Snapdragon

Catching Up on Stamping

2012-01-30T18:17:00.000Z

So this weekend it seems like all I did was sleep, read, and bake cookies. My friend Sarah sent me a bunch of books (we have very similar taste in books, which is marvelous because both of us had never found anyone else that liked the kind of books we do, so for the last year we've been mailing books back and forth and trading recommendations) and so I dove into a new series this weekend in between making batches of cookies. Tried some new cookie recipes too--chocolate peanut butter chip (the recipe on the bag of Reese's peanut butter chips...I don't like peanut butter much but Lee does), chocolate cherry (they have M&Ms and maraschino cherries in them) and my favorite, butterscotch apple. YUM. They even have frosting.

But before this weekend I did actually get some stamping done, so that's what I'm sharing today.

Needed another name frame...I don't really like how this one turned out though, it seems too plain so I might redo it. It was supposed to be given to Kinley's mom last week but then I left it in the car by accident so I still have it. Which means I can redo it.

I pulled heart stamps from three different stamp sets for this kind of CAS card (clean & simple if you're unfamiliar with the lingo). The largest heart is stamped on a separate piece of paper, cut out, and popped up.

At one point I had done all of the color and sketch challenges over on Splitcoast, and now I'm like way far behind so I'm trying to go back and do the older challenges I missed. That's all well and good, but sometimes I feel like doing that is kind of hampering me a bit...like I'm trying too hard to make my stuff fit in the challenges and then I don't like it as well. Like this card.

This one, however, represents a recent color challenge and a sketch from Clean & Simple Stamping and I do like how it turned out. I think maybe my style is just leaning more towards CAS.

Lee's grandmother recently had surgery so I made her a get-well card. I pulled out a real oldie, Roses in Winter, and then paired it with a new stamp set for the sentiment, Perfectly Penned. I love that font : )

Here's another one that I just didn't like as well because of the sketch. I tried to make it work but it just doesn't appeal to me. Sorry Tiana, I sent you a birthday card I don't like much!

This one is a birthday card for Lee's dad, and again I think the sketch is just too fiddly for my taste. The whole time I was putting it together I was like HOW many pieces are on this thing?!

Here's a simpler one...hey, Paris and the Eiffel Tower are kind of Valentine-y, right? The only thing I'd change about this card is that I think the sentiment should be in a heavier font, it gets lost a bit on the collage since it's such thin lines.

This card was a bit of a surprise. It's an old, old sketch challenge that I'd always avoided because I didn't like it, and then I used it here and surprised myself with how much I liked the results. So hey, at least I try.

Another sketch that is just too much, I kind of feel like the line of flowers on the bottom was barfed on there. I'm not really feeling those colors together much either...I want to like them but this card is just NOT where it's at.

The inside is ok though. Heh.

I've also done a bit of scrapbooking here and there, yay! I kind of wish I could wave a magic wand and be caught up with my scrapbooks but until I invent that magic wand, I'll just have to slog through the slow way. That said, I don't want to do digital scrapbooking...I like the process with real paper and photos. And I think I already spend too much time on the computer, I like to get away from it.

I had this layout all done like six months ago except for the journaling. And now it's all done! Sorry for the picture quality on these, I have a hard time getting a halfway decent shot of scrapbook layouts with our big camera and Lee absconded with the little one. (I should get extra cosmic points for using the word "absconded" on my blog. I'm just sayin'.) Anyway, you might remember Pizza in the Sky as the restaurant high up in the hills on Okinawa.

A layout dedicated to two other Okinawa restaurants, Jack's Place and Sam's by the Sea. These layouts all go into the book from when my parents came out to visit us. We ate a LOT.

And here's the last one I have done (there's another one that's halfway done on my desk but it'll just have to wait until next time). It kind of cracks me up that I put the kanji for tranquility on the layout, and then my journaling is all about how Lee and I call the place Cape Zampa and my parents call it Bolo Point so we argue about that, and then Mom and I went up in the lighthouse and dropped gummy bears on Dad's head. Real tranquil. I'm starting to wonder though if I'm using too many flowers on that scrapbook. They seem to be my go-to embellishment for every page. Hmm...

All supplies for each card/layout will be listed on my SCS gallery if you're curious. For now, I'm going to go downstairs and watch NCIS: LA and Hawaii Five-O that I recorded last night. Cheers!

Calton Hill

2012-01-27T10:38:00.000Z

Missy is putting me to shame posting pictures from Scotland much faster than I am. And I'm thinking that mine are now out of order because it's just too many brain bytes to keep three cameras' worth of photos in chronological order, so I'm just going to embrace the chaos because that's how I roll.

On the morning of our last day in Edinburgh (we caught a train at like 4 in the afternoon), we took a cab out to Calton Hill overlooking the city. Missy had somehow gotten her hands on a tourist map of Edinburgh and it looked interesting so we said hey why not. The hill is crowned with several monuments in Ancient Greek style.

Lee has been teasing me so much about my pictures coming out crooked, so I tried really hard to get one that was NOT crooked and I won't even tell you how many tries it took 'cause it's kind of embarrassing. I'm thinking maybe my eyes are crooked. Anyway, this is the Dugald Stewart Monument.

And this is the unfinished National Monument. What's amusing to me is that I don't think it occurred to any of us while we were there that this was unfinished, we thought it was supposed to look that way. It was begun in 1826, and then they ran out of funds to complete it so it's been this way for a right long while (at least, a long while by American standards. By British standards, that's like 40 winks or something).

Lee insisted we all get in a group photo. 'Cept for him since he took it.

And this is us having some fun : p

Here's the Nelson Monument, also note how this one is pretty much NOT crooked thankyouverymuch.

And a picture through tree branches just for Miss Vicki.

Lee and Bennet sitting on the National Monument...they think they heard someone yell at them to get down so the skedaddled really fast after this picture was taken.

Just kind of a fun silhouette with the sun coming up. I was playing with the camera a little bit.

And here's a view of the city from atop the hill.

Lee must have taken this 'cause I don't remember photographing any cannons.

One more pic of the city because I like it; that Ferris wheel was close to the Christmas faire we went to earlier in our visit.

One more group photo. After we were done looking around on Calton Hill, I don't think we had a firm plan as to what to do next but we decided to start walking down towards the city and then we ended up in a cemetery.

Lee still thinks it's slightly creepy that I like to walk around cemeteries periodically, and the rest of our group seemed to think it was interesting too.

I found this cross lying on the ground and thought it looked kind of neat and also sad since it was broken.

Here you can see how the cemetery is built into the hillside.

Mom liked this photo; I liked how the light was shining on the headless angel so I was pretty pleased with how this picture turned out. I think I've said it before but I'll say it again, we lucked out with weather while we were in Scotland. Now I just need to sit down and organize the photos so I can order some prints to scrapbook...not that I don't have over three years' worth of pictures already printed out. I have been working on an Okinawa scrapbook this week though so yay me. I'm always so far behind that it's not possible for me to ever be bored. At least, I'll try to be optimistic and think about how I have lots of choices for what photos to scrap next, and try not to dwell on the part where I probably will never catch up. Positive energy!

It's a Star Wars Birthday

2012-01-24T16:15:00.000Z

When I get up in the mornings (ok, ok, occasionally when I get up in the afternoon...but generally it's in the mornings), one of the first things I do is check email and Facebook. And the first thing I saw on Facebook today was this video, courtesy of Cake Wrecks Jen who I think must have posted it just for me (just kidding, she doesn't know me but we're secretly geek sisters separated at birth):

*feeling faint from supreme awesomeness* I so want to give these guys all my money so I can have this piece on my iPod. Because it's made of AWESOME. And last night, right before I went to bed, the last thing I saw was this blog post (again, courtesy of Cake Wrecks Jen) which leaves me with a strong urge to redo the guest room. I want color-changing lightsaber wall sconces! And the world's cutest Boba Fett lamp! Not to mention the AT-AT decals on the closet door...and the Han Solo quote! Ack!!! The wampa rug though, I think that's where I'd draw the line. My tauntaun sleeping bag is way less terror-inducing.

So yeah, it's been a Star Wars-y day, which I love. My geek flag is flying high today. Liz took me out for lunch today, we stuffed ourselves silly at my favorite pub, and we did some shopping too for Lee's birthday. My mom (who is also made of awesome) sent me two boxes packed full of goodies wrapped in Tinker Bell tissue paper and Star Wars wrapping paper (I love Ahsoka Tano). And I'm not afraid to admit that I have Wookieepedia as a favorite on my web browser. So anyway, here I sit in my brand-new pajama pants, contemplating an evening with Princess Bride and The Empire Strikes Back, two of my favoritestmost movies in the history of cinema, and I'm a happy camper.

May the Force be with you!

St. Giles' Cathedral

2012-01-20T15:23:00.000Z

It's been raining all day and Sadie is still convinced I can make it stop so she can go for a walk. No way am I taking her and Vader out when it's been raining all day, so she's doomed to disappointment today. She'll probably be all feisty and annoying tonight though.

Anyway, today I have pictures from St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh. You saw the front of it in the last post. I don't think I took any pictures inside it since our camera usually doesn't do too hot in low light situations, so these are but a tiny fraction of Mom's pictures. I just picked the ones I liked of the different carvings and other ornamentation from around the cathedral, so my commentary will be kept to a minimum today.

Mom must have really liked the vaulted ceiling; I think there were at least a dozen photos of it.

I don't know why Dad won't smile in pictures. He *said* he was thrilled to be there, at any rate...

This looks like bunches of cabbage suspended from the ceiling. At least I don't have to eat these veggies ; )

These are two shots of the same bit of carving so you can read what it says on the bottom.

This little guy was on the end of the pew.

Hey, it's the lion and the unicorn again! Ever hear the nursery rhyme "The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown"? Scotland is the unicorn, and England is the lion. Oh the things one can learn from Google.

Uh-oh, Mom is adopting Dad's no-smile policy. What is UP with that??

I like the looks of Celtic crosses. And that's all I've got today.

I've got a long list of things I need to do in my craft room, but honestly I'm just not feeling motivated in there today, so I may go downstairs and stitch for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Let me tell you, I've made ridiculous amounts of progress on this month's stitching project. I'll reattack the craft room tomorrow...

The Royal Mile

2012-01-18T22:44:00.000Z

Dude, I've been pretty scarce in blogland lately, huh? I was a total hermit for three weeks or so and then suddenly this week I've had places to go and things to do every day. Vader says he misses me when I'm not at the house. So anyway, today I've got some more Scotland photos to share and wow, I would have thought I'd be done with the blog posts all about when everyone was out here for Thanksgiving and stuff, but here I am. I kinda have a headache tonight so bear with me if I'm not as entertaining as usual.

Speaking of unusual, we saw blue skies in Edinburgh. Seriously, we hardly even got rained on the whole time we were in Scotland. Who says the UK always has dismal weather?

We were all walking up the Royal Mile to go do...something...and then all the male members of our group suddenly lost the will to move on because they were busy drooling over this car. I don't know what it is even, I am so NOT a car nut. But they were really excited about it, I swear we had almost a dozen photos of it.

View down the Royal Mile.

Here's Missy and Bennet in front of St. Giles' Cathedral, Missy likes to get pictures with her in front of all the things she goes to see. Which is funny, 'cause Lee usually wants a shot with NO PEOPLE in it.

But hey look, there we are too. Probably because Missy insisted we get in the picture.

Hey look, it's a butt picture!

And another one! Wow, I should start a photo collage.

So in Edinburgh you have the signs that Robert Burns stayed here. What do we have in the States? "Elvis ate here."

We did not go ask him if he was a traditional Scotsman...no full moons for us.

I just thought this picture was kinda cool, I don't even know where it is.

Ohhh yeah. So I don't drink coffee, but I do have a collection of coffee mugs because they work quite well for tea and hot chocolate (and I am so totally in love with English breakfast tea! but I digress) and Missy likes to pick up the Starbucks mugs wherever since they usually have the cool ones with place names on them. I have one from Hokkaido (northern Japan) that has polar bears on it.

