You may have noticed that Susan has been bearing the brunt of the blogging duties lately. That's because I've been out of town, teaching at Creating Keepsakes University-Nashville,TN and visiting an old friend in Jacksonville, FL.
The CKU venue at the Opryland Hotel was truly stunning. If you've never been, you must add it to your bucket list! Since I have relatives in Tennessee, I have visited a couple of times previously, most notably when our family strolled around after my cousin's wedding at Christmastime, singing carols to delight the hotel guests. My room had a balcony overlooking the Cascades atrium...lovely!
My first night in town I ordered room service (a really unusual choice for me, since I'm awfully frugal) and was delighted with how pretty it looked. I won't tell you what I paid for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a side of asparagus!
After I had eaten, Liz arrived and called me, and we walked around for awhile. We ran into Margie and Candice, and it was fun to chat with them a bit.I was really amazed to discover that the students at this event were from all over the US and even abroad! I actually did all my teaching before the actual curriculum of CKU began on Friday. My classes were like little appetizers leading up to the really filling stuff.
On Thursday night I taught my Bring on the Fab class to the entire assembly, which was kinda wild...300 students in a ballroom! And while I was in Nashville, I even got to hook up for a bit with my cousin Karen and her hubby Paul, which was an added bonus. Here's my Bring on the Fab layout:
After my duties had been fulfilled, I headed south to Jacksonville, FL, to hang out with a guy I hadn't seen in probably 17 or 18 years. Neat experience! Scott showed me around his town and fixed me some mighty tasty barbecue concoctions. Fun facts about Scott: from Tri-Cities in Michigan like me, went to my college, was in professional baseball as an umpire for 10 years, loves to sing karaoke, is a great cook, funny, smart, Lutheran...too bad we live 2000 miles apart! Oh well. It was a nice vacation.
Here's a goofy pic I snapped at the airport...zoom not set properly, but it's cute, and I like it!
So that's what I've been up to...what about you?
Beth
I like the pictures of hotel setting at Opryland. It looks luxurious. I also like how you took pictures of the lady scrappers hard at work with their home of origin tagged. That really shows a lot of diversity in scrap booking. The pictures of Florida are interesting, too. Scott is a really big man...he looks like he could be an umpire!
Posted by: Mom | June 04, 2009 at 04:46 PM
i LOVE the opryland hotel! its so grand inside! normally i REALLY dont condone room service solely because theres such amazing places to eat elsewhere, and its rather expensive, alas..with THAT view!?! i dont blame you!
also, whenever i read your guys' posts, i tend to look at the pictures first, and THEN read, and this time i was like IVE BEEN THERE! WHERE IS THAT!?!?! lol youre really lucky that CKS lets you stay at such amazing places! whenever my mom goes on business trips she gets....decent...accommodations, never GRAND ones!
hope you had fun! (which i can assume you did through those pictures!) and good job getting the asaparagus....healthy and tasty :)
Posted by: andy roets | June 08, 2009 at 08:37 AM