Weekend with Fran recap (LONG)

First, go grab a cuppa' Joe cuz this is a long post! As you know, I went away this past weekend with Fran for our first (but NOT last) girl weekend. We drove up to Prescott, AZ, only about an hour and a half drive north of Phoenix. Prescott is my favorite town in AZ. It's a small town with the cutest, quaint, downtown square and it's in beautiful mountains. Not a far drive from Phoenix but a drastically different landscape and atmosphere.

On our way, we stopped at a little roadside antique store that was jam packed full of stuff. We wandered around for probably 45 minutes to an hour. We got some vintage linens to cut up and I got THE coolest little rusty metal building fronts. I haven't photographed them yet but will when the sun comes up so I can post them. I also squealed with glee when I saw lengths of rusty barb wire for sale! so, of course some of that came home with me!

Fran and I had tried to find a cute little B&B available for the weekend to no avail so we'd booked the Holiday Inn. Well, the night before we left, Chuck asked me where we were staying and when I told him he was like, "Uh, why are you staying THERE?" Then, his next thought and action changed our entire weekend! He remembered someone that use to attend our church who moved to Prescott and have a little place the rent out. Well, by weird chance, it had not been booked for the weekend like everything else had... the town square X-mas lighting with a parade was happening on Saturday and apperently draws quite the crowd. So, We lucked out... no, we were divinely blessed to get this DARLING 2 bedroom, one bath loft overlooking the city and an amazing mountain view with that entire wall of the main living area being windows! It was breathtaking! And the place was so freakin' cute!

The downside of the weekend, which really wasn't a downside if you look at it with a different perspective, was the weather. It started raining on our way up there... then we were driving in fog. It got cold and windy. Friday, we stopped for lunch on our way up there and then did venture back out that evening for dinner and back to the loft for a girl movie. Between arriving at the loft and dinner, we both journaled our first watercolor journaling pages. Well, Fran has done some watercolor journaling. This was my first page ever:

Well, we woke Saturday and could barely see beyond our deck. The fog was so thick, it had been pouring rain, winds were 30-40 mph, and the temp had dropped during the night to the low 20's. We plopped down at our table and continued our watercolor journaling, which we'd started the previous afternoon, but had to get pretty creative with what to paint since we didn't have much of a scene to paint due to the fog! I'm so very thankful for the windows or we'd have really felt trapped. I got a few more pages painting on Saturday. Here they are:




Now, please keep in mind this was my first time doing this. It's suppose to be fairly fast work. However, I am not fast. I spend too much time on a page doing layers of color but I kept trying to simplify, really, I did! The painting of the coffee cut is so wonky it's not even funny. I did not draw anything out with a pencil first... went directly at it with a pen from the get go so I didn't really check the dimensions too well... the cut was not this tall and thin! Oh well... it captured the "essence"... it's certainly not a picture perfect likeness! The bathroom floor tile was my fastest page and you can see why. I didn't even try to make it all perfect. I just slapped stuff down!

Anyway, Saturday, our view changed drastically literally from one minute to the next.
We'd never seen anything like it. We did get a rainbow!
When we had a moment of lifted fog, we ran for the door to go to town to eat lunch. We had a magnificent lunch at my favorite restaurant called Murphy's, which is in an old bank building. It was quiet, not busy, and the food is phenomenal! While there, we not only ordered lunch but also dinner to go since we knew we weren't coming back out for the day. We went back to our loft to continue painting and later, while eating dinner, watched a couple more movies!


We woke Sunday morning to a breathtaking view. The weather had completely cleared and we could see for miles and miles. I literally got out of bed, walked to the coffee pot for my coffee, sat down at the table, and was painting within 5 minutes of waking up! The mountains in the distant were really something to see with the sun rising and casting purple and pink hues. Here is my journal page:

The temperature was suppose to be in the 50's, which it was. We ventured out for coffee and browsing through some little galleries and shops. Fran and I are perfect partners to do stuff together. We are on the same wake/sleep schedule and we both have low tolerance for certain things... one of them is walking around shopping. We both hit our limit within a couple hours. We grabbed some yummy soup on our way back to the car and went to the loft to eat and enjoy our view before packing up our stuff and heading home. We arrived at my house at 4:00 to be greated by a very fried husband and two little boys with a stomach virus. Max got sick Friday night and Sam on Saturday night so Chuck really had an interesting weekend.

I'll leave you with a couple of other pictures from the weekend. Fran working and a gorgeous woodpecker that I managed to capture with my camera. The bluebirds were just too high up to capture. Bummer! And, you can see our work table for the weekend.



I am very thankful to God for giving me a friend like Fran. I never knew such a friendship was possible! Someone that you are completely comfortable with, can go long stretches of time sitting with and have no music, tv, or anything else in the background and just be silent, someone you can laugh spontaneous with, and someone who even speaks the same exact words at the same exact time even when the subject got changed... well, it's a gift. I am incredibly blessed! Fran, I love you and can't wait to do it again! I'll always treasure our memories of this weekend!

And OH, I almost forgot! I have to photograph the most incredible birthday gift that Fran made me! OMG, you guys will just die when you see it! I almost did! I'll take pictures and show later... along with the darling little rusty metal building fronts!