And there's another car that was apparently drool-worthy. There was a wedding going on at the cathedral and this was the getaway vehicle. I think that all the guys were drooling over the car when the wedding party walked by, a gust of wind came up and all the dudes wearing kilts inadvertently flashed Dad, Lee and Bennet. *giggle*

This dude was one of several buskers we saw up and down the Royal Mile (in addition to Mr. Bagpipes up above).

And you can't go to Scotland without seeing Braveheart, so there you go. Hopefully next time I return to the ol' bloggypoo, I'll have a much more entertaining narrative to go along with. For now, I think I'll crawl in bed...maybe read a bit before I go to sleep, or not. Peace out, yo!

So, I just started to put a label on this post, and I meant to type Scotland but instead I typed in Starbucks. Maybe I'm caffeine-deprived and that's why my head hurts...hey, I haven't had a Coke since the new year started! But probably a bunch of my tea is caffeinated, so whatever. I'm off to bed.

Pumpkin Apple Muffins

2012-01-14T13:33:00.000Z

I found the other recipe...I forgot that I stuck it in my Nestle cookbook to mark the page with pumpkin blueberry streusel muffins and orange brunch muffins...those both sounded pretty good for a future experiment ; )

I got this recipe from a blog or something somewhere on the Internet, but I didn't write down the source. These are really good (I'm beginning to think it would be kind of difficult to come up with a BAD pumpkin muffin recipe...) but, of course, they are much more labor-intensive than the cheater muffins. I also had to get a few ingredients specifically for these, like the wheat flour.

Pumpkin Apple Muffins

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
1/2 cup agave or honey
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1 medium apple, peeled and grated (I used more like 1 1/2 Granny Smith apples because mine were small)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine dry ingredients (everything down to the pumpkin pie spice) in a bowl and mix together. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Gradually add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients and stir just until combined.

Grease muffin tin or line with paper cups, and fill each 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes 12 muffins.

A lot of recipes (like my favorite pumpkin cookies) call for 1 cup of canned pumpkin, and a 15-ounce can is like 1 2/3 cups or so, and I hate to toss out that extra pumpkin. A recipe like this one that uses 1/2 cup of pumpkin means you only toss a few tablespoons out, which is nice : ) The Godzilla can is 29 ounces, and with just one of those cans I was able to make all three batches of pumpkin muffins.

Enjoy! And hey, this has to be somewhat healthy, right? This recipe has NO sugar (ignore the honey part) *and* it's got a vegetable (pumpkin counts as a veggie!) *plus* a fruit. Totally healthy! Or so I tell myself.

Pumpkin muffins, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

2012-01-13T13:49:00.001Z

Anyone miss me? I will admit, with Lee out of town for work for a while, I've been keeping odd hours and not doing much of anything but working out and cross stitching. Yesterday I had breakfast at 1:30 in the afternoon, and I decided that was a little too far out there even for me, so I'm trying to get back on a more "normal" schedule. Or at least one with more of my waking hours during the few hours of daylight we have here. And after two weeks of P90X, I've come to the inevitable conclusion that P90X is what makes my wrists hurt; I just don't know what to do about it because I *do* want to work out somehow, but I'd rather my hands not fall off either. So this week all I've been doing is cross stitching and a bit of stamping in my craft room.

But today, I'm baking pumpkin muffins, 'cause sometimes I just totally crave baked goods, and these are goooooood. I mentioned a while back that I've been attempting to find the perfect recipe for pumpkin muffins, and to that end I've attempted three recipes. I have to apologize up front for my photographs, I have yet to figure out how to take pictures of food and have it look appetizing at all. The first recipe is for streusel-topped pumpkin chocolate chip muffins that I found on Our Best Bites:

I won't re-type the recipe here since they've got it done up all pretty over there, just hit the link above. I'm not sure how I found Our Best Bites, maybe it was a link on someone else's blog or something, but I love them! Sara and Kate crack me up with their commentary on the recipes. Anyway, this muffin recipe tastes pretty good (I have yet to meet a pumpkin muffin I wouldn't eat, though, yum), and it's got streusel on top and more things in life should have streusel on top. However, I think it was the pickiest recipe of the three I tried; I think I was a little too chintzy with the batter since I ended up with about 30 muffins instead of 24, and then I think mine came out a little under-done and they were just a bit gooey on the inside (which, if you're me, isn't necessarily a bad thing). I only did chocolate chips in half the muffins though; maybe I've been making my pumpkin cookies too long but pairing pumpkin with milk chocolate instead of white chocolate just seems really strange to me anymore. Anyway, due to the underbaking and the undersized muffins, the streusel kind of cracked and fell off everywhere too. I'd have to try these again and see if I could get them to turn out better the second time. And use white chips instead.

Next up were pumpkin apple muffins:

For some reason I can't find the recipe I used for these; I found all the other pumpkin muffin recipes in one place and this one is missing. Well, it's a pumpkin muffin but it's got grated apple in there too; these ones actually *looked* the prettiest of the three recipes, and they tasted pretty good too. No streusel, and the recipe is a bit more complicated since it doesn't involve a cake mix and you have to grate the apple and stuff, but it makes 12 good-size muffins and they came out perfectly on the first try. If I can locate the recipe later I'll post it when I find it.

Finally, I tried what I'll call cheater pumpkin muffins:

Take 1 box Duncan Hines spice cake mix (yes, it needs to be Duncan Hines), one 15-ounce can of pureed pumpkin, and 3/4 cup of water; mix it all up well and then put in muffin cups and bake for 25 minutes. I like to bake, but I also like to take shortcuts and do things the easy way (for instance, I do not make my own pie crust and likely never will), so these appealed to me just for the fact that they're so EASY to make. The one thing I'd recommend is break up the lumps in the cake mix before you add the other ingredients, or maybe use a hand mixer...I'd broken my hand mixer when I made these the first time so I just stirred, and some of them had bits of cake mix powder on the top that looked kinda not right after baking. (Did you know that hand mixers are allergic to gravity?)

Today I'm doing that same recipe but doubled, so 2 cake mixes, 1 1/2 cups water, and a Godzilla-size can of pumpkin (I didn't want to have to figure out what to do with leftover pumpkin so I wanted to use up the entire can in one go). And then I added a bag of white chocolate chips. Next time I try this, I think I'll put the pumpkin and water in the bowl first, then add the cake mixes gradually because it was hard to stir enough to make sure all the cake mix got incorporated properly. But I just had one of these muffins warm out of the oven, and YUM. I was able to make about 36 muffins and no, I'm not going to eat them all in the next couple of days. I'm going to freeze them and then just get out one at a time when I feel the need for something muffiny.

Now, if only my muffin tin were self-cleaning...of all the dishes I own, I think I hate cleaning the muffin tin most of all. But I love eating muffins, so I'll put up with the cleaning thing too.

My LOL Moment For Today

2012-01-05T21:34:00.001Z

I *heart* George Takei, he cracks me up posting amusing pictures on Facebook (for any non-geeks out there, Takei is the original Sulu from Star Trek, and also that guy on the TV commercials who goes "OH MYYYY!" and has a pretty cool speaking voice). Just saw this one a few minutes ago:

Funniest thing I've seen today : ) Yes, I'm a nerd. And I like it that way. Lee just kind of tunes me out when I start expounding on the finer points of starship mechanics, dilithium crystals, and the age-old Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate (my answer: unite for an epic WIN). However, Lee is totally on board with me inventing a transporter 'cause that would just be cool. Ironically, while I love science fiction, I am not much good at science, particularly physics, so that transporter is going to be a long time coming.

I need to get a move-on with the next Scotland blog post, I'm just procrastinating about digging into that mountain of pictures! They'll be up sometime before February ; )

The Accolade, Part 2

2012-01-02T12:42:00.001Z

So far, 2012 has been all about cross stitching and watching Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Seriously, I started season 2 of that show just before Christmas and I'm halfway through season 4. It's kind of fun to laugh at the '90s-era special effects, but I honestly like the show and don't know why I didn't hardly ever watch it when it was on the air. Well, taking care of that now ; )

Since we just switched over to a new month (and a new year), it's time to share a progress pic of the last stitching project, which was The Accolade:

Photo courtesy of Scarlet Quince, from whence I bought the pattern. I haven't connected with it as much as the other projects I'm working on; this one is going the slowest out of the four, although I've done a lot more since I posted Part 1.

Wow, the shading shows up pretty well in this picture. I thought I was *never* going to finish that stained glass window!!! SO MUCH confetti stitching, by which I mean one or two stitches in a color in a particular area and that's it. As I said before, the first 10x10 square of the chart had over thirty different symbols in it, and of course it takes longer to stitch when you're constantly switching out colors. It went a little faster when I started working on the bit under the window since it was a larger area with fewer color changes, but I did spend 5 or 6 hours on New Year's Eve doing mostly confetti stitching. But hey, I am now at 6,311 hard-fought stitches on this project, which still feels slightly pitiful when you consider that's around half as many stitches as the The Quarry, which was my other slow-starter. And of course those two are the largest projects in my rotation : ) But hey, I think this one will go faster next time it's up in the rotation since the next bits of the pattern are less confetti.

And there you can see how big the whole project will be in comparison to what I have done so far, which is just 4.2%. Hey, that's a lot better than the less-than-1% I had done last time, right?

And here you can see just how many different colors I was working with; I had to start a second needle board for this project because I ran out of room. There were a number of colors that were used for just ONE stitch in the entire first page of the design, and I'd park a needle on the needle board any time I had floss left when I finished stitching a particular color, so that's how often I changed colors. I still like the needle board idea; it makes things a little bit faster when I discover the odd stitch here or there that I missed doing in a particular color because I can just pull it out of the board, do my one stitch, and put it back. But I have to be pretty careful now about getting the threads tangled up since a lot of them are pretty long.

Because I'm a nerd and I keep track of how far along I am on all my SQ projects, I just added it up and I did 50,599 stitches this year (plus I finished up a couple small projects on the side). I did the most stitches on Eilonwy with all that black at the top, but percentage-wise I'm furthest along on Miranda, which is January's project.

Well, off I go to vacuum and mop downstairs. It's been muddy out so the living room is all over doggy paws, and I'm watching a friend's Jack Russell terrier and somehow that little dog tracks in twice as much dirt as my two and her paws are TINY. Argh. Anyway, I have to get the floor clean before I do my workout in there today, I'm not laying on a muddy floor to do crunches!

Edinburgh Castle, Part 2

2011-12-31T17:51:00.000Z

Lookie here, I'm back with the last post for 2011. As promised, today I've got pictures that Mom took at Edinburgh Castle.

This is the top of Royal Mile; if you turn around the castle is right there.

And here's what I looked like taking pictures all day. I know my hat is goofy-looking, but a.) I like the bright colors on it and the pompom, and b.) it kept my ears toasty.

Here we all are, just about to go into the castle, except I think maybe Lee sprinted on ahead since he's not in the picture.

I thought this was a nice picture of the parental units; this was taken up on the battlements.

And then Mom took one of Missy and me : ) I have a bit of hat hair going on...well, hat hair combined with wind hair. I'd French braided my hair that morning but so many wispies had escaped by lunchtime that I took it out and went back to a standard ponytail. 'Cause I'm sure you're interested in my hair.

Oh look, it's a butt picture! Except Bennet, since he's getting his picture taken by Missy.

Hehe, here's Lee's butt again; not sure what Dad's doing but I thought it was kind of funny.

Edinburgh Castle is also home to the Honours of Scotland (the Crown Jewels) which are older than the English paraphernalia because the Scots were quick to hide their jewels from Cromwell, who melted down the English Crown Jewels. You go through an exhibit to get to see the Honours and the sign said no photos, but a bunch of people were taking pictures so Mom did too. I didn't, I'm a good girl.

This thing was kind of cool; it was a procession of figures that started out as flat paintings and as you move along the line, they gradually become more three-dimensional.

It's like they're walking out of the wall, huh?

This shows King James IV receiving the new sword of state in 1507 at nearby Holyrood Abbey.

The scepter dates back to 1494, but King James V had it lengthened in 1536. Maybe he was having a contest with the English monarchs as to whose scepter was longer...

And there's Mary, Queen of Scots, shown as a 9-month-old baby which is when she was crowned.

