The second part of our trip was going back to Frankfurt and there we went on a half day Rhine River tour. I loved getting to see all the castles! I spared you most of my castle pictures (again if you want to see more you can go look at my Picasa Album).  As part of the tour, we got dinner and another wine tasting. Can you tell I love my wine? At that location, I was able to ship it back to the US. Very excited about this! I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my Italy wine horror story but I had securely packed a bottle of Chianti when we were flying back from Italy in my checked luggage. Needless to say, it didn’t make and since it was red, it did a good job of staining a few things, including a new leather purse I just bought! :-/ So I’ll never chance taking home wine in my suitcase again. Which is a shame because it is so much better in Europe. Sorry. Off topic. The Rhine River and the castles were beautiful.

I did find a Starbucks in Frankfurt. Lol! So I was able to get my Starbucks mugs for Germany and Frankfurt. That was my souvenir! The customs guy asked if I brought anything back. I said yes ‘Starbucks mugs.’ He just looked at me funny. Lol. I do wish I had more time to walk around Frankfurt with my camera as they had some really cool buildings and sculptures. So hopefully next time!

All images taken by me and cannot be reused without permission.

I’m sorry for being MIA last week (again!) We are still dealing with house stuff. I think we’re finally close to coming to a resolution (yes, about 3 weeks later!) but it’s not a closing. :-/ Needless to say, I’m not really happy but what can you do. But we are unpacked in the apartment now. Remember me complaining about it being dark in here? Well, we went to Ikea (yay!) and got some lights to hang on the ceiling and run the power down to the outlet. This is what we got for the bedroom and living room…

So it’s a little better but I do miss the natural light that I used to get. But this is cool because we can switch the shades out if I get bored of this. Speaking of Ikea, I ended up getting the futon I mentioned somewhere. (I thought it was on here but I can’t find the post, so it must have been Twitter.) But it’s this one. My parents slept on it this past weekend and said it was okay. Not as soft as it was in the store but hopefully it’ll break in a little bit.

So, onto BlogHer 2010 –  it was in NYC on Friday and Saturday. I wanted to go to the conference for the first time but I also wanted to go to meet Anna, from Be Healthy, Be Well, Be Inspired. We had been communicated through our blogs/twitter/email for the last 9-10 months and we just got along. It was great to see and meet her! We hit it off right away like we’ve always known each other! Okay, I was trying to upload some photos but WordPress kept dying on me. I’ll deal with it later. In the meantime you can check out Anna’s FB page as she’s uploaded most of them.

We got our picture taken with the sun from Jimmy Dean (the real one!), Pillsbury Doughboy, Wonder Woman, My Little Pony, Statue of Liberty… you get the idea! We passed on Bruce Jenner though. I didn’t need to take my camera, they gave us the pics. I am bummed we didn’t get our picture taken with Ms. Potato Head. But I did get a small one! …

Needless to say, the vendor area was huge! It was way bigger than anything I’ve ever seen and I got more SWAG than I dreamed possible! I had to send a boxful home since I didn’t have room in my suitcase! I was honestly surprised at the big name vendors that were there and had huge booths – Pepsi, Chevy, Jimmy Dean, Pur, Filtere, Quaker, Yahoo, Comcast, etc. It was really nice to go through. Saw some really neat products that I’ll talk about hopefully later.

We did spend more time in the vendor area because we did a lot of talking and networking with the people. Met a lot of great people. One of the people that inspired me the most was Christine Baze who survived cervical cancer and now lives to spread the word that you can prevent it with the proper knowledge. She started the Yellow Umbrella Organization. Check out her website here.  Did I mention she was a Rock Star too? You’ll hear her singing on her website. Awesome.

I forgot to mention I got to meet Michelle from When I Grow Up Coach. She is as awesome in person as she is on her blog! It was great to talk to her for awhile.

As for the meetings and breakout sessions, they were good. The first breakout session was not what we expected. It was suppose to be about usability of your blog and the description talked about Google Analytics, etc so we thought it was going to be around SEOs, etc. Nope. It was a basic beginning class. Stuff we learned in Holly’s Blogging Your Way Class. Which by the way is open for registration again! The main sessions were good, except for the one that Anna fell asleep in. Next year it is going to be in San Diego! I’m already working on my hubby to see if we (or I) can go. Rebecca from Design R already signed up after listening to me and Anna tweet about it all night! So it would be great to meet her! And anyone else that can go!

