RAK winner, a tour of Gallatin and some not-so-desert scrappers...

Random.org picked number 6, so comment number 6 to my post from last week, giving away my last calendar journal kit, was made by Kathi L.! You go girl!

So, onwards about Tennessee. Last night, I met Desert Scrappers owner Laura Miller and her family at a Sake Bar and Grill called Ru San, in downtown Nashville. I was surprised that this was the restaurant of choice (no steakhouse?sushi in Nashville?), but I went with it. It was delicious... I took the recommendation of Laura's cousin, Shelley, and got something called the American something-or-other (can't remember now). When it arrived I was more than slightly amused at the leaning tower of sushi on my plate, so I just HAD to take photo to show you...

Today I took a brief tour of Gallatin, as I made my way to a scrapbook store in the next town over, Hendersonville, called Timeless Reflections. Cute store, a tad bit small, but she had all sorts of the latest scrap goodies. A group of croppers even went there twice today because they couldn't resist the temptation!

Gallatin is a rural suburb of Nashville. That may sound like an oxymoron (i.e. jumbo shrimp), but this is truly a great way to describe the area. As the middle class headed out to escape the city, housing tracts and apartment complexes were built next to and directly across the street from small dairy farms, centuries-old buildings and large fields of crops. While Gallatin has all of the necessary suburban shops and restaurants (Sonic, Wal-mart, Arby's, Publix grocery), there are still a number of country charms mixed in, here are just a few:





The weather was gorgeous... a high of about 74 and a night low of around 46, which is a bit chillier than what I am used to these days.

Once I made it back to the hotel, I was back to work. I completed 20 pages, created Kolette Hall's "Good Book" album from Creative Escape and finished a "Crop for the Cure" album created by Basic Grey's Kelly Goree, which was a class I took at Gigi's Scrapbookin' and more a few weeks ago. I love that feeling of accomplishment!

More than 30 of us are cropping this weekend at the Desert Scrappers Weekend Retreat (no desert here, though...). Organizer Laura Miller even got four pages done in between "working."

Her cousin, Shelley, who lives in White House (not THE, but a town north of Nashville), was a lot of fun, but very much the perfectionist at scrapbooking ... she completed one layout the entire day! But. I will give her a break, she IS working on her honeymoon album...

My roomie, Christine, is a delight and we share names (my middle name is Christine) and a love of collecting Basic Grey, but not using it. Hey! We're saving it for something special... we just don't know what that is yet!

But there were several moments of hard-working silence while everyone diligently created their scrappy masterpieces. Here is my workspace about an hour before I came up to my room.