DoubleTree Hotel Room

Here are a few pictures of our hotel room. 1st off I loved the colors. The room was a nice size for us. The bed was so comfy. When we got there the hotel had a bottle of California wine for our anniversary in the room. Yes I opened that baby right away after a 4 hour flight it was warranted. LOL 

I wanted that picture so bad.

The view from our patio. The marina. So lovely.

There is that dang awesome picture again.
I want...

Isn't this so lovely?

If you get a chance to get there.Visit this lovely area. You don't have to stay at the hotel but you should check out the marina and the great walking trails that are there.
I can't say enough about how lovely the area is.

Have a great happy day!
Cheers,
Shel

Cliff House Fort Bragg California

The other half of our trip we stayed at the Cliff House Hotel in Fort Bragg California. It was an amazing hotel with million dollar views. I am not a good one for staying in hotels. First off I am a horrid sleeper and I prefer my bed. However we had a ocean view and every night we fell asleep to the sound of the ocean. So lovely. The place was very sound proof. There were quite a few guests and we heard nothing. One thing that bothered me was there were someone either above or below us smoking and the smoke would waft up in through our patio doors making us close them to stop the smell coming through the whole room.  If you  are not a smoker you know what I am talking about.  We stayed on the second tier on the right second unit with a patio view overlooking the ocean. Amazing views all day long.

Here is our hotel from the Cliff House restaurant.

                                   What we saw from our room in the morning.

Every morning the coast guard went out.

                       This is a view from our room

                                           This is how our evenings ended

We went for a walk to the ocean and took this picture off one of the large rocks.
***

If you ever get a chance to get to the area check out this amazing place.
I will be sharing more things we did on the trip in the near future.

Cheers,
Shel
p.s. Happy almost the week is over day!

Pinterest love

       

                         Who loves Pinterest? 
                                  I do I do!  
          (she jumps up and down like a nut job)


                                            


                                            


                                               




          I love everything about it...I love the sayings.... 
                                           
                              



            Oh, do not get me started on the food....
                                           
                                                                             


                  All the DIY ideas to last you a life time.

Decorating ideas

                                           

Hair ideas

                          Hair ideas up the ying yang


                                                
                                Classy clothes ideas

                                                   
                                                                                                      
                              And some not so classy!




                                                     

                                        


                           Awesome v-cay ideas.


There is a plethora of things to see on that awesome site. Sometimes hours go by just like that (snap of my finger sound). Is there something on there you esp like? For me it would be the food section. I love to cook..not eat so much but love the baking ideas they have. However I do really love the DIY section as well....ahhh it's a toss up on those two things.


I do not own any of the pictures I just popped on here, they were all from the Pinterest.com  site. 




                       Hope your week is going great so far!
                                           Cheers,
                                            Shel

DoubleTree Hotel At the Berkeley Marina

While in California we stayed at the

 DoubleTree 

By Hilton

At the Berkeley Marina

                 Here is a morning stroll at 5:30

                                Quiet, peaceful, serene, reflective 

The water looked like glass.

We had a wonderful breakfast and went for a walk at 9:30. Same place different look. See S.F in the back ground? So lovely.

Our room over looked this lovely place. It does cost a tad more but it is worth this million dollar view.If you stay go for a walk around the marina there are crazy views. 
                   Enjoy the rest of your weekend!                                       Cheers                                         Shel

Our Barn

Our Barn

 

                      I am madly in love with our barn. I have HUGE plans for this beautious red building .
 (Not sure if beautious is a word or not, if not, then it should be).
                                                 ***
We are considering making it a wedding venue...and VRBO. Weddings on the far left and VRBO on the right where you see the windows. When we decide on doing it I will be documenting the whole process. We just had the barn leveled and the cost was nuts. So we can imagine what the whole project will cost. My head hurts adding the numbers up before we even start.

Right now we use it as storage. Actually 3 generations worth of things are stored in this lovely building. I will be showing you the inside soon. Crazy sweet inside. We are going to be cleaning this summer then I will feel it is photo ready to share.

Here is the back of the barn, we want to put a 12 foot deck off the back with patio doors an huge windows overlooking our Christmas trees. Yes we grow Christmas trees on our farm. I have fun pictures coming your way on that.

