Party Like It's Your Birthday

Thank you everyone for my birthday well wishes :-) I had a nice day and a nice 4-day birthday weekend. I had a great time over at Knitzalot's Saturday night and got a chance to meet some cool people, including Melissa over at the recently re-named Needlephile. I was able to finish my Madison scarf - I will post pictures once I block it, since it not exactly photo worthy in its present form - and my Stitches homework swatches as well as eat lots of food and have a couple glasses of wine! What more could you want? Well, my girls of course, so maybe next time :-)

Sunday we got up and headed up to Big Bear Lake in the San Bernadino Mountains. Unfortunately, B exchanged his troubling sickness for food poisoning! Yay. He put up a good front, though and we only had to make a few pit stops on the 2 and 1/2 hour drive up there from San Diego. We went to Lake Arrowhead first where my main goal was to see the Charles Wysocki gallery. I can't really explain my facination with his paintings but it started many Christmases ago when my mom picked up a puzzle of one of his paintings to work on for entertainment. I mentioned it in my Christmas post that it is a tradition that we have kept since then. Every year we work on a different puzzle painting and it's always fun to see the scene take shape. I think part of it comes from the fact that I wanted to be on Little House on the Prairie when I was a kid - mainly because you could buy a pound of candy for a penny. Here's an example of one of his americana paintings. These I like the best although he is quite the cat lover as well. Here's the front of the family owned gallery in Lake Arrowhead Village.



We had lunch the headed up to Big Bear Lake to check into the Knickerbocker Mansion bed & breakfast. My girls and Da K got me a B&B gift certificate (thanks again!) and I was able to put it towards a night stay in Ceder IV. They have some photos on the web site of the room so you can check those out if you are interested. Most importantly, this is what me knitting in Ceder IV looks like...look at those needles fly...


But my favorite part of the room was this:


The innkeepers were great, friendly and out of the way - which is a huge bonus in my book. I even felt comfortable using their common area to play on the internet while B took a much needed nap Sunday afternoon. The breakfast this morning was really tasty and somewhat non-traditional (baked grapes and yogurt - what? but so good! And baked eggs with ham and cheese). I also got a kick out of the fact that one of the innkeepers dropped the F bomb a couple of times in the other room while we ate...and said that Vegan means it isn't cooked at all. Ha!

Big Bear has only had one snow fall since winter started and we were lucky enough to still be able to see some around the property. Although, it was certainly warm enough to only need a sweater during the day.


And here's a view of Big Bear Lake...


All-in-all except for turning 3-1 (at least I was carded Saturday night and the checker couldn't believe I was going to be turning 3-1), I had a good day ;-) Best part, B got me Mexican food for dinner (he tried to get me this but after making all the arrangements, it turned out they didn't have that particular one in stock and it is the only one I wanted) and my favorite TV shows (of the ones on the 4 channels I get) are on tonight (Las Vegas - total guilty pleasure - and Medium). Hope you all had a wonderful day (and weekend) and Happy Birthday Phil Collins!