Tiny mountain flowers Stream under bridge in Gatlinburg
Birthday Girl
Bright yellow moss on rocks
Shadows and light
A mountain stream
Pretty zinnias with butterfly in Gatlinburg
Yellow flower growing in rocks
Craggy roots
Gatlinburg
Pancake Pig at the Pancake Pantry in Gatlinburg
The General Lee at Cooter's Place

Dad at Cooter's place

(Click on images to see close up)

Howdy Pardners!

Be it ever so humble, there's truly no place like home. I am so glad to be back! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm a bit of a home body. I worry about the chickens and the piggies while we're away. I miss our big fluffy water bed. I miss the quiet beauty of our little valley in Amish country. I missed the peak week of our tomato crop! Drew brought a huge bag with him to work today. We maybe went a little overboard on tomatoes this year! Oops...

We had a very nice trip, but we ate far too many high calorie snacks and I jumped right back into my workout routine this morning to counteract the week's worth of carbs and sugar. I've never in my life seen so many pancake houses. There's one every two feet in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Folks in Tennessee must really love pancakes! I tried to be sorta good by having buckwheat instead of chocolate chip, didn't even use syrup. But let's face it folks, pancakes are pancakes and you might as well just slap them on your arse because that's where they're ending up anyway.

We spent a day at Dollywood, which was surprisingly light on rides and heavy on commerce. I made my family sit through two and a half torturous hours of time share presentations/strong arm sales tactics to get our Dollywood tickets at a 100 dollar discount. My husband was about to freak after the second closer was sent to not so gently persuade us to buy into a time share points system that magically changed parameters with every rep. I finally put my foot down and we escaped with tickets in hand. Nothing is ever really free is it?! The two biggest rides were closed so we settled for two rounds on the carousel, and a smattering of other minor but still enjoyable thrills. The park itself was really charming, but all things considered I'm glad we went for free instead of plunking down a small fortune. We have some fun Dollywood photos to share.

Our ‘cabin' (using this term loosely as it was more of a luxury retreat) was hugantic and on an incredibly steep cliff high in the mountains of Gatlinburg. I don't know what possessed people to build houses on these cliffs, that must have been quite an architectural feat! I couldn't really sit out on the porch because I'm afraid of heights, but I tried a few times to conquer my fear and enjoy the view. It had 6 bedrooms, four floors, TVs in every room and a hot tub, pool table and air hockey game, and I'm really sorry none of our friends or family could join us, but we enjoyed having a stress free, agenda free week immensely. The mountain views from the windows were incredible. What a gorgeous place. We dined at The Alamo on my birthday, I have no idea why there was an Alamo themed restaurant in Gatlinburg, but the steaks were yummy and it was a nice, quiet evening with the family. I can't believe I'm forty freaking five years old. When the hell did that happen?!

We loved the quaint town of Gatlinburg and didn't so much love the uber consumer vibe of Pigeon Forge. Dad took advantage of the outlet shopping to score some new pants that actually fit his newly svelte physique. I have to say that with all of the natural beauty of the Smoky Mountains; it seems counter intuitive to junk it up with cheesy boardwalk style "as seen on TV" shops and entertainment centers. I found it more than a little frightening.

We enjoyed a visit to Cooter's Place and each got some Cooter gear. If you aren't a Dukes of Hazzard fan, you may not know who Cooter is. Google baby! We were going to meet Cooter and get an autograph, for Dad who also almost met Luke Duke in NYC a few years back, but the lines were too long so we went back later that day for a swag buy. I scored a General Lee baseball cap and a matching "Breaker, breaker crazy Cooter on the airwaves" t-shirt. Yes, I'm that juvenile. Yee haw!

I've uploaded some photos here, the rest are on my laptop so I'll share those later on. Enjoy! Here's last week's TastyLinks^TM just a few days late. I'll be back tomorrow.

The Impatient Blogger Margot shares a project from her book Sparkletastic with Ana and Megan Araujo on this episode of When Creativity Knocks.

Stefanie Girard's Sweater Surgery You'll look fabulous coming and going this fall when you knit up this free pattern for a double sided cable scarf.

Layers Upon Layers Debe Friedhoff creates bottles of hope for those in need. "You can't sell hope!" Debe says. "You can only give it away!"

Crafty Princess Diaries Tammy has a new free metal clay project posted. This one is for the ID Me bracelet.

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