Friday, December 3, 2010

THE HEIGHTS OF HOUSTON

Sunday, November 28 – Off to Carrie’s to bake Christmas cookies. Marsha and Carrie spent several hours baking delicious Christmas cookies. They were rolling dough, scraping bowls, using cookie cutters, and tasting the treats. Paul helped as much as possible…he left and went to Home Depot. But when he got back there were dishes to do. Marsha had the camera but forgot to take any pictures. Oh well, it was a fun day and boy did the kitchen smell good.

Monday, November 29 – We did a little Christmas shopping today. We went to the Galleria Mall in Houston. The Galleria is filled with many “high-end” shopping opportunities, as well as, the usual stores and boutiques. It is centrally located in the Uptown District of Houston. The development consists of a retail complex, as well as the Galleria Office Towers complex, two Westin hotels, and a private health club. The office towers and hotels are separately owned and managed from the shopping center. It is a three level shopping complex with an ice skating rink......JEESH! Once again we failed to help the economy.....we came home empty handed.

Next to the mall ( it's actually attached) is The Williams Tower......Houston's tallest building (this helps explain the title of this blog….also, Carrie lives in the “Heights” district of Houston).   At 64 stories high, 1.4 million-square-foot office tower, it is the tallest building in the country that is not located in the city center. With its floor to ceiling windows, it is said that you can't have a fear of heights and work here! It is a very beautiful building.

hines

Located adjacent to the building is the Gerald D Hines Waterfall Park, a three-acre park with a 64-foot water wall. A water-flowing work of art. Pretty neat!!

waterfalls

marsha-water

Designed by local architects, the amazing wall of water drops thousands of gallons 64 feet, one foot for every story of the opposing Williams Building, every minute. You can stop and linger and enjoy the moment, or marvel at the stunning creation as you drive through the area.

waterfalls-3 

It is a soothing experience for businessmen and women in the area who need a quick break. If you find that you really love the spot, it is also a popular wedding venue.

After returning home, Paul decided to list one of our sofas on the Escapee “for sale” forum. It sold in about 30 minutes. Someone called from the Rio Grand Valley and are coming up to Houston (about 300 miles) to pick it up on Wednesday. If they back out, we had calls from several other people in the Houston area that will take it! WOW...should have asked more for the sofa....ha ha!! We are replacing it with a chair and footstool from the Ikea Store. Probably do some cabinet work, as well. We'll post some pictures of this project at a later date.

Tuesday, November 30.........TIME FLIES!!! Where did November go???? We can't believe it is already the last day of the month.....YOWZE!!!

We did some more window shopping at one of the area malls, but again came home empty handed.

Right outside our window were a ton of birds. Bella loved it. Her tail was going back and forth so fast, we thought it might fly off. It was really cool to see these birds so close up. Note: Marsha is so upset about how horrible these pictures turned out. She checked the camera and some how the image size got changed. Alls well now.

White Egert

egret

White Ibis.

ibis

Wednesday, December 1 - A little chilly in Houston this morning....down to 32 degrees.....brrrrrrrr!!

We sold our one sofa and the people came to pick it up. They arrived about noon. Again, we use the emergency escape window behind the driver's seat to move it out of the MH. We did have to do some disassembling to get it into the fella's pick-up truck. But it all worked out, and they were on their way back home in about an hour.

Since we were going into Katy, which is on the west side of Houston, to watch Kelly's softball game this evening, we left a little early to do some running around. First stop was Camping World. We were looking for a outdoor lounge chair for Marsha. Of course, it was out of stock and had to be ordered. We then stopped at the used bookstore and traded-in several books and picked-up about a dozen. Dropped off some items at the Goodwill and headed to Kelly's apartment. Paul fixed her smoke alarm that came down, and we visited for awhile. Her Christmas tree looks super! We decided to run to Kohl's on the way to the softball game. Marsha saw a small purse she wanted to purchase.

We arrived at Kelly's softball game....finally. A little brisk out this evening........brrrrrrr. Although it was in the 50's tonight, it felt cold! Reminds us of the high school softball games back in Ohio. Our girls played in some pretty awful weather! Unfortunately, Kelly's team lost in extra innings...6-5. We jumped in the car, turned on the heater, and headed home.

Thursday, December 2 - A beautiful day in Houston. Not near as chilly this morning and it's getting into the high 70's to day.......ahhhhh!!!

We went to the Ikea store to get our new chair. Boy that store sure knows how to do it right. What a pleasure shopping there. We made our selection by writing down the numbers off the floor model. They listed the location of the item in the warehouse by row number and bin number. We headed down to the warehouse and picked out our items in minutes. They even had little pictures of our selection by the boxed item so we could be sure we were getting the correct color. Flew through the check out lane and rolled our cart to the curb. Paul drove the car to the pick-up area, we loaded our items and home we went. We can learn something this foreign owned company.....Swedish!

All the items in Ikea require assemble. All the boxes were in good shape and not over weight or overly cumbersome. When the boxes were opened, Paul found all the pieces in beautiful condition and with simple instructions for assemble. Everything went together easily.

Chair

1

2 

Paul…looks pretty comfortable.

paul-in-chari

Foot stool

stool

Within thirty minutes Paul was relaxing in our new chair.

paul-sleeping-on-chair 

Marsha wanted to try it out. Nope…she won’t be able to use it…too big for her…LOL

marsha-on-chair

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all again real soon. Have a great day!

6 comments:

  1. Ikea is so much fun. Even if you don't need anything, it's a great experience just to check out all the unique items.

    I loved the "lines" in the photos.

    See you next month!

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  2. You going to strap that in when you move?...lol Looks good
    Duane

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  3. Love your blog Paul. Loved the part about washing dishes but no pictures. We are not huge fans of Ikea which seems to be much more prevalent in Canada than the US.

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  4. We love our recliner so much better than the futon thingie we had. But ours fits both of us if I can ever get Jim out of it.

    Sure hope you're bringing some of those cookies to Yuma with you. LOL

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  5. That looks like a chair Dave might like. Have to haul him to an IKEA one of these days.

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  6. we spent a lot of time in Houston when our daughter played fast pitch softball in the Spring Klien area... lots of chilly nights

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