Antiques Roadshow in Phoenix

Did you know that the Antiques Roadshow is going to be in Phoenix on August 1st? Well, a month or so ago, I just happened to stumble across that information and also a link to sign up for a chance to get free tickets to attend the event.

I've watched the Roadshow sporadically, but being the eternal optimist I'm always so excited for the people that have some random piece that turns out to be worth thousands or tens of thousands. What a fun adventure!

Anyway, I just got an email saying that I will be receiving 2 tickets in the mail in the coming weeks. I'm not sure exactly what I would take down there to be appraised. I'll have to look over the website a little more to see what the process is.

I'm not sure if Terry will want to go down with me (he's not a fan of standing in lines) so if any of you would be interested in going and have something fun to take down there, let me know. It could be a fun photo op day and maybe even a great story of finding out about a hidden treasure.

Tucson Folk Festival
Yesterday, Terry and I took a drive down to Tucson to visit our friends Dave & Kathrin Argentati. As mentioned before, Dave was one of 10 finalists in the TKMA Annual Songwriting contest and all the finalists were scheduled to perform their 2 songs each, starting around noon on Saturday.

We arrived at El Presidio Park with all it's great old architecture (well as old as things get in Arizona) a few minutes after noon, due to the lovely Tucson construction traffic. Fortunately when we found Kathrin, we discovered that they were scheduled to perform 5th in the group, so we still had plenty of time. We were so glad to be able to be there to hear Dave and Kathrin do their songs! He's quite a creative songwriter and they sounded wonderful together! Some other friends and family were also there in the crowd to cheer them on.

We stayed to listen to the rest of the finalists, who were also very talented and came from places as far away as Ohio, Washington and even Alaska. So you can imagine that the competition was quite stiff. The announcement of the top 3, including the winner wouldn't be made until nearly 4 pm, so we had a little more time to wander around before that.

Terry and I were hungry, and the amazing aromas coming from the food booths were so tempting that we decided to have "a little something" to hold us over until Kathrin's much anticipated dinner of homemade chicken enchiladas. We decided to share a tri-tip sandwich, although I'm sure we could have each eaten a whole one. Wow, were they good! You can see the photo here. This guy literally had a grill so big that he had to pull it as a trailer. It was piled high with whole tri-tips and when he saw me taking pictures, he lowered the rack so I could get a better shot. What a great guy. And the sandwiches were excellent. We were almost tempted to buy a whole tri-tip to take home, but weren't sure what we'd do with it for the rest of the day.

After we got our food, we sat in the shade and enjoyed lunch with our friends.

This pic is Dave with his daughter, Bethany. She is so sweet and as creative as she looks! She likes photography, cooking, doing hair and makeup and any number of other creative expressions. It was fun to get to know Bethany, her husband, Matt and the other kids. The other two young ones are two of Dave & Kathrin's kids, Davey and Rebecca. They are fun kids and did well hanging out with us all day.

After our lunch break Dave guided us to several different stage areas to hear various musicians. It was fun to see the wide range of ages and lifestyles that were represented. I love this little girl that was trying to sit still while her parents listened to one of the ensembles.

This guy, playing the standup bass is Bob Kimmel who was formerly a member of the Stone Poneys. For those youngsters among us, they were the band that played with Linda Ronstadt, who also started out in Tucson. If you don't know who Linda Ronstadt is, look it up.

Anyway, we enjoyed our time there. Listening to music in the open breezy air is always so relaxing and refreshing. Then 4 pm rolled around and we made our way back to the stage for the announcement of the contest winners. They announced the top three. # 3 was an older woman from Southern California who had such a free spirit and joyous way about her, # 2 was a rugged looking guy from Alaska and # 1 was Dana Hubbard (who was unfortunately one of the acts that we missed because we were late). So even though Dave didn't win, he did a great job and every bit of exposure and the connections that go with it are helpful for him in his love and pursuit of making music.

