Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours, may I wish you a most wonderful holiday season!

WestJet Christmas Miracle

Seriously. Grab a tissue.

November! and a little update...

Oh wow, for the first time since creating this blog space in March 2006, I missed an entire month of posting to this blog. I don't know where October went!

Lu and I had funky Halloween paper lanterns and giant spiders to hang on our porch, but we got distracted by everything else and never hung them on the porch. Next year...

My days are mostly filled with work and my 2 grad classes. I'm about 80% sure I'm not going to be taking any classes in the spring. I'm exhausted and I'm not enjoying it the way I thought I would; I'm also not sure this program is preparing me for this field in any tangible way (so why waste the time and expense just for a piece of paper?) I have 5 years to complete it, so a semester break is allowed while I gather my thinky thoughts on it.

Last month (Eep! October!) I went to Boston for 5 days with Random Acts. I didn't get to explore the city very much, but I'll do a post of some pretty scenery in a few days! I have some "selfies" from my various treks around the city (and the farm we stayed at) so I could keep my kiddos updated on my whereabouts. And so they didn't forget my face.

Here's one, in case you have forgotten my face:

Meeting everyone that I work with at Random Acts in person was fun, but there were definitely hiccups. Maybe I'll tell you a story later.

Meanwhile, for you sewing aficionados...I haven't touched my machine in months. That's part of the NEW new life plan for Christmas break and moving into 2014. DO MORE THINGS I LOVE. I haven't even had time to open my Burda for November! Was it good? Ugh. I will do that tonight!

Ahh...let's see. Knee is still utter crap. But I can walk up and down a few stairs now, and handle a couple of inclines on my hilly hiking/walking.

Sidenote: Can you believe Christmas is upon us?? My mind is blown.

Lastly, as today is November 1, I'll go ahead and announce it's NaNoWriMo time! National Novel Writing Month for you newbies. 30 days, 50K words. I will be cheating again and working on a story already in progress (but only 3 chapters in). Yay! I'm excited!

Hope you're all doing well and I promise not to let another month go by without some kind of contact! Happy Friday!!

bon vivant

I'm pretty sure luggage shouldn't make me cry and want to have its babies.

olily luggage at anthropologie

And then there's this fiasco:

jocelyn dress

And this:

merida pencil skirt

And these:

lace melange top

honore buttondown

roselle pullover

beaded pointelle cardigan

I mean really, anthropologie. What gives you the right?

Nope.

This commercial totally didn't shatter my feels into a thousand glittering pieces and then stomp them into the ground and leave me crying in the dirt.

Not at all.

20 Years Ago Tonight...

I was settling down to watch the premiere of a brand new show:

The X-Files 

Pilot 1x01

I don't think I could begin to quantify the hours of enjoyment and escape these two have given me over the past two decades.

Thanks, Mulder and Scully. 

I still want to believe. 

Vintage art: Super crafty book design

Hands down the coolest story I've seen on the internet in a long while: secret fore-edge book paintings revealed at the University of Iowa.

all images copyright Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Iowastory by Collosal

Now I want to go to the flea market and play art detective.

SMILE! It's Saturday!

And if this doesn't make you grin like a fool, I don't know what will.

TGIF. And shark cat.

All credit for finding this gem goes to Lu.

I don't know why a cat in a shark costume riding a Roomba makes me so happy, but it does.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Back to School!

Seriosuly, where did summer go?

I mean, I did drive across the American southwest.

John Ford's Point

And I went to Belize.

Xunantunich

I also spent 2 weeks on crutches and another 10 days on the couch with a weird bug.

You know what that means? That means I watched some serious television. Like this:

and this:

and this:

All guilty pleasures and probably I lost some valuable brain cells.

I wrote 45,000 words of a fractured retelling of Beauty and the Beast (it's not finished, but it's close.) That's my fourth novel this year, if you're counting. (I'm counting.) One of these I'm eventually going to polish up and try to publish.

That was my summer. How was yours?

Good-bye summer 2013, how I will miss thee.

ps.   For all my teacher friends who are going back with me or in the next few weeks, I have a Teachers Pay Teachers storefront filled with freebies. I don't make any money off of my TPT store. It's just a nice central location to give away things I make for my classroom.

TeachersPayTeachers

wednesday wisdom via Retta

This will always make me smile. Happy hump day!

