On Friday, our daughter was invited to a friend's for a few hours, so we decided to hire a babysitter to watch our boys and take advantage to a few early evening hours to ourselves. We had from 5:30 pm - 8 pm to do as we pleased, so we headed to one of my favorite restaurants - Bayou on Bay - for supper to start. If you've never been to Bayou on Bay, you MUST get the hush puppies and the sweet potato fries (SO GOOD!) and make sure you dip them both in the rémoulade (that pinkish sauce they give you). Now I'm a picky eater, so I like the macaroni and cheese (the appetizer order is a huge bowl and great for a meal and then some) but I've also had their pulled pork sandwich and my husband likes their jambalaya. I've seen the frogs legs but am just not brave enough to try them... I hear they are good, though. In all honesty, I've yet to hear a bad word about any of their dishes. If you haven't been there, you must give it a try! After dinner, we needed to figure out what to do and it just so happened it was the first Friday of the month which means it's the downtown Art Walk from 6 pm to 10 pm. We set out in the wind and rain to see what it's all about, because we have admittedly never participated before, which for locals, is apparently unheard of. We first went over to the paperdoll because I've always been curious about it but never knew what it was... and they were open late for the art walk. What a fabulous little store! I confess, I thought it was a scrapbooking supply store, and I was completely wrong. It's an eclectic little shop of small gift items, some locally made clothing, stationery and other nifty accessories. They currently have an ADORABLE little jacket in the front window that I really should have tried on, but was too distracted by everything in the store to do so. Maybe next time. After that, we headed over to Blue Horse Gallery which was packed with art, people and music. Again, I admit, it was my first time there and what a great place! They had many artists with work on display, and the art ranged from sculpture to painting to photography to ceramics and more. One of my favorites was artist Ken Wachtveitl from Burlington, WA who does stipple work on stone. The way he used the natural features of the stone and worked his figures in to the medium, the detail and beauty of his figures and the painstaking process of stipple that he uses to allow the natural color of the stone to show through his work is just... WOW! I was in complete awe of his art. Everything we saw was great. We ran into people we knew, and later, when I logged into FaceBook that night, I saw posts from other friends who had been out and about that we missed seeing. The Art Walk is definitely something we are going to try to do more often. If you haven't done it yet, make plans to do so and if you're a regular, say "Hi!" if you see me. :)
