New York..again

I love neon so this required a picture. Also, I took tons of pics of the building. All of the Art Deco buildings are incredible and I love all of them. I hate to play favorites but the Chrysler Building would probably be it. Seriously gorgeous.



Not found in New York but she's cute and I love her.



Hubby with Bear and Lion on the Interpid.



More neon. I'm building a collection of neon and cool signs for my bathroom. What? It's better than velvet Elvis. Almost.



Me and the Bear and Lion on the Intrepid.



This weekend I need to get all of the histamatic images off of the phone. They're all arty and such so more fun to look at.

New York

We made it there and back again (never thought I'd get to use the Hobbit in a blog post but there you go). It was gorgeous weather so the perfect weekend to go. A little bit of rain but incredibly mild temps. Seriously, if it were like that all the time then fall, winter, spring I would never leave! Here are a few pics. Still need to get pics off of Rolland's camera, my iPhone and Rolland's iPhone plus all the rest of the camera. OY. This should be enough to give you the general idea.

Martha Stewart's building as seen from a harbor boat cruise.



The deck of the Intrepid looking towards the city.



Rolland and his Mom at the NBC studios. I love the neon and his Mom loves the today show. A little something for everyone. I think this was her favorite place to visit in the entire city and on Sunday morning she was even on the today show via camera panning to the audience!



More skyline from the boat cruise. I'm sure this building is something but I have no idea what.



The home of the 9 by Design family. Interesting but fairly unremarkable compared to some of the architecture downtown. It's also right of off West Side highway so incredibly noisy and would make me incredibly nervous with all the kids running in and out but I guess city kids are used to lots of traffic.



Rolland, Anita and their Mom getting ready for takeoff.



Family in Times Square. Definitely a lot to see all around!



Me at High Line Park. Amazing elevated park that is really beautiful. They've also kept a lot of the features from when it was an elevated train area so you can see the tracks worked into the trail and the views of the city are incredible. We went following a visit after Chelsea Market then headed south towards Greenwich Village and Soho. I highly recommend it for strolling.



Rolland in front of his favorite plane... which I can no longer identify but it's definitely his favorite. :)



Rolland in front of the Apple motherland.



Tons more pics to come but all I had time for tonight. Hopefully I can get them all organized this weekend but we have lots of weekend plans including Garrison Keillor, Eat Pray Love and house stuff. We need another vacation!

rosary style

Since I was on a roll with the rosary I went ahead and whipped up a little rosary style necklace with a Buddha I picked up at Pearl River on my last trip to NYC. Since we're heading back I wanted to get this one created so I have plenty of reason to buy more. Excellent Christmas gifts I think.

Gift Jewelry

My friend Colleen recently had a baby girl and lately we've talked about all things pink & girly so for her birthday I made this rosary. The pink stone beads have a great mix of color and the quartz crystal adds just a hint of glamour. :) The connector is of St. Patrick (she has a brother named Patrick) with a traditional crucifix at the end. I really hope she likes it.





This one was a going away present for my friend Pamela. She's taking a hiatus to work on her own business (yay!) so I wanted to give her something pretty. The rose stones are a strand I got in Santa Fe and seeing as how she's from New Mexico they fit perfectly. I wire wrapped in between with rough tourmaline stones.



This one I know she loved but I mismeasured and will need to add another couple of stones. Turns out I'm not the only one who dislikes chokers. Ooops.

I'm working on a couple of fun pieces with pics to come later. I think these may stay in my increasingly full jewelry box. Hint: one my hubby described as a Betty Rubble necklace. I'm not sure he meant it as a compliment!

Saturday

So far it's not super exciting at our house as it's all about the errands. I'm including the new gym regime as an errand. I'm not particularly happy with my trainer who I find it hard to believe has chest and shoulders like that without some kind of unnatural help. He also pushes his "supplement" that he sells at his 2nd gig which I'm finding fairly unprofessional seeing as how I'm paying for his time and all. I guess it's a little like cable in that I pay and still have to watch the commercials. Ugh. At the end of this month, definitely requesting someone else.

