A road trip with lots of eye candy! (Pic Heavy)l-r

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I am finally sitting down after cleaning all day.  I still have a pie to make tonight but the crust is in the oven and then it has to cool before I can finish it so I thought this might be a great time take a few minutes and tell you all about a little trip I went on last Saturday with a few friends.

We have a group of ladies that come to our retreat from Des Moines Iowa.  The subject of a group of us going to Des Moines for a day of stitching came up one day at our last retreat while we were eating.  Those of us at the table thought it sounded like a stellar idea so a date was chosen and plans were made and last Saturday we all got up at the crack of O'dark thirty and hit the road to Des Moines.  Doreen picked Connie and I up at my house and then we headed to Council Bluffs to pick up Linda and after that we took a quick detour off the interstate at Avoca to pick up Mary.  From there it was a straight shot to Des Moines, well if a person was going to technical, it was a straight shot to Ankeny.  Our destination was the home of a lovely lady by the name of Patty.  Arriving at Patty's house we were greeted at the door with a warm smile and a come on in!  This is Patty and her friend Tom:

Patty has a beautiful home, It was all decorated for Thanksgiving.  She has a huge table in her kitchen that can hold 10 easily.  Which is good because that's how many of us were there.  It was the perfect size group, everyone could talk to everyone and you could hear what everyone else was talking about too.  Except for Dana, I don't think Dana said more than a handful of words but as she put it, she just likes to listen.  The Des Moines gals treated us to salad, pizza and dessert and we spent the day talking and laughing and having a great time!

L-R:  Merrilyn, Elaine, Doreen, Connie, Dana and Cathi

L-R:  Cathi, Linda and Patty

While we were there Patty offered us a tour of her home and me, being the smart blogger that I am, brought along a camera so I could share pictures of her stitching.  She had some beautiful pieces!  I won't post all of the pictures I took because that would take forever and I don't have that much time!   With a couple of exceptions, I have no idea who the designers are or what the names of the pieces are.  I just know that I enjoyed the eye candy!  I hope you will too!

Merrilyn had a finish while we were there.  She finished Jenny Beans Creation Sampler.  Much prettier than the picture on the chart!

As the day drew to a close, we packed up our bags and prepared to leave.  Then Merrilyn asked if we would like to take a side trip to her house to see her sampler wall.  Heck Yes!  I had heard stories of her sampler wall from others and couldn't wait to get a peek at it.  It was pretty awesome.  It's rather breathtaking when you see them all grouped together on one wall don't you think? (make sure you click on the picture so you can see them better!)

She also had a basket of needlerolls that  a couple of us were thinking about stashing under our shirt as we left.  But we didn't.  Honesty prevailed and we left everything where we found it.  But it wasn't easy!  Aren't these gorgeous?!!

We didn't make it home that night until almost 8p.m. but we all agreed it was a wonderful day and so nice to get to know our friends from Iowa a little better!  We're hoping another invitation will be extended in the spring, we'd be all over that even though we have to be up before the birds to get there at a decent time!
Thank you Patty, Cathi, Dana, Elaine and Merrilyn for a wonderful day!

I've got to go finish my pie and then I think I will stitch for a while before heading to bed.  Tomorrow will be a busy day with all the family coming over.   2 weeks ago there were going to be 25 of us but my sister and her family are not coming, her kids have low functioning immune systems and have been sick for weeks and she would rather keep them home tomorrow so as not to expose them to more stuff and maybe miss Christmas.  And Amy was supposed to bring her boyfriend but he went and used the "L" word after only a month of dating and she decided it wasn't fair to keep seeing him when she knew she didn't/wouldn't feel that way about him.  She liked him...a lot...and is very sad about the breakup but she had to be honest with him and he agreed there wasn't much point in continuing to see each other.  So we're down to 19 but still a houseful especially when you add in the 3 hyper dogs that will be running around!

Have a wonderful Turkey Day and take care till next time!

Julie