C'est fini!

All About Papercuttings

With Valentine's Day around the corner, I'm considering (or perhaps it's just a fantasy of mine) making lots of valentines out of papercuttings-- much like the one above I'm currently doing (pattern found at Ellen Brown's site). I've been interested in them since 2 summers ago when, at our community festival, I met a woman who did Scherenschnitte. I picked up a few more when I saw her again this past summer. I've attempted a few now, using just a Xacta knife, but I'm excited to recieve one of my birthday presents-- some of the special scissors! It doesn't take long to get hooked, especially once you see the great variety of designs-- from the Germans to the Mexicans to the Polish folks-- there's something for everyone.

I've noticed a few other bloggers interested in doing it as well, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite books and links.

Great Papercutting Sites:

• Papercuttings by Alison- she's got so many fantastic designs for wonderful prices. My first 3 papercutting designs were purchased here: this, this, and that! Love these, too.
• Ellen Brown- she has a huge number of patterns that she's generously posted; I'd like to do them all!
• Cindy's Scherenschnitte- a blogger! Her designs are fresh and fun.
• Wycinanki by Susan L. Throckmorton- go here for inspiration. I'm not sure mine will ever be this good!
• Barbara Buckingham- Just by chance I recently found her work-- and look, it's all of Lexington! (Which reminds me--I've got 3 gate papercuttings like these from Charleston, SC!)
• Pamela Dalton- Fantastic work; I believe she had an article a few years ago in Country Living.

My Favorite Papercutting books:

• The Amazing Paper Cuttings of Hans Christian Andersen- really fun.
• Scherenschnitte: Designs and Techniques for the Traditional Craft of Papercutting- beautiful designs, but not for the beginner!

Weekend Update and WIP's

Well, I had another birthday and it was loads of fun. Not only did we get one snow day-- but two! Two whole days to play in the snow and do some much needed work around the house!

My family took us to eat on Wednesday to a nice Italian place in Staunton and then to Kline's Dairy Barn. We had a great time. My birthday itself was a quiet night since we were stuck inside. I made a nice pot of soup and a loaf of homemade beer bread-- it was a perfect meal for a cold night. Jeremy made me the funniest card and he's been a real sweetheart all weekend. I'm really not sure how I'll get out of bed tommorow morning and head back to work after getting to hang out at home so much!

Here's what it looked like outside:
Not a great day for picture taking, (as I've challenged myself to do-- I'm hoping to take more photos in the chance that if I take more, more will turn out well...) since after the snow, sleet began so we had only a small window of opportunity to play in the snow!

Friday and Saturday I was either baking or doing dishes or eating. I don't think I did anything else. Ashley took me to lunch Saturday at the Southern Inn (seems to be our tradition), but other than that I spent as much time as I could trying to prepare some sweet treats for our friends Lyndsey and Jonathan's wedding reception. Lyndsey loves cakes and so we set out to make some fabulously decorated- yummy cakes! It was success!

Here's the start of my 'petit fours'-- I even doubled the recipe but only ended up with a small amount. What a pain in the ***** that recipe was! Double sifted everything and then the icing was just all wrong.
This is the other cake I made an Orange Marmalade Cake from the Mitford series. I was hesitant to even try this (I'm always scared to try my baked goods) because the recipe called for a sort of whipped cream and sour cream frosting, but I'm pleased with how it turned out! I even tried to make some pretty candied orange and lemon slices!

Here's everything, including my petit fours that Lyndsey jazzed up:

She did such a nice job & even found the time to make a birthday cake for me! It's much like the pink one above. That was so sweet!

Today, we're just relaxing and eating lots of leftover cake. Hope you had great weekend!

Do these belong to you?

I recieved an email with some classic Olan Mills photos-- you don't see many of those anymore. Wonder why?

Enjoy your day!

On a side note: We're 99.999999999999999999999% sure we'll have a snow day tommorow, so look for lots of teachers doing a snow dance!

Dorky Rant and Rave

Ok. I'm a total dork I know, but I just need to take this opportunity to get this off my chest...

Rant:

I don't know that I've mentioned it, but I stopped watching Grey's Anatomy. I was so peeved that Meredith ended their relationship like that last spring, after 3 years of me faithfully watching the show, I couldn't stand it. I know I wasn't the only crazed fan who did-- I think it was a really awful way to keep people watching for yet another year or two before they finally get Meredith and McDreamy together. Well, on Thursday night there was a rerun of the office (thank you writers strike) and a *new* Grey's coming on... so I decided to give it another chance.

It was just awful. Meredith got mad at McDreamy for kissing another girl although she didn't want to be "with" him; so they break up again. I don't know about you, but when I hear about a couple that breaks up over and over, after one or two breakups I'm not real sure I see a real future there. So I was annoyed I watched the show in the first place, seeing them break up again and seeing McDreamy trying to move on with his life... while Meredith is all self-absorbed and thinks she's got issues... either you want to be with the guy or not!

Even if the writers of the show put them back together, I won't believe it will work out. So there. :)

Rave:

Last night we saw Enchanted and that made up for it all! So much fun. This is a total girl-who-grew-up-watching-Disney-movies movie-- really adorable movie in which McDreamy finally wins and keeps a girl's heart! It totally seemed liked McDreamy post Grey's-- his wife left him (Meredith) with their daughter and he's all broken inside. He finally gets the girl. Loved it.

