amazing cards from ginger creek

i will post about the food in greece soon! but before i get to that, i have to show you these adorable cards my sister heather made for me.

HOW COOL ARE THESE?

answer: very cool. i asked her to make something a little vintage and this is what she came up with. i LOVE them, and some of you have probably already received a note from me written on one of these beauties.

heather has an etsy shop called Ginger Creek where she sells cards like these AND many other styles.

check out these adorable little safari cards!

she also has some beautiful crocheted baby blankets that are so soft they're ridiculous. trust me. or better yet, go check it out yourself. go! browse! show the love. :)

unbelievable

sometimes, i wonder what i did to deserve my friends.

last night, i got my taxes done and found out that i owe $500 in taxes. i was counting on that tax return a bit, though i could live without it. but owing $500? i've recently been racking up some medical bills and related expenses. went in to check for a sinus infection, went out with blood tests, ultrasounds, and some news that isn't entirely unexpected, but no less unwelcome.

change your life right now, or it will change for you and you won't have a chance to go back.

i was a little overwhelmed trying to think of where i could squeeze an extra $500 out of my turnip of a bank account. i sent a text to one of my friends as i sat in the driveway of my family's tax accountant, teary and looking for a bit of sympathy. i feel like i can't catch a break right now.

this morning, she called me, asked me if she could stop by. i said of course, despite my third-day hair and cluttered apartment.  she showed up with no makeup on, in her pajamas, with a book she'd been telling me about.  she held it while we chatted, and then she handed it to me as she left and told me to look in it five minutes after she left.

there was an envelope inside, with $500, marked brenda's break.

the trip to north carolina part ii: snaps and bootses reunited

i know you've all been waiting with bated breath for part two of my trip to north carolina. suffer no longer, gentle readers! welcome to part ii: snaps and bootses* reunited.

the trip to north carolina, part i: the first encounter with chicago

my sister jennifer moved to north carolina with her husband this past march, much to my dismay. it's not that i don't like her husband. he's darling. it's just that i'm reeeeally attached to my immediate family, and i liked having them all within a half-day's drive of me. i was looking forward to having jennifer and her husband come back for christmas, but then i got the message-- they weren't going to be able to make it out here. so what did i do? i scraped money together and went into a bit of debt to go out there instead. here is part one of the (probably) three-part series about this trip-- the flight out there and my first encounter with the evil entity that is the o'hare airport.

happy thanksgiving!

yes, i know i'm a little late getting this up.  but i just wanted to... um... demonstrate that we should keep the spirit of thanksgiving in our hearts even after thanksgiving day.  yeah.  yeah, that's why i'm late getting this up.  totally not because i fail at blogging.

things have not been going the best these days, and i've found myself in a little bit of a slump.  so to help myself get out of said slump, i am going to think happy thoughts and write some of the things i am grateful for.

i am grateful for...

having family who lives so close.
my warm little apartment when it's cold outside.
my fluffy duvet and my favorite pillow.
having been taught the importance of family.
my job.  it's busy.  it's stressful.  but i know i'm doing something good.
my education.
my mind.
the people who listen to me ramble.
the people who ramble at me.
being able to help people.
people who have helped me.
books.
my talents.
cinnamon, because seriously, it's the best.
people who have given me a chance.
the experiences in my life that have helped me grow.
the chance to make up for mistakes.
a mother and a father who love me, even when they don't understand me.
siblings who i can call friends.
my car.
my freedom of choice.
my freedom of belief.
lightbulbs.
inside jokes.
bad days, because it means i can tell the difference between good days and bad ones.

photos: wonderful wedding in the wild west of wyoming!

finally, the photos from the wedding my sister and i attended in wyoming! this was our friend carrie's wedding. it was absolutely beautiful. and thanks to a smudge on my camera lens, i got to capture carrie's happy wedding glow. : )

photos: bruce and fred's excellent adventure (part 1)

bruce and fred's excellent adventure! (part 1)


i've broken these up to make them a little more easily digestible.  so here is part 1: roses, old thinggies and rubble (oh my)!


and i still can't figure out how to arrange these photos with text the way i want them (even using the caption thinggie) so you are just going to have to go captionless.  also, if i try and arrange them in an appealing way, they go all "i jump to the beginning now, okay!  lol!!"  booooo, pictures.  boooooo blogger.

anyway, if a picture is a mystery to you, you can make something up for it.  it's like a game!

update: adventure report!

goodness, i have got to stop doing this to you nice people!  i know i hate it when people don't update their blogs for forever, and here i am doing it myself.  shame on me.

 my last (very brief) post said that i was out having adventures.  and adventures i have had! are you ready for the Exclusively Exclusive Adventure Report?

