Weekend in Santa Cruz

We spent Saturday and Sunday at the coast in a place called Santa Cruz.  We drove to the BART Station and got a bus to San Jose and then from there took a bus to Santa Cruz.  We were initially only going for the day but thought there might be a chance that we might decide to stay overnight.  We liked the place as soon as we got there so set about finding somewhere to stay straight away.  Santa Cruz is an expensive place to stay and we tried a few places that were fully booked.  We then found a place right on the sea front looking out on the beach and went for that one!  Our hotel was called 'Casa Blanca'!!!!

Our room was small but nice

and this was the view from our room

The Beach

We went for a long walk on the beach and my poor feet were blistered underneath by the end of it!!!  It was scorching hot but the sea was freezing cold!!! 

There was a lovely pier with lots of yummy seafood restaurants so we managed to eat some great food!  There was also a fab vintage Thunderbird car show on the pier.  I fell in love with several of the beautiful cars being shown there.  Here's a few

Here's me in front of a lovely pink Thunderbird

There were sea lions 'lounging' around the pier also and you could hear them barking throughout the night!!  I love them, and you could get up very close to them.

                                                                     Smile please!!

Yesterday we went on a steam train trip into the Redwood Forest which was lovely.  It was relaxing to be in the middle of a dense forest and look up to the highest trees I've ever seen.  The Redwood trees have a special bark on them that doesn't burn easily which makes them ideal when there are forest fires.

A Few More Button Bracelets

These button bracelets are addictive!!!!  They are quite theraputic to make as well!!! 

Button Bracelets

I have bought some pretty coloured buttons recently and thought I would make up some cheerful looking bracelets with them.

They are attached to elastic so stretch over your hand.   They do take quite a time to make though as each button is attached seperately!!!

What do you think???

I've put them on my new 'Bracelet Display' stand that I got at Joann's the other day.

Greetings from Sunny California

Ok - I've not blogged for a few weeks and that is because I am in sunny California for a few months!!!!  It's very hot and sunny here and I am so glad I bought some decent sunglasses with me as the sun is very strong on the eyes!!

The other day I decided to catch the BART (light railway) into San Francisco.  It's not that far, around 30 minutes or so but it was the first time I had gone there alone.  I find it difficult to get buses to wherever I want to go once in San Francisco so generally end up walking.  For those of you that have never been to SF there are lots of very steep hills like this

and they go on and on like this

As I have a bad foot at the moment I sort of limped around but covered quited a large area - the map below shows my trek!!!  I started at the bottom marked cross and walked up to the top cross and back again!

I wanted to visit an old bead shop called Yone - it is full up of every type of bead you could think of and owned by a very interesting man who knows everything there is to know about beads.  It is easy to spend ages in the shop just chatting to him.  The bead prices start from 3c and go up to $300 per bead!!!!  I enjoyed my visit there and bought some pretty beads, at the cheaper end of the price range!!!!

I then headed to Powell Street BART station and headed into Old Navy to use their toilet and have a look at their clearance section as they usually have great bargains in it!!  I wasn't disappointed as they had a BOGOF on all sale stuff so I got 4 tops for £1.39 each!!!!  After this I headed to the BART and managed to get a direct train almost straight away.  I will probably go into SF this coming week also as there is a paper/craft shop I'd like to have a look at!!!!