Louis Vuitton Paper Dolls: Spring/Summer Lookbook

Now this is a marketing ploy I can get behind!  A printable paper doll booklet featuring many of the spring/summer 2013 collection from Louis Vuitton:

 About the only thing that would make it better is if they had let me color all the outfits myself! (Nope, never gonna outgrow the paper doll!)

Download your copy at Louis Vuitton here.

Pictures from Belize

I spent 10 days in Belize (and one unexpected extra night in Atlanta) over the past couple of weeks. I was never so glad to be home in my life!

I'm still in recovery mode so I'll share some pics and maybe some stories another time:

my 'front yard' on Tobacco Caye 

jaguar, Belize zoo

crocodile, Belize zoo

from the boat, Hol Chan Marine Reserve

black howler monkeys (in the wild), Community Baboon Sanctuary

home for 3 days, Tobacco Caye 

Xunantunich, Cayo District of Belize

snorkeling with nurse sharks, Hol Chan Marine Reserve
(yup, I snorkeled with them. AFTER they stopped rushing the boat.)

sunrise over Tobacco Caye

Unfortunately I am not having the best travel luck this summer. I came home from Belize with the flu, fever, sore throat, achy everywhere. FEELS LIKE WINTER. I'm hoping this makes me immune to whatever flu comes out locally this year!

Also, I want a do-over of the past week! 

Sweet Sixteen

Remember this?

Lu, age 9

Me too. Feels like yesterday.  That was Lu's first birthday on this blog. Today, my sweet girl is sixteen. 

Happy birthday, baby!

Great Big All American Girl Roadtrip: Photos

We made it home safe and sound about a week ago! It was an adventure, I'll grant you that.

We started in Sante Fe, and stayed in the cutest little hotel a block or two from the plaza, which was perfect because we could walk everywhere. We ate the first night at the Blue Corn Cafe, which I can highly recommend. Yummy food, great atmosphere and lovely people.

This was one of those times I wished I was more like my friend Debbie, because there was a group of French tourists eating a few tables away and they could not translate the menu (and no French speakers in the house!) When one of men received his dish of "macaroni & cheese", his expression was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Not what he was expecting!

Our first morning we walked to the Loretto Chapel.

It was beautiful, but like most things in life, smaller and more commercialized than I expected. (It's no longer a church, but a privately owned tourist attraction.)

After that we made our way to Petroglyph National Monument down in Albuquerque and then northwest to Chaco Canyon.

I have never been on a rougher road than the road to Chaco. I thought my teeth were going to shake out of my skull. It's 21 miles off the highway and something like 13 of that is dirt road. Apparently they don't use road graders out in the back country though, and it's basically one long cattleguard of dirt and stone. Ouch. I had a headache by the time we got there!

But the pueblo dwellings were beautiful. I wish I had enjoyed this part more, especially in light of the next day on our trip.

We drove across the rest of NM and into Arizona to Kayenta, the closest town to Monument Valley.  We hiked down to view the Navajo National Monument:

And then drove out to Monument Valley for a sunset Jeep tour in the back country. Honestly? It's impossible to take a bad picture of Monument Valley. It is GORGEOUS.

That last photo was taken about 5 minutes before I fell off a rock and partially dislocated my kneecap. You know the most fun you can have on vacation? Hint: It's not in the emergency room. 

So, four x-rays, two crutches, and one sleepless night later, we drove back through monument valley on our way to Colorado, cutting our trip short since I was not in prime driving condition any longer. 

The money shot:

We drove through "Mexican Hat":

And landed in Mesa Verde National Park.  I'm pretty miserable at this point (and thinking the doctor was probably right when he told me to stay in the hotel for 36 hours before I attempted to drive), but the view was pretty on the way up. 

You know what no one ever told me about Mesa Verde? It's at the top of a mountaintop mesa. Twenty-one miles of hairpin turns and sheer dropoffs. At 20 mph. 

I couldn't do it. We only made it 9 miles before we were both carsick and I could barely stand to lift my foot to hit the break (not a good Rx for that drive).  So...Mesa Verde. Sorry we missed you!

We drove on to Durango to spend our last night, and Colorado (what little we saw of it) was lovely:

It took over 15 hours to drive home the next day, but I've never been so glad to see my bed in my life. 

I'm glad to be home! 

ps. I'm off crutches now and the kneecap is improving. Which is good news...I leave for Belize in 2 weeks!