I’ve been in a terrific funk the last few (weeks?) so having the Philly boys in town this past weekend really brought a smile to my face. I’m blessed with good friendships.

FRIDAY NIGHT: First “groupie” of the weekend. Heading to good ol’ Gabriel’s Gate of course.

Because you wanna be where everyone knows your name. But mostly, I just crave the Spinach Garlic Bread. Mmmmm.. Also, thank you Erin for the round of shots!

Later that evening at the Irish Festival. (Sans Salt Potatoes.)

The LeftOvers didn’t play. (Wah, wah. And weird.) The event was at the Outer Harbor (which is not my favorite) and had lots of people for starting at 5pm on a Friday. (We were the early birds with the rest of the crowd who got in free.) I did get to hug Christina Abt, who had a booth selling her books!

And I bought a few packs of our favorite delicious cookies from the Infamous Welsh Cookie Company.

Because we’re old, the night ended early and we spent time in the pool and hottub and hottub and pool and then sat outside on the patio looking at stars. Even though it was cloudy. Country life is the best.

SATURDAY: A late start (see the part above about being old, ha.) but we made it to the Elmwood Festival of the Arts. Where I did not take any Groupie photo of all of us. Boo.

But I did capture a few things.

LIKE THIS AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS PIZZA from Westside Tilth Farms.

And these two gorgeous pieces of pottery from my friend Bruce at BAM Pottery. Disclaimer: I purchased these for gifts. Ahem. (Gift for Weber Wonderland maybe?)

I did find a gift for myself.

A penguin playing the accordion tee-shirt from Planet Love Designs! I’ve purchased from them lots of times over the years. And always at the same spot at this same festival. What I did not know until this year was they are located in West Falls (down by me.)  I stopped originally to get the PICKLE tee-shirt.

Live Simply Necklace

And I might have purchased this Live Simply necklace from P.S. Enjoy Your Life. (Another of my regular stops…)

We try every hear to purchase “something for Weber Wonderland” at the festival.

18x24" Feel print

This year we selected this print “Feel” from Sarah Goodyear for our bedroom. (SWOON!) (I’m also in lust with this one called Wistful Thinking.)

And in “honor” of the BFF this print from the WNY Book Arts Center will hang in the guest blue bedroom.

I might have picked up a something for HWMMS for Christmas and he found something for me as well. All in all it was a very productive Arts Festival day. (AND I GOT TO HUG JEN ROZ!) And drink yummy beers. Which led to my ultimate demise later that evening during the hottub, pool, pool hottub, bonfire, hottub adventure. Many bourbon with sweet cherry lemonade mixers. Ow.

Two interesting (at least to me) things worth mentioning about the Elmwood Festival of the Arts. Ok, three.

  1. I can’t believe I remember the first one.
  2. It makes me SO HAPPY to know that over the last 20 years, I’ve acquired (along with HWMMS the last 8 years…) quite a bit of gorgeous local pieces from many talented people.
  3. This year, as I walked around looking at the various booths I thought “I know someone who can make that wood, metal, textile, stained glass…” piece. Or “oooh, we should have a class to make a bigfoot garden metal stake at work!” I like this.