I did have good Target fortune although I'm not without Target shopping guilt and found this bag that may be used as it's name suggests "flight bag" for the upcoming NYC trip.



I've already started laying out the outfits and thanks to my friend Yuri, I found this dress I plan to wear for dinner then to Wicked on Friday. And it was over 1/2 off which is mostly why it was such an easy impulse purchase.

I have made a couple of pieces of jewelry for gifts that I'll post tomorrow in case you in no way care about a) my trainer from hell or b) what I wear.

Hope you guys are having a terrific weekend.

Suzanne

There are a lot of reasons to love my friend Suzanne. Pick me up texts like this on a Tuesday night are just one of them.



Thanks lady, I love you loads and will see you soon!

Cinnamon rolls

Baked goods I made last weekend. I forgot to take an after picture but they were very popular. Super tasty.



I'd like to get a few things baked today but at 108 outside I'm reluctant to turn on the stove. I did make mushroom curry, brown rice, black bean soup and cauliflower... something I forgot but with Indian spices to go with the curry. I've finally been using the Indian cookbook I bought a few years ago. And Deborah Madison's is a new favorite for vegetarian offerings.

I've also got some art pieces in mind but the heat, not too keep being whiny, really does sap my energy and the couch plus this book are too much of an oasis.

House

I worked on this piece for a few weeks and it's finally finished and up in our newly painted entry way. I had originally been inspired by this and this.

The roof tiles came to me first so after prepping the large canvas and getting a few base layers on I started with the pebbles. A lot of pebbles were required so I was happy to finally use up some of the supplies I've stashed for a couple of years now.



Next, basic painting and shaping of the house.



I forgot to document the layers in between. The edges of the piece are covered in telephone pages that I glued down then coated in a bunch of layers of paint. I covered all the edges around the frame to finish it off. I like how in a few places the names and numbers peek through. I also liked the texture and color of the old butterscotch dominoes.

I also started adding in some of the fun doodling/graphic elements. My version of a cherry blossom crossed with a dogwood.



Final touches including a door knob and a lot of layers of the charcoal pencil. Now, the piece hangs in the entry way of the house and I kind of love it.

Springfield

Turns out Springfield, Missouri is much more interesting than I knew and now has cool art like this in their front yard.



I made Rolland drive by 3 times just to double check that was what we were really seeing then I made him wait while I took several pics (this was the best). I'm still wondering what the hell the crane guy was thinking when putting that together.

Other super cuteness found in Missouri is the cutest nephew ever. And his octobunny that I had no idea would be such a hit. I should've caught on to all the chewing options but missed it entirely. Rolland however know it would be a hit.





I forgot to take a pic of his parents (my brother and sis-in-law). They too are pretty cute.

Happy Birthday Sweetie!

It's my hubby's birthday today. We celebrated with steak dinner last night, Despicable Me and Chipotle today. It's total excitement at our house but I hope he had a great birthday weekend.



Happy Birthday, I love you!

Road Trip Weekend

We packed up and hit the road this weekend to visit this super cute little guy. We haven't been able to get to Missouri to see our new nephew, or his parents, and I wanted to get in some snuggle time before he went off to college!





On the way back we went further south to Eureka Springs for a quick stop before heading back west to Texas. I also spent lots of time playing with the hipstamatic app for my iphone. I went a little nuts but I'm loving all these picks.





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Summer so far...

Has been pretty busy but at least it's enjoyable busy. I've been hanging out with girlfriends and the hubby. The last couple of weeks have been movie heavy but this weekend we worked in a movie and a house project. We went to see the Last Airbender at the fancy theater in Allen. The theater was awesome but the movie wasn't. It was actually fairly horrible. The sliders and reclining seat made up for most of it.

