Shake it up!

During August our family spent a week at a vacation home in Browns Flat, New Brunswick on the St. John’s River.  With the exception of the uncooperative weather, and a little bit of SUV engine trouble, it was a fun week.  We played board games, card games, did a puzzle or two.  We ate some delicious meals and drank a couple, or more, bottles of wine.  There was canoeing, kayaking, fishing and swimming.  Hubby bought me a new lens for my Canon DLSR camera, so there was quite a bit of picture taking too – over the 7 days I took in the vicinity of 800 pictures (which I will share in another post)!  And the icing on the cake, was a lot of time spent with our grandson who was the star of the week.

With the rainy weather we spent quite a bit of time travelling the roads.  As we drove along highway 102 following  the scenic shoreline of the St. John River one thing struck me – how much I LOVED the use of cedar shake shingles on so many of the local homes.  The look seemed fitting for the area, so nautical, so weathered and so wonderfully “coastal”.   So, since its a little dangerous to drive and use a camera, when I got home I hit the world wide web to find homes with cedar shake shingles.  And I found A LOT of examples, in A LOT of styles … traditional, contemporary, natural, stained, painted … have a look at these:

Little House on Cape Cod

Traditional exterior design by Seattle architect David Vandervort Architects

Traditional spaces design by Chicago architect COOK ARCHITECTURAL Design Studio

Modern exterior design by Seattle architect Lauren and Kyle Zerbey

Traditional exterior design by Burlington architect Smith & Vansant Architects PC

Modern exterior design by New York architect Dufner Heighes Inc

Eclectic exterior design by Boston architect Helios Design Group

Traditional exterior design by Los Angeles architect HartmanBaldwin Design/Build

Traditional exterior design by DC Metro general contractor Winn Design & Remodeling

Traditional entry design by Boston architect ZeroEnergy Design

Contemporary entry design by Boston architect LDa Architecture & Interiors

Exterior design by New York architect SchappacherWhite Ltd.

All images courtesy of www.houzz.com.

I’m having a hard time picking a favourite.  How about you???

Las Vegas–Part One

Although I’m a little behind on posting about our trip to Las Vegas in March, I wanted to share some of the scenery we enjoyed while there.  Some of you may remember that I got a new DSLR camera for Christmas.  Between my new camera and my old point and shoot camera, I took over 800 pictures in 7 days.  You have no idea how hard it is to pick a “few” of those to give you a sense of our trip, but I’ll give it a try.

Here is Part One.

We had never been to Las Vegas before and neither of us are gamblers, so we spent several days checking out the amazing desert scenery.  Check these out:

This is the hotel we stayed in – The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas.  Brand spanking new and very cool.

This is the scene from our hotel room balcony at 6:00 am.  And yes, I went right back to sleep after taking this one :)!

And this is the view down the strip later that night from the same balcony.

Our first big adventure was the flight and tour of the Grand Canyon.  There are no words to describe the Grand Canyon, so I’ll let some of my pictures do it for me.

Taken from the airplane on our flight from Vegas to the Grand Canyon.

First glimpse of the vastness of the Grand Canyon.

More.

And here is a panorama using a cool feature on my Canon camera Photo-Stitch.

Our next big adventure was a trip to the Nevada State Park – “Valley of Fire” which gets its name from the red sandstone formations throughout the stark landscape of the Mojave Desert.  We paid our $11 entrance fee and drove through some of the most amazing landscape either of us had seen.

Here are some rare plants and flowers seen in the desert.

The next stop was Hoover Dam, which was too big to get a single picture of.  I won’t bore you with the amazing details of this man made structure, suffice it to say “WOW”!

Lake Mead before the dam

The new bridge over the Colorado River next to the Hoover Damn  (from which you can see nothing I might add)

In Part Two, I will share some of the Vegas lights and interiors.

Stay tuned…