Nashville Mini Vacation, History and Country Music

Hello and happy Sunday. Come in and have a nice cup of coffee or tea or some hot chocolate with me. Let’s catch up. What have I been up to you might ask? Well let me tell you about my weekend in Nashville last weekend. I had a short mini vacation with a friend from Pennsylvania.This is how it went:

Last weekend I spent a few days in Nashville with a friend from Pennsylvania. We met several years ago at a cave convention. Yes there really is such a thing. We just became friends really fast. We have been talking about this Nashville trip for years. Every time we planned it something came up and we weren’t able to do it. But it finally worked out.

My friend Ann flew into Nashville Friday afternoon. I am about 4 hours from Nashville. I picked her up at the airport and we started our adventure.

We stayed at the Hotel Vanderbilt which is very close to downtown without the horrendous downtown prices. Also a perk with this hotel is that we had shuttle service to and from a certain mile radius. This covered downtown. Another perk was the Commodore Grille within the hotel that offered amazing food and local song writers and singers every night.

Our first night in town we decided to go to the strip in Downtown Nashville on Broadway. I parked my car at the hotel and we checked in. Our room wasn’t ready but the hotel stored our bags and off we went via a short shuttle ride to downtown. It was so much fun and so loud. It is not for the faint of heart. Weekends in Nashville are a bit crazy. A singer from near Ann’s hometown in Pennsylvania, Josh Gallagher, would be singing in a couple of different bars during the weekend so we wanted to see him and his band perform. Josh was a top 4 finalist on The Voice in 2016. We caught the last few minutes of his performance on Friday night but he was also playing on Saturday at a different bar. One thing I love about Nashville is all of the wonderful music. So many country music legends have been discovered in small bars in Nashville. You never know, you might be watching the next Alan Jackson or Morgan Wallen.

As you can see it was fairly crowded. It was Friday night after all.

It started to rain before dark, so we went to a couple of bars to hear music inside, and then decided to head back to the hotel for dinner, and listen to the singers and song writers in the Commodore Grille. The food there is amazing!!!

***The rain started and the crowds dwindled somewhat***

***Look at this salad topped with salmon!!!! So good.***

We went into this candy store that smelled so wonderful you could smell it from the street. We only looked and didn’t purchase anything.

The first morning we were in Nashville there was a fire alarm at the hotel. Everyone was ushered outside where it was a balmy 32 degrees with a wind chill of a lot less than that. Fortunately we didn’t have to stay long. Apparently someone had pulled the fire alarm on one of the floors and broken it so it continued to sound for a long time. The fire department came and checked everything out.

For our first adventure of the day we decided to take the shuttle over to the Parthenon. I had never been. The Nashville Parthenon is the World’s only exact-size replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. It is in the center of Centennial Park which is a large public park just west of Nashville. The park itself is just beautiful. A lot of activities were going on at the park on Saturday. Soccer games, picnics and lots of people out enjoying the beautiful sunshine. I will have a full post on the Parthenon later this week.

***If I lived close to this park I would walk the trails here all the time. It is so beautiful.***

***Someone was getting ready to have a picnic***

Next, we got the car and drove down the road to Belle Meade Plantation. The history behind this mansion is so great. Mostly known for the thoroughbred stud business Belle Meade produced more than two thirds of all the Kentucky Derby winners including 11 Triple Crown Winners. A lot more of this history in a future post. There is just so much information here that I would like to share with you. It will be better done in a separate post.

After our house tour we did a short wine tasting, there is a winery on site. We enjoyed a light lunch outside in the sunshine. It was so nice and relaxing. Ann and I both agreed it had been awhile since we had just chilled out and taken time to enjoy what was around us. A lesson to be learned here for sure. I will have a full post on Belle Meade later in the week as well. To give you a little information Belle Meade is actually a city with a population of less than 3,000 people. A beautiful place.

Before we left Belle Meade we visited the gift shop. It was so nice. There was something for everyone in the shop. I loved the handmade pottery by local artist Roy Overcast. He has done some amazing pieces.

***I just had to bring a piece home. I love this color.***

On Saturday night we returned to the downtown strip and it was so packed. I knew it would be on a Saturday night. We wanted to see Josh and his band again and catch the full show. They were playing at the Tin Roof. We got there about 30 minutes before his group came on. Lots of people were there for him. He has quite a following. Josh is from Pennsylvania but now lives in Nashville. He came over and talked after the show and we got a few pictures.

***What a cutie he is, and just as nice.***

***The strip on Broadway was getting crazy***

We decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel.

