Random Snapshots

august goals

As of August 10th I will be officially finished with school so I expect to have more free time for the last 3 weeks of August.  I'm ready to re-claim my life and get some stuff done.  In the words of Big Black, I'm going to DO WORK SON!

1.    Control my eating out and get to the gym more often:  I anticipate having more time at night to plan my meals throughout the day which will result in less eating out.  I'm giving myself 2 months to get back on track and shed a few lbs.

2.    Finish a knitting UFO:  This is ongoing for me.  I really need to begin finishing what I start.  I'm shooting for finishing the 2nd Lindsay sock and possibly my Hey Student! cardigan.

3.    Start a date-night tradition with Adam:  This has been on my mind a lot as school winds down.

4.    Get in the habit of tackling a small cleaning project in the house every week on a certain day:  For example -- Every Wednesday try and purge/organize a small portion of a room such as the "junk drawer."  I can manage something in small bits like this and think it will really add up.

5.    Do something that I haven't had time for: Edit and order a bunch of photos, learn to embroider, get back to reading, or do some home project.  Something along those lines that I haven't had time to do in the past 2.5 years.

fireworks

We got to watch the fireworks last night from the rooftop of a friend's apartment building.  She lives in the S. Lake Union area.  It was very cool and ended up being the best Seattle-fireworks-viewing-spot we've found so far. 

The sunsets around here are really amazing!

I brought my tripod with me to set up some long exposures and I got a few good shots.

 

 

 

 

 

I have a billion more photos to go through from the daytime fun we had as well.  It was such a gorgeous (and hot) day to be outside exploring. 

Hope you all had a great weekend!!

goodbye June, hello July.

Man, June flew by fast didn't it?!  I think the closer I get to finishing school (5 weeks, 6 days) the faster the weeks, days and hours are flying by.  I haven't been able to keep up with anything lately, including this blog.

I do have some goals for July though.  Just a couple of things I'd like to accomplish without putting too much pressure on myself during this last class. 

1. Print some photos.  I don't care how many or what they are of, I just need to print some instead of letting them live on the computer!  A few months ago I purchased an Espon Artison 800 and that printer is the shit.  The quality if fantastic and I've loved the photos that I've printed so far.    
2. Update my blog banner.  I think that speaks for itself.  :)  I also am considering moving my blog to another host.  I would like to be able to post larger photos in the future and currently I can't do that on Typepad unless I upgrade my format -- aka: pay more.  I'm looking into Squarespace, but open to other options, advice, opinions.
3. Continue to work on my EliseJoy summer minibook.  I don't have a photo of my own yet, but it's turning out to be pretty cool.
4. Get my Sock Summit homework done -- this should probably up in the #1 spot since it is the most important thing I need to do in July.
5. Eat better and workout a little more.  Constant goal for me which I hope becomes easier once I'm finished with school.
6. Finish up at least one knitting UFO (unfinished object).  I'm working on a delicious pair of socks right now which I think I can finish up since the yarn is sport weight.  Here's a sneak peek:

 

That's all I have for now.  Happy July everyone!  I hope you are all enjoying your summer. :)

 

wishing I had time for...

...photo editing:  I have many photos to share that have accumulated over the past 3 months.  Editing takes time.  Time that I do not have right now!  So for now I'll share my daily mugshot of the day taken on my iPhone. (Disregard the fact that my makeup looks so dark in relation to my neck.  I think that's an optical illusion -- I hope!?  In addition, I should really learn to love lipstick - geez, you learn a lot by taking selfies all the time.)

You can view more of these here if you're so inclined -- Daily Mugshow.

...learning to sew:  I should have learned to sew before I moved away from a family full of seamstresses!  But, now I'm left to learn on my own.  With You Tube and the amount of instructional books out there I think I should be able to learn some stuff!  I would like to make a few skirts for summer and I hear that is pretty easy.  Advancing to dresses would really be the thing I'm most interested in.  I love a dress that fits well!  I can sew the basic stuff -- pillowcases, napkins, simple bags and I even made curtains.  I need to bone up on the basic rules and terminology more.  I've heard great reviews on these three books -- any other recommendations?

...learning to stitch: I've done embroidery here and there.  (I think I can say that about almost every craft out there!  Thanks Mom for allowing me to grow up in a crafty home!) Mostly when I was younger and I never really advanced beyond the basic stitches.  It's coming back into style though as a modern craft much like knitting and sewing.  More variety of patterns are available too.  When I have some time to set aside I'm going to start with this kit.  Click the picture to take you to the kit's link.  Sublime Stiching has some VERY cool patterns that I can't wait to try!!

Other things I'd like to have more time for right now -- finishing up some knitting UFOs (I have enough to last for a while!), knitting socks and sweaters, cleaning my house (haha!), running, Pilates and reading.  Not too much to ask, right!?

7 weeks and 3 days until I'm done with school.  Not that I'm counting.  :)

That means that there are only 6 weeks and 4 days until Sock Summit 2009 -- more on that later.  

