Oh what a day!

Busy, busy day and lots of good things going on yesterday.  First on the agenda was a tour of the Rain Forest tour in Rio de Janeiro/visiting the Christ Redeemer statue, that is one of the 7 Wonders of the World.

Walking through the Rain Forest, we saw the Palm trees where the Hearts of Palm come from..who knew?  and then next our guide found a Cashew nut that had fallen. Apparently, they are attached to a type of fruit that resembles an apple at the bottom. It was black when we found it, I put it in my pocket and then it turned kinda of a weird green/gray by the time we got home??  And we also saw the Palm trees that had the Acai berries on them. They grow in clusters, similar to grapes.  Kind of cool...

We also saw a few waterfalls, the couple that was with us took our picture, unfortunately, it was a bit blurry.

Seeing the Christ Redeemer statue on the tallest mountain in Brazil, overlooking all of Rio was awe inspiring.

And the view from there! WOW!  It was really a cloudy, overcast day and I was afraid the pictures would turn out dull and bland, and they were.  I can just imagine what it would have looked like on a beautiful sunny day.  I guess we'll have to return! ;)

Our tour guide was Henrik, from Paris.  What a wealth of knowledge he had! He moved to Rio 5 years ago, after meeting a girl of his dreams from Brazil. He followed her here, married and had a little girl.  They are no longer together, but he stays because of his daughter.  His other job was a Set Director for cinema/movies. He just finished working with Sylvester Stallone on his new movie.

On a search for new quilting inspirations...

What do you do when you want new inspirations for quilts?  I tend to look at tile work..in public restrooms, churches, cathedrals and floors.  I found a new source!   On our annual holiday..no business, just relaxing, etc., we take daily walks and look what we found along the WHOLE beach promenade.

This is on Copacabana Beach...in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America.   Now why on earth did I think it was in Cuba?  Geez, that's why I have to travel, so I can learn geography first hand! LOL  All the sidewalks here on the main drag in front of the beach are mosaics like this, on the boardwalk is this particular design. It is a pavement landscape in large scale (4 km long). It was completed in 1970 and has used a black and white Portugese pavement design since it's origin in the 1930's, a geometric wave. It was designed by Roberto Burle Marx. Now....if you were to use this for inspiration, would you try and do it mosaic style?  That would be my first choice as it would be awesome...but wow, what a lot of work!

Now the second boardwalk, I can find NO information on, but yet I have to believe it's done by the same guy.  It's on the famous Ipanema Beach and it's totally cool as well. 

Very modern looking. Ipanema's boardwalk is not as long as Copacabana's, but it still is quite impressive. 

Did you know where Ipanema was?  We have all heard of it from that famous song, 'The Girl from Ipanema' by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes in the 1960's.  I'm not EVEN gonna tell you where I thought it was located!  Of course, I was a very young child when that came out, so I imagined it  to be somewhere else, and that's my story. 

 The park right before you enter the gate to the beach.

This last picture was taken from the rooftop from our hotel, overlooking Copacabana Beach. If you look close, you can see the boardwalk.

Now if I could only speak Portugese or at least read it to see if they had any fabric shops.  I did find one, but it was a bridal shop with bridal fabrics.  hmmm, not the kind of fabric for which I was looking. 

Telcido..that's the word I'm supposed to be looking for....think I'll find any?

where in the world am I?

Yesterday was an awesome day, snorkeling at 3 different sites and driving around, taking in the scenery and a visit into town. I belong here.....they LOVE color! Houses are all different colors and I mean BOLD colors! I wish I could have stopped and took pictures at each new exciting color I saw. Makes for a long trip when you do that, so I was only allowed a few. But I did get to stop and take pictures of REAL pink flamingoes, in their natural habitat....not at a zoo, a hotel, just in their natural living habitat. I had to go through a bit of a marshy area to get even decently close and if I weren't such a pansy, I'd have gotten closer. But, those pictures are to come later, when I get home to that dang computer cord. The pictures I'm going to share are from websites dedicated to this place as well as freebie fish pictures. I spent over an hour and a half sorting through 1000's of photos, trying to find those of the fish I DID see on my little snorkeling excursions. These are just a few that I saw. Blogger is being onery today and so I'll stop here. But great day, just a great day.

So, anyone know where I am?

reading causes raccoon eyes

A new discovery.........okay, not new to me at all and you would think I'd learn....reading on the beach with sunglasses, (and who goes without sunglasses anyway?) causes raccoon eyes. NOTICEABLY! so much that people commented.......oh well.

it was a good book. So I'm a little behind on reading. Who has time to read books when there are tons of blogs to read ,and quilts to sew? I only have time on vacations anymore since I can't haul my machine on vacation..to the beach!

Since I love to snorkel and hubby does NOT, what do you do on vacation where the snorkeling is well known? Short of me going on tours myself, or not going at all...we decided to rent a car and go find beaches that have great snorkeling directly from the beach. So, that's what we are off to tomorrow.

I checked and no quilt shops or even fabric shops listed. I guess sewing is not big over here? Oh well, it forces me to be more well rounded....not my body--LOL--just my experiences.

by the way, does anyone else have problems with blogger and where it places pictures, etc? I downloaded LiveWriter at home but only used it once. And now I'm on a laptop wondering if I should download it on this as well. Getting the photos where you want shouldn't be so hard!

anyway.......have a good day and hope all of you in the midwest are staying warm!

Divine Miss M's week with Nana

It was M's first time to the beach with Nana--and she got to be by herself-the others couldn't come, so it was just her. Lots of firsts for her....(well, that she remembers!)..going to the beach--hey, did you know the 'water moves'? :) making sandcastles....doing 'candy bars' (that's what she thought the others were saying when they were doing 'cannon balls') in the pool....driving the golf cart...riding a bike...eating kiwi....playing cards (and dang, she caught on quick!)

getting thrown high in the pool by Papa....

making jewelry...

What a great week--and I even made her a 3 tiered ruffled skirt (with all the yummy Simplicity fabric I got for 1/2 off!). I forgot to take a picture of it, but it turned out pretty cute.

The Colors of Aruba

Sitting at dinner the first night on a girlfriend trip, this colorful hut is sitting right in front of me..and made me start thinking....What a cool quilt..to do a quilt with the "Colors of Aruba"...Good guess Ruth! yep, that's where I was last week. Had no chance to do my blog...so you are just going to get a glimpse of what we saw while we were there.....
these iguanas were the coolest colors ever! when they were little ones, they were mostly brown with a few small turquoise dots on their sides and turquoise stripes down the center of their back. As they got older, it turned into more turquoise dots and when they were really big, they were almost all turquoise..but they were very shy..I spent half my time chasing those little buggers! Ask my friends...they'll tell you more than you'd like to know!
Aruba, as a desert island, is not in itself all that pretty...the water is pretty, but the land isn't that colorful, but the natives sure had a way of bringing lots of color to their world...and in the most unusual color combinations. It was so inspiring..most of my pictures are of the colored homes and businesses. I can tell a quilt is brewing.....which is a good thing because I did diddly squat on my hand sewing! At least I was getting inspired.
walking along the beach, I thought this almost looked like a postcard...
we were all wearing colorful outfits to fit the island, although you can't see my hot pink skirt..but it fit the mood!