Today we went on a date to Birmingham! The Birmingham Museum of Art has an exhibit called Norman Rockwells America and I really wanted to see some Norman Rockwell pieces up close and personal! This is the last weekend – which means tomorrow is the last day – you still have a chance to go!! The traffic and parking was horrible – we didn’t realize it but there was a gun show downtown ( I had no idea what kind of crowd a gun show brings sheesh) and the bowl game was at noon today in Birmingham…we thought it was a night game. But we made it nonetheless! (just in case you didn’t know, you can click on any pictures on my blog, and they will enlarge!!)

1)Sorry old lady – you saw me taking a picture 2) Todd studying a non-norman piece. (we really liked the way the artist painted a partial portrait frame around the portrait of the boy) 3) One of Norman Rockwells signatures. I was intrigued, because some of them look more like a stencil (this one), some look like this, but filled in, and some were just cursive handwriting.

His work for the Boy Scouts of America – this is my first go at a panoramic iPhone shot. these were my absolute favorite pieces -and they were outside of the exhibit! They were just a part of the museum, don’t miss these if you go!! I was a scout and I love all things scouts and hope that if I have children they will love being scouts! I would like to buy some prints of these pieces and hang them in the guest room possibly (we haven’t hung anything on the walls yet.)
We didn’t leave the museum until about 2 so we were starving. I really wanted to try Bottega Cafe for lunch – and luckily there wasn’t much of a wait so it happened.

I had a kale, onion, and goat cheese pizza that was delish. The crust is EXCELLENT. Todd had a shrimp risotto that he was good, but not great. We had an appetizer of flatbreads with dill mascarpone and smoked salmon which I was a bit apprehensive about trying, but it was good.
I didn’t take any pictures of the rest of our day sorry- it started raining on us so we didn’t last much longer anyway!! Went to the Summit where we perused Sur La Table (and bought some wild black sage honey which I fully intend to eat on crostini with some goats cheese tomorrow), Ann Taylor Loft (where I bought a clearance sweater Hooray! They have EXCELLENT sales if you didn’t know. I will never forget when I once bought a $1oo dress for $10), and Barnes and Nobles (where I bought Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in hardback.)
So….GO TO THE MUSEUM TOMORROW!