Highlights of the Past Year

Being an Aunt has been the highlight of this past year plus a side trip to New York.

Christmas of 2009 my older sister & husband announced the pregnancy of their second child. I spent the next nine months hatching a plan to visit the new born. Plans were made for 3 weeks travel to start mid September, not only to Texas but New York and later Kentucky. 


The New York leg of the trip was first. I was able to visit with my mom and step-dad who live in Upstate New York, which is absolutely beautiful. It was shocking how much I had defined the whole state by a teeny-tiny portion of it that i'd only seen portrayed in movies. The hills and greenery and natural beauty of the area was wonderful. We spent 2 afternoon in New York City, it was exactly how the hype makes it out to be - huge, loud, gorgeous, and unimaginable to say you've seen it all. For pictures of overwhere I go to go here: .

From NY I arrived in Texas and met up with my husband who had flown in to spend the next week visiting. We were able to visit the State Fair for the first time as a couple and blew him away with the size and the Flecher Cornydogs.

Of course the main point of this trip was to meet Sean, the new addition, an addorable little boy.


The additional good news we received was the announcement of my brother & his wife having their first child together {she has a daughter from a previous marriage}. We were all excited.

Year in Review

Happy New Year 2010!

Lets review what this year held for me.

January:
We flew home from time in Texas for Christmas & New Years. We received the best news that my older sister & her husband was expecting their second child in August. She told us over lunch & it was so fantastic to hear the news in person, to cry & then get to hug her in congratulations. For New Years we played games and it was one of the better time i've had at new years in a while.

Unfortunately, the trip ended rather stress-fully when my husband woke up with horrible abdominal pain in the early morning we were booked to fly home & we had to go to the ER. It did proved my uncle to be calm & heroic when i'm crying & stressed & needing a ride to the ER. God showed his blessing when the doctor successfully identified he had gallstones but no immediate surgery was necessary so we could fly home. We made  it to the airport at the normal time as if nothing had happened, except he was hopped up on pain killers, he did very little talking & thank goodness for curb side baggage check-in.

The rest of the month was M. on pain pills, doctor appointments, surgery & recovery. It was an odd way to start the year by being very still & watching loads of movies.

February - April:
The shortest month of the year arrived & with us both back to normal it felt like the year to begin. However, I don't remember what happened between February & April. April 27th I do clearly remember being laid off. I remember it being a complete shock.

May:
I got to sleep and read a lot! Which really, wasn't a bad thing, the recuperation was absolutely what was called for. A week after the lay off I went to the beach for my birthday weekend which was very nice also. The rest of the month i spent time figuring out a new routine with the most free time i'd had in a decade. I won't mention the job market as most of you probably understand how dismal that is.

June:
Went to The Summit of Awesome - all about craft & business. I fell in love with encoustic painting, the art of painting with beeswax. Another workshop confirmed for me that I do not want to go into hand felting, i'd like to keep my arm as long as possible. Two classes gave me good understanding of legal issues like what a LLC business is vs. a single proprietorship and what the difference is between trademark & copyright. There were inspirational independent business owners who spoke about their crafty business.  There was one fun craft gift exchange.

July:
I know i celebrated fourth of July in the movie theater again. The past three years my husband & I have gone to the movies to ignore the crowds to see the fireworks. Maybe this year we'll go back to fireworks. We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary, again by going to the beach for the weekend.

August:
Baby Sean is born!!

September:
New York, Texas, Kentucky

October:
I don't know

November:
I don't know. Thanksgiving.

December:
Christmas - tree tradition. New Years game party.

General Goals for 2011:
- Go to seattle in the spring for a trip by train

Small Update

It's been a fun day spent with family and good food. An interesting way to get to know a new person is to play the game Would You Rather and listen to their response. One of my husband's cousin's introduced her boyfriends & thankfully he is a game player with good answers.

Hope everyone remembered to set their clock back last night. We did so there is no funny story about showing up anywhere an hour early!

RED

My husband and I got to have a date day of sorts. We started with a matinee movie with 1 free ticket & a free small popcorn. Who doesn't love free? We added 1 ticket & 1 large cherry coke to share.

We chose to go see RED with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker & Helen Mirren. All the way around a fantastic cast! it's an action comedy with lots of loud shooting & very little language. Honestly, its says its rated PG-13 for action violence & brief strong languages but neither my husband or i remember there being any language. Now, it could be stated that we watch R rated that are heavy in language and in comparison it just didn't register on our radar. Either way it's a very fun movie - not a constant laugh out loud but i chuckled a lot.

Type Collection

I've been collecting wood and lead type for about two years now. Currently they're just a collection and haven't performed anything functional. I do have grand plans for some of the wood type but we'll see if i have the nerve to use them this winter.

Brought to You by the Word ON

I got lost today in the world of YouTube. Best thing I found was Grover from Sesame Street performing a spoof of the Old Spice commercial. Both are funny entertainment!

The Artist Way

I've joined a group of other creative people that are reading through The Artist Way by Julia Cameron. We meet on Wednesdays to discuss that weeks chapter. I've read this book on my own before but i didn't do anything she suggested. No morning pages, artist dates or writing out the tasks at the end of the chapters. This time around i'm gaining much more incite actually participating in the full lesson. I'm not doing it perfectly, i have yet to complete a 7 out of 7 days of morning pages, i've forgotten to do an artist date 2 out of the 3 weeks and thought about the task questions but not written the answers. At least with the group accountability I'm feeling more committed to the whole process of becoming an unblocked artist.