The house project has been painting the entry way and rehanging our bookshelves we have tucked into the entry arch. They were starting to become slightly precarious but after Rolland did some serious planning and a lot of prep in the garage for most of the day they are back in place and sturdy enough to handle the heavy duty paperbacks. The benefit of a Texas summer is the new coat of paint dried in about 5 minutes!

My fabulous new find of the summer has been The Fabulous Beekman Boys


Josh and Brent are in fact the owners of Beekman farm which is a gorgeous farm in New York. The scenery and house are lovely but I'm not sure that the animals and Farmer John aren't my favorites.

Any new summer loves that you've found?

Holiday vacation and a lament about kids nowadays...

I took advantage of the long weekend with Monday being a holiday to take last Thur & Fri off as well stretching the vacation time into as much as possible. It has been lovely. I spent lots of time with girlfriends, the husband and the puppies. We caught up on movie watching, magazine and book reading but mostly just enjoying not working and not running around like a crazy person. I have also slept past 8am every morning. A fairly big deal for me.

On the 4th of July I actually went to brunch and saw SATC 2 with a girlfriend. Hubby and I had junk food and watched District 9 as fireworks displays around here are a madhouse. Not a traditional 4th but relaxing none the less. But, back to the actual holiday.

I was shocked at how many kids and families were in the mall on the 4th of July. While it's true that I have pretty much always hated the heat and wanted to spend as much time swimming as possible, I loved the summer. Summer was spent mostly in Kansas with my grandparents and cousins. We had lots of large family gatherings over the summer and none were bigger than the 4th of July extravaganza. Fireworks were purchased, often before with a few emergency runs to the stands as the poppers and snakes got low, tons of food was made and all of us kids were outside. Seriously, if we went in for anything but the bathroom or a drink there was an adult somewhere telling us to get back outside.

After a dinner with lots of hotdogs, hamburgers, homemade ice cream and soda we all started getting antsy for the big show. My grandparents had a huge side yard of lawn where we gathered around the edge while my Dad and uncles lit the larger fireworks. As we got older we got to do a few of the bottle rockets but all the really good stuff was reserved for the adults which was fine by me. Once when I was really little I grabbed the wrong end of the punk burning my hand making me slightly nervous about the entire lighting procedure (also, I have never figured out how to work a lighter. Really.) Anyway, I loved sitting in the lawn chairs with my Mom and the rest of the family watching the show. There was some serious hilarity that ensued as grown men were chased down the street by fireworks (true story), fireworks that completely fizzled and some that were dazzling for the fairly low end firework offerings available pre-internet around Eureka, Kansas.

All of this is a fairly lengthy explanation for being incredibly sad at all of the kids that now think celebrating the 4th of July means watching cartoons in the air conditioning. I know I shouldn't be narrow minded in making my relatively idyllic 4th of July memories those that everyone should have but they are what I think of as being quintessentially small town American. Luckily, those folks in Kansas still know how to party.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary! Turns out that by 15 years everyone's pretty content with a nice dinner and then home early. Rolland sent me some gorgeous pink roses to the office. Very sweet.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie!



Note: We are going out tomorrow to a burlesque show just in case you think we're ready for the home!

500

So I'm wishing I had some kind of incredible brilliance saved up for my 500th post but alas, I got nothing. I have been trying to spend my summer pretending it's actually a summer break: reading, spending time with friends and family, country drives with the husband but truthfully this is something that should be done all the time. But with our schedules and living out in the 'burbs, it's tough.

I have been thinking a lot about what and where I'd really like to be when I grow up. The opinions are definitely divided amongst the polled. A large camp has informed me that there really is no specific path in life and we can pick and choose to do lots of things. Trying them all on for size, wearing the new favorite until another perfect outfit comes along. Intriguing but tough for someone who hasn't met a decision I didn't like. If asked to pick, I'll choose something immediately then move right on to the next. Mostly dessert first and anything pink or sparkly is always a yes. But now, I find myself floundering. The summer seems like exactly the right time to kick back and allow myself some time to ponder. A true luxury.

Next week, back to reality TV, fantasy books, baked goods and oversized art projects.