Life is in the Details

Week in the Life - Thursday

In the home stretch!

Week in the Life- Wednesday

These photos from yesterday look like a very ordinary day, but in fact it wasn't.  I just missed taking photos of all the out of the ordinary things, and each time I would say after... ugh, I forgot to take pictures! And in fact I only took 25 pictures yesterday at all.  So Day 3 will be more words than photos, and that will be fine. Hopefully today I'll remember to take the camera.

Week in the Life - Tuesday

Typical day today, AC repair man came to service the AC that hasn't been working as well as it used to.  A trip to Costco, picked up some new toys for Eloise and birdseed, along with some other odds and ends. Ana came home and we had chicken hotdogs for dinner and then went for ice cream.  Ana likes to ham it up for the camera! Although this is also typical of her without the camera!

Week in the Life - Monday

 

 

Early Summer Recap

Family, friends, crafting, gardening, and just enjoying the outdoors.  It's been great so far!

New Shawl

I finished this shawl this morning.  It's my first handspun shawl and I know for sure it will not be my last.  The yarn is spun from Hello Yarn fiber in two different club colorways that I was lucky enough to get from destashes on Ravelry.  It is a two ply yarn of Maldives and Patchwork.  My first time mixing colors and I was so happy with how it turned out.

This was how the yarn looked before it was knit up.

The yarn was a fingering weight and I ended up with approximately 800-ish yards from 8 0z of fiber.  I decided to do a simple shawl pattern to really show off the handspun.  I found this Simple But Not Boring Shawl (the elongated version)  and it was perfect!

I adjusted the pattern to account for the thinner yarn, so it took a bit longer to knit than I originally thought it would.  I did some project notes on my Ravelry page.  Basically I had to make the shawl with twice as many stitches as the worsted weight in the pattern. The last rows of the ruffle that went up to 600+ stitches each were killer! But so worth it in the end! I'm so happy with the results and can't wait to knit more handspun!

A new year...

The new year started quietly for me. My mom and Fred had planned to come down on Saturday, New Years Day, so I also spent the last day of the year cleaning my house.  It's the first time I made a point to do this, because of company coming, but I highly recommend it. It's so nice to start the year is a sparkly clean house!

 Ana and I stayed home watching the ball drop on tv, after being in NYC the day before.  We watched Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper on CNN.  I love them together and I laughed my way into the new year.  As I get older I realize that I appreciate the music choices on the Rockin' Eve show less and less, so I am very happy that there is now a non musical alternative! With my favorite news anchor, no less!   I made my favorite baked brie, in crescent rolls with raspberry preserves served on wheat thins for the festivities, and relaxed in pjs.

Saturday Mom and Fred came as planned. I made some chicken soup and homemade bread with lemon cake for dessert. 

It was pretty low key. Mom has wanted to visit while my tree was still up so that was the intent of the visit. It was her first time seeing my tree after having one for 10+ years, I guess it was time.

I love this photo showing my parents addiction to their Blackberries.  Fred is only recently a convert.  He never understood why people needed the internet on the go. Now look at him! And he's even on Twitter!

The day was capped off by an accident and thankfully not a trip to the emergency room thanks to Fred's super strong skull. I was explaining a joke from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update about Governor Patterson walking lost in front of the camera, which while I know is not politically correct is still so funny and since the Governor got in on the joke himself, I think it's safe to laugh now.  But I was showing them how he bumps into the camera and I bumped into Fred, pretending he was the camera.  Unfortunately, my ottoman was right behind him and he wasn't able to step back when I bumped him and instead, he fell back, on to the ottoman.  Which would be fine if he wasn't so tall! He kept falling and banged his head into the wall behind the ottoman.  I don't know how he didn't hurt himself but I guess our skulls are meant to protect that brain! I felt terrible though and while Fred was so gracious about the whole thing, even while holding the ice to the back of his head, I will leave the SNL skits to the professionals!

The first week of the year was spent still looking for a job.  Engineering is still suffering from this recession, especially site planning which is my area.  It's getting scary how long this is lasting and how there just doesn't seem to be much improvement.  I keep hearing that people are shopping more and the stock market is up, but that does not seem to be helping the construction industry at all.  