Happy Friday!

shake it!

I downloaded a cool iPhone app the other day that turns your iPhone photos into a Polaroid-style photo.  It's nothing fancy, but it gives a little "kick" to the photos.  I find myself taking more photos with my phone since I got the iPhone a year ago.  I've been playing with it for a couple of days and really like it so I thought I would share. 

The app is called Shake It! and it was .99.  I don't have a link, but if you search the name it will come up. 

You take your photo right within the app and then literally shake your phone to "develop" the photo.  Kind of an unnecessary, but cool feature!  Comes up in a square polaroid with a border which saves right to your phone. 

Here are some examples from the past couple of days:

Me, lounging before bed.

 Adam, not wanting his picture taken.

 My mid-day snack today -- an "apple pear" and raw almonds.  Note to self: buy more "apple pears" ASAP!  They are delicious.  

mount rainier

We finally got some sun on Saturday!  While A and I were running some errands we decided to stop back home and grab the camera gear.  We headed over to our favorite place to shoot Mount Rainier -- the top floor of the parking structure at the Auburn Rail Station.  Unfortunately we got up there and realized I forgot the clip for my tripod - d'oh!  It's easier to shoot the mountain with a tripod so you can bracket the shots.  It's hard to expose it properly when the sky is so light like it was on Saturday. 

Either way I came home with a couple of cool shots that I liked:

 

  

  

As a bonus Adam let me take a few shots of him:

  

  

  

Felt good to bring my camera out and get some practice.   

savory poached eggs with tomatoes

This is what I had for dinner tonight:

Here is the recipe: Savory Poached Eggs with Tomatoes.  

OMGosh -- it was delicious!  This will definitely become part of my meal rotation.  Very simple food which is what I love.  This only took about 10 minutes to make and it was really easy.  Plus, these are all foods that are usually in everybody's fridge at all times.

  

How do you like that bowl?

My aunt made and painted these sometime in the 70s.  She gave them to me when I moved to Washington.  Nobody else wanted the set, but jokes on them because I love these bowls!  So vintage and kitschy.  I love vintage stuff, but we don't have a lot of it so this is a great start for me. 

self-portrait tag

I was tagged by Lindsay to take a self-portrait "as is" and post it on my blog.

 

I just took this a few minutes ago.  Day old hair and minimal makeup.  In fact, the only reason I got dressed today was so I could go out and get some dinner.  :)  Typical Sunday.  I get dressed up every day for work with full makeup and hair so it's nice to have a break once a week.  

Now it's your turn.  I'm tagging anyone who is reading and needs some blog material.  :) 

friendly reminder for the new year

Back up your photos!  If you're shooting digital you should be doing this regularly anyways, but now is a good time to make an extra backup DVD of all your 2008 photos.  I hate to read the horror stories online of hard drives crashing and memories vanishing.

**Edited To Add: Andrea mentioned in comments backing up to an external hard drive as well and/or backing up through an online source.  Great ideas!  Even better to do all 3!  I don't have an external hard drive yet (hoping to get one soon), but I have my photos on a couple of different hard drive between our computers.  I'm interested in the online sources too if anyone has any info**

 

I ordered these cute little CD/DVD albums from Kolo a few weeks ago while they were on sale.  They came in last week and I put my photo backup DVDs in them last week.  It felt great to get them all organized. 

  

You can find them here if you're interested -- Kolo Cortina CD Album.  They have a couple of other color combos as well. 

weekend wrap-up

I took a few days off of blogging to enjoy my 5 days off.  I am really sad that it is Sunday already...back to work tomorrow.

Did you have a nice Christmas?  I hope so!

We sure did.  I didn't take many photos which seemed nice at the time, but I'm sure I'll regret that soon.  :)

Christmas Eve was really great.  We had Jessica and Steve over for dinner and drinks.  We had a lot of drinks.  Polished off 2.5 bottles of wine and 2 bottles of cheap champagne.

They slept over too which was fun! 

Christmas was low-key for us, as usual.  Except for the presents.  We both went kind of overboard with the presents for each other.  We've been doing that for the past couple of years.  I know people say they aren't into the presents anymore when they become adults, but we are.  We love buying and hiding and suprising and opening on Christmas morning.  I think we would do this anyway, but it's kind of become our "thing" since we moved out here and have been spending Christmas alone.

Here's our living room shortly after opening gifts:

  

The rest of the week/weekend has truly been the laziest experience for both of us.  We've done a lot of staying up really late and sleeping in, a lot of video games playing, watching TV and movies, sitting by the fireplace, knitting, finishing, blocking and starting, reading a lot of books and magazines and just relaxing in general.  It's really been great!  I'm going to have a hard time going to work tomorrow morning.  Adam is off until Friday.     

I'll blog about a few of the amazing gifts I received this year over the next few days.  I'm off to enjoy what's left of my Christmas vacation now!