Tagged for a Meme: fast forward to December

A few of you know I'm a sucker for the meme's so when Ragged tagged me for this one, I was thrilled even though I'm not even ready to think about Christmas yet. So if you'd like to play along, I encourage you to do so! Then we can get back to our regularly scheduled autumn, thank you very much. :)

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate please. Egg nog has too much cinnamon.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? A little bit of both. Santa likes to mix it up.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Colored, lots and lots of different colors.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Don’t need no stinkin’ mistletoe to steal a kiss.

5. When do you put up your decorations? Soon after Thanksgiving.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Oh goodness, that’s hard because my MIL is the best cook ever (think Paula Deen) and she always makes it and anything she makes I love. Last year was turkey, this year will probably be prime rib. My mouth is watering thinking about it.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? singing Christmas carols at midnight mass.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I really have no idea how old I was when I learned the truth. I’d guess I was between 6-8. As soon as I knew, my mom pretty much abolished Christmas. She stopped decorating and wrapping presents. She didn’t like the commercialization of the holiday.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Sometimes, but we usually wait till we’re with the rest of the family on Christmas Day.

10. What kind of decorations are on your Christmas Tree? Um, well, we don’t usually put up a tree. But sometimes we’ll alternate between a tree that’s fully covered with bears and a real tree with colored lights and all different kinds of ornaments that I’ve collected over the years.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread? Love it! But probably because I don’t live in it. We get a lot at the hideaway and it’s awesome. I wouldn’t like having to drive in it all winter though.

12. Can you ice skate? Barely.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Shoot, can I just admit right here and now that I’m spoiled? I’ve gotten loads of wonderful things so it’s truly hard to pick a favorite. But my favorite from last Christmas was the telephoto lens for my DSLR.

14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you? Family. Love ‘em. Thanksgiving, almost everyone tries to be together, it’s my favorite. Christmas it’s a bit harder for all of us to be at the same place, but whoever can get together usually do.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? I can’t remember if my MIL usually makes pies at Christmas in addition to Thanksgiving, but if she does, definitely the pies. But I do know she always makes Christmas cookies – her pecan balls (aka Mexican Wedding cookies) and sugar cookies are the best ever.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Going out with Jimmy on Christmas Eve and looking at all the Christmas lights in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood has the best lights, they’re not usually over the top, they’re just beautiful, colorful and totally brings out the Christmas spirit. I love looking into the windows and seeing the family celebrations. Yup, I’ll look into your house if your windows are open. I figure if you wanted privacy, you’d pull the shades.

17. What tops your tree? A bear or a star or a bow, if there is a tree that is.

18. What is your favourite holiday book? Madeline’s Christmas by Ludwig Bemelmans

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? O Holy Night

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yummy? Irresistible when mixed with chocolate. Alone, not so much.

I tag you and you and you and you...that means you, too.
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Intoxicated by Alcohol Inks? -or- Does it look like I was drunk when I made this?

Whoo hoo! It rained! I've actually worn close-toed shoes for the past 4 days. Still keeping my flip-flops nearby, afterall this is California, but pretty soon I'll be wearing my boots or Uggs on a daily basis.

The one thing I don't like about the rain, especially the first rain of the season, is driving in it. But Saturday, I drove about an hour in the rain to take a class with Tim Holtz. He's been on the Carol Duvall Show several times on HGTV and DIY. Well, it was totally worth driving in the rain to take classes from him. Doris and I signed up for one class and enjoyed it so much we stayed for another class.
The first class was a collaged minibook with it's own mosaic lunch box. In the three hour class Tim showed us distressing techniques along with the fun collage techniques that he is known for. The book fits perfectly in the mini lunch box that we decorated with cool acrylic square pieces called Fragments after gluing various collage pieces to the backs.
That project was so cool and Tim was so funny and charismatic that we knew the next class would be fun, too.