I have been doing the work for a teaching certificate and I think that may be what my new career path may be.  I want to teach Science, which I do love deeply and I think I am enthusiastic enough about science that I could maybe pass that love of learning on to students.  I just think of teaching as such a calling, and I'm just not sure if I've been called.  But that will be a focus early on in this new year.

Then this past weekend I caught the Wii bug again! I got Ana Guitar Hero for her birthday, which she has been wanting, and I have been trying to figure out the game.  I'm getting better but at this point I am just struggling through the beginner level trying not to get thrown off stage!  And then another gift for her (really for myself...shhh)  I got Glee Karayoke which we both LOVE!! So fun if you're a Glee fan and like singing corny songs! We sang ourselves hoarse this weekend! I now want to get the Disney Sing It with all the Disney movie songs!!

The weekend ended with the taking down of the Christmas tree and all the decorations. It's always sad for me to put it all away because I love Christmastime so much, but I am definitely liking the uncluttered house with lots more room with the big tree gone. 

I hope this year I can get more uncluttered. Get rid of lots of stuff that I never use and start fresh before this new job or career or path starts for me.  I hope that 2011 is lots more of what I did this first week, focusing on a new job, learning new things, being creative, cooking simple food from scratch, decluttering and spending time with family and friends.  Oh and snow! We've had another few dustings of snow after the 28.5" the day after Christmas and we're expecting another 6-12" on Tuesday.  I am LOVING the snow!!

December Daily Update: I have to print out the last few pages of the December Daily album and assemble them, then I'll photograph the rest of the pages that I haven't blogged yet and update here. I am done through December 22nd, but I got behind in my photos and blogging with all the confusion of Christmas.  I hope to get that done in the next couple weeks.

 

Days 12, 13, 14 & 15

I'm a bit behind on my pages, since it's the 18th and I'm only done until the 15th.  But Christmas knitting snuck in and stole some time from me and a bad cold at the beginning of the week really kicked my butt for a few days.  I'm plowing through a ton of knitting and will be for the next 7 days, so my pages may simplify a bit to fit everything in.  This week will also be cookie making, and finishing up last minute shopping so I'm glad I've made it this far and hope to catch up on Monday with the past couple days and this weekend's documentation.

So here are the pages from the 12th through the 15th.

This was the beginning of the sick days on Sunday.  I did very little that day and only took that one photo.

Monday I was still sick, but I got some fiber in the mail that I had ordered so I took pictures of the fiber along with some yarn I am planning to use for the remainder of my Christmas knitting.  Yarn and Fiber has become such a huge joy of mine over the past two years, so it had to sneak into this album in different ways.

Tuesday I was still sick, but starting to feel on the verge of human again.  Eloise showed up at the back door with polyfil in her mouth (I guess only a crafter would have random tufts of polyfil in the backyard), so I thought I'd tell the story of how we trade for whatever she finds in the yard.  She brings me things to the door and I reward her with a cookie.  Very effective tool for keeping dogs from eating things that they are not supposed to eat.

It was also the first day we had snow, just a dusting, but the only accumulation thus far this year. Hoping for some more before Christmas!

And then the exciting day that our new washer and dryer were installed! No more leaking washer in the laundry room!

Thursday I went to my knitting group Christmas party at Sharon's house.  Such a nice party, but I forgot my camera!! Luckily I was able to take a couple pictures with Sharon's camera and she emailed them to me. So I'll work on that page tomorrow, along with Friday and today and tomorrow.  Definitely simplifying as it gets closer to the holiday, which is probably how I should always scrap, so it's a good lesson.

Off to see The King's Speech tonight and then more busy-ness tomorrow! Holidays seem to be quite an endurance sport!!

December Daily Days 10 & 11

Just finished up my pages for days 10 and 11.  Yesterday's pages were time consuming because I went to NYC and took tons of pictures that I loved and I wanted to include them all!

But first, Friday's layout which is very simple.  I didn't do much on Friday, a trip to Costco and the post office, but the most exciting thing was making banana pancakes for breakfast, so that's how this layout came to be.

I used the trick Ali Edwards used yesterday to make the white box and lower the opacity to make the text show up a little better.  Love that trick!