Exclusively Exclusive Adventure Report

It's Exclusive!

independence day
independence day was celebrated by eating grilled hot dogs and watching toy story 3 with my delightful parents.  i was hoping to be able to see fireworks from my balcony, but no such luck.  the trees were just baaaarely too tall.  that weekend, i also celebrated my friend callie's birthday by eating delicious curry and engaging in general frolicsomeness.

bruce and fred's excellent adventure

after an insanely busy week at work, i escaped with the above-mentioned callie on a weekend road trip!  our first stop on the trip was the topaz internment camp located outside of delta.  i'd never been there and neither had callie, so we didn't really know what to expect, really.  it was wonderful in very unexpected ways.  on the way there, we drove past a memorial rose garden.  so naturally, we stopped to smell the roses and contemplate life. 
 
continuing down the road toward delta, we drove past some very interesting old buildings.  i'm a desperate sucker for old, decrepit buildings, so i stopped to take pictures and callie was very patient with me. finally, we found our way to the Great Basin Museum, which was curated by a very friendly and excitable older gentleman who told us all sorts of interesting facts.  part of the museum was devoted to mining and geology, and another part was devoted to the history of delta, including clothes, books, household appliances, and the like.  guess which part i spazzed out about like a kid in willy wonka's chocolate factory. (hint: OMG OLD THINGS!!)

we did find a section of the museum devoted to topaz, but there wasn't much in it.  there was a recreation of one of the barracks, but we still wanted to see more.  we found out from the curator that the site of the camp is actually several miles outside of delta.  he gave us a map and we drove out into the middle of nowhere to the site.  we were looking for buildings or ruins or something, but couldn't see anything.  we wandered a bit more in the car before i realized that we were driving through the camp.  there was just nothing that was still standing.  we got out of the car and wandered about for a bit.  there was a lot of rubble-- broken stoves with chimneys still standing, broken dishes and jars, discarded piles of wood.  there were also whole patches of ground just covered with rusted nails.  it was eerie.  it looked like the buildings that had held those nails had just dissolved.  i know that's unlikely-- they were probably just discarded there as people disassembled the buildings.  but still.  eerie. 

after wandering around for a bit more, we headed back into the car and continued on our way to the ultimate destination-- zion national park.  we arrived at our hotel after quite a bit of flailing. the room smelled like something had died horribly in it, but it had a bed.  that's all that mattered, really.  we got a good night's rest and then headed into the park the next morning.  we took the shuttle up the canyon and got out at the temple of sinawava to go exploring.  it was early in the morning, so there weren't many people there.  it was so deliciously quiet.  we could hear the river and the birds winging and the squirrels and lizards rustling through the bushes.  we went on the river walk, where we took lots of pictures and callie was assaulted by a very cheeky squirrel who wanted to steal our granola bars.  we also went down to the river, but i didn't go in for fear of river krakens. 

that evening, we went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants-- parallel eighty-eight.  words cannot describe the deliciousness of our food, so i will encourage you to look at the photos coming in the next post so i can let pictures speak for us.  also, the view from the table is stupid-awesome.  

the next day, we both had a hard time getting out of bed.  eventually we made our way back into the park.  it was ridiculously hot that day, so we decided not to bother with hiking and ate ice cream instead.  it started raining, but we defied the rain and refused to hide.  after we finished our ice cream, we sat on rocking chairs on the porch of the lodge and just stared at the stupidly beautiful view until we finally admitted that it was time to pack up and go home. it was such an awesome trip.  i'm so glad we got to go. 
 
adventures in wyoming 
 my sister jennifer is home visiting this month.  her visit happened to coincide with the wedding of a mutual friend whom she met at field school and i met at jen's wedding.  her name is carrie, and she's the sparkliest, most wonderful person ever, pretty much.  i adore her.  the wedding was in cheyenne, wyoming.  the week before the wedding was another insanely busy one in which i had zero (0) time to pack and prepare, so we were a bit later getting on the road than we would have liked.  it was a looooong driiiiive.  but it was rather beautiful in parts, and the stars were ridiculously beautiful when the sun went down.  sooo many stars when you're out in the middle of nowhere. we got to our hotel in cheyenne around one o'clock.  we'd made a reservation, but they'd given our room away because they thought we weren't coming, so we got an upgrade to a king suite.  that bed was quite literally the best bed i have ever encountered.  it was like heaven.  heaven.  words cannot describe this bed.  oh my goodness. 