And it was fun but way more challenging.
But the cool thing about challenging is doing stuff out of your comfort zone. And I was. We took a basic wooden framed mirror, added some words, covered it with flash tape then used alcohol inks to color the metal. I was not playing well with those alcohol inks. After a while, Tim came over looked at my project and asked "so what's going on here?" I said "I need help." He said "Yes, you do." How hilarious is that?! So true and so pathetic. Well, he grabbed a few colors and applied them here and there, told me to stick with those colors, continue blotting and twisting...and voila - above is the finished project. I would have liked it to be more in the green family tones, but I had messed up so badly before he got there that to cover up the yellow and pink tones I had created (don't ask), he had to add more brown and blue tones. I'm pretty happy with it, but you should have seen how a-m-a-z-i-n-g the other peoples mirrors turned out. Will i do it again? Probably not on my own. Would I take the class again? Absolutely! I need to learn more about those inks. Plus it was totally cool doing something outside of the traditional paper based classes. Even though I'm not completely satisfied with it, it'll go on my wall in the office and not shoved in the back of a closet. Hopefully Tim will come back to the Bay Area because I would definitely take another class or two with him again.
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Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas

Today marks the 50th anniversary that Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas integrated nine African-American students and marks one of the major events of the Civil Rights Movement.

1957
After being driven away by angry mobs on the official first day of school on September 4th, the students were finally able to enter the halls of Central Rock High School on Monday September 23rd. They were met with protests and death threats; other students spat on them and did everything they could to make them feel unwanted and alienated. Each day presented new challenges to the students and one of the nine had to leave. However the other 8, through strength and determination, finished the school year and marked one of the most significant milestones in America’s Civil Rights history.

Last December, I had a chance to visit Central High School during a road trip with my sister-in-law. And although I remember learning about this event when I was in high school, nothing compares to actually being there and seeing this amazingly impressive building and how big and intimidating it is and must have been to these students walking up to it with the mob of protesters lining the streets and trying to prevent them from entering the high school.

If you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend reading “Warriors Don’t Cry” which was written by Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine, or click on some of the links here.
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Fall: Bring it!

I'm so ready for fall! The evenings are a little bit cooler, the air is a tiny bit crisper and every now and then there'll be a slight breeze. But we typically don't 'see' fall till mid-October or Thanksgiving. So I'll just have to accommodate my needs with these photos from a couple of years ago.
Sweet gum tree leaves on the front lawn.

SC at the apple ranch near our hideaway.
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Now that's just silly

Here are a couple of scrapbook pages I worked on last week:
The family at the cabin this summer.

These pics are of the nephews when we were at Disneyland last fall.
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struggling to figure it all out

so, this has been how i've felt the last couple of weeks.

In July I got a new macbook and we (Jimmy) finally transfered all of my PC stuff onto it about 2 weeks ago so I've been fully Mac'd since then.
The transition hasn't been as easy as I had hoped.
Things aren't as intuitive as I had hoped.
Viewing and editing my photos hasn't been as easy as I had hoped.
Therefore, blogging hasn't been as easy as I had hoped.
Part of my frustration is that supposedly, mac is much easier to use and more intuitive. Like my MIL, she got a mac for Christmas last year and seriously? within minutes she was like, this is freakin' awesome and was all click-click-click ba-da-bing ba-da-boom. Me? I'm like bog-bog-bog what the??
Jimmy's been kind to my ego by saying that since I was such a skilled user on the PC, my adjustment period will be longer because of my old habits. And now I have to learn. What? Learn, are you kidding me?

What I have been having fun with is a program called Photobooth that uses the camera in the computer and that's how i took that silly self-portrait. Which is about a week old - yesterday I chopped of my hair and got it colored (for the first time in 11 years). The jury's still out on if it's a good thing or not.
On a brighter note, I leave you with a pretty hydrangea from my MIL's garden.
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A common thing across two countries

Last week, (or was it the week before already?), the authorities of The Tree Trimming and Cutting Down Committee decided that one of the sweetgum trees on my street was no longer suitable for living. Of course, they didn't bother to tell any of the families who live within one house of the tree that they were planning this, so early one morning, we heard the noisy sound of chain saws. Didn't phase us though because we just thought it was the gardener with his leaf blower. Till the gardener was here for 2 hours. I finally peeked outside and thought "Huh. There's an awful lot of blue sky. I think they chopped down one of my trees." Yup, I'm observant. lol. BTW, the tree isn't really mine, firstly we rent, secondly, the trees are between our driveway and the neighbor's. But I've grown attached to it, despite the spikey balls it drops everywhere. It's beautiful in the fall - yellow, red, orange leaves. In California, ya gotta get whatever fall color you can whenever you can and embrace it. Anyhoo, once I saw them giving the poor tree the ax, I donned my spy camera and started snapping away.
An appendage being hauled to its violent fate.

