Friday, May 28, 2010

So I'd Like To Know If... You've Got the Notion

The crafty kicks goes on.  Somehow I've managed to find girlfriends in this city who are determined to be a domestic diva as I am.  After our craft night a few months ago, we decided we wanted to recruit someone to give us a few sewing 101 lessons.  I was fortunate enough to talk my wonderful friend and talented seamstress Dale into taking on the task of adopting 8 beginning seamstresses. 

And when I say beginner, I mean be-gin-ner.  Thankfully, Dale was willing to start at the very "how to wind a bobbin" beginning and was ever bit as patient as she could be.  She brought us some cut out kits of tote bags that are put together for a charity called Newborns in Need.  It was a little daunting to look at the end product and think we could create that, but with her guidance and direction we all completed the bags in two nights and are feeling inspired to create more...

Dale showed us other ideas and kept reminding us that just like anything we did, repetition was the key to mastering the skills that seemed out of our league right now and that mistakes were okay - they're just part of the learning process. 

And introduced us to my very favorite tool: the seam ripper.  Handy for when you do something like, I dunno, sew the pockets on your tote bag shut?  Just sayin'. 



I have a feeling I could become a very dangerous person in a fabric shop.  Ideas, ideas, ideas....



Dale walking Crystal through the basics - in our "sweatshop", my lovely garage! 



Kim and Anne were the superstars - both finished their bags in about 2 hours.   On a sewing machine made in 1952, no less.  Just goes to show you don't need fancy equipment to do the basics!  Here they are showing off their cute Nemo bags, soon to be filled with baby neccessities for preemie newborns! 


Oh, and the ice cream truck driving down our street to give us a little reprieve - from both the heat of my makeshift "sweatshop" in the garage and the stress of getting handles and linings JUST right - was a nice touch! 



I'm proud of our new found talents.  I'm sure we'll be taking custom orders in a few weeks... as long as whatever you want only involves straight lines, of course.








Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Salute!

Let's see... time spent with good friends, in warm weather with delicious wine? Check. Pretty sure that's a recipe for a perfect weekend day. Matt and I spent Saturday at the Salute NC Wine Festival with friends - Mike, Anne, Locke, Crystal, Donna, Kim and Crick. I'm not sure we tasted everything there but we definitely put a good effort forth. I'm totally shocked to report that my absolute favorite wine was the Cellar 4201 Sangiovese. Yes, moi, who pretty much only started drinking, nay tasting, red wines a month ago. It seems like white wines from NC are just super sweet. I'm a fan of semi-sweet wines, for sure, but I don't want a sugar buzz along with my vino buzz. Other faves were the Raffaldini Fiore, Divine Llama Chardonnel and McRitchie Sparking Niagara.

After our (sugar) buzz, we headed to dinner at Downtown Thai. Afterwards we headed across the street to a new bar. It's called Tate's Craft Cocktails... I guess craft means hand-made and hand-made means really, really, REALLY slow service? I'd give 'em a 2nd chance, since apparently they have just opened, but it took an hour and a half for 8 of us to have one round of drinks.

And then we stood in a street and danced to an 80s cover band and I thought about how much I adore life in this city with our wonderful friends, the end.











Friday, May 21, 2010

And That Was April. And, Ok, Most of May...

Once upon a time, I posted on this blog all the time about the things I was doing.  Do you remember?  I vaguely do.

The irony is that I started this blog as a means of "scrapbooking" our life, and then when we are actually busy doing all these fun things... I run out of time to blog about them.  Sooooo annoying when REAL LIFE gets in the way of online life, right?  Right.  Oh yea, and then my hard drive crashed and took with it most of April's pictures and draft posts.  So there's that. 

I took a vote at Bunko last night as to whether I should back track and catch up and just cut my losses and start from today.  The general consensus was that white Bordeaux is very strange, but quite delicious. 

Oops, wrong poll.  The general consensus was to cut my losses and start today.  The systematic side of me doesn't like this.  I finish every book I start, I go down the to do list in the order I wrote it, and I once in high school I forced myself to wear every article of clothing in my closet once before I repeated anything.  I don't like the idea of skipping April and half of May; it truthfully feels a little bit like it didn't happen.

Go ahead and schedule that blogging intervention sometime soon.  In the meantime, I'll just quasi update on what happened between my last post, my hard-drive crash and today. 

