Travel

Here is the group at a cafe in Little Italy enjoying green eggs and pizza for breakfast (be very wary of ordering a pesto omelet). My sister Holly and our good friend Michael joined us on our annual trip to New York. We all met up on Sunday evening after Jon’s IGMA miniature show. We started out our first day in Chinatown and Little Italy. After I took this 1st photo of the day at breakfast my camera battery died. I was one frustrated camera-less girl on our big adventure. I lead the troops on a pilgrimage to my favorite little jewelry shop called Michal Golan in the Financial District. After buying some sparkly treats, we headed down to Wall Street and then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with the sun on our faces. It was so pretty (can’t believe I didn’t have a camera)! We wandered around Soho until our feet felt like they were going to fall off, took another pizza break and then window shopped a little more. The hotel in Soho that I booked online was not quite as nice as their website would have you believe. Jon and I spent the first night on an uncomfortable couch and woke up to cold showers. We made a group decision to check out and move on to a 4-star in Midtown. The next day the predicted rain showers arrived and we stayed dry under cheap umbrellas while we strolled Central Park. We spent the afternoon exploring The Met. I was amazed by the Egyptian artifacts. The jewelry was so pretty and Jon was very impressed by the miniature pottery that they would place in the tombs. Vincent Van Gogh stole my heart again! It has been years since I have had the pleasure of staring at an original Van Gogh painting. I had forgotten how amazing his brush stokes and use of color truly are. I have seen so many poor reproductions of his work on coffee mugs and mouse pads that the images have lost their magic. Standing there with wide eyes in front of the originals and seeing the the thick paint and swirls of color, I fell in love with his work all over again!

I started a new little travel journal on this trip. I have kept messy visual journals for years, they provide a place for me to glue all the little bits and pieces of my life. For the past few years I have carried a little black Moleskine Sketchbook on my travels. These are great little books because they have a pocket in the back to stuff all your important scraps, nice thick pages and a strap to hold it all together. But I felt like it was time for a change and decided to start my next one in a unique book journal by Ex Libris Anonymous. I bought a couple of these journals at a booth at the Folklife Festival in Seattle. Each journal is unique since they are made from recycled old book covers. Inside the front book cover and throughout every journal there are old cover pages, illustrations, maps,and inscriptions mixed in with acid free blank white paper,it’s all held together with a
black plastic spiral. On the flight home we were lucky enough to have the row to ourselves. I took advantage of the extra space and spread out my new journal, art supplies and ephemera from the trip. I happily cut and glued away, passing the hours in between vacation bliss and the familiar routine of home.

My sister Holly is somewhere up in the air, on her way to the Big Apple for
the first time! We will be trailing behind her on a red eye tonight.
Holly is a walking machine and is going to tear New York apart with her
little legs. I know she is going to love walking this city, I just hope we can all keep up with her. She has walked a million miles this past year. I don’t know her
exact stats but she walks enough to have stats. She trained really hard
this last year and in September she completed the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk (60 miles in 3 days)! I am so proud of her! She really deserves a break from
the kids and time to treat herself. I can’t wait to show her my top sights and to discover new things together. I know there will be lots of Gilson giggling going on and hopefully some treasure hunting. Here are a few
favorites from last year when Jon’s brother Jeremy joined us in New
York.



Here’s Jeremy with an amazing miniature carved scale model of Manhattan in an art gallery in the Chelsea Art District. Jeremy is an awesome videographer and makes beautiful wedding documentaries. Check out his work HERE!