At least its fate is mulch and will probably (hopefully) be used for something worthwhile.
After they left, I went to the street to see what was left. A sad little stump remained.
(BTW, just in case you can't quite read me, I'm being overly dramatic. The poor tree was probably diseased, I looked back at some of the photos I've taken and it was looking a bit dowdy. The powers that be don't usually go around cutting down trees willy nilly.)

The next day the Tree Dudes returned. The healthy sweetgum tree was due for a trimming in an effort to keep it healthy and hopefully to prevent it from the same fate as its partner.


Here's the solo tree, healthy and happy as can be.
I miss the shade from the other tree, but blue sky is good too.

Coincidentally, across the continent, in a different country, the same thing was happening at Rook's Nest. Check out her post on the trees being felled in her neighbourhood. I suppose it really isn't a coincidence that trees were being trimmed, after all tree trimming is a common thing. But it is pretty funny that it happened the same week, we both took photographic documentation of it and we read each others blog. But I admit that I was spurred and motivated by her post to actually blog about mine. Thanks Ex!

Well, she doesn't realize it, but she also gave me the bug for fresh jam. She's blogged about making cherry and strawberry jam recently. A couple of weeks ago, I had more peaches than I could eat before they went bad, so I made jam. Yum-o.
There's an explanation for my mish-mash of jars. All of them are from jams received from other friends who jam a lot so I thought it'd be nice to return the jars with some sweet goodness in kind.

Raspberries and escargots anyone?

Unless you're looking for a little more protein, make sure and wash your fruit.Found on Cute Overload here.

The bay that makes it SF Bay Area

Checked out Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge in Fremont this weekend.

This is the view from the visitors center, atop a little hill that overlooks the bay.

Here is one of the many sloughs that make up the wetlands around the bay. There are more in the background.

The Dumbarton Bridge is the south most bridge that crosses the bay and connects Palo Alto to Fremont.

The Dumbarton Pier. I was surprised to learn that there's a fishing pier here.

Lots and lots of powerlines.

and more powerlines. I was hoping to photograph some birds, but they alluded me. So I was stuck shooting powerlines.

That bridge in the background is the old drawbridge. There's a trail that leads to it but I wasn't about to venture out there thanks to this warning:

I've seen a mountain lion in the wild. I was in a car. I don't ever want to see one where I'm not enclosed behind some kind of barrier. That is one intimidating looking cat.

Here's a lei that washed ashore, probably from a ceremony in the bay. I left it there.
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Lots of celebrations

It's been a busy month of birthday celebrations as I mentioned here. And I did miss quite a few people, as I figured!
This little sweety, Miss L, celebrated her first birthday last weekend. I'm ashamed that the only photos I actually took of her are from behind. But the other times I was either holding babies or playing with other kids or stuffing my face.

Today's celebration was Miss A's and she is the oldest of our friends kids. It doesn't seem like its been six years since her mom was preggers with her.

Miss A received this red riding hood apron (?) from her Aunt Karen. This was the most meaningful gift of the day, because the apron was originally owned by Miss A's great-great-great grandmother A Bowen, one of the ancestors A was named after. And it's Bowen tradition that the oldest Bowen girl passes it down to the next generation's oldest Bowen girl. Pretty sweet, huh? So this cute little apron is well over 100 years old...and in pretty good shape, too! I love hearing about heirlooms like this, don't you?

Prince WBowen turns 3 later this month. But the family is here for the long weekend, so they have a birthday weekend celebration, Saturday for Miss A, Sunday for Prince W. I'm gonna miss Prince W's celebrations, but I wanted to give him a little whoo hoo, too!

It's been a while since I've posted any of my craftiness, so I thought now would be a fine time just to show the cards I made for the three kids.

And lastly,
August marked my 2nd blogaversary. Two years ago, I started blogging because I had been lurking on websites that offered photo challenges, and I wanted to participate, too. Then I found Illustration Friday and other websites that offered creative challenges and started submitting some of my artwork there. Thru these websites and other blog surfing, I found a creative community of bloggy friends who I enjoy spending the time reading about their world and happy to share bits of mine. Who'da ever knew I'd love it this much? It's thanks to all of you!
>>Great big hugs<<
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