I traveled safely home from Napa.  I went to a coaching seminar in Durham with my bestie, Heather. My parents visited.  We visited Matt's parents.  I went to my first car race ever, at Bowman Gray.  A week later, I went to my second car race.  This time I brought ear plugs.


Lauren + I at Bowman


Jamie and I put two dogs in one car and hoped for the best on a 3 hour car trip.  The best happened, and our reward was a day of floating on boat on Cherokee Lake, catching up on magazines, each other's lives and maybe even a little sleep.  We probably shouldn't mention our husbands were working 30-hour shifts that weekend. 


The Captain + Her First Mate


I went to Charlottesville to take engagements pictures of my friend Jess and her fiancee Charlie.  I climbed up on benches, laid in a field of buttercups, got bug bitten and sweaty as I wrestled with a 7 lb telephoto lens and loved every stinking second of it.  The pictures came out amazing, 99% due to my fun and beautiful subjects. 


<3 Jess + Charlie <3

I ran the Race for the Cure 5k with five of my girlfriends - Lauren, Jamie, Anne, Akanksha and Crystal - and 11,000 other girls (and boys) dressed head to toe in pink, celebrating survivors, remembering loved ones and clamoring for free Dannon yogurt and SunChips at the end.  For the first mile, I prayed for myself - to get up the hill.  The rest was flat and downhill and I allowed my mind to wander to a grad school friend who was diagnosed in her 20s.  I've run that race four times now, since I met E in grad school, and every time her continued and future health is the prayer I carry through those 3 miles.  Two of my girl friends were running their first 5k, and my favorite race part of the race was the smiles on their face at the finish line.


Jamie's Pre-Race Pink Carbo Load Party

My husband had a well-earned week long vacation in the middle of May, and used the time off to diligently apply himself to mastering the use of a few specific tools well-loved by most physicians: the driver, the putter, and the 8 iron.  Believe it or not, knowing he was on vacation was relaxing for me as well - it's hard to watch your spouse work day after day after day with few breaks in between!  Hitting snooze at 5:00 am is not nearly so sweet when the garage door is going down and your husband is on his way to work.  (That's why I get up immediately when he leaves and don't allow myself one more second in the nice cozy.. mwafh... waht... zzzZZ....)  Oops, where was I?

Vacation!  The end of his vacation week we traveled down to Myrtle Beach to visit my friend Kim where we all overdid it on sun, peel 'n eat shrimp and well, sun.  Despite using SPF 55, I still have two very pink bright feet a week later.  Totally worth it though, there's no place on Earth that makes me happier than the beach. 

And then! And THEN!  The culmination of all this frenzied activity (I swear there was at least one Saturday night in the middle of all this that Matt was on call and I stayed home and Swiffered and read Cooking Light to my lil hearts content)... I had a birthday.  My actual birthDAY was kind of blase, in the way that they are once you stop having theme birthday parties and/or feeling the need to prove yourself worthy of your friend's bar tabs... it was pretty much just a regular Sunday, I just so happened to be a smidge older.  We went to church, cleaned the house, walked the dog, and I took the liberty of allowing myself a nice 2 hour no reason nap.  Matt picked up dinner from 6th & Vine, and we watched Celebrity Apprentice... and that was my birthday. 

But despite the actual day being as typical as could be, my friends and family made me feel so special and loved on my birthday.   Cards with sweet thoughts, texts from far away friends and facebook messages kept popping up, reminding me that people were thinking of me.  And have you ever received a gift where you felt like the receipient just knew you?  That they listened to what you talked about, paid attention to what you liked, or cared about who you were?  I won't go into detail because that feels a little weird, (and also, hi potential robbers?  I don't have anything worth stealing.  And I've never posted pictures of my house on this blog so just... go away...)  But suffice it to say, there's a few people in my life who have set the bar high for their next birthday or Christmas gift!  So, even though I may have been near-huffing Scrubbing Bubbles shower cleaner on my actual birthday, I felt like one happy, lucky, blessed little girl.


Happy Birthday to ME!  (Please ignore the post-work out hair.)

So I've had a week to get used to being 28, and it's working out pretty good so far.  I truly promise to try and do better to keep this updated, and that's really more for my sake than for yours (okay it's for your sake too, Mom.  And you too, Dad-in-law.)  And well, I guess with that, on to the next adventure!


 
Living The Good Life Ain't For Sissies