I don't know who this lady is but I liked her sheer little shawl thing. She looks pretty severe; I'm getting kind of a Jane Eyre vibe off her.

This scene shows the Honours being smuggled out of the castle by a pair of women to keep them from being melted down by Cromwell and his men. I don't remember who the women were and my exhaustive two minutes of Googling hasn't turned up their names either so they shall remain nameless for now. After we went through the exhibit, we got to see the Honours of Scotland in person, but of course you can't take pictures in there and they had a castle employee standing guard to make sure you didn't. But you can see bunches of pictures of them here and I got myself some postcards with photos of them.

I think that dude on the left was in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was in fact filmed in Scotland.

Here we all are in the Great Hall, which is decorated with lots of weaponry because that seems to be the thing to do in a castle's Great Hall. I love how Lee and Bennet are pretending they don't know they're having their picture taken.

Hey look, it's another butt picture.

Holy smokes, here's proof that Salazar Slytherin was from Scotland!! Aaauughhhh!

Last photo for the day, Missy and I walked into the little alcove to get out of the wind and cold while everyone else was taking a potty break. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm glad I didn't arrive on the scene until *after* indoor plumbing got popular.

So that's all she wrote, for now anyway. I just made a pan of brownies (more so I could eat brownie batter than the brownies...don't judge) so I've just totally negated my kickboxing workout today. But I'm going to go chill out and watch some more Lois & Clark. Hope you have a great New Year's!

Edinburgh Castle, Part 1

2011-12-29T12:40:00.000Z

Been slow with the blogging lately but I figure most people are still so busy with holiday stuff that they're not online as much as usual. Which is good, because it means that they're spending time with other people face-to-face (at least, I hope so). But I'm back today, partially because it's been a while but mostly because I'm procrastinating about doing my workout today. I've started P90X (again) and today it's yoga--and I don't like yoga. All those stinkin' push-ups hurt my wrists. And my balance ain't the best.

But that's neither here nor there. Let's get on with the pictures, shall we? Another reason it's taken me a while to post more photos from my parents' and Missy and Bennet's visit is that there are so MANY to go through, it takes almost an hour to pick out pictures for one blog post. And I don't even have Bennet and Missy's yet. So today I decided to just share the pictures from my camera; that seemed easier to me than trying to put up pictures from my camera and Mom's and get them in chronological order. So here we go, Edinburgh Castle!

We took a taxi to the castle right after we had breakfast at Sainsbury's, which is a British grocery store chain. The stores usually have a cafe too, and breakfast there was cheaper than at our hotel and it was really good, too. I've developed a real taste for English Breakfast tea and of course, what's not to love about scones? Probably why I need to work out more often, but I digress. We got to the castle right around the time it opened, so while there were some people already milling about it was nowhere near as crowded as it got a bit later in the day.

I took pictures of several monuments just outside the castle; Lee really liked this shot. The sky in this one makes it look like we're about to get drenched, but surprisingly, I don't think we got rained on hardly at all that day.

Teehee, I took a butt picture! Which is funny to me because MY butt isn't in it.

Still outside the castle; this is one of my favorite pictures from the day, is that weird? I like the warm colors of the wall and the rust against the cool gray of the sky, and the juxtaposition of different textures and stuff. I don't know, every once in a while I just get a picture that really appeals to me and this is one of them.

Those are the Scottish Royal Arms displayed over the main entrance to the castle; the red lion is on my address labels. The Latin motto means "No one attacks me with impunity", or to put it another way, "Don't no one mess with me, dude!"

There was a statue on either side of the main entrance; this is the one to the right as you're facing the castle.

Kind of a view of the courtyard area once we entered the castle proper. Skies are looking more blue, huh?

Mom, Dad, Missy and I did a short little battlement walk which had some great views of the city. Edinburgh Castle is up on Castle Rock (obviously not the same Castle Rock as is in Nottingham) well above the elevation of the rest of the city. The city used to be even lower than the castle, but the current buildings are built over the top of the older city; we did a tour of the underground city later on this same day. More on that later.

Bennet and Missy are checking out the cannons; Bennet is pretty much in the center of the picture with the bright red hat and the blue jacket.

Another view of the city from the castle walls. I took the pictures through an opening in the wall, so I was kind of surprised how well they turned out.

More city stuff. The dome is the East Register House, according to the guide book.

Hey, I know those people!

I know them too : ) We waited for several minutes but the dude right behind Missy just would NOT move out of the picture.

This is inside St. Margaret's Chapel, built in the 12th century by her son, King David I. It's the oldest building, not just within the precincts of Edinburgh Castle, but the entire city of Edinburgh.

The stained glass was added in the 1920s.

One of the windows depicts St. Margaret herself, although I didn't get a picture of it, and this one is William Wallace. The picture is a little bit blurry; hard to get a good photo of stained glass especially without a tripod.

For the past few centuries, Edinburgh Castle has been used more as a garrisoned fortress. This is the dog cemetery which holds the tombs of the dogs who were unit mascots or belonged to the officers living at the castle.

Kind of a cute picture of my parental units : ) I haven't read all the way through the guide book to know where we were when I took this though.

Another coat of arms from somewhere else in the castle...I wanted to read all through the guide book before posting but it took a long time just to get through the pictures so whatever.

How lucky are we, blue skies in Scotland!!

Mom and I walked around a corner to take pictures of this side of the building and the wind funneling down through there was just incredible. I felt like I was going to fly off like all the nannies at the beginning of Mary Poppins.

The unicorn and the lion are on either side of the entrance to the Scottish National War Memorial. The guide book says it's a unicorn anyway, though it looks like a horse to me; nevertheless it's always a lion and a unicorn in the coats of arms. I first saw this one from the front side of it and it looked like the unicorn had its hoof up to its nose to stifle a sneeze or something, I didn't see the shield until I got to the other side of it : )

And here's the lion.

One last picture for today, this is the statue that's to the right of the entrance to the castle, this was the last picture I took as we were leaving. So I'll be back at some unspecified date in the future with Mom's butt pictures from Edinburgh Castle. Ta-ta for now, peeps!

The Annual Christmas Card

2011-12-25T22:31:00.000Z

I'm pretty tired right now, thinking about going to bed soon, so I'm sitting here eating a cranberry white chip cookie and drinking a Coke. Hey, the new diet/exercise regimen starts tomorrow ; ) Anywha, I figured that now would be a good time to share this year's Christmas card:

I made these using the Stampin' Up stamp set Bright Hopes from the holiday mini catalog. I think the cards turned out okay, but they didn't really strike me as spectacular or anything. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

I had to make a Hanukkah card to send to Sarah and her family, and since she loves polar bears using this stamp was a no-brainer. I really liked this one, but no way would I have watercolored 50 or so cards to do this for Christmas cards...it was fun to do once, but I imagine the fun would wear off around card 3. I put some Stickles on it for snow.

I found myself in need of two more really fast Christmas cards today, so I looked through my scraps and pulled out the stripey piece and paired it with one of my super-simple go-to layouts.

This was a really fast book of cookie recipes I made for my friend Renee. It's a 4x6 picture book that was only $3, so I just picked some bright colors to kinda go with it and made it really simple.

The front page is the only one that has any patterned paper on it other than the window in the front cover.

And here's one of the inside pages. I don't have 24 cookie recipes so I only used the right side pages; I picked out four colors of cardstock and just typed up the recipes and cut them out on regular printer paper for the insides. That part was easy too, I just made two text boxes that were 5 1/2 inches tall and 3 1/2 inches wide, and then I was sure that the recipes would fit when I cut them out. Some of them were really short but I didn't have enough time to really make this a big project, so I kept it super-simple.

Well, I'm off to bed. I want to get up kind of early tomorrow to get started with my workout schedule...I'm going to give P90X another hack and see if I can give up Cokes and not eat so much sugar. The sugar part will be easier once I give away all the pumpkin muffins and cookies in my kitchen...I got like 10 giant cans of pumpkin puree before Thanksgiving (I have hoarding tendencies, hey, they don't stock that stuff here year-round) so I thought I'd try out a few recipes for pumpkin muffins. If there's any interest, I can post more about the search for the perfect pumpkin muffin recipe at a later date. For now, I'm going to bed.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Visiting the Homeland

2011-12-20T15:31:00.001Z

Dad is convinced that we are of Scottish descent. I remain skeptical, though I will admit that Scotland is a lovely place and I can see why so many people want to be Scottish. Personally, I think I'm a good ol'-fashioned American mutt. Anyway.

The day after Thanksgiving, we got up early in the morning (which turned out to be a theme from this visit) and drove to Ely to hop on a train to Edinburgh. So here's all of us waiting on the platform (alas, not Platform 9 3/4) except Lee who took the picture.

The advantage of taking a train from here to Edinburgh is that it takes less time than a car, and you get to relax and sleep or play Uno while you ride instead of worrying about driving. And it's kind of fun.

We saw several rainbows.

Then we had to keep reminding Mom when it was her turn to go in Uno because she was so busy taking pictures out the windows. And it's a good thing that Lee's already winnowed down the pictures from our camera, 'cause it still took me 45 minutes to go through Mom's photos for this post. I think she was making a silent movie.

There I am shuffling the Uno cards and wondering why Mom insisted on taking my picture right that minute. This is your chance to remark how long my hair is. You know you want to.

One more gigundo house we saw out the window. Or it's a church or a school or some other cool building and we did daydream about living in a place like that for a minute.

This is the first thing we saw when we got off the train at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. Ta-da! Then we hailed a taxi in about 3.2 seconds, and got a 6-passenger taxi on our first try.

Then we took pictures of all of us squished in the taxi.Why is Missy squished in with my parents instead of me? Guess that's just the order in which we boarded the taxi.

Lee and Bennet violated the man-spacing rules again. I think they sat next to each other just about every time we sat anywhere though.

Don't know what The Scotsman is, but it was one of Mom's pictures so I'm posting it. Anyway, we took the tax to our hotel, got checked in and freshened up, and then got on the bus back to the city center. A very nice elderly Scottish lady helped us make sure we got to where we wanted to go; I have to say that every Scottish person we talked to was SO nice the whole time. Always willing to give directions (and correct directions too!). The Irish were the same way, only they're a bit easier to understand.

We did a lot of walking around Edinburgh that first evening, and hit up the Christmas faire too.

Ice skating below the castle, pretty cool picture, huh? That was all Lee.

There's a teeny bit of the Christmas faire; they had lots of food and drink booths, places that sold things like knitted hats with ears (I so wanted one but didn't get one because Lee wouldn't walk around with me in public if I wore a hat that looked like a raccoon or something), and a section of carnival rides and stuff.

This cool picture is also Lee. I'm not so good with the low-light stuff.

Mom thought this sign was hilarious and she said a couple of teenagers laughed at her when they saw her taking a picture of it.

That building in the background kind of makes me think of the Addams Family mansion, not sure why. Maybe it's the upward angle of the picture, 'cause didn't they used to show the house that way on TV to make it look bigger and more imposing? No, just me? Ok then.

There's the front of St. Giles Cathedral. I think we took this picture right around five o'clock in the afternoon; it's pitch black by then this time of year. Hey, the days start getting longer again after December 21, yay!

Here's Lee and Bennet exploring the whiskey shop. We walked up and down the Royal Mile leading up to the castle just looking in the shops and stuff.

This was next door to the whiskey place, and I got a pretty little thistle charm for my charm bracelet. The thistle is the national flower of Scotland and so it's naturally on *everything* they sell at the touristy shops. So anyway, that was our first day in Edinburgh. It's going to take me a while to get through the pictures for the next bit and I don't even have copies of Bennet and Missy's pics yet. It's a lot of photos.

Let's Talk Turkey

2011-12-17T11:22:00.003Z

The evening of Thanksgiving, I thought I'd never want to eat again I was so stuffed, but wouldn't you know I was ready for breakfast first thing Friday morning. And breakfast was sweet potato casserole and it was goooooooood. But anyway, today's pictures are all from Thanksgiving day. No parades, no football, but a lot of cooking and food and Wii if you were a dude.