I go to work tomorrow and then repack for a quick trip to Germany!!! I am so excited! One of my friends has a job over there, so I’m going to meet up with her after her work is done and we’re going to hang out and spend her birthday there! Anyone know what to do in Frankfurt as I’ll be there by myself most of Wednesday??

Ok, I’m tired! Need some sleep!

Night my Chic Geeks!

I’m just checking in from Cabo! So far I am having a blast in the sun. The weather has been perfect and the view is beautiful. We had a rough time getting here thanks to Delta. :-/ We almost missed our flight and if they weren’t having mechanical problems with the flight, we would have. But you gotta love running through the Atlanta airport after the Delta lady tells you to ‘hurry, you may still make it’. I still wanted to tell them I won’t be in this position if it wasn’t for you to start with. And there’s only one flight per day, so who knows when we would have gotten here next. But anyways, we made it!

We’ve been enjoying laying at the pools enjoying the sun and shade! Today we went to downtown Cabo San Lucas and around the Marina and it was really nice. Of course there was a Starbucks there, so my day was made. We did a lot of walking around and exploring. Got a few souvenirs. Tomorrow I am planning on spending the day laying on the beach. What a great way to spend the vacation. I have read three books already. I only have one more non-fiction to go and then my non-profit book. So good thing I have my Nook with me with a few books on it!

I hope you enjoyed Anna’s Guest Post yesterday! I know I sure did. Speaking of guest posts, I did a guest post over at Covet Chicago yesterday. So please check it out!

Tomorrow, I will have a great interview for you with Ginger from GoingPlacesToo on Etsy. Also, she has offered a giveaway from her dog prints! So start looking through her prints and find your favorite! I personally love them all and am jealous for the winner! I have to admit I already have one custom one.

Here are a few pictures from Cabo I have taken with my iPhone 4. I haven’t uploaded pictures from my camera yet but I think my iPhone is taking great pictures! Hope you are having a great evening.

Images taken by me and cannot be used without permission.

This past weekend was a lot of fun for me. It was so nice to hang out with my brother and we all went to the Stockyards on Friday. Needless to say my brother and I got bored and started to playing around in the stores with all the fun hats and kids toys. And of course my brother had my camera, so we got pictures! It was actually fun to feel like a kid again with him. Lol, after my mom accused us later of hogging all the toys from the kids, I said, without thinking ‘There weren’t any other kids around!’. Lol. What can I say? Kid at heart sometimes. It’s good for all of us. Here are some of our ‘kid’ shots.

Haha, yes that is my attempt at a scary face! Lol, now aren’t you scared to run into me in a dark alley with a pink toy gun?

And just to end this out, here’s a happy family picture from the weekend.

All images taken by me or my brother, S, and cannot be used without permission.

Isn’t he the most precious thing? I really wanted to take him home! For some reason my husband wouldn’t let me. :-/ He’s so unreasonable sometimes!

Here’s one of the baby’s family. They allowed feeding of the giraffes, so that’s how I got so close. It was pretty cool.

Well now that I have gotten distracted with my baby giraffe, I need to start at the beginning. This was the first stop – the elephants. I think he was playing ‘Peek-a-boo’ with me.

Next was the giraffes but I already showed you those. So onto the most frightening thing I saw all day:

Needless to say, I didn’t hang around there very long!

Okay, so I wanted my picture with the llama, because it always reminds me of this song. The song makes no sense whatsoever but it cracks me up every time I hear it. My husband thinks I’m crazy. So here’s the picture I got of the llama and though, ‘Great! The Llama and I will have a great picture together!’

Well, he apparently had other ideas:

Well by this time we finally caught up with the rest of the family (the in-laws and six nieces!) so the day got a little more interesting, as you can imagine with six girls running around. For their privacy sake, I’m not going to put their pictures up here expect this one since it’s their backs. It’s just the cutest picture ever. Here are two of the younger ones (cousins) showing my husband where they are going next on the map. Yes, neither one of them can read but good thing there are pictures on there.