I love silo's to, recently I was reading a article about them disappearing around the U.S. since farmers do not use them the way they did in the past. I began to  notice that it was true when we travel you see less and less of them standing. So sad since they are wonderful structures.
                                                     ***
The bottle art structure hubby did for me. It is welded rebar and blue bottles that I pick up when I find them. It is sturdy, we live on top of a huge hill with some major winds. It has survived our cold and snowy winter winds as well. 
                                                      ***
I draw and design things I want done around the farm and he just magically makes it happen. Love that man! The little wooden structure below he did for me because I wanted a path to the back of the barn. It was a major mess when I started but I am whipping it into shape.

This is a new hosta garden I am working on. It is a work in progress but it is coming along. I will show you more pictures of it soon.

I want to start taking pictures of barns as we travel. Old ones not the super cool, sweet, cost to much money ones but the old dated ones in weird shapes, colors and sizes. Wisconsin is lucky to have fantastic farms to photograph. When we were in Calif I was amazed when we went to an area along the ocean how many old barns there were.


                                                    HAVE
                                                         A
                                                   GREAT
                                                WEEKEND

                                                 CHEERS,
                                                   SHEL

Things about California That Scares me....

Reading this....

And this....

                                                      Then this....

Then this again up close.

Then seeing people on the beach by the sign that had a shark advisory...

JAWS....

But being Califorians they acted like they did not have a care in the world. I wanted to go screaming up and down the beach flapping my arms everytime I saw a munchkin getting close to the water. But then I would look like the lunitic.

OH WELL.....
 I would have saved them from JAWS!

Yes I am afraid of the water.

All because of the movie JAWS.

I am a 53 yr old woman confessing that to you.

That was the reason all of our kids took swimming lessons at a young age. In my day parents never did that. And to this day I am still scared of water.

Well not all water...a kiddie pool is ok if you don't splash me.

We have a yellow lab and she hates water to. I think my vibe rubbed off on her. People tell me it is not normal for labs to not like water.

Well it's ok in my world.

Right My Bell, Amanda, what ever your name is on certain days?

Have a good one!

Cheers,

Shel

California " Urban Art "

We went to an art gallery called the....

         We went to an art show in Albany Bulb State park in S.F.
I am a artsy fartsy type person so our sons set a day aside to visit this unusual, but emotional place. It is considered an open-air "Gallery". The park itself is an artificial peninsula created from years of dumping construction debris. We were told that debris was there from the earth quake in 1989, or as many had referred it to the World Series Earth Quake. So we believe that the Oakland Bay Bridge was beneath our feet that day.  Very heavy and sad thought as we hiked the area.

We were standing at the top of the hill and below us was this lovely creature. I called it HER, others called it a different name ....But to me it was a her, a women reaching out to the world. What does she want? What are her needs? Is she asking for help, food, comfort?

All the above?

She was made of all types of mix media. Metal scrap, wood, rebar, twisted and piled around HER.

We believe they were found things from the park or the surrounding water that wash a shore.

I became so sad taking pictures of her. My heart felt heavy as I snapped away. My family continued looking at other sculptures, but I could not bare to leave HER just yet.

Of course tons of thoughts went through my head who-what-why would someone make this? And what does it mean?

It was raw talent.

She haunts me to this day.

She even has become my screen saver.

I must share with you another tid bit about the park.

It is a homeless haven. It has garbage, waste, tents, make shift homes made of everything and anything for shelter. People down on their luck.

I will not lie It was a tad intimidating. However we were not bothered by the homeless, other friends of ours had been in the past.

So go knowing that it exists and that it is a sad yet  a wonderful place to see. Yes it was hard seeing these people, whom are someones child, brother, sister, grandparent etc.

 You get the picture.

If you go, go with an open mind, an heart. Take in the beauty of the Urban art, the views of S.F. and surrounding area. 

 I hope you can take something away from it the way I did.

 It has a urban wilderness feel to it and I enjoyed it.

I will share more pictures from the bulb in future posts.

I started with HER since she bewitched me.

Gotta Run Hun's

Cheers,

Have a great Day

Shel