We didn't take too many pictures of the prep work, but I started in at 7:30 that morning with a list of everything that needed to be made. Missy joined in after her shower, then Mom, and then Liz came over with Bobby shortly after noon. So here's Missy with the lemon meringue pie that kinda looked like a mushroom cloud. Most of the dishes were a collaborative effort; I made the lemon part and Missy did the meringue for this pie, and for the sweet potato casserole I did the sweet potato part and Liz put together the crunchy pecan topping (which I think should be on far more foods 'cause YUM).

The one masculine addition to our feast: Bobby fried the turkey. Also yum.

Hey look, there's another picture of my butt. Mom said she didn't send out the Big Ben or Stonehenge pictures in her Christmas card, so I'm betting it's a butt picture (if nothing else, then in the card she sends me and everyone else gets something different). Anyway, Missy and I were draining all the juices out of the pan the ham was cooked in. We even got a second ham a week after Thanksgiving 'cause Lee didn't get enough leftover ham to make him happy the first time around : )

We also made some table decorations (Missy was totally in charge of the decorations). I got the supplies to make these cute little pumpkins I found on someone's blog somewhere, so Mom put them together and Missy added the cinnamon stick stems and some felt leaves with the hot glue gun (Mom is dangerous with a hot glue gun).

And here's Missy with the other project, little turkeys! I found this idea over on Our Best Bites (there's a link somewhere in the blog list to the right).

Missy and Liz put the turkeys together using some fake flowers and felt Missy got in the States before she came over here. I had the googly eyes already but I should rustle up some more 'cause I think they're all gone now.

And here's what the guys were doing. They also did one quick run to the store and watched far too much Top Gear (it's a British car show that is also played in the States, I can't STAND it but I am in the minority).

Missy decked out the table because she's far more decoratey that I am.

And this gives you an idea of all the food we had, minus the desserts that aren't out here (just for dessert we had Mississippi mud, apple pie, pumpkin praline pie, lemon meringue pie, and pecan pie). And yes, that sign says Keep Calm and Walk the Dog (Mom sent it to me).

My friend Sarah sent me the recipe for these yeast rolls (which is extra funny since it's a well-known fact she hates to cook). The recipe said to form the dough into balls but it just would NOT do that so they came out kind of weird shapes. Still tasted good though, I've made them several more times since and they still don't look all pretty like the picture on the original recipe. But when does anything I make ever look like the picture in the cookbook?

There's everyone...well, half of Mom and Missy since they were on the edges.

Lee should be afraid.

Liz, Missy and I did not plan it but we were all wearing shirts of a similar color.

And then Bennet insisted on taking a picture from the other side so I'd be in one (other than that picture of Missy and me working on the ham).

Right after we sat down to eat, Lee grabbed the salt grinder and it pretty much exploded all over the table. And we all laughed. And then had to clean it up.

And I find it hilarious that Bennet had to get the Queen of the Kitchen apron when he grabbed the broom. We were finding salt crystals in the dining room for a week, although Sadie and Vader seemed to like that part.

After dinner, I nominated the guys for dish duty and they all balked which I did not find remotely cute or funny considering I'd been hard at work since 7:30 that morning. But they did eventually do the dishes.

See? Proof. And it's a butt picture that doesn't feature my butt. Yay!

And there's me at the end of the day, hanging out with Sadie in the cave under the stairs. It used to be the Vader Cave but Sadie uses it too so now it's just the cave.

The Gang's All Here

2011-12-15T13:34:00.000Z

Lee's wireless mouse that's connected to the Mac must hate me; I've been arguing with it all day and Lee won't let me throw it out the window and into the pool just for the satisfaction of watching the splash and thinking about its circuits shorting. Meanie head. Well, I'm updating the ol' blog while it IS working. Harrumph.

Soooooo Bennet and Missy arrived the day before Thanksgiving, so Lee and I packed up the parental units into a huge and ancient Toyota van that our neighbor lent to us, and hit London early in the morning to go see the Changing of the Guard (should that be capitalized? I kinda think not...) and run by the Hard Rock Cafe to get Dad a shirt before the rest of our posse arrived.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised that there wasn't more to see with this whole guard-changing thing. Bit of a letdown.

Though I like watching horses.

All we saw is all these people in uniforms come around a corner, then this band plays some music inside the fence line, and then it's pretty much over with.

And as a former band brat, all I could think of is "They do this every other day and they don't have the music memorized yet?!" For shame, dudes.

There's the crowd in front of the palace.

And here's Lee and me in front of the Hard Rock, and London's Hard Rock is actually the FIRST Hard Rock. And still we've never been inside it; the shop is in a separate building (you can see the shop door to the right of me and Lee) and that's all we've been inside. I take it back; Dad went in to check out their bathroom facilities. He didn't tell me what color the soap was, though.

Come to think of it, we may have gone to the Hard Rock first and then the changing of the guard. Kind of hard to tell when I'm trying to squish together pictures from three different cameras.

Mom with one of the iconic red telephone booths all over London. Most of them don't seem to have functioning phones anymore in this day of widespread cellphone use, but they're such a quintessentially Londonish thing that I wonder if they'll get rid of them. They're on a lot of postcards along with the Beefeaters and double-decker buses.

Then we headed back to Heathrow to pick up Missy and Bennet, and just so they'd know it was us we all wore Baylor shirts and I printed out some signs for us.

All for naught because their plane arrived an hour EARLY and they were already waiting for us when we got there. Dangit! So we all ate breakfast at a restaurant in the airport, stowed their baggage in the ginormous van, and then whisked them off on the Tube to explore London a bit and keep them awake to speed the time change transition.

All us girls got on the Tube first and all sat together, leaving Bennet, Lee and Dad to sit on the other side in complete violation of man-spacing rules. Because men have silly rules. If two dudes go see a movie together, they leave a seat open in between them. It's man-spacing; Lee's explained this to me more than once although I think it's silly.

Anyway, our first destination was, of course, Big Ben.

Here's Mom's second contender for Christmas card pictures. Big Ben I think is more likely to be Christian than Stonehenge.

And since the days are so short here in the late fall and winter, it starts getting dark by 4:00 in the afternoon.

Mom took this one, making me wish I'd gotten one from this perspective on our big camera.

And there's Westminster Abbey, which we still haven't gone into.

On our way back to the Tube, we stopped to take pictures with a pair of very nice policemen, and I think it's kinda funny how the flash made them show up and you can't hardly see anything else.

Teehee. Then we hopped back on the Tube to go to Mom's destination of choice: Abbey Road, the recording studio famously used by the Fab Four back in the day.

Kinda looks unassuming. I was a little disappointed that all the signs that say Abbey Road are way up on the buildings, like three stories up behind fences; Mom says that's to keep Beatles fans from stealing them and she's probably right. All the other street signs are down on the fences right next to the street, often at like knee height.

The wall right in front of the recording studio is covered in graffiti.

I took the picture of "All you need is love" but the ginormous orange Palestine kind of distracts from it.

Then we tried and failed miserably to recreate the Abbey Road album cover. It's hard because there's not a stoplight and traffic does to whizzing through there, and despite it being only 5:00 in the afternoon it was pretty much pitch black.

Horrible picture, but we tried. None of us wanted to take our shoes off to pretend that we were Paul from the album cover.

I'm Alive!

2011-12-12T22:20:00.002Z

I have finally discovered where all the hand towels were hiding; one had gotten mixed in with Lee's laundry and we found Sadie laying on the last one because apparently I dropped it on the way to the laundry room. And then after that got settled, I got a severe case of the Don't Wannas and I didn't do much of anything for, like, three or four days. It was fun. Lee did not much of anything all weekend too.

But now I am forced to admit that my Christmas cards, despite being made before the end of November, will probably not reach their recipients until after Christmas, and the prospects of our packages arriving on time are also vanishingly small. I think I'll get them sent out by Wednesday so we'll see what the USPS can do with it.

In the meantime, I've chipped off just the very tip of a very large photographic iceberg so I can share some pics from when everyone was out here for Thanksgiving. In England, where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but the pub a couple doors down from us did do a turkey dinner that night which I thought was funny. But we made our own turkey dinner here so we didn't go to the pub, and those aren't the pictures I'm sharing today anyway. Perhaps I should have waited till tomorrow to post when I could do so a bit more coherently, or perhaps I need more caffeine. Or chocolate. Ooh, there's caffeine in chocolate, so that'd be two birds with one stone. Hmm.

Oh yeah, pictures. But first, a little story ('cause I haven't yammered incoherently for long enough yet). My parental units were due to arrive on a Sunday at like 11:30 or something. Turns out that we overestimated the time it would take us to get to Heathrow (hey, for once there wasn't too much traffic) so we arrived an hour early, so Lee and I took a bit of a nap in the car for an hour before we went into the airport, only to discover that their plane was late. Then the arrival time kept changing about every 10 minutes and we were both STARVING by the time they finally *did* arrive two hours late, and that's where the McDonald's trip came in. So now you're all caught up.

After Mickey D's, we drove out to Stonehenge and wouldn't you know it, this time of year they close up at 4:00 in the afternoon and thanks to that extra-late plane, we arrived around 3:55. Fail.

But we did see a pretty sunset.

And Mom was thrilled to see Stonehenge even through a chain-link fence off the side of the road. But we still went back the next day.

And we had the typical English sunshine while we were there. Here's the first of Mom's butt pictures. If you were here in 2008 when my parents visited us on Okinawa, you may remember my mom's fondness for taking butt pictures. If you weren't around then, here's the deal: Mom seems to have a weird predilection for getting behind people (that is to say, me) and taking pictures of their butts (that is to say, my butt). Which I wouldn't mind so much if my butt were a bit less substantial than it is now. On the up side, at least this time it's mostly hidden by a winter coat, bwahahahahaa. Butt picture fail.

And here's a funny picture of me and Lee that is NOT of our butts. For which I am grateful. I'd like to think this is my better side.

And here's me with my parental units, with all our butts facing Stonehenge so you can't see them in the picture. Of course, Mom doesn't like having pictures taken of HER butt, so there you go.

Yep, Stonehenge looks pretty much the same as it did in September. And I still want to do the inner circle tour thing sometime and see what it looks like from the inside out.

Mom's possible Christmas card photo #1. Because nothing says Christmas like an ancient pre-Christian monolithic stone circle.

Mom took this I suppose because she liked the picture of Stonehenge on the side of the bus. I think she was trying to make a movie out of her pictures, because between hers and ours, I have about a gabillion to go through and I don't even have copies of Missy and Bennet's pictures yet. Of course, I haven't gotten up to the part where they arrived yet either.

Anywha, after Stonehenge we had planned to go to Old Wardour Castle, perhaps my favorite of the dozen or so English castles I've seen so far, but Wardour is only open on the weekends this time of year. Double fail. So we just went back to our casa, and sprung Sadie and Vader out of doggie jail, and then the Tuesday before Thanksgiving we took the parental units up to Bury St. Edmunds (well, more like down, since we live north of there) so they could see a bigger English town and the abbey there. And we had lunch at Pizza Express and I want to marry their snowball dough balls. YUM.

Hey look, it's another butt picture. Once again, my jacket covers my bum. I think I need a pair of sweatpants or something that say JUICY across the bum for the next time Mom wants to do butt pictures. Which reminds me of an episode of Gilmore Girls, but I digress.

Maybe next Christmas we should chip in to get Mom a better camera. Sure, she took some pictures that are pretty good, but compared to the ones we get off either of our cameras, the colors feel washed out. Hmm.

The abbey is another one to suffer in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the worst part of that whole thing is the part where the massive church libraries were destroyed. But now we have some picturesque ruins to photograph...which I don't think quite makes up for the lost libraries.

Miss Vicki, I picked out this branch picture just for you.

Mom had me and Lee go over to this ruined wall to have our picture taken and Lee told me to get in the shorter opening because I'm shorter than he is. I'd've been happier if he'd said to get in the thinner opening because I'm thinner than he is, but alas, that isn't true. Harumph.

And here's Dad and Lee with more ruins.

Proof that we had some lovely autumn colors here a few weeks ago. I think there's not a whole lot of that left now; we've had rain for several days in a row so it's beginning to look a lot like winter. Only not the snowy kind of winter.

