The last of our flock has flown – but before she flew – she made a healthy fruit cake for her dad’s birthday.This is a cylinder of watermelon with thinly sliced peaches swirled in an overlapping wheel as a topper.  Grapes are sliced and pushed through straws.  Kiwi slices stick to watermelon sides.  Mint is used as a garnish and a refreshing touch.  How creative, fun, colorful, easy and healthful is that?

Imagine what you could do with different fruits.   Yogurt could be poured around the bottom, on the side or over the entire “cake” and then decorated.  Cherries, orange segments, melon, star fruit, berries!

The cake shape can be carved out of cantaloupe, honeydew or a cored pineapple.  Fill the pineapple with tiny blueberries and sprinkle with coconut.

Perhaps bananas and apples would not be a wise choice because they brown once cut but combinations and designs are probably endless and only limited by availability and artful editing.

Safe and sound and on the ground.  Back from Las Vegas but a ton of pictures and comments and reporting back to do.

Jean Phillipe Patisierres are everywhere upscale or new on the strip.

 Is this art or is this chocolate in the making?

Atop is a glass ceiling with artful blown glass dishes holding and pouring four different types of chocolate then proceeding down walled glass shelves that drip to bottom and then recirculate like a fountain.

Happy Birthday to the best father of my children, the handsomest husband and the most generous person I know.  Inside and out – you drip with love, beauty and life!  Thank you for being the one.  Thank you Universe for this fine specimen of a man in all of our lives.

I am quite the cougar.  My husband will turn my age finally tomorrow.  LOL.We are settling Into our superb accommodations at Hotel 32 at the Monte Carlo and feasting on F & B’s.  Apparently this week is rather slow for Sin City.  Most kids are back at school and it’s right before the big Labor Day last summer hurrah weekend!  Great deals on rooms and it is Restaurant Week!

Just arrived in Vegas, baby!Beginning our empty nest partying!

Sometimes you just have to take a long, hot bubble bath.

Plunge into the soothing, relaxing and scented cocoon.

In My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force and art by Jane Mount, various people in various professions are asked to build their “ideal bookshelf”.  Guests responded to the following– What are your favorite books?  Name a book or books that changed your life.  What book do you read over and over?  What book(s) made you who you are today and why?  What is the best book you ever read and how did it influence you?  What book makes you cry every time?  You get the picture.

The artists, writers, designers, etc. are friends/acquaintances of the editor and illustrator.  I believe they also sought out some celebrities like Thomas Keller, Mary Karr and David Sedaris.  The questions are a starting point for discussion.

On one side of the page is a colored drawing depicting the spines of each bookshelf for each person.  Some bookshelves have few books, others have many, some are arranged vertically and horizontally and some include bookends, artifacts or sentimental décor.

The illustrated bookshelf represents the person and reveals them as they describe the reason for their selection on the opposite page. A few titles kept popping up repeatedly out of the one hundred and five readers.  Some of those, I decided were a must read due to their popularity.  Lolita by Nabokov was on practically everyone’s bookshelf.

Start thinking about your ideal bookshelf and why.  What books could you not live without; helped you surmount some disappointment or gotten you through a major life event?  What books stimulate your imagination? Which books inspire you?  Whose writing are you drawn to and resonate with?  What time period or type of book do you relish?

This is an interesting retrospect.  Enjoy.

In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks – John MuirOn my walk this morning, in the mountain town I belong to,  I observed two homes up my hill with such personality I just had to share them with you.  Every time I see them, I nod and shake my head in agreement, I breathe easier, I smile and pause to enjoy their creative energy on display. 

Charm, eccentricity and artful abandon abound in this mountain community.