Lacey and Erica's vacation photo album // McKinney - Dallas - Norman // September 2022

Lacey and I have been friends for over 20 years now but we have never travelled together (that I can remember... Lacey - any thoughts on this?) As mentioned in yesterday's post, we were absolutely determined to see My Chemical Romance on their reunion tour. ❤ Since the concert was in Dallas, TX, I decided to make a little girls' trip out of it and spend 2 days away. Not only was this our first time travelling together, but it was also our first time travelling without husbands and dogs... and we had a blast! Lacey, if you're reading this, I'm proposing an annual road-trip with just the two of us!! 😄

How cute is Lacey's dog, Priscilla??! Too damn cute!!

We have crochet nights a few times each month at my house where we choose a project and work on it together. 🧶 I had no desire to drive around Dallas so my plan was to take us to a yarn shop, buy a bunch of supplies, and crochet all day at the hotel until it was time for the concert. I did a quick Google search before our trip and found the highest rated yarn shop in the area. It was McKinney Knittery in McKinney, TX. We got to Historic Downtown McKinney around lunch time. Downtown was adorable with lots of tiny boutiques and restaurants, ample parking and little to no traffic. AKA heaven!!! 😍

We had lunch at Cadillac Pizza Pub before shopping. We both got their lunch special which was a personal pizza and small salad, and we celebrated our safe arrival into Texas with cocktails (any reason to have a drink with lunch, right? 😆 LOL) The pizza was really good and my caprese salad was delicious. 

Time to shop!! McKinney Knittery is a gigantic yarn shop. Half of it is specialty yarn of all types and colors, and the other half of the store is fabric!!💓 My two favorite things!! 💓I didn't like the fabric as much as I thought I would. It was mostly traditional quilting cotton. The designs were cute but they didn't have the more modern contemporary prints that I prefer. The yarn, on the other hand, was spectacular!! I have never seen so much yarn! Of course we wanted to buy it all but, we stuck to the supplies we needed for the two projects we picked out (a skull granny square pencil pouch and a Japanese knot bag). I still ended up with five skeins and a bunch of other goodies. Funny story: we saw Moon Drake yarn at the shop. The owner of Moon Drake is an independent yarn entrepreneur in Oklahoma and former acquaintance of ours... and her yarn was highest priced in the entire shop, but I wouldn't have considered it the best colored or quality! 😆😶🙊

One thing that I despise about specialty yarn is that it always comes in hanks. It's a fancy way to display the colors of the yarn but it makes it so hard to unravel into a usable ball. The extremely friendly employees at the knittery offered to roll our yarn into balls for us with their little spinning machine. While we were waiting for them to do that, we wandered over to the next boutique, Ettiene Market. It is a handmade soap and kitchen accessories store. It smelled amazing!!

After we had our fill of shopping, we headed to the hotel. Lacey booked us a room at the Lorenzo hotel. It was the coolest place!! It is an art themed hotel with random paintings, sculptures and installation art scattered all over the place (inside and outside of the building!) The best exhibit was a small white room at the corner on the first floor. The entire room was collaged in a multitude of white objects. It was all 3-D and had color changing lights. 😎📷 Perfect photo opp!! 

The Lorenzo hotel is famous because it is where Tina Turner went when she finally had enough and left her abusive husband, Ike. They were originally staying at the Hilton, which was across the highway downtown. They got in yet another massive fight and Tina Turner said that was the last straw. She snuck out of the Hilton, ran across the highway, and took refuge at the Lorenzo (it was called something else at the time.) The hotel is very proud of its history and has Tina Turner memorabilia displayed throughout. 

I wanted to see all the little art galleries that the hotel had, so we walked around (bags in tow) for a bit before settling into our room. I also wanted to do some poolside crocheting since I saw online that the Lorenzo has one of Dallas's best pools, but it was too hot. 🌞 So we just hung out in our super chic room and crocheted only one skull (out of the 4 we need for our bag, and we didn't even start our second project... I always think I have so much more time than I really do). Then it was time to see My Chemical Romance in concert. ❤💀💓 It was SO GOOD!!! 