***We shared these chicken tenders. They were yummy and I like the way they were presented.***

On our last day in Nashville we visited The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson. I had been here a few times but Ann had not. It was a bit chilly. The house tour was very short only about 30 minutes. The grounds were beautiful with a lot of the gardens starting to bloom out. Check out this cookbook I found in the gift shop. Southern Cakes. I have decided to make each of the cakes from this book. There are 60 cake recipes. I plan to share each one on my blog. I can’t wait to get started.

The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson.

We couldn’t let Ann leave Nashville without visiting The Opry Mills Mall. We spent some time there and headed back to the hotel to visit The Commodore Club for the last night. We had an early night because Ann’s flight left out at 6:00 AM. I had to have her at the airport by 4:30 AM. Luckily the airport was only about 15 minutes from the hotel.

I think our mini vacation was well rounded. We had history, honky tonk, shopping and lots of great food. All things southern that makes Nashville such a great place to visit.

After I dropped Ann off I left for home. I had a 4 hour drive ahead of me.

It was very nice getting back home to hubs and the babies. I got everything unpacked and took a short nap. What a fun weekend we had hit it is always nice to get home.

I hope you enjoyed our time together. Our coffee share was quite a lot today. So now what have you been up to?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

I am linking up with Natalie The Explorer over at Weekend Coffee Share. Check out her latest post and lots of others here #Weekend Coffee Share

Tuesday Happenings

Hello and happy Tuesday!!! Another busy and full week last week. We finally got my mother in law moved to a care facility closer to us. She is doing as well as can be expected. We are just taking it day by day. We are trying not to expect too much and hoping and praying for the best. She is ninety years old and we are realistic about how things can change quickly with her.

Last week was also a crazy work week. My work is starting to get really busy. Between work and going back and forth visiting my mil there wasn’t a lot of down time. She sleeps most of the time it is hard to rouse her to talk. I do think she knows we are there and that she gets some comfort from that.

I did take a couple of hours last weekend to make these cute paper roses. I saw the idea on Instagram and then went to YouTube and found a few videos. I love the way they turned out. Once you get the hang of it they’re really easy to make. I made these while watching a DIY on YouTube called Paper Book Roses.

I hated the idea of cutting up a book. I want to the thrift store and bought a couple of really old books. I think that made the roses even better because it gave them a more vintage look. Instead of trying to tell you or show you how to make them, and if you are interested in making them, just google paper roses or roses made from book pages or something like that and you will get lots of different ways to do them.

I also finished knitting a scarf over the weekend. I was really close to finishing and finally just buckled down and finished it. I love red and I think this will go great with a lot of things. It is almost getting too warm here for scarves but there is always next year. I am trying so hard to focus on some of the projects I have started and finishing them!!!!

And every chance I get I am working on my nephews’ Afghan. I am doing this one in gray and navy blue, Tennessee Titans colors. That is his favorite team. This one is crocheted and it is nice to switch from knitting to crochet every now and then.

Isn’t this the cutest brooch. I bought it a couple of weeks ago at one of my local thrift stores. I almost forgot about it. I started to throw the bag away and it was in the bottom. I collect some of the really big brooches. I love the unique ones. I don’t really like to wear them but I plan to use them for a project one day. I do occasionally put them on a purse or hat.

I leave you with a picture of our work cat. Her name is Anthodite which is a cave formation made up of crystals. We call her Anthey for short. She showed up about two years ago. She is a bit feral and only comes around when there is not a lot of people around. There are a few of us who have been lucky enough to pet Anthey, for just a second or two, but she is very selective. I would love to take her home someday. she is the most precious girl and has made it for quite a while in the wild.

So yes a very busy week but I did want to catch up with all of you. My blog is my happy place and I love reading blog posts from my fellow bloggers. I am catching up on some of those right now. Have a wonderful rest of your week.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Pound Cake and Some Thrift Store Finds – Hello Monday!!!

Hello and happy Monday how was your weekend? It rained all weekend and most of today. But at the end of the day the clouds suddenly parted and the sun came out. It was a nice surprise.

Over the weekend I decided to bake a pound cake in my bundt pan. I have had this pan for years. It weighs a ton. I got it from my husband’s grandmother. I haven’t used it for a long time. I got the pan out, it is cast iron, greased it really well and made my cake. I decided for extra moistness I would add an additional egg, some extra butter, and a little extra water to the mix.

***Oh I forgot to mention it also stuck to the pan.***

At first all looked well. The cake rose beautifully, even though my oven is somewhat on its last legs, and that may be what I am getting for Valentine’s Day. I know, so romantic. But when I took the cake out it seemed to deflate. It sunk down to about half the height that it was. But it tasted great anyway. I think adding all the extras was probably a little too much. In the past I have added a couple of things but it was probably a little too much at one time.

