Here and Everything In It

More Christmas Shenanigans

These photos are courtesy of our lovely, talented, photografabulous sister Victoria:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monkeys, Sloths and Geckos? As Roommates? I'm IN

We decided to go all out this spring break and see a part of the world we've never seen before, so we just booked two tickets to San Jose, Costa Rica, and are renting a condo in Manuel Antonio for ten days. Yay! SO much to see and do! SO much rainforest to absorb! SO many neato animals to watch and listen to! SO many different kinds of fruit to sample!

AND -- IT WILL BE SO WARM! I CAN WEAR TANK TOPS! AND SANDALS!

The luxury of escaping the frigid northern winter is almost too much to consider at this point (on Sunday I got some minor frostbite on my cheek while out walking the dogs -- gah).

Here are the pictures that were sent to us from the travel agent, but after some research, these photos seem to be from two different units in the condo building, so it remains to be seen what the accommodations will really look like.

 

 

 

But, if she sent us a picture of a balcony overlooking the ocean, there's bound to be a balcony overlooking the ocean, right? RIGHT?

I'll think I'll print out these pictures and bring them with us for evidence just in case.

Walking The Shoreline

Well I'm Just Going To Show You Anyway

One of my major crafting challenges over the last year has been creating a hand sewn alphabet book for my niece, Olivia. I saw a really beautiful name book on craftster.org, completely fell in love, but in my manic and irrationally overachieving method of doing things decided that Olivia's name WAS NOT ENOUGH, and I instead needed to create an ENTIRE alphabet book, from scratch, with title and end pages as well as book covers.

And I wanted to make it all and then present it bound in a book before I showed anyone, but seriously, people. At this rate, this sucker won't be ready until my niece graduates from university and honestly? I can't wait that long to share.

Here are the finished letters, some of which have been photographed at an angle to cut down on the reflection from the fabric, but they are all roughly rectangular and same-sized, I promise.

This is the first one I did, and I took alpaca wool and threaded it through the felt to give the alpaca a real-life fuzziness:

And then this one was my experiment with tiny embroidery stitching that I think took about a gazillion hours:

(oh, by the way, I've since filled in the stitching on the animal names so the letters are made of unbroken lines and easier to read as a result)

And then my cow, whose eyes looked demonic and then crazed before I changed them around about eight times:

(the barn door actually opens to show a cat. Aw.)

And then I started to mess around with perspective, which I may or may not have the patience to repeat with future pages:

   E for elephant was actually one that I was planning in my head from day one, though it turned out much more colourful than I intended. Not only that, but suddenly my gender-neutral pachyderm was wearing a pink tail bow, and I had to physically restrain myself from giving him/her drag queen eyelashes:

(but I totally scored on the elephant love border ribbon)

And, F. I love the different fabrics I used on this page. It was a lot of fun, and I'm actually pretty relieved that the frog looks like he's leaping rather than being beamed into space by some alien tractor beam:

(again, this happens to be one of those pages that I SWEAR is rectangular in real life)

I'm now working on the Giraffe page, which is going really well. I'm pretty excited about the whole thing, really. And, if Olivia learns to read before its completion, or like, you know, publishes her first novel or thesis before it's ready, maybe she can then keep it for her child? You know, considering it isn't a personalized NAME book, but the entire freaking alphabet.

ALL TWENTY SIX LETTERS.

But I shouldn't complain. Crafting? Come on, it's bliss. If my hell were accordion music as played by eighth graders, SMART Assessments, perpetual carsickness and that constant high pitched pinging background noise from the first Star Trek, heaven would be a clean wood table, sunlight, and a variety of textiles with which I can create things that I think are pretty. Ah.