One of my greatest fears is the terrible traffic in/around the Dallas metro area. 🚘🚘🚘 Luckily, our drive both days wasn't too bad but I knew that traffic in the evening around the American Airlines arena would be hell. To avoid this, we got an Uber to and from the concert. I was telling Lacey how much I love Uber and how Wes & I use it on all our vacations and we've had the best experience with great drivers. Then both of the drivers Lacey and I got were awful!! 😑 To be fair, there were a lot of road closures around the arena and post-concert traffic was insane with cars & pedestrians everywhere, and no one was paying attention to what they were doing. Despite all that, we made it safely back to the hotel for a restful night's sleep.

The next morning we took one last stroll around the hotel's galleries and then headed out to breakfast. ☕ We went to the Maple Leaf Diner. It is an authentically Canadian restaurant. 🍁I have never tried Canadian food and was excited to have it. Both Lacey and I were pretty underwhelmed. We ordered poutine (which my pen pal in Canada pointed out is NOT breakfast food) and hollandaise. I've only ever had cheese curds fried so that's what I expected in the poutine. Instead, they were naked curds that were mostly melted into the bland gravy. I thought my meal was bland overall, but the Canadian bacon was tasty. We had a little time after breakfast, so we headed to Buc-ee's. I needed to get gas anyway.

We went to the Fred Jones art museum on The University of Oklahoma campus on our way home. Despite being an alumni, I haven't retuned to OU in probably 15+ years. So much has changed!! Namely the parking, as in there is none now! We had to park in the paid parking garage; their ticking booth was out of order so we had to download and attempt to use their impossible app. 😣 Anyway, Lacey used to work at the art museum but hasn't been back since she quit. It would have been nice to explore the entire museum but we were short on time and came solely for the Synesthesia exhibit. 

We wore our matching Boredwalk t-shirts!

The Synesthesia exhibit imagined how colors would be if we could use our other senses to perceive them. The aim was to answer the following - what does pink smell like, what does green sound like, what does purple feel like, etc. The exhibit was only one room but it was amazing!!! Most likely one of the hippest rooms we've been in. 😎 The room was divided into yellow, green, blue, purple and pink. Each section was interactive and we were encouraged to walk though everything while touching it.

I really liked the blue section which mimicked underwater coral. Each of the corals were sewn from a different type of fabric. 🧵 But, my favorite was one part of the pink section. It was a tall silo that was made from crochet. The outside had all sorts of crocheted flowers and doilies glued onto it. 💮🧶🌸Once you walked into it and looked up, the ceiling was a kaleidoscope and also had more crocheted items dangling down. Lacey also really liked the pink section but her favorite part of it was the mushroom. 

The silo already looks pretty rad from the outside, but then you walk in and it's this explosion of pink crochet!! I literally gasped! The lighting in the pictures isn't great so you can't really tell how joyful and vibrant the pinks are.

Since I am not an artist or a critic, I'll stop trying to describe our experience to you and just fill the remainder of this post with pictures I took at Synthesia. The Fred Jones art museum is free (parking is only $3) so if you're in the Norman area, you should totally go see this exhibit. It was a delightful end to me & Lacey's trip. I love vacationing with Wes but I had an equally fun time on my mini-vacation with Lacey. It was great to travel with someone who has 100% the same interests as I do. We didn't have to compromise since we both were excited to do the same activities and we were both shared the same vibes. Lacey, my dear, we MUST do this again!! 😀

Lacey takes Erica to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

Awesome BFF necklaces from Kelsey's Patch on Etsy, our delicious lunch at Blackbird Gastro Pub, then the art museum!

I had a four-day weekend over the Labor Day holiday. \(^_^)/ On my Friday off, I revisited my old stomping grounds... The University of Oklahoma. I graduated in December of 2007 and haven't really been back much to visit. The campus has received a complete face lift --OMG new buildings everywhere-- and Campus Corner is almost unrecognizable. (All of my favorite bars are gone!) Anyway, Lacey is finishing up her graduate studies in art history and also interning at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. I went to the art museum once as a student but this time I would be going with a museum employee who knew all the best exhibits and could give me detailed information on the collections. My own personal tour guide; I was pumped!

I honestly don't know who that is in the photograph. I took the picture for the puppies.