After a wonderful day, we decided to head out to the Argentati's lovely home. It was so gorgeous out that we ended up congregating in their shady back yard. A few more of their friends came by too and we all ate chips & salsa and enjoyed some delicious chicken enchiladas. Dinner was topped off with a sinfully rich brownie that Bethany made. It was a chocolaty cupcake-shaped brownie filled with bite-size Milky Way Dark bars in the center. It was so rich and wonderful. I can't believe that I didn't take any pictures of the food. Probably because I was hungry and enjoying the company so much.

After dinner the instruments came out and the guys proceeded to jam. The young folks were good sports. Matt tried to stumble his way on bass thru the "classic" songs that Terry and Dave were doing, which he had never heard before. Poor Davey ended up being stuck with the mandolin, which he didn't know how to play. He picked around on it a little bit, but eventually gave up. Bethany was willing to sing with the guys, but they couldn't seem to land on a song that all parties knew and could play or sing. Anyway, I think it was an enjoyable evening for everyone else. I always feel blessed with a day filled with friends, fellowship and fun and love the gift of having amazing musicians in my life, even if I don't play an instrument myself.

Thanks to the Argentati's for a precious day full of fun memories. We're hoping to make plans to get together again soon...and eventually we'll talk them into moving to Phoenix, we hope!

Another post with no comments...

So I know that some of you have said that you read without commenting. Unfortunately, when I don't get any comments, I have no idea if anyone is even reading, so it gets a little discouraging.

Is there something I can do to encourage you or make it easier for you to comment?

Or maybe no one's reading because...

I don't post often enough and you forget to come back and visit
My posts aren't interesting enough
My posts are too long

Is there anything else I need to know or should I just give up the blog and stick with Facebook?

Thanks for your input.

Chihuly Exhibit at the Desert Botanical Gardens

One of the things we did on Easter Sunday was to go to the DBG in Phoenix as the guests of our friends, Cathy & Marshall. We had a chance to visit the Butterfly Exhibit as well as the Chihuly Glass Exhibit which was thru-out the gardens. The two exhibits are so popular that you can only see them with a reservation, so if you go, be sure to call ahead to reserve your time slot.

We decided to go from 4 pm to 8 pm since we knew that would be a good timeframe for photos. The weather was perfect too! We went from late afternoon sun, thru dusk, sunset and dark. Since it's a lighted exhibit in the evenings, it looked amazing in all the stages we saw. I took what seemed like a bazillion photos and I'm thinking of entering a few in the Arizona Highways Photography Contest. There are a lot that I like personally, but it's hard to come up with something truly unique for a contest. I may enter anyway just because I like the prize that they're offering and you just don't know if you don't try. We'll see...
First I want to share a couple of fun photos of our friends. Marshall spent quite a while waiting patiently for a good shot of this lizard. I'm sure he got a better shot than I did.

He moved around to a different angle so this stick wouldn't be in the way and the lizard actually moved and "posed" on a rock for him. All the people around us stood and admired the lizard and Marshall taking pictures of the lizard.

Then Cathy posed for this fun picture. Doesn't she look so sweet? Well she is! We're privileged to know them both. I'm so glad God brought them to Arizona and to Open Door. They're such a precious couple.

Here are a few of my favorites from that gorgeous day.

Making Progress:

I'm feeling good about progress in several areas over the last few days.

First, on a personal note; I have actually exercised both of the last 2 days. Yesterday I set up my laptop on our treadmill and walked for over an hour while I caught up on email. Then today, Terry and I went for about a 5 mile hike at the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. If you look at the map we were on trails # 100, 8 and 8A. We entered off of 40th Street, just south of Shea. Fortunately, it cooled down a little after hitting 100 degrees earlier in the week. It was probably in the mid-70's with a really nice breeze most of the time. So I'm feeling good right now. I'll probably be sore tomorrow though, but at least it's for a good reason.

We've also made progress on the outside of the house. Here's the new paint job above. It turned out more pale than I expected, but I think I'm o.k. with it. I would really like to get some shutters for the front windows to add a little more of the dark green trim color to the mix, but otherwise I'm happy with it. And at least it's not beige like all the other houses on the street. I also think that when we get more landscaping in it will be a nice background for the plants.

Speaking of landscaping...we're beginning to make progress there too, even if it's just baby steps.

