delight in life

harry potter: until the very end

I know I mentioned my Harry Potter obsession a few weeks ago, but I never shared these little bits from the night of the premiere. I actually wore a costume for the first time. A relatively subtle one, but a costume nonetheless. I just printed out the Gryffindor crest and double-stick-taped it to my grey sweater.
 
The theater was somehow not prepared for the enormous mass of people that showed up for the midnight showings and everything pre-movie was kind of annoying and frustrating. But once we got in it was really wonderful. I love midnight showings! Everyone is always so excited and so unabashedly nerdy. I will probably never go to another at midnight again, so I tried to enjoy it all.

The movie was so. good. Better than I'd hoped and really a perfect way to end it all up. I'm gonna miss it all a lot, but at least they went out well. 

My sister drew this funny little sketch of me, and it ended up being pretty much exactly accurate, right down to the tears and the iPad. I went ahead and tweeted the same thing just to round out the picture.

 

early success!

To my delight, my basil seedlings went crazy only two days after I planted them. The lavender came along two days later! I'm still not holding my breath that I'll have a flourishing crop of lovely lavender, but I'm fairly certain I'm going to have piles of basil. I'm wishing I'd split those seeds up among three or four pots.

The chives, which I did use 2 pots for, have only 4 wee seedlings. But I found some cilantro seeds today so I threw them in a pot as well. My gardening philosophy could be classified as "why the heck not?" with a little dash of "oooh! that's so prettyy!" tossed in for good measure.

our fourth

Better late than never, right?

We celebrated our first fourth of July in DC with the masses on the Capitol lawn. We packed a big cooler full of yummy food and lots of water and camped out on the lawn for the afternoon. We'd brought my pretty rainbow umbrella because we were worried about rain, but it ended up being used mostly for sun protection -- we were so glad to have it. It was soooo hot. 

We were there to watch "A Capitol Fourth," the big concert that airs on PBS every year. Chris was actually supposed to be IN the concert, but because of his surgery he couldn't participate. He was disappointed, but I was glad to have someone to enjoy the concert with. It was a really fun concert, especially when the quartet of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins impersonators came on. Once the fireworks started, I was upset to discover we were in exactly the wrong place to see them. That was a pretty huge disappointment (I LOVE FIREWORKS) but overall it was a really fun night and a fun way to extend our feeling of being "permanent tourists."


ps: hi Mom!

gardening (again)

When I found out we'd be moving in June, I decided not to bother this year with anything beyond a few windowsill pots of basil and mint. Made no sense to get all excited and invested when I'd just have to throw it all away two months in. But I unpacked the very last of the moving boxes the other day, and in it were my pots and a bunch of seed packets. I couldn't resist a quick trip to Home Depot for some soil and a late night session on the balcony. 

I planted lemon basil, purple opal basil, chives, lavender, and cat grass (Oscar's favorite treat!). I don't have super high hopes for any of it due to the age of the seeds, the lack of full sun, and the time of year I'm planting, so anything that comes up will be a delight! I've never grown any of these things before (except the grass) so I'm really looking forward to see how things work out!

In a pinch, crochet hooks and washi tape make great plant markers. :)

the color of

I found a cool website yesterday on swissmiss. "The Color Of: an attempt to find out the color of anything." It's pretty straightforward: you enter a term, it gathers some images from flickr that fit your term, and then somehow smushes all the images together for the final product. I had fun playing around with random words:

harry potter

I have never been so excited or so sad about a movie before, much less excited and sad about the same movie.

I've re-read the books and I've re-watched all the movies and I bought my tickets eight days ago, all in preparation for the midnight showing tonight. Harry and I started together when I was 11. And now I'm 23, nearly 24. Pretty weird.

So I'm just as sad as I am excited to see it all end. These stories have been so important to me; they mean so much to me. But luckily, books can be read over and over and over and over, and as my lady JK Rowling said, "No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories you love best will always live inside you, so whether you come back by page, or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

some recent favorites

1 - the lovely small park where I spent a few hours working before the library opened. 2 - the Capitol on the Fourth. 3 - Coronas at a sidewalk table. 4 - the arbor by our pool.

(All taken with Instagram on my phone.)

ok, HI.

Whew. I blinked and two weeks went by. Chris had surgery and all of our stuff showed up the next day while he was still in the hospital. And we didn't have internet. The last two weeks have been a blur of unpacking, recovering (him, not me), and dashing down to the lobby any time I need to use the internet. It's been a bit stressful, but we made it through and our apartment is starting to come together. We have internet now, Chris goes back to work this week, and things are feeling normal again. 

What's more fun than unpacking thousands of boxes? Painting swatches on the wall!

We also painted last weekend, and I'm obsessed with how it looks. Can't wait to share photos when we've fiiiinally got everything settled.