Mom thought this looked like a giant hand reaching out of the earth. I can see that.

An artsy picture of the newer church with the ruins of the abbey. And you know I didn't take it 'cause it's not crooked.

Let's just drive home the fact that America is really a young nation. The earliest things we have probably date only to the 1700s for the most part. I'm such a history nerd.

This last picture was taken in the abbey gardens; I really want to go back there next summer when the roses are in bloom and take lots of pictures. Anyway, there are several monuments there to the soldiers of both world wars, and since Remembrance Day was pretty recently we saw lots of poppy markers all around them, so that's what this is.

That's about it for this time, maybe next time I'll have it together a bit more and be less rambly. Then again, maybe not. Ta-ta for now, peeps!

Taco Bean Dip

2011-12-08T16:17:00.000Z

All our guests are gone now, and I'm busy trying to get the house back in order and figure out where on earth all my hand towels are hiding, but in the meantime I have a recipe to share. I got this from a sweet lady I knew when we lived in Okinawa and it's been a big hit every time I've made it (even with people that say they don't like cream cheese or sour cream). So here you go.

Taco Bean Dip

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
16 oz. sour cream
1 package taco seasoning (look in the packets near the spices, where you'd find gravy mix, etc.)
1 can refried beans
1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Beat together the cream cheese, sour cream, and taco seasoning with a hand mixer until well blended. Next, mix in the refried beans and 1/2 cup of cheese with a spoon; spread in a greased 9x13" pan. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until heated through; remove from oven, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and serve with tortilla chips when the cheese is melted.

A couple notes: The original recipe as I got it didn't have the bit about using the hand mixer, but I discovered that I had globs of cream cheese if I mixed by hand so I started using the hand mixer. I don't use the entire packet of taco seasoning because I'm not one much for spicy food, so I use maybe half of it...you could certainly use more or less depending on your taste. And I don't measure the cheese, I just sprinkle a bit of it in the mix before it goes in the oven and then put whatever is left on top when it comes out of the oven. Then again, I think cheese is one of the four basic food groups. Chocolate is another one. I haven't pinned down the other two yet, are you sure there are FOUR basic food groups and not two?

To-Do List = DONE! Booyah!

2011-11-22T10:26:00.001Z

Remember a while back I said that my dad, the doubting Thomas, told me he didn't think I could get everything done on my list of things to do before my parents got here? Well, I DID. Christmas cards? Done. Sarah's baby book? Done. Two mysterious Christmas presents? Done. Tiana's baby book? DONE, baby! *And* I even got some sleep the night before my parental units arrived. Bwahahahaaaa!

So guess what we did as soon as we picked up Mom and Dad at the airport?

It's a tradition: we take them to McDonald's first thing when they arrive in whatever country we're living in. Their plane was like over an hour and a half late *and* we'd overestimated the time needed to get to the airport, so Lee and I were sitting at Heathrow for three hours or so, and it was like two o'clock by the time we arrived at the Golden Arches. So yep, they're here, Mom's all excited that she got to see Stonehenge, and today we're kinda chillaxin' at the casa and I plan to make a couple pies to prepare for Thanksgiving. But I just couldn't wait to share Tiana's completed book so here it is!

The first and last pages...unfortunately I forgot, I had intended to put "Made in the USA" on the last page because Tiana's firstborn has "Made in Japan" on the last page. T, if you want me to do that, wouldn't take me long to fix it so let me know : )

Tiana requested a layout to put some of her ultrasound pictures on, so she measured how big they were so I could do the mats. The little tabs are for her to write in the date of the ultrasound or else how many weeks along she is for each one, and then the top right is space for one picture of her pregnant (I insisted; T rolled her eyes). The little pregnant lady stamp was from Michael's a few years ago. Tiana wanted me to spell out Abigail, which I did for the first birthday and title page, but it just wouldn't fit on here so I had to shorten to Abby.

Tiana's husband Scott's favorite color is orange, so I try to work that in where I can on the baby books. I love the Sweet Always patterned paper--it's pink, orange, and green so it works great for this : )

You just saw this one earlier this month.

Tiana's January is very much like Sarah's but different colors. The title is done in Perfect Plum (purple), I know the picture makes it look much darker than it really is. Hey, the weather here has finally figured out that this is England, so it's all overcast and my pictures turn out darker.

New and improved February with the truck full of love.

I still love that little St. Paddy's bear.

Tiana's favorite baby animal stamps; we've used these on the baby announcements for both her girls now (Tiana made her baby announcements already, so now we're just waiting for Abigail to arrive).

I made the May layout orange since I know they like that color so much.

I'm really happy with how this one came out. Tiana said she really liked how Emma's September layout had apples on it (T's a teacher) but I'd already done Abigail's September with a tree and fall leaves, so I managed to fit in the apples on here instead. True, there's also strawberries and cherries, but I think that makes it less fall-ish and more summery. The title isn't black, it's Early Espresso; I was going to try Lucky Limeade (and had even cut out the letters in that) but it didn't pop enough against the wisteria background.

The patriotic July layout...

This is one of my favoritest ever baby book layouts : )

T got this for September because Sarah had requested the tree for her September instead of November, and I did both their layouts at the same time (I think they were the first ones I did like back in July).

More orange for October.

And this one was featured on here just recently too.

There's the last layout! Tiana requested Melon Mambo for it, and I really liked that Pumpkin Pie patterned paper with the numbers all over it so this one was pretty easy to put together. Just took me a while to figure out what to put as the accents by the page title.

That's all she wrote today, folks. We're off to do some shopping and then back here to bake pies and cookies. Cheers!

ETA: Baby Abigail has made her appearance, so now I need to get this book off in the mail PDQ : ) Congratulations to Scott and Tiana!

Getting Organized

2011-11-18T16:19:00.000Z

I know I've been quiet of late, but we're getting ready for having everyone out here for Thanksgiving and I don't figure anyone wants to hear about me cleaning up the kitchen and doing laundry. Heh. Yesterday I spent most of the day getting my stamps organized...I finished getting them all unmounted and onto cling foam (except the alphabets, will have to do those later) and I finally got enough stamp cases to get them all put up. Took me a lot longer than expected to get them organized how I wanted them.

I know, I know: that's a lotta stamps. But it's just half of 'em.

Hey Vader! I had planned to squish in stamp sets to share cases as much as possible, but after I got started I figured that was just going to make it more difficult for me to find particular sets when I wanted them, so I only put stamp sets in together if it made sense to me, like two sets that I always use together. I plan to make them all labels to go in the front that show what all the images look like, but that will be an ongoing project, so I just put a slip of paper in the spine of each that has the stamp set name(s) on it, and then put them in alphabetical order. The retired stamps are in the back, and the current ones are in front of those; there's enough room for me to slide the current ones left or right when I want to get to the older ones behind them. And the mini catalog sets are the ones that are stacked on top of the other ones in the photo above. The only ones still wood-mounted are my backgrounds (which will stay that way) and the alphabets, which will eventually get switched over.

I'm so glad we have a house that has closets. I need to get this one cleaned up a bit though...and as much stuff as I have, Amber has mooooooooooooooorrre!!

So, since I've peeled so many of my stamps off the blocks, wonder what I've done with the wood?

Yeah, I have two of these giant bins full of wood blocks. Not sure what to do with them yet; they won't take them in the recycle bin and I hate to just toss 'em, you know? Might see if I can find a place to deposit yard waste and put them in there, because they're just wood blocks. I could even peel off the stickers if that would make them more recyclable.

The stamp cases are recyclable as they are now though, just haven't put them in the bins yet. I think I'll hang onto them for a bit, maybe not all but a few that are in good condition, in case I think of a brilliant use for them. After all, we've got a mostly-empty garage (and Lee is gonna roll his eyes when he reads that but hey!). So that's what I've been up to; still have a little work ahead of me on Tiana's baby book and my Christmas cards, so I'd best hop to it. Just don't be surprised if my blog posts are a little thin on the ground for a bit, k? So if I don't stop in again before next Thursday, I wish all you American peeps a happy Thanksgiving!

Friday Flashback: Priceless PLUS a Baby Book Update for Tiana!

2011-11-11T17:11:00.001Z

I got Sarah's Halloween baby announcements done and in the mail earlier this week. Behold the awesomeness:

Well okay, *I* think they're pretty awesome, and this is my blog so I can pat myself on the back whilst tooting my own horn. It's the same layout I used for the baby announcements when she had her son, but I used Halloween-ish colors that still work for babies. I'm going to miss Peach Parfait when it retires next summer...may have to start hoarding : ) I'm gonna take a minute right here and tell you how much I love SU's grid paper; I always stamp on that stuff. It was perfect for placing the horizontal strips on here in the same place on each card...not that I'm OCD or anything. (Okay, maybe a little bit!)

The pumpkin is from a cute little retired SU set, Fall Whimsy, and the background is from Priceless, which is also sadly retired. So today I'm going to open the vault and share my other Priceless cards.

This was a prototype I did for Sarah's announcement, I tried out a jack o' lantern and this witch's hat from Spooky Bingo Bits but I think the Fall Whimsy pumpkin turned out much cuter and more baby-like. A lot more work since I had to paint each one with Watercolor Wonder Crayons, but worth it in the end I think. So let's look at some more Priceless cards, shall we?

I do a lot of the color and sketch challenges posted over on Splitcoast Stampers, so a few of these layouts and stuff aren't as much "me", ya know? But I like the challenges for pushing my creativity a bit. Without them, I'd have like four layouts I'd use over and over, although I like to think I do pretty well with branching out on the color choices.

Here's a little girl birthday card done in purples. The color isn't so good in this picture...sometimes it's hard to tell since I keep all my stamping project pics on the laptop and it matters a lot what angle you look at the screen as to how the colors look.

This one I think went to my former boss for her birthday one year; it was another color/sketch challenge card. For a while I had done all of the challenges on Splitcoast, but I've gotten behind by a lot (like 80) so I'm working through the older challenges here and there. This wasn't one of my favorite sketches because it kind of feels like big square eyes to me.

And here's another kind of funky sketch. You can tell I totally love those swirls for backgrounds : )

This might be my favorite card I've made with this set, it's the glitter window technique. I punched out a piece of the pink cardstock (the Key Tag punch is now retired, but you could use squares or something else) and after I stamped the front of it, I put a piece of clear packing tape on the back of the pink cardstock so the sticky side faced up, and then covered it with glitter. The glitter sticks to the packing tape and keeps it from sticking to anything else, and you can still read the sentiment stamped on the white cardstock underneath. The sentiment is from Happy Everything, also now retired--it's still one of my favorite sentiment sets.

This time I have some scrapbook pages to share too!

My mom is saying, "No Kik, that's Bolo Point!" But all the signs say Cape Zampa and Bolo Point is the dive spot off the coast : p The hot pink flowers are from Priceless and I put a touch of glitter glue in the flower centers for a bit of interest. And the pink flowers make a visual triangle on my layout because it's a good design principle.

This one is more clean & simple (CAS)...I really, really wanted to put a yellow butterfly in the upper right corner because when we were at this castle ruin, Lee spent 15 minutes chasing a yellow butterfly for me trying to get a picture of it. We didn't get any good ones but I will forever remember him chasing that thing : )

So that's it for Priceless, how about a few recent projects?

I made a bunch of these a while back and somehow took pictures of the other cards I made the same day, but forgot this one. I'm totally in love with Cajun Craze (the dark orangey rust color) for fall cards.

And Cajun Craze was in this week's color challenge so I got to use it again, yay! This stamp set with the teacups is called Morning Cup and I got it by accident--it was put in a Stampin' Up! order when I didn't order it, so I called them and said I got an extra item and they told me to keep it, wasn't that awesome?

Since I've finished Sarah's baby announcements and I'm now waiting for some ribbon to work on my Christmas cards, I've reattacked Tiana's baby book and have three completed layouts to show for it.

I'd done a February layout for her before but I hated how the truck turned out and I didn't like the patterned paper so I redid it because I'm a perfectionist and that's how I roll. I think this one turned out better.

