grey/white day. Anyway, yellow turned out to be harder to find than red and orange and it was very often found with black....

Coming soon...... Green.

It's an Army of Sqrl's

What more could a girl ask for but her very own patterns. I just say what creature I want and proof, magic it's 3D. Ah, if it were really that simple....... As you can see 10 sqrl's later we finally have one that works. I can take no credit for this. I certainly don't have the patience or focus to do this. This is the work of the Bee. He has the amazing ability to take a concept, a drawing in a sketchbook and build it into a 3D model. Sounds simple but it is so not. I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am for this help and how excited, because the sqrl is just the beginning.

Who's that?

It's Rupert the robot.......



Oh yes, and don't forget Ratso (see the little mousie nose sticking up there), the mouse that lives in The Bee's pocket.

Well.. I hope all who celebrate had a great holiday. We don't celebrate here in our house but we did go for "drinks and goodies" at a friends house on Christmas eve and that was real nice. Christmas day was quiet and relaxing. I started working on a new project and am so very excited about it. You see, we have this tree in the little courtyard in front of our apt. Not sure but it's some kind of weepy birch kind of tree. When it's windy it sheds it's branches and it's branches make the best wreaths. Well, it was so windy this week I thought we were going to blow away and I couldn't help getting excited about the all the downed branches that I would find in the morning. Now, I know I shouldn't be making anything right now with the amount of junk I already have to move across the country but you see I just can't help myself. I can't just let those beautiful branches lie. And I'll be seeing so many wonderful people in the beginning of our trip so now I'll have presents to give. I like giving presents, even if it's just an excuse to make things... Shh, don't tell..... Since I'm just totally digging on the whole paper mache' thing, I've decided to make two little birds for each wreath and nuzzle them into the branches. This tree makes a very nesty looking wreath, perfect for birds. This got me thinking nesty so now I'm working on making little nests. Not as easy as you'd think. For little tiny animals with little teeny bird brains and no thumbs or even hands for that matter, it's pretty impressive this nest making. It definitely took this big brained animal with poseable thumbs quite a while to figure out how to build a nest. Well... I've got one done and working on another I want to put a smaller bird and some eggs in each nest. They are so darn cute I'll have pictures eventually. Now I just have to find a similar tree on the east coast..... Above are some the prints that came on of our silk screening fun last week. I think I'm quite happy.