Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Yes, I know that Christmas was a week ago, but we have been traveling, making blogging a tad tricky. Before we left, we got ourselves stockings (no, we never had any before) and fixed our fireplace, which has added coziness!

Our first stop on our multi-leg tour was in Indiana, where we hung out with Jesse's side of the family.

We baked delicious gluten-free pumpkin muffins

and fiery chocolate mini muffins with chocolate icing and strawberries.


We had to use ridiculously high proof alcohol to get them to light right, but we got it!

We also played pool

and Jesse played so well that when he scratched Lorna was so surprised she spilled her wine all over the floor.

All of us went out to eat together as well.

We also had fun and craziness with my side of the family.

We enjoyed our presents,

read,

got crafty,

and went to the Mystic Seaport.

We had fun looking at old boats.


All in all it was a good Christmas!

The Hen's Den Design Team

Guess what? I am one of the Hens' Den's new design team members! You can find the announcement here: http://thehensdenteam.blogspot.com/ You will have to wait until January to see my first project as part of the Hens' Den design team, but until then here is a new layout I just completed using MSC's sketch #1:

I also had a blast playing with sketch #2

and sketch #3!

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

I was in the kitchen the other day, examining some questionable spinach, when it occurred to me: much of the food we throw out is perfectly safe for consumption. Many of us pitch the sour cream when the clock chimes midnight the day of its expiration stamp, but I'm thinking more broadly. A lot of food is safe well past any reasonable level of edibleness. Take my spinach for instance. It was in a bag, and at the bottom was a mass of green mush and liquid. Would you pull out your Oneida spoon and dig in? Nonetheless, I'm sure I could dump it in a pan with a little oil for a stir-fry and never know the difference. Popeye ate mushy spinach, and look where it got him.

On the other hand, no one ever ate blue-green chicken, cooked or otherwise, and was happy with the result.

This epiphany led me to the following, very important, list of foods you can eat when they're rotten:

• Spinach
• Carrots
• Cheese (just cut off the fuzz)
• Olives (Testing this now! 2 hours and counting!)
• Bread
• Potatoes (like a Chia pet, just trim the sprouts)
• Rice
• Flour (worms = protein)
• Twinkies (these don't actually go bad)
• Apples
• McD's french fries

Surely you've found others...

(PS: I don't really know if you can eat this stuff. When faced with the omnivore's dilemma, I recommend, as always, taking the conservative position.)

Sunshine

Now that I finally have a (short) break from traveling, I have had a chance to do some scrapbooking. I used MME's Sunshine line for this layout, which is based on MME's December sketch. These pictures are from my favorite breakfast ever -- at the Princeville St. Regis in Kauai. The food was delectable and the scenery was awe-inspiring!

While we were in Kauai, we explored the island in this jeep and got out and explored some beautiful beaches. This layout is based on sketch 3 from My Creative Sketches.


Here's the two-page layout perspective.


Finally, I made this card using scraps from MME's Union Square line and card sketch.

Marathons are Painful

Running for 26.2 miles is painful. Being out in the freezing rain for four hours is painful. Running a marathon in freezing rain is madness! Jesse, Sarah, and Tyche braved the horrible conditions to run the Dallas marathon. Congratulations!

Chubby [Bunny]

Happy Thanksgiving! Sadly, we don't have any pictures because we forgot our camera, but I thought I would give you this treat of a picture taken just a couple minutes ago.

This is what I get when I send Jesse to the store to buy marshmallows -- he amuses himself by buying the hugest ones possible:

The perspective in the picture doesn't do this thing justice. Seriously, each one is so ginormous that I could not get the whole darn thing in my mouth!

Addendum -- here are the marshmallows taking up the entire mug:

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Jesse and I are flying out to Delaware bright and early tomorrow morning to share Thanksgiving with Jesse's grandfather and mother's family.

We have actually been traveling a ton lately -- mostly for work. Between the two of us we have traveled to Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, in addition to various cities within New Mexico, and all the way to Chile, just in the last six months! We also have trips to Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, and back to Connecticut planned in the next month! Craziness.

11/11/11

A good friend of mine's birthday was on 11/11/11 (so fun!) so I had to make her this card based on the MME sketch and Lush lines:

I also used the MME layout sketch this month for another page from our trip to Hawaii. You can also find a tutorial for my handmade sun in the WeScrap forums.

This final layout is also for WeScrap. I love re-living our Hawaii memories!

