Glass and Snow

So this weekend we took a little mini-vaca to our rival to the east to visit my husband’s brother. Don’t get me wrong – I like Pittsburgh. I even supported Matt’s team and wore black and gold when they were in the superbowl. But I’m still a Cleveland girl and they are still our rival.

One of the main reasons for this trip was to see the Chihuly exhibit at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. I’ve wanted to go for months now. He is one of my absolute favorite artists and not just because I have a thing for the Bellagio. I also happen to have a thing for Venice.

We decided to go Friday night so that we could see Chihuly Nights (same exhibit, different lighting).

It was so interesting


And beautiful


And surprising


And so very worth every second of the 2 and a half hour drive.

I love how the sculptures fit with the plantings and mimic the shapes around them:


And become a part of them as well:


The free standing pieces were spectacular:



As well as the full room instillations.


Each area has a completely different feel:

From the glowing tumbleweeds – which are visible from pretty far outside of the conservatory:


To the glass spheres and boat:


To the floating chandiliers:


I think my favorite pieces, though were these:

They are outside in the Japanese tea garden and appear to be jumping out of the icy koi pond:

Simply breathtaking.

After we took a few goofy pictures


And a posed picture:

I had a little time to play with my 50mm lens:



Experimenting with framing, and depth of field.

If you are anywhere within driving distance of this exhibit I highly recommend going – and going soon. It only runs through Feb. 24th. But if you can’t see it in person there are even more pictures (believe it or not) here on my flickr site.

From there we went to Redbeard's Mountain Resort & Yacht Club – a little dive type bar up on Mount Washington – for dinner and a few drinks before calling it a night. And yes, I did make the bartender switch the TV to the X-games. Heh.

The next morning we left bright and early for Seven Springs to get our ski on.

The mountain is divided into a front face and a north face – the front being closest to the lodge… Yeah. It was super-crowded. Everyone must be taking advantage of all of this snow! So we hung out mainly on the North Face which has some nice views:

Joel and Ellen were experimenting with the whole snowboard thing (Joel is a skier, Ellen is new to both) so we only stayed with them for a couple of runs…

Matt “helped” Joel get down the hill faster.

Heh.

By the time the front faced closed and the lights were coming on for the night ski we were all pretty tired. So we headed back to Joel’s place where he made us a tasty taco dinner

And we spent the rest of the evening playing Guitar Hero III

The guys were really into it. Ellen and I both liked to play but weren’t nearly competitive about it. We figured out that “pride and joy” is the funnest thing to play ever and just rocked that like 3 times in a row – and one time this happened:

Our scores are one point apart. I don’t think we could do that if we tried.

And since I don’t think I’ve ever had a cat on the blog here’s a picture of Apollo:

She liked me because I talked to her. A lot.

All in all it was a very fun weekend!!!