Road Trip - St. Augustine

I have often said that for A REAL RETIRED HOUSEWIFE OF FLORIDA every day is a vacation!  But sometimes I feel like taking a vacation from my vacation.

My favorite vacation...ROAD TRIP.  Brian and I make a great ROAD TRIP team.  We both agree on the destination, Brian picks the route and I take it from there.  I research things to do both at our final destination and along the way.  My motto is:

"The destination is just one part of the journey"

On a ROAD TRIP from our home in Ohio to Detroit, Michigan, I found so much to do along the way it took us 3 days to get there, instead of 3 hours.  You can imagine the fun I am having discovering adventures in our new home state of Florida.

Our latest ROAD TRIP was to the historic city of St. Augustine, Florida.  I knew very little about the city (history is not my strength).  Here are some interesting facts about St. Augustine from Wikipedia:

• The oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United States
• First explored in 1513 by Spanish explorer and governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de Leon
• Ponce de Leon was the first mate to Christopher Columbus in 1492
• Henry Flagler, a partner with John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil arrived in St. Augustine in the 1880s and was the driving force behind turning the city into a winter resort for the wealthy northern elite

Any more facts and my eyes start to glaze over.

I used TripAdvisor (my authority on travel) to see the lodging options.  I picked the Travelodge on San Marco Avenue.  The staff was friendly and most important the room was clean and comfortable.

When we arrived I noticed that there were two thrift stores next door.  For most people that would be a bad sign, but for me...it was a bonus.  I left Brian to take the bags to the room and I walked to the stores.  At the second store I found a major score, 6 glasses in a pattern I collect.  The glasses are Cameo by McBride and I rarely see them at thrift stores.


For first-time visitors like us, a trolley is the best way to get around.  Parking in the city is expensive and hard to find.  It is convenient to park at one of the free parking lots at the trolley stops and jump on and off the trolley.  Plus our tickets were good for 3 days.

The day we arrived, we bought our tickets, road around listening to the driver and getting the lay of the land.  We stopped at the Castillo de San Marcos, a fort that is now a National Park.  I won't go on about what I really thought about the fort (boring), but I will say you get a great view of the Matanzas Bay and the cannon firing demo was fun.

The next day, with a plan in mind, we hit the sights.  These stops brought the city's history to life (and that is saying a lot from a non-history person like me...with a short attention-span).

Saddie Mae showed us around the Old Jail, nearby was the Oldest Store Museum and the St. Augustine History Museum.

The Spanish Military Hospital made you happy to me in modern times! We also saw the Oldest Drug Store and the Fountain of Youth.

We didn't go in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not, but we did see some interesting things outside the building. There was a 4-room log house, made from a hollowed out Redwood log.

Also in the parking lot was an exact replica of Michelangelo's famous statue "David".  For many years the city of St. Augustine made the museum cover the statue until they surrounded it with a hedge.  You can walk in and see the statue, but you can't see it from the parking lot. 

I also use TripAdvisor to find good places to eat.  With our trusty GPS, we tracked down TripAdvisor's #1 restaurant in St. Augustine, The Back 40 Urban Cafe.  I stepped outside my comfort zone (pasta, burgers, seafood) and got the Shrimp Curry Salad...OMG.  I could write a whole blog on how delicious this dish was (using phrases like "visually appealing" and "depth of flavor").  While waiting for Brian to finish his Upside Down Chicken Pot Pie, I enjoyed a very tasty piece of Key Lime pie.

On the way home, we stopped in Gainesville to learn more about Florida's history at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida's campus.  The museum shows that there is lots more to Florida than theme parks.

Back to my regular vacation lifestyle...

GOLF...A Real Retired Housewife of Florida Style

I am A REAL RETIRED HOUSEWIFE OF FLORIDA that enjoys golf. I enjoy it more when I don't focus on the scorecard.  It is a good thing that most of the people I play with don't expect golfing skills...just a sense of humor. This blog is about some of my experiences on the golf course (notice no mention of scores or handicaps).

In Ohio, I would start golfing in May and be winding down by September...more of a summer thing. Golfing in Ohio was a great experience. I miss the courses and all of my golfing buddies!

Becoming A REAL RETIRED HOUSEWIFE OF FLORIDA moved golf way up in my priorities. I live in a golfing community and have a house on the 12th green of the Crane's Roost course.