My Creative Sketches

My Creative Scrapbook has a new sketch up that I used to create this layout of a beautiful sunset that Jesse took from our lanai in Kauai. I used more of MME's Lost & Found Sunshine collection.

My new favorite music video

I am not sure what my old favorite music video was, but this is my new one. Remember how I mentioned that we bumped into Danny Pudi (who plays Abed in Community) while we were in New York this summer? Well, he happened to be in Time Square shooting a music video for Jones Street Station when we ran into him. We (at least Rachel and Chloe) are so dang cute that they couldn't help but include us in this music video for the song "The Understanding":

These are some shots that we took on our own cameras (much larger than the toy Danny was "taking pictures" with).

Anatomy of a Bonk

The Duke City Marathon was today. I've been training for a few months. I'd been hoping for a pace around 9 min per mile, but I'd been able to keep a bit faster pace during my runs without trouble. So, I went out a bit faster, around 8:45 - 8:50. Even at 15 miles, I felt great. I kept going at that pace until I started to fade a little because I thought I'd be able to back off some and keep going if needed.

Boy was I wrong.

Check out my Garmin splits from the marathon. As you can see, I'm cruising up through mile 19, at which point I start to slide. And like an avalanche gaining speed, I quickly slide all the way down and am doing nothing more than just moving forward. I was lucky to be doing that.

I made the classic mistake of going out too fast, overestimating my abilities. I won't say I would have gone under 4 hours if I hadn't done that (because who knows?), but through 18 miles I was on pace for a 3:51. Apparently, that's way out of my league.

I would also say that it wasn't a mental breakdown. My body was done. I was nauseous, dizzy, and running for even a minute left me out of breath with my head spinning. When I finally finished, I couldn't stand up straight without getting out of breath for half an hour, and I was nauseous for twice that time. It wouldn't have surprised me if I had passed out just standing around afterward.

It was a good race overall though. My time was decent, and I learned a lot about running a marathon. I think I could have gone faster with better pacing, and I was hopeful to be able to hold the pace I tried based on runs like this one. But ultimately that's not what God decided to have happen. C'est la vie!

Marathon Man

Jesse ran his first marathon today! He ran a total of 26.2 miles in 4:09:12 hours, which is quite incredible when you think about it. Here he is running to the finish line:

Fall Colors

Jesse and I met up with his dad and uncle for an impromptu trip to Colorado. We got there in perfect time to see the aspens turn a brilliant yellow and drove up winding roads to see these spectacular views.

I have been working with fall colors in scrapbooking as well, using yellow from MME's Lost & Found2 Sunshine line


and orange and brown from MME's Lush and Lush2 lines.

Ten Challenge

For the TrailMakers' 10 challenge, I used ten buttons and ten alphabet stickers to create this layout that features Bo Bunny's Et Cetera collection and Bakers Twine from the Paper Trail store: http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart/ I love how these pictures from Jesse's trip to Chile just pop against the neutral papers!

Et Cetera

I know that Jesse just got back from his trip to Chile, but I couldn't wait to begin scrapping those pictures! Bo Bunny's Et Cetera line (found at http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart/) is perfect for scrapbooking travel pages!

Tile

Yes, we finally did it! After years of discussion, we finally installed tile in our bathrooms and laundry room. We decided to get it professionally installed instead of doing it ourselves, which turned out to be a great thing because the installer ran into a couple issues that we would not have been equipped to deal with! Anyway, without further ado, here is the finished product:

We absolutely love the look and it will be so much easier to keep clean than the carpet that used to be there (gross!)

More Crafting

I wanted to show you how I made my latest handmade flower. You need to start with approximately 8 hearts. You can punch out the hearts, hand-draw the hearts, or stencil them. I traced mine using some chipboard hearts that I had in my stash. You will want 4 larger hearts and 4 smaller hearts. The size you want will depend on how big you want your flower to be. Your largest heart will be about 2/3 the size of your completed flower.

Once you have your hearts, use your fingers or a pencil to curve them a little bit, which will make them easier to manipulate later.

Poke holes in the bottom of your hearts and put them on a brad -- smallest hearts first. Arrange the hearts around the brad and you will end up with this kind of flat looking flower.

Mist your entire flower with water so that it is easy to manipulate and then pinch each petal to get this look:

I used my handmade flower on this layout of our trip to Hawaii last year. I used MME's sketch, theme, and their new Lost & Found 2 papers, pearls, and brads.

I also made this card based the MME's card sketch & theme and using their Lost & Found Union Square and Lush Red lines.