Since we're now preparing for Thanksgiving, I had turkey on the brain : ) And I know I said on this blog sometime recently that I needed to shake it up a bit and not stamp the Falling Leaves all in a row and look what I did, they're all in a row. Well, why mess with a good thing?

Us crafty types are already working on stuff for Christmas too so I went forward with that layout as well. This is the first time I've played with the Stitched Stockings stamp set and the matching punch, what do you think? Makes things quick and easy! I'm going to use them to make gift tags for Christmas presents too, that should take me like 10 minutes to make those. I've also done about 85% of the first birthday layout, but I'm waiting to finish it till I get something in the mail. That means I only have 10 more pages to do, and I'm planning to get them all DONE before my parents arrive next Sunday. Hey, I've been rockin' out the pages for a couple days here, I think I can do it! My list of things to do is finally getting shorter, WOOT!!!

Think I'll go make those gift tags, and then I can mark that off my list. And then maybe I'll start another layout before we make dinner...we're having muffins and scrambled eggs because I didn't go to the store yet and it's the best option with what we've got in the kitchen : ) Plus we love breakfast for dinner. Catch you later peeps, and remember, hug a veteran today! I did.

Last Stop on September's Road Trip: Shakespeare's Home Town

2011-11-08T22:00:00.001Z

As promised, I'm finally posting the last of the pictures from the road trip Lee and I took in September. I sure took my sweet time with these but hey, I have been posting other stuff so it's not like I forgot that I have a blog. Anyway, Stratford-upon-Avon is fairly close to Warwick so we decided to swing through there before we hit the road to go home. It's a really cute little English town and I would not at all mind going back a second time since we were only there for a few hours.

One of the first things we saw was a set of statues; in the center is Shakespeare and he's surrounded by statues of four of his famous characters. I think this is Falstaff; I've only read a few of Shakespeare's plays so I'm not quite as literate as I could be in this regard.

This one I think is Prince Hal crowning himself king as Henry V.

This one I know for sure is Lady Macbeth, trying to wash the blood off her hands. "Out, out, damned spot! Out I say!" I confess, I've quoted that line to my dad's spotted dog Ginger when she goes in the kitchen, only usually I say "darned".

And here's Hamlet, having his philosophical heart-to-skull with Yorick. Oddly, I don't seem to have taken a picture of Shakespeare's statue in the middle.

Here is the birthplace of William Shakespeare; we got to town early enough in the morning that there weren't a ton of people out and about when I got this picture. An hour later there's no way I could have gotten this without a dozen people in it. You can tour the house, but we didn't because it was like over 10 pounds a person and we thought that was kinda steep for a small building.

This is the jester Touchstone from the play As You Like It, and no I wouldn't have known that without my trusty friend Google. I would actually love to read Shakespeare's entire catalog and I'm interested to see the film Anonymous, which is based on the premise that all these enduring works were not actually written my Shakespeare and that he took credit for someone else's work. I'm intrigued.

Just 'cause I thought it was fun to see the architecture around the town. Down the street from Shakespeare's birthplace, Lee and I had lunch at this place that was really good, I'm sad I don't remember the name of it but I'm sure I'd know it if we went back. We had sandwiches and scones and cream tea and how do I love scones and cream tea. Yummmm.

This is the bank that's around the corner from Shakespeare's birthplace. Other sites in town include Anne Hathaway's cottage (no, not Princess Diaries Anne Hathaway, I mean Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway) but we didn't have time to go see that.

Here's the river Avon, which also flows past Warwick Castle. There are some riverboat tours, but again, we hadn't the time to check them out.

Hey look, it leans to the left! I think this was a combination restaurant/hotel that I just thought looked neat. It was across the street from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Which is here. We did go inside, although we didn't go into the theatre itself if that makes any sense...we stayed out in the atrium area. Lee and I were thinking it would be cool to go and see a play here sometime, so we'll have to check their schedule and see what they're doing. Anyone have any suggestions as to what play, Shakespearean or otherwise, we should try to see? I'm kind of interested in The Tempest but that might be because one of my stitching projects is Miranda.

Anyway, we walked along the river for a ways and then went into the Holy Trinity Church, which is Shakespeare's burial place. We did the suggested donation of two pounds each to go inside and the nice older gentleman who took our money encouraged us to take pictures when he saw the camera.

This is up on the wall to the left of the graves of Shakespeare, his wife Anne, and their elder daughter Susanna.

The stained glass above the graves. With the low light it was really hard to get a good picture, this one isn't all that good and it's far and away the best I got.

And here is the final resting place of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway. Wonder why we still call her Anne Hathaway rather than Anne Shakespeare...

This was hanging up in the other end of the church and I just liked the looks of it.

And this kind of gives you an idea of what the whole church looks like. As I said before, I'd like to go back to Stratford again and maybe go ahead and pay the exorbitant entry fee to see Shakespeare's birthplace and go see some of the other sites too. They have a number of souvenir shops up and down the street where his birthplace is; I got myself a couple of magnets with Shakespeare quotes on them just because I liked them. One says, "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit" (Twelfth Night) and the other says "This above all--to thine own self be true" (Hamlet). They had copies of the Oxford edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, and while it would be cool to own that and say "Why yes, I bought that in Stratford-upon-Avon", I'd rather have one with footnotes. I think I need the footnotes.

When I was in high school, we of course read Romeo & Juliet (I still remember my freshman English teacher going over several of the scenes..."but soft! What light from yon window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun"), Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and Hamlet. We also watched the Elizabeth Taylor version of Taming of the Shrew along with the Moonlighting episode where Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis did that play (kinda wish I could get just that one episode on DVD...); Much Ado about Nothing (Michael Keaton is *hilarious*!), and I think the Mel Gibson Hamlet (this was before he went crazy). My brother and his best friend Devlin did a thing for their Speech & Debate class where they performed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and there was a lightsaber fight involved. Talk about hilarity...

Irony

2011-11-07T22:45:00.001Z

I sent this to my parents in an email earlier this evening, but I thought it was so funny that I should post it here for your amusement as well. I promise next time I post, I'll have pictures to share, whether it's photos from Stratford-upon-Avon (yeah, still have one more post left to do from our September road trip) or my more recent stamping efforts (25 baby announcements made today, woohoo!), but for now, a little story. Dad wants to know why I didn't have a picture to go with this one but...no.

Lee just got home and we had the following conversation.

Me: Hey honey, how was your day?

Lee: Oh fine, how about you?

Me: Well, Vader needs a bath.

Lee: Uh-oh, what did he do?

Me: It's not so much what HE did as what Sadie did TO him.

Lee: *confused look* Sadie peed on Vader?

Me: Yep.

Lee: *still confused* HOW??

Me: You know how dogs like to sniff things and then pee on them? They were sniffing the same thing and Sadie finished first, so she turned around and pretty much squatted on Vader's head, and he didn't move 'cause he was still sniffing whatever it was.

Lee: I can't believe the girl dog peed on the boy dog. It's not like she can aim.

Me: Yeah, I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't seen it happen.

Lee: Ok Vader, let's go get you a bath...

There's No Minute Like the Last Minute

2011-11-05T18:20:00.003Z

I probably should not be blogging when I'm tired and kind of cranky, I think this might be akin to drunk dialing or something. I don't know for sure, I've never drunk dialed anyone...or been drunk, for that matter. I just don't see the allure of alcohol (besides, I can use all that money to buy more stamps and craft supplies, right?). But whatever, I haven't updated here since Monday so it's gonna just have to be now.

So yes, tired. Been a busy week. The first part of the week I made a couple batches of cookies to go in a care package, and I left the pumpkin doodles on the counter in the kitchen to cool while I went upstairs and chatted with Tiana on Skype for a few minutes. I noticed that I was hearing a lot of little clickety doggy paws going back and forth downstairs so I went to check out what was going on, and lo and behold:

When I left these to cool, the bottom two racks were full and they were standing upright, not all askew. My little Vader man, who almost never gets in trouble, was snatching cookies one or two at a time, then taking them to the Vader cave under the stairs to eat them. He's not even allowed in the kitchen! I'd pulled the door closed but hadn't shut it all the way when I went upstairs, and so he pushed it open and went in to grab himself a snack to the tune of probably about a dozen cookies, maybe more. I was so mad, and Tiana was laughing at me the whole time because she heard the whole thing go down on Skype. Well, I've heard some hairy days at her household too so we're even. Luckily I had enough cookies for the care package, even when I didn't use any of the cookies surrounding the part Vader was stealing from just in case they got slimed or something.

The rest of the week I've been busy stamping. Worked on Christmas cards...have to get some ribbon in the mail before I can finish them...started working on Sarah's Halloween baby announcements...and I had a baby shower to go to this morning and since I waited too long to order something off the registry, I decided to make a baby advice book, which is basically a book with blank spots for shower guests to put in their best baby advice. Thought it would be good for a first-time mom, and my mom gave me the idea since she made one for her coworker last year. But anyway, this is what my craft room looks like right now:

Only right now it's darker in there 'cause the lights are off, and the shoes aren't in there anymore. It's also Guy Fawkes Night so there are fireworks going off outside, and Vader keeps barking every time he hears them pop. But anyway, I procrastinated terribly on this whole baby advice book thing, so I didn't actually start it until 5:00 yesterday afternoon, and then I stopped around 6 or 6:30 to eat dinner and watch Captain America with Lee, and didn't really start back up again until around 10:00. Soooooooooo yeah I went to bed around 2:00. And then I didn't sleep hardly at all, and yet I was kind of wired when I got up this morning. Yeah, that's worn off now : P despite two brownies (Mom and Missy are planning to stage an intervention).

So you might want to see the book, huh? Here it is, not too shabby for a last-minute project.

The first and last pages; I thought the little onesie stamps were cute. The mommy-to-be is doing up the baby girl's nursery in pink, green, and paisley, so that was my color scheme. Luckily I have LOTS of Certainly Celery and Pink Pirouette patterned paper to work with.

If you click on any of the pictures, you can see it enlarged enough to read the quotes I put on there. Mom told me I needed to put quotes on there. I wondered if the write-on blocks were too big but Lee said just go with it and don't overthink it ('specially since I waited so long to get started).

It took me probably about an hour to Google enough baby quotes for the book, and there were some really funny ones I didn't use, like "Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it." --Marshall McLuhan

"It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't." --Barbara Kingsolver

"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky." --Fran Lebowitz (WORD!!! What is it with the constant sticky??)

I accidentally used my gray marker on this one instead of the black one, but I figured I was probably the only one who would notice so I just went with it. This is what happens when you've got markers strewn all over your work surface.

"It sometimes happens, even in the best of families, that a baby is born. This is not necessarily cause for alarm. The important thing is to keep your wits about you and borrow some money." --Elinor Goulding Smith

"Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million-dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla." --Jim Bishop...okay, so not technically baby-oriented, but still funny as all get-out.

"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked." --Elizabeth Taylor

"I am fond of children...except boys." --Lewis Carroll

"It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge." --Phyllis Diller

So there it is, 20 pages in probably 4-5 hours' work. That was enough pages for everyone at the shower today to have their very own page to write advice for the new mommy, even saving the first page for HER mommy to write on. So what did they do? They wrote short little snippets all on one page like it was a high school yearbook. I half-expected it to say "Have a nice summer" and "Stay sweet". Feels like they missed the point, you know? Nary a bit of advice. So that's why I'm cranky and disinclined to do another one of these.

Enough grumpiness. This is the card I made to go with the book that was used improperly.

The shower invitation was done via Evite, but my friend who gave the shower wanted the mommy-to-be and her mother to have keepsake invitations, so I made two of these. Luckily I did all the card stuff earlier in the week or they so would not have gotten done.

It is now 6:20 p.m. and I figure that's probably too early to go to bed, although I really want to. So maybe I'll go watch a movie or see if my parental units want to Skype. Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone. Hey wait, is that one of those holidays that you wish happy blah-blah day for? Maybe. There's fireworks and burned effigies, what's not to be happy about?

House of Haunts for Halloween

2011-10-31T21:33:00.001Z

If you've been with my blog for over a year, you will be shocked (or at least surprised) to find out that I did not dress my dogs up today.

