Shaddy's Shopping Show

***************A bright yellow and orange flower shop, how cute is that?

The blue Scandinavia shop and Hedgehog Gifts sit on the tip of the Door County peninsula at Gills Rock. A photo on the wall inside Hedgehog Gifts showed the shop completely encased in ice. Lake Michigan is ruthless in the winter months.

We always stop in the Hedgehog Gifts shop. This year, we bought the chubby fellow and added him to our hedgehog collection. We bought the one on the left in 2003 and stubby in 2005. Presently, the trio hangs out atop our pub table. We don't mind since they don't drink much.

Tastes like mud...was ground this morning.....oh, I get it!!

************A coffee shop, antiques and Charlene's Gallery Ten occupy this spacious building.

We bought the rustic table below at Charlene's Gallery Ten. It's perfect beside my reading chair in our bedroom. A folded card on the table as it sat in the gallery informed us that it was made by Jim Goodwin with spalted maple from a tree harvested in December, 2005, on Washington Island (just off the tip of Door County). That fact cinched the sale.

Lon's had good luck at the Yacht Works shop over the years. Summer clothes are always marked down.

I bought the blue turtleneck and black v-neck sweaters at Ecology Sports. The fabric is described as chenille feather fleece and is 100% nylon. I agree with the warning tags statement: This silky-soft sweater is impossible to resist! So irresistable, I had to have two.

This is Solbjorg's, a Norwegian giftware gallery. It's a naughty place. I innocently walked in and was immediately tempted by the necklace in the photo below. Before I knew what was happening, my credit card jumped out of my purse. Soon thereafter, I left the premises with the aforementioned necklace nestled in a box, swinging in a bag from my hand. Naughty, but nice, right?

I love pumpkins, corn stalks, mums and all the other fall plants gathered in this sidewalk collection.

These are just a few of the Top of the Hill Shops.

I think I know what's transpiring here between these shoppers sitting on the bench. She's telling him all the things she bought while he sat innocently on the bench relaxing. He's reacting as many men do.

**********Isn't that the truth! Good clothes are definitely an invaluable asset, absolutely worth the investment. In fact, I won't leave the house without them!

Sunshine & Co. is tucked behind the main street in Fish Creek but worth the effort to seek it out.

**************There's no end to the unique ways owners decorate their shops. When you think you've seen it all, you turn a corner and there's another sight to catch your eye.

I like that bike hanging in the archway in front of this shop.

The shops in Door County draw Lon and I like magnets, extremely strong magnets. They draw us both equally and that's great.

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If you have an interest in other features of Door County, please see my previous posts.

Speaking of Food...

We've eaten here at Joe Jo's several times through the years. They offer great pizza and unbelievably wonderful gelato in 18 flavors.

We enjoy visiting with Jo, the owner as she comes and goes. I told her I'd put her picture on my blog. She seemed a bit leery when she asked me what I call it and I told her it's Paper Cut Screams. (Jo made the quilts on the walls; she's made lots of them).

Wilson's has tasty cones and is a popular restaurant in an awesome location overlooking Green Bay.

Oh, my! I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

Al Johnson's restaurant has grass growing on the roof and a goat to keep it mowed.

Pizza again? That's what we had last night! Oh, but here it's cooked over a wood fire and, besides, we've rarely met a pizza we didn't love.

These hostesses caught my eye with their funky outfits. What about that footwear? I'm old so of course I don't get it. I guess they're doing their best to put a face to the restaurant name, Wild Tomato.

The Wild Tomato has a wood stove for cooking their handmade pizzas. Tossing dough for the crust looks easy when this guy does it.

The chef is a busy, busy man, mixing up the dough, making the crust, adding the ingredients and sliding his masterpieces into the stove.

We've dined here in the past, but not this trip. Several dining areas are available inside and out with a splendid fireplace. It's located right across the street from the condo we stay at when we come up for the Winter Festival in February.

We didn't eat here where the umbrellas are either, but I took a picture because I liked the evening lighting.

*************These fall flowers lined the walk to the White Gull Inn & Restaurant. (I posted a picture of the restaurant but it seems I lost it in the publishing process). They're famous for their fish boils. Folks watch while the fish and potatoes are cooked in huge kettles on the patio in back. It's a tradition for lots of people but not for us. We partook a few years ago and discovered we just plain don't like boiled fish although watching the cooking process is kind of fun. We ate breakfast at the White Gull on Monday before we drove back home to Beloit.

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Lon fixed bacon, eggs, toast and pancakes for breakfast on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We skipped lunch and opted for an ice cream cone or some such treat instead.

Obviously, we aren't into fine dining. We choose to spend less money on our meals so we can spend it on other things, like stuff for the house or clothes for ourselves. We both enjoy the wide variety of shops scattered about and find great joy in peeking inside to see what's behind their doors. I'll be sharing that aspect of our long weekend soon.

(If you want more of Door County, Wisconsin, you can find it in my previous posts).

Fred & Fuzzy's Waterfront Bar & Grill (Part 1)

FRED & FUZZY'S (PART 1)

I apologize for the horizontal rather than vertical presentation of this photo. Shouldn't some mysterious power know which way I want these to appear? Oh well, hold on to your chair and tip your head to the left. If that's too much work, just go on to photo number two.

Next time I'm ordering one of these. The Bloody Mary I had was awesome so I suspect that a Cherry Margarita would be a dream come true.

Meet Slim. He "don't talk and he don't eat either."

I took Fuzzy's picture but it's disappeared from my camera! I swear he was sitting right there at the bar when we left after the sunset. I told him David Frykman had sent us here and then I asked if I could take his picture for my blog. (I apologize Fuzzy, but then, maybe losing your photo is a good thing. I'll have one more reason to return, not that I need another one).

Double-click on the appetizer menu and scroll to the bottom. "How we came to be" is a fun read.

After leaving David Frykman's Studio Gallery and with David's grill and bar recommendation fresh in our minds, we found our way to Fred & Fuzzy's. Early in the afternoon, we drove beside the Bay Ridge Golf Course and found a parking spot where a limited number were available. We strolled down the sloping walkway and were very pleasantly surprised by the sight of this off-the-beaten-path bar and grill. If not for David, I doubt if we'd ever have come upon this delightfully unusual bar and grill. It's unfortunate that we've only now come to know of Fred & Fuzzy's after many years of visiting Door County.

We walked along the gravel foot path, past the fall arrangement of pumpkins and mums to the bar area and the sidewalk that led to the tables and chairs set on the grass at the bay's edge. I captured it all with my camera. Everything was wonderfully casual and yet breathtaking with the water of the bay twinkling in the sun and lapping at the shore.

We weren't hungry yet, so we opted to return for a sandwich later. The waitresses assured us we would have exquisite seats to watch the sunset if we came around 6:30.

Please come back for Part 2 which features our meals, drinks and a handful of the sunset photos I took from our bayside table. As with every entry on my blog, I had a hard time choosing which pictures to present here. I'm still taking an extravagant number of photos when I have my camera with me.

(The only reason I separated this into Part 1 and 2 is because this blog post preparation area was uncooperative and wouldn't let me present all the photos in one post. It froze up on me and I had to work around the glitch. I'll spare you all the frustrating details).

Y'all come back now, ya hear!

If you want to read more of Door County, go to my previous posts.