First, we were able to use an old french door to replace the ugly wooden gate to the little atrium in our back yard. This is the walled-in area that looks out from the picture window in our master bathroom shower. The view below is from inside the atrium looking out to the yard.

Also, after almost 5 years of living in this house we finally put some plants in the atrium. This is a similar color scheme of blues, purples and white that I'm hoping to do in the front yard. We bought a Blue Plumbago, (thanks Linda for the idea). I'm hoping to get a trellis and see if I can get it to grow up over the wall so we can see it in the backyard too. We also bought this nice Mystic Spires Blue Salvia, as well as purple and white African Daisies.

I am envisioning a gorgeous view of this beautiful cottage garden from the master bath once everything starts to grow and fill in. Now Terry just needs to keep it alive. I'm terrible at remembering to water outdoor plants, but he usually does a great job at it and keeps the plants going that I've planted. Of course, this area doesn't get a ton of sun, but I'm hoping the light reflecting off the walls will be enough, so we'll see how these do.

Keep your fingers crossed that they will thrive and grow and make this little corner of our world pleasing to look at. If they do well, I'd love to add a bird bath in this area as well. Can you picture a sweet little birdbath fountain in there? It would be nice, especially since the salvias and plumbagos both attract hummingbirds and butterflies.

Some of my favorite people!
A week ago (Friday) we were privileged to have a few old friends over at the house to do some reminiscing and catching up. Several of them were former members of Glory Road, the band that Terry was in when he we younger. Greg Williams was in town from northern California visiting his new grandbaby, so we tried to get a few other folks together to see him. Rob & Toni Brunner, and Bernie & Kayelen Rolfe came by. And Dave & Kathrin Argentati drove up from Tucson. Sadly, another Glory Road member, John Heath wasn't able to come because he was at band practice for his current band. We missed him and others too.

We enjoyed a simple dinner, then while catching up on the latest news, we found out that Dave was chosen as a finalist for the TKMA Songwriting Contest and will be playing two original songs at the Tucson Folk Festival on May 2nd. We asked him to play the songs and thankfully he obliged. As expected, they were wonderful and Kathrin sang along with him, which was an added treat. The other nice thing about Dave playing the songs was that it got the guys started playing music.

Over the next few minutes, Terry kept going back to get more instruments and soon there was an instrument in each of their hands. For those who are observant, try to count how many different instruments they played. (They were all Terry's.) The cool thing was that they kept taking turns playing different ones.
They sang such a wide range of material, including several originals written by the guys and some old Glory Road and even Shira songs. They also played songs by James Taylor, the Eagles, the Band, and many others. It was such a blast!! Everyone was singing and jamming and having an amazing time. They kept it up until almost 2 a.m.! It made me feel young again.

I had fun singing along and taking pictures. I even dug out the video camera and taped a song or two. If anyone can tell me how to transfer an 8 mm videotape over to a computer file, I'd be happy to post the songs. I don't know if I'd need more software or anything, but let me know if you know how to do it.

What a huge blessing it was to be able to share this night with such precious friends. It was so much fun to see the joy in their eyes and hear the laughter of a lifetime of friendships.

Even though some of them are in other cities, these are the kinds of friends that just take up right where they left off the last time we were together.

What a gift that night was!!!

An atypical Wednesday night dinner:

Tonight we had a great meal just for fun! We were really low on groceries last week, which is unusual for us. So I went grocery shopping (to 3 different stores) over the last week. I ended up at Sprouts when I was hungry and they had some awesome deals and delicious looking food, as usual.

Because of that we had all this wonderful stuff in the fridge for dinner. Grilled jumbo shrimp, grilled fresh asparagus and clam chowder. Plus Easter chocolate for dessert!

I love the fact that Terry's not afraid to grill things that he hasn't tried before. This cookbook was one of the best investments that I've ever made. I bought it at Half Price Books for Terry for his birthday (or Christmas) a few years ago. He refers to it all the time for instructions on how to grill various kinds of meat, vegetables, etc. He even commented tonight on wanting to try one of the grilled dessert recipes. Love it!