Fourth Annual Art Crawl

The kids have been getting into our closet recently...

Once a year the Water Valley Main Street Association and the Water Valley Arts Council organize a coordinated walking tour of all the local artists home studios and the galleries on Main Street.

You get to see the town full of people, look around in all the old homes that you walk and drive by the rest of the year, and enjoy beverages and snacks at every stop.

This year there were a few new twists, all good, with the founding concept remaining the same.

Mary-Lou and Snookie Williams, the social king and queen of Water Valley, getting ready to take their electric car to the next stop on the tour.

I believe this is called a photo-bomb.  I was trying to capture the packed downtown parking situation, and my lovely sister in law wanted in on the picture.

Then the sisters decided to keep jumping until I gave up.

We walked all over the place, at first introducing Eliza around, then finding it wasn't necessary. This young lady fits right in, and is happy as a clam chatting on a porch with the old aristocratic crowd, or jamming with the slightly less aristocratic carpenter/musician/professor crowd.

A new twist this year was a 9 pm fashion show at Bozart's Gallery.  Julia Ray, the young lady with a dress shop next to the BTC, provided all the dresses, and James, friend and wife of the baker at the BTC, provided all the models from his modeling agency.

It was a hoot.  The clothes were great, the girls seemed to be having a good time, and the crowd had a blast. 

Eliza, ever on the cutting edge of the fashion trends, actually bought a dress at a WV boutique earlier in the evening.  She stopped us, dragged us in after seeing it on a mannequin, tried it on, and bought it, saying, "This may be the cheapest dress I have every bought."

The local crowd was reeling from the fact that we were watching a fashion show in Water Valley, the addition of crazy hair and makeup on the models, or the select few impractical dresses, were icing on the cake.

It was awesome.  And shocking even to us, that we have this level of talent working out of the ground floor of the building, quietly making dresses at incredibly reasonable prices.

We went to the bar behind the pizza joint on Main Street, to top off the evening with loud conversation, loud live music, and some domestic brews.

When the band started I turned to the bar to grab a napkin to make some earplugs.  A friend was already pulling them out of the dispenser and handing them around, and we all looked at each other and burst out laughing.  

The sisters.  These girls will turn 25 and 30, respectively, on October 9th.

It was a very fun evening, we came home to clean dishes and a very snoozy babysitter, and that amazing sister in law let us sleep in until 9 this morning.

I've known that young lady since she was 13, and while she has grown up into a smart and accomplished young lady, in many ways she's still the same kid, and I love hanging out with her.

The kids love her, and the three of them were inseparable all weekend, with the exception of Saturday night.  The three of them even took a trip by themselves to a carnival in Oxford on Saturday morning.