Friday, April 24, 2009

ON THE ROAD.....AGAIN


I can't believe it's April. I have been so busy with STUFF.
I had the best week!! I left for North Carolina on Monday, April 13th. Drove from Cleveland,Oh to Knoxville, TN. Next morning had a lovely breakfast and got ready to finish my trip to Murphy, N.C. As I got in my car and checked my portable GPS it said 3hours to go 113 miles.
I thought for sure that was incorrect..haha the joke was on me! It took even longer on Rte129,
talk about a snake road over several mountains. Getting up to 25 miles per hour was SPEEDING!!!
Finally got to BEAR PAGES-Paper Crafts in Murphy N.C. and I must say it was definately worth the trip. The owners of the shop,Weldon and Nancy, opened their home for me to stay in and provided me with great food, good conversation and 6 FULL! classes. I have to say that Y'ALL
were wonderful. We laughed, told stories, got to know each other, oh yes, and we even managed to stamp and color. Weldon almost sold out of the twinkling H2O's he got and of course they bought bunches of StacyStamps...YEAH!!
We had classes on Tues. night, 3 on Weds and 2 on Thurs.
I got up Friday morning and started east to Boiling Springs, N.C. to DOROTHY'S STAMPS-N-SCRAPS. The owners are Mary Ruth and Keith(Keith is a pastor, so I had to behave!!)
You want to talk about delightful people..these are the best! On my way to their shop I made a little detour to a Cheeroke Casino...(they were not nice to me!!financially that is!). When I got to Dorothy's(named after Mary Ruth's Momma), we had our first class around 6:30P.M.
Mary Ruth bakes this wonderful sourdough bread and brings it to the shop and sells it to customer..OMG is it delicious!(2 loaves found their way into my car). On Saturday we had 2 more classes and had the best time with some real southern ladies..actually we even had another Yankee there other than me. We used COPIC Markers and did a colored pencils class too!
I laughed so hard at Sarah Ann's jokes...wish I could remember them all!
I started home Staurday evening and got home on Sunday afternoon...And took a NAP!
I hope to make the trip again in the fall. The drive this spring was lovely and the people I met fantastic..I look forward to another visit.

I will be in Hartville,Oh on May 23rd for 2 classes: one featuring my FLOWERS and the other GUY CARDS. Please check out their web site for more info...hope to see you there!

The picture with this post is of Weldon, me and Nancy at BEAR PAGES-Paper Crafts.