delight in life

2011

Twelve months ago, I declared that 2011 was going to be the best year ever. I love being able to say that I was right about that. At the end of 2010, my dad asked us how we wanted to be different a year from now, and I said I wanted to be "at a job I enjoy and in a dwelling with painted walls."
Here I am at the end of 2011 with apartment walls that are painted a lovely shade of light grey, and while I'm not yet at a job I enjoy, I might be soon. And I'm not at a job I don't enjoy any more, so that counts for something for sure.

My monthly resolutions fell off a bit at the end of the year, but they were so useful and motivating for me all year. I am really glad I did that.

2011 was the year we moved and I fell in love with our new home.
2011 was the year I fell in love with quilting.

2011 was the year we spent three lousy months apart but six magic and oh-so-fun months in Virginia. 

2011 was the year we celebrated one year together.
2011 was the year I realized that spending your life counting down till the grass is supposed to get greener in two months, or a year, or a week is a good way to make yourself unhappy and miss out on a lot of good stuff happening right now.

2011 was a very good year.

 

hand-painted mugs

This year Chris and I gave a bunch of hand-painted mugs as Christmas gifts. I saw the idea/tutorial from Wit & Whistle a few months ago on Pinterest, and I was really pleased with how mine turned out! I used the same herringbone pattern in the tutorial, and I also tried to come up with a few of my own. That part was harder than it sounds, because they had to be patterns that were easily free-handed with a shaky hand and uneven paint applicator. Several of my ideas had to be discarded, though I do like the two I ended up using.

I got plain white mugs from cb2 and gold, black, and copper paint from Blick. This is one of those handmade gifts that was fun to make at first, but after 2 or 3 I was kind of over it. It's always good to keep in mind when you're planning handmade gifts in larger quantities that some things are not so fun the 7th time around!

We paired the mugs with hot chocolate from Ticket Kitchen. Of course I had to get some for Chris and me too so that we could make sure it was worthy. ;) Man oh man that stuff is good! We really loved it and I was sad I was giving the rest away because I wanted to keep all of it for us.

 

merry christmas

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! I hope all of you are somewhere warm, merry, and bright with people you love.

(silly collage made with my new favorite iPad app, Mixel)

potterthon

Over Thanksgiving, my family (well, most of us) took on a Herculean task: a Harry Potter movie marathon. All eight movies. We were not quite crazy enough to attempt a single-day viewing, so we broke it into 2 days, with the first 5 movies on day one.

An event this epic can't happen without t-shirts to commemorate it, so I volunteered to garb everyone. I bought 8,000 packs of fuzzy iron-on letters, some white tshirts, and some black spray paint and got to work. Everyone got a phrase or quote from the movies on the front in iron-on letters. Some examples:

• Expelliarmus
• Weasley is our king
• Yer a wizard, Harry
• My father will hear about this
• and a bunch more, mostly ones that are probably pretty obscure unless you're crazy
• which my sisters and I are

For the backs, I exacto'd stencils out of cereal boxes and spray-painted the stencils on all the shirts:
My dad has an awesome mini-movie theater in the basement, complete with plush red velvet chairs, so for 2 days, me, my dad, my sisters, one boyfriend, and two family friends sat in the dark watching movies, sustaining ourselves almost exclusively on popcorn and Coke. 

You'll notice my mom and my husband were not in that list. They preferred to spend their 48 hours as humans, as opposed to cinephilic vampires, so they went and did things like playing tennis in the sunlight. But they still got shirts! AND my mom made the cutest little magic wands for everybody out of pretzel sticks and chocolate, complete with notes from Ollivander explaining what the wands were made of. So awesome (and delicious).

Chris was the only one who got a special message on the back of his shirt, at his request. He was also the only one who had a Voldemort quote on the front. So contrarian!
I suppose this is a super nerdy enterprise that we took on, but let me just tell you that it was so fun. And my family is awesome.

i made a dress!

I bought a beautiful dress pattern  almost a year ago (actually, maybe more, I don't remember) and it's been sitting unopened on my shelf ever since. I was far too afraid of the pattern to dream of ever actually making the dress. A few months ago, I realized this was ridiculous and I found a gorgeous gray-striped fabric that I knew was destined to be my dress. Then I also realized it was a bit crazy to use my favorite fabric on the first try, so I bought 3 yards of 2.98/yd navy blue fabric. All of that fabric sat on my shelf for a few more months, because I still was scared of the dress.
Before Thanksgiving, I described my irrational fear to my mom, and she suggested I bring the pattern and the fabric with me and she would help me. Is she a genius or what?

Making a dress is pretty hard! I thought the instructions were pretty clear, with a few small exceptions, and generally each step on its own is pretty straightforward. (Mostly that is because my mom was there to explain it all to me.) It's just that there are so. many. steps.
My biggest mistake was trying to do the whole thing in one night. If I hadn't been relying on my mom's help to get me through, I would have spread it out more, but I was determined to finish before we went home the next day so I would feel more confident next time I attempted it on my own. There were a few steps where it would have been nice to insert "take 18 deep breaths, go watch some tv, and come back tomorrow."