I just love the picture that Ana took of the banana pancakes with the bokeh from the Christmas tree behind them.  Here's a closeup of that picture, good enough to eat for sure! And they tasted as good as they look!

Yesterday we went into NYC to see the Donny and Marie Christmas on Broadway show.  The city was the definitely bustling, as it should be this time of year.  It was up around 45 degrees, so warm enough that people were not worried about the cold and everyone was out!

We had hoped to get some John's pizza when we arrived, but we had hit traffic and there was a line at John's so we headed to another smaller pizza place that was packed too, but the line was at least moving fast. We scarfed our pizza and headed to the show that was to start at 2. 

The show was great! It was a small theater so being in row J we were right up in front.  Donny and Marie are such showmen/showpeople (?) and they are so personable, and really get the audience involved.  The show was a little less than 2 hours, shorter than a typical broadway show, which ended up being a good thing because we had time to do a little looking around afterwards.

We started to walk toward the tree, and were taking pictures along the way, but the crowds kept getting more and more packed and we decided to just stop at Magnolia Bakery and then head back home.  We can see the tree another time, it's the same every year afterall.

Here's the layouts I made for yesterday, it got to be a lot of pages because I just loved so many of the photos and I didn't want to exclude any. So I separated the days into sections sort of, with the city sights, then Donny and Marie along with the playbill and tickets in a pocket, and then a few shots of the bakery which is so pretty and decorated for the holiday with silver snowflakes and birds hanging from the ceiling!

The text on the left page is the lyrics to the Rob Thomas song, New York City Christmas. I always think of that song when I walk around NYC at Christmastime.

I used the original transparency that was intended for the 11th.  And inserted a few other photos just by pasting them together and making a mini page.

Look at the crowds of people on the photo on the right, it was just jam packed!!

I love the photo in the second row of this page on the left, it's SO New York City to me.  It came out a bit blurry but I just had to include it anyway.

Here's a close up:

I just LOVE the pretzels and the tree lights behind the cart. I can almost smell the chestnuts!

Here is the Donny and Marie spread, with the illegal photos taken by Ana.  I worried about us being yelled at by the usher since photos were not permitted.  Of course, now I'm very glad she took the pictures!

And finally Magnolia Bakery.  The cupcakes were okay, well they were  good especially for the number these people have to produce daily but  I'm so spoiled now by Flaky Tart cupcakes that nothing compares.  But that store is just beautiful! The colors are just perfect for a cupcake store.

So that's all for now.  Today I am sick and sniffling up a storm.  Maybe I should just glue a tissue to some cardstock and call it a day.  Maybe a photo of nyquil. I'm not going to worry about it until tomorrow. Today we're having pea soup and homemade bread and lounging while it rains outside.  If not for this cold it would be a perfect day!

December Daily Days 8 & 9

Here's some photos of my past couple days of the December Daily. 

On the 8th, I just took some photos of my Christmas decorations outside and filled up the little circle page with the images. It was super simple to do, I just printed the photos wallet size, and they were tiny enough to fit in the circles.

For yesterday's layout, I wasn't really sure what to do because I didn't do anything very exciting, so I just wrote about my errands during the day, a trip to the post office to send out some yarn I destashed, some knitting errors I needed to fix, a few of the tv shows I watched,  and a little bit about the chicken pot pie I whipped out in less than an hour! (Pre baking)  And used some photos of my knitting and pot pie. This is just a reminder to myself that I really like to do the regular day types of layouts, because they show a slice of my life right now. And I am pretty happy with the results.

I used a bunch of Ali Edward's digital word art from Designer Digitals and modified them a bit in photshop to fit into circles so I could use a punch to make little embellishments. I am totally loving the "free transform" command!! Just rediscovered that this morning.  The pages printed out brown, which leads me to believe I either picked the wrong color, or I'm running out of red ink.  I imagine it's the latter since I've been printing a whole lot of red lately.  So I need to pick up some more ink today. 

I accidentally printed out the photo page wallet size the first time around and thought it was so cute, this tiny version of my page.  So I used it as a bit of a preview on the preceeding transparent page.

Not sure yet what today's page will be about, but it's looking to be another ordinary day.  Maybe I'll get ambitious and hang my stockings finally so I can be a bit more festive.