I golf 3 days a week, but instead of 4 months of the year...I golf all year round.  I even golf in the summer (and yes it gets pretty hot out on the course).  This is the temp reading from my golf cart.  Good thing I didn't look at it until after we passed my house.

I golf with a neighborhood group and two ladies groups...lots of casual play and one group that plays by the rules, oh my.  As much as I miss my golfing buddies in Ohio, I have met lots of fun people in Florida.  Here is some of the golfing humor:

     FISH - F*ck, It's Still Here (for when you whiff the ball)

     SBU - Shitty, But Useful (bad hit, but somehow it ended up in a good place)

     Rule of 4 T's - End with Titties To The Target (advice I got when
                                 I wasn't following thru on my swing)

     If You Think...You Stink - Meaning...don't think, just hit the ball

     You a Little Devil - You have 3 6's in a row on your scorecard

I swear I am not making these up!

My favorite

Have you had one of those days when you can hit the ball from the tee, but can't follow up with a second shot?  A friend, Carole, has a saying for that:

A good drive is for naught, when you f*cketh up your second shot

Some fun golf cart bumper signs:

Here are a few pictures of my golfing experiences:

This was a fairway shot that landed in a palm tree about 4 feet up.  I was aiming for the fairway, but the tree got in the way.

Can you see the alligator?  Good thing this guy was on the other side of a large pond.  According to the Florida Wildlife Commission, there are 1.3 million alligators in Florida...gulp!

Just because our course is named after them, the sand cranes think they own the course.  Sometimes it takes patience and skill to avoid them. 

OFF TO GOLF...

So Many Paper Beads...So Little Time

My current craft project/obsession is Paper Beads.   What a great craft...the raw material is FREE (when you use junk mail, newspaper inserts, magazine pages, posters).  You can use scrapbook paper, but I go for the free stuff.  I find that I don't look at paper the same way.  The colors catch me, I check the thickness and the feel of the surface.  Then I am hooked.  Flyers, menus, magazines...nothing safe around me.

I keep a bin in my office to throw the paper in.

It is best if the paper is colorful, with no much white space.   These papers are good because they have lots of color, no white borders and little white space in the page.

This page is not good because it is not colorful and has a white border.  The top and bottom show the most on the bead.  Once you make a few beads you will understand.

Next comes cutting the paper.  There are several ways to cut the paper...by hand, freestyle. Or using a cutting board and either a cutting wheel or utility knife.  But my favorite (for now) is a paper cutter.  I can cut several pieces at once. 

I cut triangle strips, with the wide end less than an inch, tapering down to a point.  The length of the paper (and how many sheets you stack together) will determine how fat the bead is.  The wide end will determine the length of the bead.

On to rolling the paper.  I bought a bead roller online, but when I started sharing my love of Paper Beads with others, I came up with a homemade roller using a cotter pin and polymer clay.  Both versions work great.

I stack several cut sheets together to make a bead.  The pieces don't have to be the same size in width or length.  This is where the "art form" comes in.  Sometime it is 3 sheets, sometimes it is 6 sheets.  It depends on the thickness of the paper.  Newpaper ads may take 6 sheets, while magazine pages may take 3 sheets.  I pick the paper with the most colorful tip to be on the top (because this tip ends up making a center band).  When I get close to the end, I put some white glue on all the sheets and complete the wrap.  Pull the bead off the roller and on to the next.

I finish the bead with a glaze.  My current technique is to hand glaze each bead with 2 coats of Mod Podge.  I put the bead on a bamboo skewer and paint a coat of Mod Podge with a brush, put the skewer in the knife holder, wait 30 minutes and repeat.  For a while I was dipping the beads in polyurethane, but I ran out so I switched to the Mod Podge.  I also tried coating with thick embossing powder and melting with a heat gun.  This technique created beautiful beads, but was very time consuming. 

I do a lot of these steps while watching TV, one night cutting, another rolling, another glazing.  Do you think I watch a lot of TV?

So Many Paper Beads...now what?  Paper Beads make nice jewelry.  Pinterest and Etsy have lots of paper bead jewelry for examples.  But paper beads can be used for so much more.  As I showed in my last post, I filled shadow boxes with Paper Beads.

I have strung Paper Beads with glass beads on fishing line and attached the line inside a frame.

I enhanced a wire tree with Paper Beads.

So Many Paper Beads...So Little Time