I even had costumes (got them last year at Target on November first for half off!) but I didn't do it. I was working all day today on my crazy list of things to do, and "dress up the dogs" somehow didn't make the list. Sadie is grateful...or she would be grateful, if she knew that she had avoided her Halloween costume this year. She hates to dress up. Vader, on the other hand...you could pretty much do anything to Vader and he'd let you as long as you pet him and tell him he's a good boy, so he's cool with Halloween costumes.

But anyway, as I said on Friday, I do have eight different cards I made a couple years ago with House of Haunts, 'cause I had to post *something* Halloweenie on here.

I love the little creeping ghoulies in the background on this one. It's a jumbo wheel called Haunting and is now on the SU clearance rack. House of Haunts is in the current SU catalog.

Here you can see the trick-or-treaters a little bit better, although the wheel didn't come out quite as crisp as I might have wished. I think I might unmount it and make it one giant flat stamp.

I made all these cards on the same day and just tried to do a bunch of different layouts, but I kept to only a few colors for the most part: Pacific Point, Lovely Lilac (now retired with most of the other purples, harumph), Old Olive, Summer Sun (also retired) and of course Pumpkin Pie and Basic Black.

This is the one I posted last Friday so that's why it might look familiar.

For some reason I thought the sentiment part needed a little black flower. The punch I used for the sentiment is now retired unfortunately, I really like that punch. Oh well, I still have it : )

Haha, this one looked so similar to the one before it that I thought I accidentally posted the same card twice.

I'm running out of commentary for these cards.

Aaaaannnnd....that's it for those. I only made ONE Halloween card this year, for my friend Jeng whose birthday is today:

Sadly he won't get it on time but that's pretty much standard for this year. However, today I mailed off birthday presents to my brother and Lee's sister, and if they get to their destinations in the post office's standard one-week time frame, those will BOTH be there ON TIME for their birthdays. I'm giving myself a high-five right now.

Something else arrived on time too....Sarah, my friend the Halloween nut, had her little girl early this morning so she has a Halloween birthday. I'm so tickled it worked out that way! And somehow I even managed to get the baby book out there before Leora made her debut, so I'm giving myself another high-five.

So I talk a lot about how I have a list of things to do, like, *all the time*, so you want to see what it looked like when I got up this morning?

Yes, it's on a dry erase board. Easier for me to keep track of than a zillion slips of paper. And it's color-coded with Tiana's baby book layouts on the top. I usually have to take a picture of it about once a week and then re-write it with what's still left to do because I run out of room with the crossed-off stuff on there and the picture ensures I don't forget anything I still have left to do and I realize that this entire paragraph makes me sound entirely MENTAL but that's who I am so I'm going to post it anyway. I should have taken another picture of the board now but I'm too lazy; the last eight items have been crossed off because I was busy today. Lee is raising his eyebrows at the vast quantities of peanut M&Ms that have been consumed by me in recent weeks, but it seems to help me be more productive. And peanuts are healthy, right? Unless you're allergic to them, which I'm not.

Well, tomorrow Liz is coming over here to make Christmas cards, so I should get up early to design what I want to do so I can knock 'em all out tomorrow. Wouldn't that be nice. Hey, given enough peanut M&Ms, anything is possible, right?

Friday Flashback (sort of): Fall & Halloween Cards

2011-10-28T18:37:00.000+01:00

Where has this week gone?? I swear it should only be Wednesday or something, I really don't know where the time has gone. Judging by this week's to-do list, I've been busy though : ) Lots of crossed-out items...still lots more to do, but the crossed-out items are satisfying to look at. I didn't really feel like sorting through the last of the pictures from September's road trip, so instead it's back to stampy goodness. This is gonna be like a fake Flashback Friday 'cause I'm not highlighting one stamp set; instead I picked through my archives for some fall and Halloween cards. But the first couple are all-new.

And this one is neither fall nor Halloween, but work with me here. I used this week's Splitcoast color challenge: Baja Breeze (one of my all-time favorite colors), Rich Razzleberry, and Island Indigo. I'm trying to get back into doing the weekly color and sketch challenges on SCS since that will be a good way to replenish my card stash. (Unfortunately I haven't gotten to this week's sketch yet.)

Lookit that, these cards are both all-new *and* fally. I got the idea for these from this week's Fall-To Layout over on Clean & Simple Sketches, except I made a horizontal card instead of vertical like on the original sketch. I had to do that to accommodate both leaves on the left (didn't look right with just one cut-out leaf). I had to do the two different sets of patterned paper because I made 12 and didn't have enough of that yummy green paisley for all 12. Maybe I should buy another pack of this paper....

And this was last week's Fall-To Layout, but this one just didn't really do anything for me when I made it up. It feels a little too bare to me. But let's take a look at some other cards I've made using this stamp set, shall we?

This was my brother's birthday card last year (note to self: need to make him a birthday card this year, it's coming up fast!). Apparently I like lining up the leaves.

A lot. Hmm. I think every card I've ever made with these leaves has involved lining them up. (Second note to self: switch it up next time!)

Also from last year, but this time with the set Day of Gratitude which is in the current Stampin' Up catalog and I lurve it. I miss that paper too, it was scrumptious; I like this year's Spice Cake autumn paper but it is missing one thing: RED. Or orange, I'm not picky. It's green, blue, aqua and brown, and really pretty, but I love my deep reds and oranges for fall stuff.

Here's a second Day of Gratitude card with other bits of that yummy paper.

Ok, so these next few are OLD, like from when I first became a demonstrator in 2006. I still love this stamp set though, it's called Fall Whimsy. This card was done using the white crayon resist technique; you stamp the outline on glossy white cardstock, make some marks with a white crayon for highlights, and then sponge ink colors over it.

Here's another Thanksgiving card with the same stamp set; I found the idea somewhere on Splitcoast to use the leaves and pumpkin to make a turkey. He's kinda cute, right? Lots of cutting though.

And one more to highlight that oh-so-cute pumpkin. I think that Fall Whimsy might get its very own Friday Flashback post sometime. Ahh, if only I had time to do all the ideas that pop into my head.

This stamp set, Lovely as a Tree, has been in the SU catalog for longer than I've been stamping. Every summer when the retirement list comes out, demonstrators take bets on what will retire, and this one just never does. Which is fine, it's an awesome stamp set. Maybe it should get a FF post too...

Here's another oldy, this cute lil scarecrow is from Happy Fall Y'all. This is my favorite thing I've made with him, isn't he just the cutest thing ever?? Sometimes I'm in the mood to watercolor and that's when I did this one...took quite a while to paint him up just right.

Here he is again, embossed with gold embossing powder and then watercolored.

Halloween is next Monday so this is probably my last chance to sneak in some Halloweeny goodness. These jack o' lanterns are from Carved & Candlelit, one of the first few stamp sets I ever bought. On this one, I stamped the face with black craft ink and embossed with Iridescent Ice embossing powder, so it was all glittery.

This one is also embossed, but emboss resist: I stamped the birthday sentiment, then did the pumpkin on top with VersaMark and clear embossing powder, and sponged ink around it. This went to my friend Jeng, who is a Halloween baby. (Third note to self: make Jeng a birthday card ASAP!!!)

The main image on this is from a jumbo wheel, and the color is done with a brayer and a spectrum pad. SU used to have spectrum pads (where it's got four little ink pads of different colors in one container) but they retired them a while back, I kinda miss them.

I only picked one of the like 8 or so I did at one time with this stamp set. Maybe I'll share the rest on Monday. This is one of my favoritest Halloween sets ever, House of Haunts (the house is another stamp in the set).

Ack! I almost forgot about Best Fiends!

You may remember Frankie from Sarah's October layout in the baby book I made for her.

And here's Drac, this was also a past birthday card for Jeng. Sometimes his Halloween birthday cards go in costume as 4th of July birthday cards or St. Patrick's Day birthday cards : ) Anyway, I love the highlighted bats' eyes on here. And the googly eyes in Drac's boo-quet.

That does it for me, kidlets. Lee's gonna be home in a few minutes and then we're cooking dinner 'cause I'm hungry. Tata!

Warwick Castle

2011-10-24T22:25:00.000+01:00

Wow, I've been dragging out these pictures for quite some time, I'm still working through photos from our road trip a month ago! Well, this time I'm just gonna post all the pictures I want to share from Warwick Castle in a single post so this one will be kind of long. Warwick is not an English Heritage site; it's a privately run tourist attraction that's kind of trying to be Disneyland with more torture. Or something. Their website is pretty slick and calls it "Britain's ultimate castle" although to be honest, it was probably not even in our top 5 castles list. Actually, their website seems different from the first time I looked at it before we went on this trip...then it was all done up with Flash and noise and it was kind of irritating. Hmm. Let's move on to pictures, shall we?

The place is pretty big so this isn't even the biggest part of it, but it's the part of the castle you see on the way in to the barbican (which is that bit on the left that sticks out from the castle walls). The barbican protected the entrance to the castle with two portcullises, arrow slits for archers, and of course murder holes through which defenders could pour all kinds of not-fun things on invaders. Ruin your whole day, that could.

Several of the exhibits had to do with Richard Neville, the 16th Earl of Warwick, nicknamed "Kingmaker" after his exploits during the Wars of the Roses. This exhibit, peopled with wax figures done by Madame Tussaud's wax museum, shows preparations for battle: making bows and arrows, shoeing horses, etc.

This exhibit is of one dude (Warwick himself, maybe?) making a rousing speech to the troops as they prepare for battle. They had sound playing in the room, which was okay the first time you heard it or maybe even the second, but we stayed in here for quite a while as Lee really wanted a picture without any other people in it besides the wax dummies. Then the sound effects got old real fast.

So all these pictures are in the order in which they were taken, but I took out so many that this kind of seems disjointed. Oh well, I shall soldier on regardless. After we toured the Kingmaker exhibit, we went back out into the courtyard and saw this bird taking off as part of the falconry show. Then we found some stairs to climb.

This was taken from "the Mound", which has been the site of a fortress of some type since at least the Norman conquest. The tower in the center is now called the Princess Tower and has a bunch of fairy tale/princess stuff in it but we were told it was just for kids (well FINE then, I wanted to go but nyeh). The Great Hall and state rooms are to the left of the tower.

In the middle is the barbican from the inside, and to the left is Guy's Tower, built in the 14th century.

Part of the wall up on the Mound, just 'cause I liked the shapes in the crenellations.

Here's a view away from the castle from the Mound; lots of clouds heading in.

Wasn't sure which one I liked best so I'm posting the horizontal and vertical shots : )

And a silhouettey one with the town church spire in it.

Twice a day they have a display of how the trebuchet works, and we discovered that we could see it just fine from where we were up on the Mound, so we waited around about 20 minutes for that to start. What is a trebuchet, you ask?

It's that catapult thingy in the lower right hand corner throwing a flaming ball of...something. The trebuchet is powered by a couple of dudes in giant hamster wheels who crank the arm of the trebuchet down, and then it's released to throw cannonballs or fire or fiery cannonballs or people you don't like at whatever it is you're fighting with, be it army or castle or whatever. It takes forever for the thing to be primed though, so I think I'd rather stick with a bow and arrow; much shorter reload time. That's assuming I could actually shoot a bow and arrow, which I cannot do with any accuracy.

You can still see the projectile almost straight above the trebuchet...

And it's so high up it's almost out of the shot in this one. Kind of fun to see how the thing worked since it was a big part of medieval siege warfare. After the show was over, we walked down from the Mound along the outside of the castle walls and found...

A peacock. They actually have a peacock garden on the grounds, so we saw several of them walking around. Why is it that rich people keep peacocks? Even Lucius Malfoy had some (and his were white). When I was little, my great-grandmother would take us out to this park called Mooney's Grove and Adam and I would chase the peacocks around. They're FAST. One of the guys who worked at the park saw us one day and gave us a few peacock feathers he'd picked up around the grounds though, so that was cool. And then I think he told us to quit chasing the peacocks, not that we ever got close enough to make them worry much.

Well, I tried to pull the sword from the stone, but I guess I'm just not the true-born King of England. Plus, you know, GIRL. So if the legend was that whoever pulled out the sword was the true ruler (non-gender specific) of England, I might've had a shot.