So after this, I’m carrying the youngest niece which makes it hotter than 100 degrees. And my hubby has the camera. You have to get a picture of the Flamingos!

My niece I was holding liked the monkeys. She could do their ‘sound’ quite well for someone who didn’t say much. It was cute. These monkeys liked to show off running up and down those ropes. It was entertaining!

And what trip wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Lion’s Den??

Hope you enjoyed our trip to the zoo!

* All pictures have been taken by me or my husband and cannot be used without permission.

The first day we wandered around Historic Downtown St. Augustine and saw the neatest water wheel:

A break for a latte and pumpkin muffin. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the heart. Isn’t it adorable?!? But then so is my hubby Of course, I had to get a pic with the latte but I was afraid of spilling it.

Historic St. Augustine

Okay, I saw this Cinderella Carriage and I chased it around the square until I could get a good shot of it. (Good shot meaning without cars. They were doing construction on the bridge, so I apologize for the background.) I really wanted to ride in it. Wouldn’t that be perfect for a romantic night ride? It was really pretty!

There’s an old fort downtown historic St. Augustine, so we went and saw that. It was pretty neat to walk around the outside. I’m standing in the moat area.

The sailboats on the coast while standing at the fort.

On our last day, we went to the Lighthouse in St. Augustine. We climbed all the way to the top! 219 stairs! There was a lot of neat history there and a nice place to tour.

The stairwell….

Back to downtown St. Augustine, this was in a Courtyard. Isn’t it gorgeous? There were huge fish in the water.

Also in the Courtyard was this piece by Frederick Hart. It caught my eye and I couldn’t leave until I got a picture of it.

Lastly, the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church was beautiful. I could see the dome around the city and needed to see it up close.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of St. Augustine!

All images were taken by me and cannot be reused without permission.

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All images taken by me and cannot be used without permission.

Images from: Executive Retreats

A picture of the tree with all the presents ready to be opened.

I couldn’t resist buying these shirts for my mom’s papillons when I saw them. I tried to get a shot where you could actually read them but I’m lucky they’re standing still to get this shot. The green shirt says ‘Santa’s Little Yelper’ and the red shirt says ‘Wreck the Halls’. They’re so suited for each puppy.

And then the day after Christmas we went to my in-laws for our second Christmas, where we went it with my husband’s parents, his sister J and brother-in-law and their four daughters. Here is their tree.

Here is my youngest niece when she decided she needed to lay down for a minute. Recognize that fabric? That’s one of the Christmas presents I was working on. I made six quilts for each of my nieces. They seemed to like them. The flannel was just so warm, so I hope they get lots of use out of them.

After we left there we met back up with my family for a quick vacation in Charleston.

There’s nothing like walking into a bookstore and seeing a cat curled up in a bin of books.

On the last day we went to the Charleston Tea Plantation, which is the only Tea Plantation in the USA. It was really neat to see. Of course, nothing was working in December, so I’ll have to go back when things are in production.

Then we rounded out the trip by spending NYE at my brothers/sister-in-laws, just hanging out and playing videos. A relaxing way to ring in the New Year!

What did you do over the holidays?

* All images taken by me for ChicGeek Designs and cannot be reused without permission

On the face of the Mountain is carved Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee, and Jefferson Davis. All key figures from the Confederate States of America.

You can walk to the top or ride the skyride. We choose the skyride today. Here’s the view of Atlanta from the top of the Mountain. As you can see the weather wasn’t really cooperating.

One of the things to do in Stone Mountain Park is the Antebellum Plantation. I love how they’ve decorated this house for Christmas. The little cornhusk horses are adorable. In the kids room, each kid has a different color yarn and the have to follow it to their present. So it’s a fun game. In the loom room, they are starting to decorate with popcorn and cranberries.

Stone Mountain Park does an amazing job of lighting up everything at night. I wish I knew how to work my camera well enough to do the lights justice, so here are the better pictures. The lights were just beautiful. Every tree, every building, everything was wrapped in lights.

* All images taken by me for ChicGeek Designs and cannot be reused without permission