But! Frustrations and difficulties aside, I went home with a dress that I made myself. It's got plenty of flaws for sure, but I am wearing it right now anyway and I think that's pretty cool. 

 

the end

Today is my final day of work at American Airlines. I have lots of feelings about this, and none of them are consistent. I'm scared to be jobless, I'm ready to move on, I'm sad to leave some dear friends, I'm relieved to be leaving a job I haven't loved for a while now (and a company that is not doing so hot), I'm anxious about money, I'm excited about the future.

My friends gave me a wonderful send-off when we moved from Texas:


Today has had much less pomp and excitement, just a quick (but sincere) email dashed out to my coworkers, and few nice IMs throughout the day. (And a bouquet of flowers from my sweet husband.)

I'm grateful to AA for the last two and a half years, for hiring me straight out of college, for the friends I've made, for the amazing trips I've gotten to take, for keeping me on after we moved, and for the experience I've gained. Here's to them, and here's to the future.

 

quilt #8: colors

Lots and lots of pink for this one. I'm working on the piecing now and I'm very pleased with the way it's all coming together!

new york city day trip

Saturday we went to New York City to see How to Succeed on Broadway. What a fun, fun day it turned out to be.

We took Megabus up there, which was un-sketchy and very cheap. I approve. We left at the crack of dawn and arrived just in time for a delicious brunch at Cafe Cluny. Three-egg omelette with goat cheese and fresh herbs? Yes, please!

It was a gorgeous (if chilly) day, so we didn't mind the 40-minute walk from brunch to the theater for the matinee show. The show was a total blast. I loved it completely and so did Chris. It was very, very funny, and the retro costumes were really fun.


Despite the insane, body-crushing crowds, we braved a trip to Rockefeller Plaza to see the giant tree. It was pretty, but I was happy to get out of there as fast as we could (which wasn't very fast at all). I may have even thrown an elbow or two in my attempt to get out alive.



I loved seeing the signs of Christmas everywhere! Saturday was also Santacon, which is essentially a massive pub crawl for people dressed as Santa Claus. It was pretty funny to see roving gangs of Santas everywhere we went.

We took a bus home at 9 pm, which made for a very long, but very fun day. So glad we made time to do this.

gold and sparkly

We don't have a mantle anymore, which I haven't minded until now, when I was trying to figure out where to put my Christmas decorations. As an alternative, I decided this year I would make a bunch of different garlands and string them up above the couch, like I did here. The first one I've made is this pretty glittery gold one.

(Bonus sneak peek at my current quilt in progress on the couch!)

I saw something similar on Etsy, and since I make it a point to always have glitter paper on hand, it took me about 15 minutes to whip up my own.

I used my super awesome circle cutter to cut about 40 4-inch circles. That cutter is not a tool I use very often, but when the chance comes up, I am always so glad to have it. Next, I folded each circle in half and then opened them up and placed a piece of double-stick tape along the crease. I laid the string along the crease of each circle and re-folded them, pressing tightly on the crease to seal the tape along the string. Easy peasy!

resolved: december

(Warning: we're taking the scenic route to get to this one.)

Last night was one of those nights where I had so much running through my head that I couldn't sleep and I had to get up and write it all down or I'd forget everything and the world will end. Or something.

So much going on.

December 16 is my last day at my job. In June, instead of accepting my resignation when Chris and I moved from Dallas, my company did a wonderful thing and offered me the opportunity to continue working for them from Virginia. The arrangement was always meant to be temporary, so I have known this was coming for a while, but I didn't know the exact date until a few days ago. For financial reasons, I was hoping for it to stretch just into the new year at least, but it seems that was not to meant to be. Though I know we will manage just fine, the idea of having our income suddenly cut in half is a bit unsettling, to say the least.

I'm looking forward to so many things we have planned for December, but at the same time the challenge of fitting everything in has me feeling overwhelmed. That's what's bringing out the insomniac in me tonight.

I keep starting lists and not being able to remember everything that needs to be on the list. So even my plans are incomplete.

I also am doing the December Daily and of course I always want to maintain my regular documentation on this blog, and I hate how much that has been lacking lately. So much I want to say about Thanksgiving, about Potterthon 2011, about my first attempt at dress-making, our christmas tree, and on and on. 

And throughout all of this, no matter how hectic I feel, I still want to actually enjoy this season, and remember the root of it all, beneath the pretty gift wrap and the sweater sales, why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. I'd like Chris to see my smile more often than he sees my crazy, frazzled, I-can't-do-this expression.

So this is my December goal: to try to fit it all in, to do everything on all of my many lists, but not at the expense of my stress level or my husband's patience.