Exploring..

It has been a long time since we had a Saturday full of exploring some of our favorite places around town. Today, it was time to escape the house...(lots of snow gave us a snow day yesterday & with a long weekend last weekend of just hanging out around the house alot)...it felt really good to escape today.

Jack's choice of fav places was Eclectiques, of course, an antique mall of sorts in Clintonville full of all kinds of vintage treasures. Remember my green chairs & table...they were found there. We've gotten to know Paul, one of the guys that works there pretty well & he always gives the kids little Smurf figurines & answers lots of questions about all the little treasures he has. Jack likes his little corner of the place. & we let them pick one $5 or less item.. Jack was able to get a deal with a $5 microscope & Maddie of course went for the "fun jars!" These jars are full of odd & ends, mainly old costume jewelry. Lots of treasures were found in her jar tonight when we emptied it out. ")

Maddie's fav choice was our art museum downtown...good choice! We spent all afternoon there, having fun with a Doodles program that we made 3-D art. The topic was making a collage of "family traditions." We weren't really good at sticking to the theme. I kinda tried with creating a pitcure of our long road trip to NC every year. It was alot of fun creating little sculptures. John made pretty awesome cars to add to the collages. Maddie had a lot of candy ideas & Jack's was really interesting!! involving landmines..i could have swore that was a garden?? I'll have to take pix & add tomorrow.

The museum is going through a lot of renovations, but the children's area is all done & really fun. I loved the old area, but this one is more modern & they have added more spaces for kids to explore. Even when we ventured upstairs, I noticed a lot of galleries have activities for little ones to do in the center tables. Love that. Wish Col had a Chidlren's Museum...I dream of having one in Dublin. I know the perfect spot for one too!

The Cafe Palette at the museum, is no longer...so it was just a deli stand:( The Cafe Palette will however be a part of the next phase of the reno..not done till 2013:( This did give us an excuse to eat at one of our fav places, Whole World, which is perfectly located right next door to Eclelitiques:) Crunchy Cuc Sandwich...yummy!!!