Reading Summer 2010

When a bibliophile is thrown into long empty days*, they can easily be filled with crimes, detectives, the fanciful and the undead.

Bookshelf: Read

Violetkey's favorite books »

Start of November

Let see how much writing i can get done this month. I'm participating in National November Writing Month & National Blog Posting Month. Good luck to everyone participating!

one post down 29 more to go

Redesign

Right so, apparently i still have a blog. This is kinda a test post to see what its like to have an image and a "read more" text. I don't think blogger supports thumbnails with short posts. Not sure how i feel about that considering i keep going between blogger & wordpress. Wordpress supports posts with thumbnails. So, don't mind me as I test.

Home again, home again...

It was a delightful 2 days at the beach. Came back with a light sun burn even. The bad news is we think that the old fuji digital SLR i've been using for a few months has kicked the bucket. We load the batteries but an ERR flashes on the display screen. At least i still have a decent point & shoot until we can figure out if the fuji really is dead.

Friday Beach Day

It was a beautful & sunny drive leaving Portland. The good weather continued all the way to the coast.

We arrived early evening to the hotel & I enjoyed a little relaxation. Its a new hotel for us & so far really enjoying it.

Had a nice long walk on the beach after dinner. Enjoyed dessert with the sunset. We have a great ocean view from our balcany as long as we don't look down at the roof of the hotel's pool room.

This is a great continuation of my birthday celebration.

(All photos are from my phone which isn't the best)

27

Sister's text message to me:  "27, right?"

Me: "Yep. Weird huh?

Sister: "Very"

That pretty much sums up how i'm feeling about turning 27, very close to 30. Thirty feels a little bit like a looming deadline but for what i'm not exactly sure.

Tonight I saw How To Train Your Dragon in 3D - it was very good all the way around. Enjoyed the plot, the way they dragons were designed, the voice acting, the 3D treatment. Highly recommended.

I'm off to the beach for the next few days. The dogs are going with us but we have little dogie sedatives for Z who is a crazy ball of anxiety in the car. She is so filled with anxiety the drugs don't even make her sleep but at least make it tolerable for her to sit there and not fight against her dog seat belt or whine & bark the whole 3 hour trip. We're bringing raw hide and treats & her favorite ball to play with on the beach to make up for the car ride.

Uplifting Advice

Something I was given to think about:

Why not me? Why shouldn't I be the one to claim a fulfilling life? Why can't a miracle happen to me? Because honestly it can be, i can have a fulfilling life & a miracle can happen.

This is my update of what happened yesterday

Yesterday was Tuesday as you probably know. I was able to spend a few hours tutoring a friend on the finer points of how to use Photoshop. Overall that was very successful, i was able to explain tools & processes and he was able to reiterate back to me in his own words what i just said, proving that it made sense. This also was a good experience for me to know that in the future i could offer services as a tutor. This has gone down on my long list of: Possible Ways to Make Money

First Day of the First Full Week

Monday was a product first day:

- Went to the gym for the first time in about a year. I was shocked at how busy it was at 9am but thinned out by 10. I figure i'll go at various time to see which options are the best.

- Did the dishes when I realized i need a clean coffee pot and there were dishes in my way. Plus, i had the realization i had nothing more urgent to do than clean the kitchen.

- Figured out exactly what i'm eligible to do or not do while collecting unemployment. I'm encouraged that they allow you to earn some income and still collect (of course there are rules about how much i can collect etc.). I was further encouraged when i talked to a woman who recently was on unemployment and how easy it was to go to a building to talk to real people about training classes, resume reviews and more. 


Yea for productivity!

Pretty View

Lovely view of Mt. Hood that I can easily see by looking up ;-)

Look Up

 
The theme for May at NaBloPoMo is Look Up and i've chosen to participate this month. It is an apt theme for me because on Thursday I got laid off from my job of 3.5 years. There is nothing like being pushed out of a comfort zone to re-exam what i want to be doing. This was the end of my first traditional 8-5, cubical farm, with benefits & 401K job after college and so I imagine I can only go up from here.

With it only being about 60 hours since i got the news the most enlightening thought i've had is that; this is the most free time I've had since childhood. Especially considering the past 9 years has included a combination of college (year round), homework and work (worked part-time in school & then full after.) I know I will spend a fair amount of time looking for a new job but i'm pretty excited about having time & energy for some personal projects that have been stewing away for ages.

If you're participating in NaBloPoMo for May let me know, i'll come visit.

Cirque du Soleil

Yup, I want to go see Kooza the Cirque du Soleil show here in Portland. Its good timing, I can ask for it as a birthday present. If you want to watch a promo video: click.

Time-lapse

Steampunk fashion has come to my attention over the past couple of months. Personally, I think it's a great combination of Victorian fashion and industrial and scientific bits.

This is an impressive time-lapse of a 6 hour book cover design using a steampunk theme. I'm now interested in reading the books by Gail Carriger.



I original found this from the Bookliciousblog (all about books) and the original article from Orbits Books here.

From the Orbits article i found the Clockwork Couture "a fine steampunk clother". I've found a few pieces of jewelry I'd like owning. Plus, this blouse is beautiful!

photo from: Clockwise Couture