Road Trip Daydreams

I had a lovely birthday. The USA lost to Belgium but that's alright. I mostly just enjoyed showing off one of my favorite old haunts. I knew my parents would love the history and 1950's restoration décor. My favorite is the women's lounge. Kittycat wallpaper...be still my heart!

As a birthday gift, Ian made me a coconut infused vodka. He's been infusing vodka with all sorts of things this year: Meyer lemons (from his parent's lemon tree), ginger and even horseradish. So far, everything is really good (although our limoncello remains my favorite)...except the horseradish! I'm just not sure I'll ever learn to love that.

As you can imagine, will all those vodkas, Ian has been concocting some pretty fancy drinks. The digestif in the little glass was made with our Meyer lemon vodka and a bit of dry ice that came in the box of croissants I just ordered. (An aside about croissants: seriously, people...these croissants are SO GOOD! They're made with real butter and you bake them straight from the freezer. They will make your house smell like a French bakery, which is not an exaggeration because they actually come from France. They are worth every penny.)

When I'm not drinking vodka or eating croissants, I've been working on a quilt for my dad. All the blocks are finished and now I'm embroidering the names of places we visited on all our camping trips over the years. The idea came to me a few years ago when I saw the "Happy Campers" print from the Circa60 Beach Mod Collection by Monaluna. This is the first quilt I've made for my dad...three years in the making and hopefully finished in time for Christmas this year.

As much as I struggle to find enjoyment in embroidering, I have enjoyed the memories that each stitch has brought back to me. Tiny bits of adventures keep popping into my head as I work: cliff jumping at Lake Superior, the tornado in North Dakota, the donkeys that ate our pretzels and blocked traffic for three hours (it made the local papers and was totally our fault!), driving to the west coast and back with only three cassette tapes for road-trip music (in case you're curious: one mixed tape I made by recording my favorite songs when they came on the radio (I was 16 and it was 1997 so you can just imagine the gems I had on there), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (staring my mom's fav. Donny Osmond) and a Greatest Hits tape with only one song we all liked: The Cover of the Rolling Stone).

We actually came home with four tapes...I bought Mariah Carey's Daydream one day when we got a flat tire and had to spend a few hours waiting for it to be fixed. And my poor family, upon my insistence, added it to the music rotation for the entire rest of the trip. For that and the many other times that tried my dad's patience (oh god...I just remembered I put MMMBop on that mixed tape!), I will dutifully, nay, cheerfully finish embroidering the last 12 blocks this summer. And listen to Daydream over and over...it's THAT good, people!