Goodbye/Hello

Well now I've done it. I'm officially one of those people who have abandoned one blog for another.

Thank you for following me for as long as you have. In the spirit of new years, decades, and yes, Elizabethan eras, I have done what I said I wanted to do in 2010 by creating a more focused blog.

Meet Harpischordian. Follow me and my craft/music/writing shenanigans there.

Cheers to 2009

A few (but certainly not all) of my favorite photos from the year.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

For the good times.

Beef Stew.

Because the forecast looks like this.
And your boyfriend could probably use something like this.

And Neflix mailed you this.

For the old-fashioned aroma.

For the holiday in-between times.

For Just One of Those Nights.

Beef Stew.

So just look at them and sigh.

When my Dad sent my picture in to Cheerios with a couple proofs of purchase and a few bucks in exchange for a rubber stamp of my 6-year-old face, of course I had no idea that 21 years later, I'd still be using it. I'm lucky I kept it. Much as I would love to continue using this thing in place of my signature, these days I use it to create tags for my homemade gifts. It's been getting a delightful amount of use.

There are few things more satisfying than to clutter up a large table with yarn, embroidery thread, Elmer's, felt in both large squares and tiny bits, patterns, sequins, scissors, cardstock, holepunch, inkpads, hot glue, stuffing, needles and pens, along with all the other debris from the box that you had to deal with to get to all the stuff you needed in this craft explosion, and THEN to put everything back where it belongs, and admire your new little creations on the now cleared table.

I considered naming these owl ornaments Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but since I won't be gifting them together, I thought they needed better stand-alone names. Instead, we have Zephyr (after the wind, not the RHCP song), Zuma (after a Neil Young/Crazy Horse album which I have never heard), Zora (after one of my favorite authors, Zora Neale Hurston), and Zelda (after the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald who was cah-razy! as well as my old car of the same name, which was also green). If I were able to give them all to my parents, I might just call them the Lennon Sisters, for giggles and old-times' sake.

Catching back up

This is how I feel when I've got a lot of stuff to do. I want to party and have fun, but sometimes I just need a little rest.

One of my resolutions for 2010 is to be a better blogger. So many blogs, mine included, are show and tell forums. Some of my favorite blogs are just that. But now that I've had this thing for a few years, I'd like to try some new things and answer the question of why I keep this blog, anyway. Perhaps what I'm wanting to do is focus on maybe just a couple aspects of life and get better at them through blogging.

I guess that's the theme for the coming year. "2010: Getting better at doing stuff."

And showing you how to do it, too? Or what I learned? Tips and tricks? Maybe selling some of the stuff I've made? Ooh, and maybe some music recommendations of what to listen to while you're picking up new hobbies?

I'll continue to post while I work on figuring out a more focused way to blog. In the meantime, I've asked this accordion boy to please smile and learn to play the "Beer Barrel Polka" in time for my Oktoberfest im Februar party.

Pasta Sunday; link happy

Cassano's is an Italian grocery store in Spokane. It's been getting a lot of business from us for the past few weekends. They have a freezer case with freshly frozen pasta, a deli with big hunks of cheese, and a little refrigerator that supplies Joel's constant hankering for Chinotto. It's been a real treat to counteract the cold, rainy Sundays of late with these yummy things. So we fix these fancy dinners (this was smoked cheese and sundried tomato tortellini, paired with turkey meatballs that I adapted from the chicken meatball recipe on Smitten Kitchen) and then bring it all to the coffee table and watch The Amazing Race 15. Makes for a very decadent, exciting hour.

Pumpkin pie

I told you I had a couple of rotting pumpkins on my porch. Joel's (right) began as facial hair: eyebrows, mustache, soul patch. Now it just looks like an old man with kind eyes who forgot to put in his dentures, with a soul patch. Mine (left) started out as an evil laughing Jack o'Lantern. Now it's an even evil-er looking one, probably with emphysema to accompany its sinister laugh.

Why have these not moved from their post in the last three weeks? Because I don't want to pick them up! Gross. I fully expected the punk kids next door to have smashed them by now; it was their job! After all, they did earn it by carving "Smoke Weed" into the freshly poured concrete right in front of the house (oh, but little did they know that by using our clever letter adding skills, we would thwart the call to drug use by altering the message with a simple "t," therefore calling all those who walk past this house to burn all of their dapper suits and smart skirts. [Smoke Tweed! in case you hadn't figured it out yet]). This dirty job is theirs. But every day it grows less enticing, I suppose. And these pumpkins just sit there, dutifully waiting for the next holiday to arrive, poor things, saying hello to the mailman as he delivers the Christmas cards.