We took off twice on Friday from Seattle to LA. After loading a very small plane and having a nice smooth take off I was feeling pretty free. Then we were turned around 15 minutes later because the pressurization was off in the plane. So, we had to land again in SeaTac and wait to see if they could fix the plane. In my opinion it didn’t seem like it took nearly long enough to fix it. I really wasn’t sure if we should get back on the plane and just as I was about to freak out, our good friend Michael (who is a commercial pilot) happened to call Jon. Talk about perfect timing! I shrieked "answer it, ask him if we should be be boarding this plane!!!!" I was starting to panic. He informed Jon that it really is an easy fix and that we had no reason to worry. So thanks to Michael I was able to relax for the flight and enjoy my new book "Eat,Pray,Love". We had a pink sunset landing due to our little delay, which was quite beautiful! I was a happy girl to have my feet on solid LA ground once we landed. As we were waiting for our luggage to pop out of the conveyor belt I noticed a girl sitting alone with a pile of leopard skin suitcases and shoes that matched. I stepped out of my comfort zone and asked if I could take a photograph of her. I have become a real wimp about photographing strangers. While I tried to get a good shot of her with the awful LAX lighting, we had a nice little chat. I found out she was sitting there all alone trying to figure out what to do next in her life. She had just arrived in LA for love but wasn’t sure if she should stay, she said it was complicated and didn’t share the details. I do wonder which direction she headed that evening in her leopard shoes.


The main purpose for our trip was to sell some of Jon’s Miniature Pottery at the Miniature’s West Show in Culver City. The second motivating factor was a day of sunshine! Below is a brand new gorgeous set of pots created by Jon last week for the show. I love the way the different shapes play off each and how the 22K platinum glaze sparkles under the lights. These are some beauties!

Our plan for Sunday was to enjoy the sun in Santa Monica with our friend Dan and his family who live in Ventura. Sunday morning started off slow for us (surprise, surprise) and Dan never called us or answered his phone. Then we discovered that our hotel no longer offered a complimentary shuttle to Santa Monica and that a cab ride would run 40-50 bucks one way. Determined to see the beach and get some sand between our toes we headed out to find a bus to take us there. Once we found the bus stop we instantly started to meet one character after the next. First there was the lady at the bus stop who asked to borrow a pen. Then told us all about her tragic life as a widow since her husband of 40 years died in his sleep 1 year and 3 months ago. She told us if she didn’t talk to someone she was going to explode, we were happy to listen. She was returning from a nice visit to her sweetheart’s grave. She was eager to get home to her new companions, two stray cats she found and had named Ali and Mousey. Once on the bus there was the little guy with no front teeth who was on his way to church. He sat down and started telling us biblical stories in an interesting fusion of english, spanish and I think latin. He really liked to use his hands to gesture while he spoke and every few minutes he would laugh really loud about something he was saying. We couldn’t really understand him but we tried to follow along and would laugh when he would. Then there was the woman with one glove giving the happy toothless guy really dirty looks. Oh and the lady with headphones on who wanted to talk but wouldn’t take off her big headphones so she could hear us. The characters just kept coming and going, on and off the bus as we cruised along Sepulveda Boulevard.

We jumped off the #6 to catch the #7 which would take us to the beach. Only to watch it roll right by us while we were waiting to cross the street. As we waited for the next bus to come, we decided to call Dan one more time and this time he actually answered! Dan had been calling us all morning but had called our home phone instead of our cell and didn’t realize it. Dan had already been surfing and now was in the car and driving to Santa Monica to meet us (hoping that we would finally answer the phone). It was such a pretty California day! It was so refreshing to see flowers, to feel the sunshine and to see so many people out and about. Everyone in Washington has been in serious hibernation. We met Dan and Christina and sweet Aviana for a yummy lunch. It was nice to catch up with them and to finally spend time with little Avi. With our full bellies we headed to the pier with sunglasses and smiles on our faces.

For the rest of the afternoon I was either staring at Aviana and making goofy faces or focusing my camera on her and making goofy noises (or some sort of combination of the two). She is so cute I couldn’t help myself!

I would have a photo of Jon leaning on a palm tree to share if he hadn’t broke my #1 camera rule and deleted it without asking me first. Well, all in all, it was a fun, silly little weekend trip. It was so nice to see the sun, it gave me hope that someday we will see it again in Tacoma. Next stop New York……