Art museum, botanical gardens, hot dogs, chocolate oh yeah, Saturday :)

So I was off yesterday and we certainly made great use of the day! I know that some days of the weekend must be spent catching up at the grocery store, doing laundry, cleaning, etc. But, this was not one of those Saturdays! Granted we did run a few errands in the late afternoon, however a majority of the day was fun, fun and more fun!
As you all know, I don't like museums, typically, unless they are / were someone's house at some point in time. Nor do I really like art museums because I don't always get it and I get bored (I know, I know, bad bad me), however, I'm turning over a new leaf. Well have been turning over this new leaf for about 2 years now, since I married J and he LOVES art, museums, history, and basically culture in general lol. Which I do too, but I just never really wanted to experience these things, who knows why. At any rate, my world has been opened up and I have been loving it!
There is a big traveling exhibit at our local art museum: The Chihuly. This artist is known for his glass blowing techniques and sculptures. J taught me that Chihuly has a team of other artists that he directs about how to blow the glass, etc. I think he is a bit older so unable to do everything like he used to (I know, I've not done full research). At any rate, an exhibit had been put together and sent to our museum! And it...was...beautiful! See:

This is a giant glass sculpture in one of the (many) outdoor gardens! And at night it is all lit up (they keep the gardens open on Weds-Fri nights and light up all of the sculptures there and it is GORGEOUS, we plan on going back one evening when it's not a gazillion degrees at 9pm)

You can't tell here, but those blue things are glass and they are displayed IN A POND!

This one you can clearly tell they are in a pond. Soooo pretty!

Someone is in his element :)

He took so many pictures and even risked getting a little sunburned, AND sweating like mad for his art :)

And that boat was in England at one point! SO beautiful!

There we are at another sculpture :) Good thing this was taken from far away because we were both drenched in sweat. Later on we drove by a digital sign that said it was 102 degrees! As in real degrees, not heat index! So yeah, a bit warm out. But we saw a little bit of the gardens before throwing in the towel and heading indoors to the art museum

Very regal looking Georgian mansion huh! The people who built it went to England with their architect for a year to research before building this in America! It was beautiful! We went on walk through ourselves, and then tagged on for a portion of a tour. Then headed out for some lunch (unfortunately the timing was such that we couldn't get lunch beforehand and the snack bar was closed, so we were both fighting hunger the whole time, whoops lol).

Then we traveled on and went to a really cute neighborhood and tried a new hotdog place - much smaller than The Dog where we ate a few months ago. But decent. They had some stellar coleslaw! And then we went to a little chocolate shop right across the street and it happened to be buy 1 frappish thing, get another free (cocolata or something like that it was called), same texture of a frappuccino but much more gritty and chocolaty. I didn't care for mine (but it was free), and J thought it was 'okay', too gritty for him, but that was all the chocolate in it! And then we shared a couple of truffles and a rochar and were on our way.

Next stop: MY FAVORITE USED BOOKSTORE! Can't get out of that part of town without stopping in! Plus we had a 68 cent credit to use up (um, not hard) :) I found 3 books but ended up buying 2 since one was the first one in a loong series and I didn't want to start trying to collect the whole series for my personal library (Private by Kate Brian in case you're wondering). I ended up with 'Fashionistas' a red dress inc book that looks funny! And 'Charmed Thirds', the third installment in the Jessica Darling series (I'm on number 2 now) - I think that I own 1 and 2 but they are in a box somewhere in the closet, and there are only 5 in the series so it is something a bit more attainable to own for my own home library :) And it was in MINT CONDITION! Like, only read once, if that! Made my heart smile :)

J picked up a couple of art books (shocker) and an awesome out of print cookbook :)

Then we headed over to his parent's house to chat n' chill. It was very nice. Maybe my favorite part of the day, but who knows, the whole day was fabulous! But we talked with them for several hours, watched some baseball, and relaxed :)

Oh and we did swing by Target for a quick stop for kleenex (great deal on 10 boxes) and checked out monitors (and coincidentally, I found that they carry the iTouch for $195 but you get a $20 gift card when you buy it, so really $175)...still not enough to validate it although the best price on brand new that I've found. And you KNOW all of this office supply store shopping for the monitor is a great chance for me to price check iTouches if the opportunity arises that I can actually get one at some point in time :) And yes, this is driving J nuts but he puts up with it lol :)

So then wen went home and both read our magazines and drifted off to sleep. A splendid day!  (and a long post! thanks for hangin' in!) :)