Gosh I am such a dork.Hope you had a nice weekend.

Holiday Photo Round Up

This is my 161st post!!! WOW!

I have to be honest that I thought I might not blog anymore, but I've got to find a way to keep up with all the photos I've got. My mom's set me up with a Blurb book as a gift, and the whole process has inspired me to get all my photos organized. I've got a huge box just full of photos and mementos to sort through and hopefully scrapbook. Thing is, it's been years-- 5 or 6-- since I've done it so I've got a big task in front of me. As far as the Blurb book, I'm keeping it "simple" by making it a wedding album. Our photographer from the wedding put her photos in a nice album, but then we've got another album just from the table photos and stacks of some from friends. I'm currently getting all that together, and putting some of the negatives on a cd so I can use the best of what I've got.

I'm not exactly sure where I heard about the Blurb books-- probably someone's blog-- but I originally was interested in one from Kodak. I quickly lost interest once I saw the potential of what the Blurb books could be. I'm soooo excited. Really. Can't wait to see how it all turns out. Stacks of photos all printed in one nice hardcover book. Anyone have any experience with these books?

Any-who, I realize I haven't put up many holiday photos. The holidays were a blur of eating and socializing and crafting and fun and I think I forgot my camera most of the time. Here's as much as a summary as I can offer:

Early December in DC:

We went ice skating at the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden. Freezing but fun. Sweet and romantic- it shouldn't just be cute couples in the movies who get to skate together under twinkling lights. Well my guy wasn't all that romantic at first. Perhaps a little too practical at times-- he saw no reason to take off a perfectly good pair of shoes and put on skate to go out into a crowded rink. And we were with our friends Lyndsey and Jonathan-- practically just days before they were getting married so I finally got him to be a good sport.

Happy Lyndsey.

Not-so-happy Jeremy.

Jeremy really started having fun once someone (whose name shall not be mentioned) said, "Let's race!"... well, this is the result of all that:

Poor Jonathan.

Really he was so close to exiting the rink, but in the last 30 seconds on his way out, even, I guess he hit a wet spot and he had a fall. We quickly took the Metro to GW Hospital where we spent the rest of the evening... Thankfully the stitches helped heal the cut and there's no trace of the incident in their gorgeous wedding photos!

A Poor Attempt at A "Family Photo":

The truth is I'd really love a great photo each year of us at Christmas, but we sort of forgot and did the best we could... Really, really did not like my hair in the photo and was inspired to change it-- now I'm a brunette-ish redhead of sorts...




A Philly Outing:

We headed to Philly the weekend after Christmas. We walked around by Boathouse Row and Kelly Drive, and up near the Art Museum (to visit and Armenian Memorial). Visited the Philadelphia Waterworks (actually really cool) and got cheesesteaks at a great shop. And a few days later we headed to the Franklin Institute.




Some cute kid we ran into...



Yo, Adrian :)

Memorial to the Armenians lost in Genocide





Jeremy riding the Sky-Bike at the FI, trying to work off all the cheesesteaks he ate the day before...

Becca with her boyfriend :)


Well, that's all. Hope you're having a great week!

Back To Work Humor

Picked up this book over the holidays. Not totally sure why, considering I usually never buy these kinds of books. My cousin and I were in a bookstore and I just kept running into it everywhere I went, and I just couldn't seem to put it down.

My brother and I used to argue over the tv remote when my parents weren't around... it was a real battle to control what was on tv. This went way back, back when He-man and She-ra were on. I definetely remember having to watch a lot of MacGuyver (does that mean I lost a lot?)... so these are a sampling of the book, in honor of my bro.

5 of the 400 Facts about the World's Greatest Human:

1. Bill Gates lives in constant fear that Chuck Norris's PC will crash.

2. A masked man once stabbed Chuck Norris in an alley behind an children's hospital and THE KNIFE BLED TO DEATH.

3. Chuck Norris's beard has a representative in Congress.

4. Chuck Norris gargles with antifreeze.

5. Chuck Norris was once on celebrity Wheel of Fortune and was the first to spin. The next 20 minutes of the show consisted of everyone standing around awkwardly waiting for the wheel to stop spinning.

Enjoy your first day back at work! (I really should be getting ready...)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Best wishes to you and yours for a great new year.

I wanted to share some New Year's postcards, and my collection has just doubled since a friend gave me her grandmother's collection. I always enjoy reading them... I am especially curious about the ones recieved by Jeremy's grandmother (who I'll never have the chance to meet as she passed away years ago). These are some of my favorites:

My resolutions?
Last year I wrote my resolutions on a slip of paper, and I didn't keep up with them. I'll have no choice if I post them for all the world to see, eh?
1. Do some yoga or exercise 2x a week. (I won't bother to explain how much I despise working out...)
2. Do better with correspondence. (I've been really awful at returning phone calls and emails.)
3. Journal or post a blog entry 2x a week. (It doesn't sound that hard...!)
4. Do my nails once a week. (Long story... bad habit of biting nails...)
5. Take a step forward job-wise...

And a reminder of some hopes and wishes in college-- this Mary Baldwin postcard should remind me of the many things I wanted to do with my life.