after a good night's sleep (and early-morning nap), we got dressed and went to carrie's wedding.  it was held at the cheyenne botanical gardens, which were in full bloom for the occasion. carrie looked beautiful. at the end of the ceremony, the officiant told a native american story about the origin of the butterfly.  he said that if we tell our wishes to a butterfly, they would carry it up to the great spirit for us.  carrie and chris opened a box full of butterflies and let them loose.  i wish i would have gotten better pictures of it (so many butterflies!) but i was busy crying my face off. 

after that was the reception at the plains hotel.  i really wanted a cowboy to come in with spurs a-janglin' but no such luck.  the whole town just has such an interesting old-west feel.  i bet wyoming as a whole slew of decrepit old buildings just waiting to be explored!  (OMG, old things!)  anyway, back on topic.  stop distracting me.  the reception was lovely and carrie was all sorts of wonderful.  i love that girl, and the ridiculous drive was completely worth it. and we were treated to a beautiful sunset on our way home. pictures in the next post!  (because i cannot figure out how to make the pictures and text fit well in this one post, because i'm a technological genius like that.)

update: i'm still alive, i promise!

fear not, gentle readers, i'm still alive! things have been a little crazy over the past few weeks, but they've settled in again and i seem to be getting my groove back.

the first several months of this year have been filled with frantic projects at work. i work for an amazing company called imagine learning, which provides English language and literacy software to kids all across the world. (blog plug! check out our company blog here.) at the beginning of this year, i started turning in applications for my company to provide supplemental educational services (or SES) in a whole bunch of states. SES is after school tutoring provided to struggling low-income students at no cost to their parents. in order to be approved, the company has to go through a rather rigorous application process. i actually had a dream once that the application process was the same for every state in the US. unfortunately, it was only a dream. every state is different, and i have only run into one (one!) state who hasn't had something new on their application that i hadn't seen anywhere else. in all, i have written eighteen applications since the beginning of this year. two of those were reapplications that were approved and seven were brand spankin' new applications that were approved. the others are still pending, which means that so far none of my applications have been denied. (knock on wood!) i'm pretty darn pleased with that, i've gotta say.

in other news, i just returned from a trip to visit my grandmother in the tacoma area up in washington state. i haven't seen here in about five years, and it was wonderful to see her again. she's doing well and is still wonderfully sharp and fun to talk to. i've always had a particularly special connection to this grandma. we came from the exact same mold, i think. i look just like her (i mean... just like her to the point that it confused my grandfather when he was getting older). while i was up there, she had me go through her closet and take some of the old vintage clothes she wore way back when, when my mother was even younger than i am now. i nearly died, because vintage plus-sized clothes are basically impossible to find. i know this because i have looked. so i'd put on an outfit and come spinning into her room and pose for her. she said it was a huge flashback, since i look so much like her-- except she says i look better in her clothes than she ever did. (i doubt this very much, since she, in my mind, has always been an ultimate icon of beauty and class.) in addition to looking like her, i also seem to think an awful lot like her. we talked about some of the things we've both been through and whenever i said something she would give this slow, emphatic nod. yes, i understand completely. she shared some poetry that she'd written when she was younger, and it felt like it had been plucked from my own brain and put onto a page.

she said to me once, the last time i saw her, that even though i hadn't grown up near her and there were a lot of reasons for her to not know me very well, she did know me. she could look into me, and she understood every little thought i had and every part of me. that is something that i will carry with me forever. whenever i feel a little lost or like i'm crazy or that no one around me seems to understand what i'm feeling, i know that it's alright. this wonderful woman understands me. she's been there, and she's felt the same way. and she turned out pretty amazing, so i've gotta believe that i will, too.

this week's goals-- keep the apartment tidy, finish reading my latest literary conquest, keep this blog up to date, and try, desperately, not to spend money i don't have on groceries. (after spending time at pike place market in seattle eating delicious food and staring at delicious produce, reading recipes in real simple, and working my way through italy chapters of eat pray love, i want nothing more than to fill my house with delicious fresh food. and flowers. lots of flowers. sigh!)