hermes paris

I wanna stick more and more things in my hair

I swiped some feathers from the craft jar in the kindergarten classroom the other day to attempt a hair piece. shameful.

B is for Beagle

Come on. This face is ridonkulous.

Following the acquistion of my beagle Cadet, I've created the kind of gibberish language that evolves around babies and other extremely cute things. Hello, pookie-pumpkin-loverbug-snufflebear-sugar-honey. What the heck? I doubt I would even talk like that to the absolute most adorable baby in the world. This dog has taken over my life, my words, my bed (she still sleeps in her crate overnight, but my bed is pretty much hers at all other times. All of the sudden everyone loves beagles too. Everyone I see when I'm walking her has a beagle story or grew up with a beagle or whatever. The dog hair everywhere is well worth it.

some of the loves of my life

fun weekend.

A is for Alabaster

Alabaster was an unexpected inspiration for me. Two of my closest friends recently brought me back this alabaster box from their voyage to Egypt.

Alabaster can be traced back to ancient times. In Egypt, it was used to worship sun gods. In Biblical times, putting something in an alabaster box or jar was a sign of honor and esteem. It is found in calcite or gypsum form, and today is used in ornamental decor, architecture, and carvings. What kind of treasures are you putting in your (metaphorical or real) alabaster box?

Other 'A' contenders and inspirations: antiques, art deco, arbors

A to Z

Recently I was browsing the archives at psimadethis (tipped off by the lovely abigail) and found this great list of decorating/life inspirations. In the spirit of lists, which I make obsessively, and my love of the alphabet as a teacher, I decided to make my own list of inspirations for each letter. The initial goal was to post a letter daily and be done in January. Ha. It's now a Twenty-Ten project. I'll post a couple of letters a month. Enjoy. And see the great list @psimadethis here.

chairwhore

blog featuring only chairs = love, yes?

found here

3 Things

So I don't cook super often. I enjoy it at times, but don't often feel inspired to make full meals - I'm pretty good at putting together little snacks and yummy things to nosh on. I've decided, however, that I should have a few signature dishes.

I absolutely love crab cakes. Good crab cakes that really melt in your mouth are so hard to find. This would be a big endeavor, judging from the recipes I've googled. Lots of subtle flavors and tricky to get the texture/doneness just right. Still undecided as to whether I'll attempt these.

Lasagna - love a good lasagna. However too many recipes turn out with emphazise pasty, too-thick noodles, soggy sauce, and plain ground beef. I need to find a more sophisticated recipe.



I love enchiladas, both the more healthy recipes and the greasy ones at Mexican restaurants. I have an okay recipe for chicken enchiladas that I need to refine a bit.

Twenty-Ten: I become gourmet.

so much to say

Okay, Twenty-Ten (that sounds much better than saying two thousand ten). A new decade. A couple of days before New Years I reminisced with a friend about the year 2000 and how quickly things have gone since then. I graduated from high school that year. I also went overseas for the first time and went away to college (quite far from home, as opposed to most people at my high school) where I didn't know anyone. Apologies for the cheesy cliche, but I truly felt like I had my whole life ahead of me and anything could happen. While 10 years has flown faster than I ever could have imagined, I fortunately feel the same way about the next 10 years. The transition from college to the adult world isn't easy, but I've learned so much along the way and I'm so blessed with a great family, friends, and a job that I love and can grow with as a career. Not a lot of people can say that in their 20s and I'm so grateful. I'm also grateful for new hobbies and interests I've found along the way, such as photography and decorating.

So the sad news is that my hard drive died over Christmas. My laptop was new in May, so this was a bit frustrating. I transferred everything onto it when I got it and backed up on an external hard drive, so I didn't lose totally everything. My music and most of my Word documents are fine. What I did lose is all my pictures from the summer. That was sad. I have some in an album in facebook and some on flickr, but there are hundreds more, just mundane things but special to me, that are lost. While there's no one to blame but me, I didn't anticipate a 7 month old hard drive dying out, so it was a bit upsetting. Now I need to get things from my external hard drive onto this new one and start organizing things again....

Here's to bigger and better blogging in 2010! I'm going to be starting an A-Z list of different things that inspire me...hopefully up in the next few days. I'm also going to try and be more consistent with my photography, something that fell by the wayside this fall. Cheers and Happy New Year!