We started on the top floor, which housed the Ellen and Richard L. Sandor Photography Gallery. The exhibition was Visage: Photography from the Permanent Collection. This was the current showcase at the museum. The exhibit entailed numerous black and white photographs of interesting and/or famous individuals. There were a few photographs of Igor Stravinsky. There included one that he sat for professionally and then a few candid of him composing & conducting. I have a CD of his symphonies; I used to play it as background noise when I studied so I thought getting to see photographs of him at work was pretty neat. Also pretty neat was a photograph of David Phelps (below). He sculpted the Pastoral Dreamer, which is my absolute favorite piece of art on campus. Lacey & I used to walk around campus for exercise and we always made a point to visit Carl (the name I gave to the Pastoral Dreamer). Then when friends & family came to visit, I always took them to see Carl. Today, I got to see Carl's dad. LOL

(Sorry guys, I can't undo this goddamn highlighting. It always does this to me when I copy & paste, which is what I did to get the link to the exhibit.)

The next floor housed the Art of the Americas and the Eugene B. Adkins Collection. It was mostly Native American art. Many paintings, clay vases and tribal jewelry. My interests don't really get piqued by Native American art but it was still an interesting collection. And a very large collection. Lacey noticed it was already 4:30pm. The museum closes at 5pm and we still had 2 floors to go! I was determined to see the entire museum because I didn't know when I would have another day off to return. 

This painting came the year I visited the museum as a student. I remember because I received a poster replica which I hung on my wall for several years.

We had to breeze through the first floor and basement area. I would rather have taken my time but that's what I did on the second & third floors to get us in this mess. I'm sure Lacey was glad I didn't have time to ask her too many questions. Haha! The first floor was my favorite. It housed the Asian and European art collections. The Asian Art collection is getting rotated out because the museum has more pieces in storage and it is also receiving a donation. Part of Lacey's job is to determine which artists are already represented by the museum so the curator knows what to accept from the donation. She's also been researching contemporary Chinese artists. So much more fun than my job.

Also on the first floor was the James T. Bialac Collection. Mr. Bialac gifted his collection of over 4,000 pieces of indigenous art to the museum. I know I mentioned earlier that I didn't find Native American art very sexy but this collection was different. The pieces were colorful and vibrant. There was a piece that looked like an oil painting but was really constructed from yarn. There were also the pieces above, which were constructed from wood and beads. 

The last part of the first floor was the sculptures. Lacey filled me in on which sculptures get rotated in and out of the museum (The Mustang does quite frequently) and which ones were going back into storage. She has the coolest job as an intern. She works directly under the curator and is the first to see all the new pieces that come in. She said she watched as the curator unwrapped a vase that was donated by Mr. Bialac. She performs various tasks for the curator, such as drafting the descriptive note cards that accompany each piece of art, so her boss can focus primarily on curating.

@fjjma #allthefeels #happiness #joyful #hunger

Lastly, was the contemporary art in the basement. There was an interactive exhibit of various paintings. The goal was to engage the audience and gain exposure on social media. The exhibit encouraged visitors to take pictures of the artwork and then post them on social media using hashtags representing the emotions that the artwork evoked. There was a piece of installation art that was a tv screen laid on the floor with green bubbles on it. You blow through this long tube to move the bubbles on the screen, so pretty much, you're the artist determining the arrangement of bubbles on the floor. It was really neat. We ran through the entire basement in less than 15 minutes (one of the security guards reminded us that the museum was closing very soon) so I couldn't appreciate the art as much as I wanted to. 

@fjjma #allthefeels #sad #anger #dammitjustletthatpuppyin

I had a very enjoyable afternoon at the art museum. I wish we had another 2 hours so we could properly experience the first floor's and basement's collections. The museum is free and definitely worth an afternoon's visit. There is so much there; I think it rivals the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in its permanent collections. Lacey couldn't answer all of my questions, probably because they were dumb (Does anyone know why that woman in the sculpture has two horses' heads for legs? And how come interns can't touch the art?...Doesn't seem fair that she can't touch anything.) but she did make my visit a lot more fulfilling. Our last stop was the gift shop. It was small but jam packed with fun, nerdy, art souvenirs. I got these badass socks for myself and Wes. Totally wearing them to conquer Open Enrollment season at my job (the smaller girl's pair reads "badass" on the top).

All in all, a very good day! I would definitely recommend going to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma campus and I would love to return myself.  Let me know if you want to go!