On Saturday I visited a couple of thrift stores in search of some bottles for my bottle tree. I didn’t have any luck. I had ordered a few extra from Amazon and I put those on the tree. Even though I didn’t find any bottles I did find a few other things that I just couldn’t seem to pass up.

I still have several stems for bottles. I will continue my search. I think that will be half the fun.

First, this purse. I just love it. The tag had spring purse on the label. I found it at a local antique mall. The booth was a new one with a lot of great stuff. The purse is brand new. I don’t think it would hold a lot of things but it will be perfect for spring and summer. It’s also quite large. It may make a good knitting bag.

Next, A few weeks ago I bought these green glass bottles and this week I found the little glass flowers. I think they go great together.

I bought this book by Beverly Cleary. I had so many of her books growing up. I still have a lot of them. This is one I didn’t have so I was so happy to get it.

Next, I love this little yellow McCoy bowl. I will probably save it to give as a Birthday gift to someone. I actually bought it with them in mind.

And finally look at these stickers. I don’t know about where you are from but stickers are big now. We sell a lot of them in our gift shop at work. I work with a lot of young people. They will love these. All of these stickers came in a small pack for $1.00. There are ten different stickers in each pack!!! I bought three packs because I didn’t really know if they were stickers. They are, and I plan to give them out to our team members. I will go back and get more of these.

Look at the lake at our house. Because of all the rain over the weekend the lake rose quickly and it is really muddy.

I leave you with a picture of my little Izzy. She is so adventurous and a scaredy cat at the same time. She is mama cat’s favorite of the outside kitties. But you didn’t hear that from me.

Have a wonderful week!!!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Goodbye January

Well here we are with the first month of January into its last hours. It’s hard to believe that one month of the year has gone already. January has been a bit of a crazy month. Both long and short at the same time. We said goodbye to 2023 and got ready to start a fresh new year. Lots of snow and ice for us. I read 4 books and listened to 2 audio books. I will have a rundown on those for you in an upcoming post. I finished several knitting pieces and the heart cross stitch. I had a lot of winter snuggly time at home and that is fine with me.

Last week we again had the taste of rural living. Remember I told you the week before, that we had the downed tree and we had to cut it off of the driveway before we could get out. Last week we lost power for over two hours. It went out around 6:00 AM Thursday morning. When we lose power we also lose our water, because we have a pump, and our phones because we have to have power for the internet. So there we were.

We always like to report our outages to the power company and not just hope that someone in our area will do it. To do this we have to go to the top of our driveway and get a cell signal to call the utility board. We then get a recording and we report the outage. The driveway was very dark because the outside light on the driveway was out as well. And I forgot to mention it was sooooo foggy. Oh and we have to back up the driveway because we always pull down the driveway when coming in.

My husband and I both went to the top of the driveway so that one of us could get out and open the gate. It was not easy backing up the driveway with no lights except the back up lights. The fog made it even worse. I had left the house without my glasses. That added to the difficulty, because I wound up behind the wheel doing the driving. We finally made it to the top, we have a very long driveway, and got the outage reported. It had already been reported by a neighbor. But you never know.

***This is what it looked like at 6:00 AM***

The power was out for over two hours and I was a little late getting into work. We never found out what the issue was. It was a widespread issue on our road. Several houses were affected. We do have a small generator that we can use if the power is out for hours or days.

Over the weekend I felt like I was running a bakery. Secretly this has always been a dream so it was actually a lot of fun. It started with my nephew requesting sourdough bread. I make this from a starter that I have had for probably fifteen years or more. It stays in the refrigerator until I feed it. He also requested some peanut butter pies to take to his coworkers. He just moved and started a new job a couple of weeks ago. It was also my brother in law’s birthday and I wanted to bake something for him as well. If you want to read more about the sour dough bread and how I make it, visit this post I did a few years ago. It is definitely a process.Making Sour Dough Bread

I made six loaves of the bread, 20 small peanut butter pies, and about 2 dozen cake pops. The cake pops were just something I decided to do at the last minute. I had never made them before. They were okay but I definitely need to work on those. So I did a lot of baking on Saturday morning and delivered bread, and pies and cake balls all over town in the afternoon. I finished the evening with a visit to my little mother in law at the assisted living village.

The peanut butter pies were a big hit.

I also spent some time over the weekend cleaning my silver bracelets. I am ashamed to say that I haven’t worn them in forever because they looked so bad. I bought some cleaner and got to work on them. I feel like they are new again.

This is not my cat. Well she sort of is I guess. She lives at work. She is feral and we haven’t been able to catch her. We are trying to get one of our team members to agree to take her home. We named her Anthe. Isn’t she beautiful? We feed her and take care of her the best we can. She has been with us for several months. I hate to trap her but that may be the only way we can get her to someone’s home where they might be able to tame her.