Lee and I then went to the start of the parapet walk, which had a sign saying that it involved over 500 stairs and once you started, you had to finish it, so of *course* we had to do that. This is taken from atop Guy's Tower and you can see the much smaller Bear and Clarence Towers. The original plan was for them to be as tall as Guy's Tower but then Richard III (who was driving that particular project) got busy with other things when he became king, so they stayed small.

Looking out over the courtyard towards the Mound and the state apartments on the left.

There's the town of Warwick, which is a pretty decent size.

And here's Lee standing over thin air on the tower : ) The guide book says that the holes were left there so that defenders could drop things on people or shoot at them from the top of the tower, even if they were hugging close to the castle walls. They put a lot of thought into how to defend the castle, and from the torture exhibit we saw, even more thought into how to do incredibly cruel things to people who ticked them off.

More of Warwick, this one taken from Caesar's Tower on the other side of the barbican from Guy's Tower. Doesn't that just look like you'd imagine an English village should look?

Lee trying to squeeze through a teensy passage on top of Caesar's tower. Kind of makes you wonder why they built things this way with teeny tiny passages between, but it's that way with houses too. There are several buildings I walk past every day with my dogs that only have maybe 12 to 18 inches between them.

That is the river Avon, upon which Stratford sits (more on that next time).

One last photo from inside the Great Hall. They had lots of armor and weaponry all over the place.

We also toured the state apartments, which are again done up with wax figures, this time depicting a grand weekend party in 1898 given by Francis Greville, fifth Earl of Warwick, and his wife Daisy. (Sorry, we didn't take any pictures of this part.) They were part of the "Marlborough House set" led by Edward, then Prince of Wales and eldest son of Queen Victoria. From what they said in the exhibit, many members of the Marlborough House set engaged in affairs with one another; Daisy was for some years the mistress of the future king, who was nicknamed Edward the Caresser (I laughed at that, it's an historical joke). At least two of Daisy's children were fathered by men other than the one she was married to, and she was rather indiscreet about her affairs with the rich and powerful. Could you imagine being Daisy's husband through all that?

So there you have Warwick Castle. I'm off to bed; I feel like I might be starting to get sick and I really don't want to. I've got less than a month left before my parental units get here and lots to do between now and then, so this would be a bad time to get the sniffles. Nighty-night!

Friday Flashback: Petal Prints

2011-10-21T17:48:00.001+01:00

I know I've mentioned this before, but for the last several months I've been working on unmounting my SU wood-mounted rubber stamp collection, so I've spent a lot of time looking at my older stamp sets and kinda getting reacquainted with them. There's a tendency to always want to play with the latest and greatest stamp stuff, but it's fun to go back to some older favorites, ya know? So I thought I might occasionally do a Friday Flashback post and share some projects. Not an every week thing, 'cause I still have a ridiculous number of things to do on my list, just when I feel like it. And today's stamp set is Petal Prints, which I still love and it totally deserved another chance in the spotlight.

How about a couple girly birthday cards? I used this week's color and sketch challenges on Splitcoast for these two cards. I'm gonna use my Friday Flashback cards to replenish my card stash.

I saw this sketch on someone's blog, I think it's this month's Sketch For You To Try. So I paired it with an older SCS color challenge for a cute little fall birthday card. The main image panel seemed a little bare so I added in the brad.

And here's a couple of thinking of you/sympathy cards, again with older color and sketch challenges from Splitcoast. I love the way the leaves look stamped in Sahara Sand on the same color cardstock.

So those are the cards I've done this week with Petal Prints. Let's open the vault and take a look at some older cards, shall we?

The left side of this card is done using the mulberry batik technique. I did this card in a couple different color combinations.

I like the pretty blue and pink color combo on this one. And the white swirls.

I used shimmery white cardstock on this one so it looked cuter IRL than it does in the picture.

And here's the last one from the vault. Kind of fun to see several different layouts and color combinations with the same stamp set, right?

Still, I felt like I needed some more pictures on this post, so I'll share some of the other things I've made recently.

I made a couple of name frames last month, and this one was totally inspired by a card I saw on this post on Renee's blog. I totally like how this one turned out.

I wanted to do more on this one but I ran out of time before I had to get out the door and give this to Emmaline's mommy. Not that I think it's bad or anything, just not quite as cute as it could have been. Ehh.

I made this for our nephew's second birthday. When I show Lee cards, he always checks out the inside, so I finally started putting something to look at on the inside:

I noticed that Sparkle stamps the same image on the inside of her cards without coloring it in, so I did that.

This was last week's Fall-To Layout, and this card was really easy to put together. Next time though I think I'd color in the sprinkles with colored pencils before sponging on the icing color so they'd show up better.

Another birthday card, this time for our brother-in-law. I need to play with that leaf stamp set some more too : )

And the inside, so Lee would have something to look at.

Now that I'm caught up on the birthday cards (for the moment, at any rate), I need to work on designing my Christmas cards. It's next up on my list : )

Prepare to Be Jealous

2011-10-18T21:57:00.001+01:00

This is us, in our seats to see the Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theater in London this afternoon. You know you're jealous.

It was a bit of a crazy day since we got tickets at last minute and raced into London for the show (we made it with about five minutes to spare). Lee had never been to the theater (or should I say theatRE since we're in the UK?) before, and the last time I saw Phantom was when I was 14 (I won't say how many years ago that was) so we were both pretty excited to be there. The theater isn't very big, I think my high school auditorium might seat more people, but it had three levels and was nice-looking despite having some kind of cramped seating.

Mom took us all to see Phantom in Dallas like I said, many moons ago, and before we went she bought a CD of Highlights from Phantom of the Opera (I think this is the one I have) and had us all listen to it so we'd be familiar with the music and stuff before we went to see the show. Eventually she had to buy two more copies of the CD because Adam and I kept stealing hers ; ) So that recording has been in my musical library for, um, significantly longer than I've known my totally awesome, spectacular, fantabulous, extraordinary, and handsome husband (why yes, he *is* reading over my shoulder), and therefore it's pretty much what I will compare any Phantom production to. So today I'm expanding my repertoire to theater critiques, heh. This will make more sense if you've seen the musical (or the 2005 movie, I'm not picky...think I'll have to watch that one again sometime soon).

The sets were well done and the costumes were fantastic, especially for the masquerade scene. I about went crazy trying to take in all the pretty costumes during the masquerade: Carlotta the soprano had a cool spiderweb kind of dress, the theater owners had cool skeleton costumes, one of the extras had this pretty peacock outfit, and Christine's masquerade dress was a confection. Very cool. However, the chandelier falling didn't seem quite as climactic as I remember it being. The orchestra was good as well, overwhelming the singers only once or twice, but the conductor ran through the first half of the Entr'acte with the speed of a freight train which annoyed me. Other than that, I highly enjoyed the music.

Supporting characters: I totally loved the people who played the two new owners of the opera house, Monsieurs Firmin and Andre, as well as Madame Giry, the choreographer of the ballet corps. (You can see the cast list of the production we saw here.) All three of them had some pretty funny bits, I love the song where they're all exchanging the notes that the Phantom has left for them. Carlotta, the older soprano whose spotlight Christine steals, was also terribly funny.

Raoul: He kind of looked like Kenneth Brannagh, which isn't a bad thing...I liked him well enough. Having listened to my Phantom recording for so many years though, I really notice when performers do something different than my CD, and this Raoul seemed a little more forceful than the one I'm used to.

Christine: I liked her quite a bit. She's got a powerful voice which I loved in "Think of Me" and the duet with Raoul, "All I Ask of You". She also spoke with a little bit of an accent, which I suppose makes sense because her character is from a Swedish family. Christine and all the ballet girls had these wigs (I assume they're wigs) that were all curled in ringlets; I liked those. I always wanted ringlets but I got messy waves. Whatever.

The Phantom: I liked him, with one exception: "The Music of the Night". I looooooooooooooove that song, and the way that it was performed today seemed too overtly theatrical and harsh, not nearly as lyrical and sensuous as I think it should be. After all, this is the song the Phantom uses to try to woo Christine into loving him. That said, the Phantom was most excellent when he lost his marbles a bit further on in the production. When Christine and Raoul are singing "All I Ask of You" on the roof of the opera house, the Phantom spies on them from a floating bit of scenery suspended from the ceiling and sings a whole song while it's moving, which was pretty cool. And his makeup when his mask is torn off was very well-done too.

Totally had a ball at the theater today. We were surprised how crowded it was for a show on a Tuesday afternoon, but I suppose the theater has to do pretty well for itself if it has shows on Tuesday afternoon ; ) I think we'll check to see what productions are going on when everyone comes out here for Thanksgiving, that might be an option for something we can do together. There are several other theaters in the same area as the one we went to today so there should be no shortage of shows from which to choose. After the show, we walked a couple blocks to the National Gallery and looked at some paintings, and then had dinner at the Texas Embassy where we both had Mexican food ('cause nothing says Texas like Mexican food). They had a bunch of Texas license plates up on the walls, including one that had Baylor's logo on it right over the door...think we might have to take our fellow Bears Missy and Bennet there : )

Finite Incantatem!

2011-10-17T22:09:00.001+01:00

Bonus points if you caught the reference in today's post title : )

So, I often talk to my parental units on the weekend via Skype, and on Sunday my dad told me they'll be here in like 30-some-odd days and I told him all the stuff I need to get done before then (Sarah and Tiana's baby books, Christmas cards, and various other projects). Dad said he didn't think I'd be able to get it all done before they arrive, which I took as a personal affront. So after ingesting a magnificently huge amount of Peanut M&Ms, I've run around for two days in complete hyperactivity/borderline panic mode and today it paid off--I finished all the pages for Sarah's book!!! Now I just need to get them put into the album and get it mailed off, hopefully by the end of the week.

Anyway, instead of just sharing the latest batch of pages, I thought I'd put up all the pictures so you can see the whole book from start to finish. Here ya go.

Sarah sent me some scrap fabric from the bedding that will be in her daughter's room, and it's got a lot of hot pink, lime green, and white in it, which led to me picking the patterned paper on this page. The left side will be the first page in the book and the right side will be the last page. Took me a lot longer to figure out what stamped images to use and I'm not 100% sure about what I chose, but it's done (FYI, it's the hummingbird from Elements of Style, the butterfly from Strength & Hope, and flowers from Vintage Vogue, all SU stamp sets).

Sarah found a crochet pattern for a SUPER CUTE little pumpkin hat, and I sent it to my mom who made said hat for Sarah, who was just tickled pink over that hat. So I figure that several of Leora's first pictures will show her modeling said hat, and that's how I picked the color combo...orange and green for the hat, pink for Leora, and the brown 'cause it went with the other colors. The pumpkin and basket of leaves in the upper right corner are from a cute SU stamp set called Give Thanks; I always liked it and it's been a long time since I last played with it, but it seemed right at home on this layout. The baby pram (look at me, all British) is from Baby Bundle. After I did the layout I wished I'd stamped something on the background but I wasn't going to attempt to take it apart to do that.

I have no idea why this picture loaded sideways, so, um, tilt your head? I'd posted it before anyway, so you can see it oriented correctly if you click here. November is the first of the month layouts because we think Leora will arrive in late October.

Sarah's Jewish, so no Santa or Christmas stuff for December, but she luuurves her some polar bears, so I got a new Whipper Snapper stamp for this layout. Not entirely sure about the patterned paper that I used, I had a lot of trouble coming up with a pattern for this layout for some reason. I like the mittens though.

There's a closeup of Mike and Ike. I love the Whipper Snapper bears : ) I wish I'd done a better job sponging the sky in the background. Well, hopefully Sarah will like it just fine as-is (if not, then maybe I'll color up a new one and send it to her).

The Nursery Times stamp set from SU was on my first order when the new catalog came out, specifically to use in baby books. The photo mats look black in the picture but they're really dark, dark purple (Concord Crush).

There's Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty in the lower left corner...

Mother Goose on the journaling block (the goose is colored in too, the shading doesn't show up so much in the picture).

And the dish running away with the spoon. Next time I use this stamp set, I'll color in the dish a darker color, she's practically white with a bit of blue shading on this one. And why can't the girl by the skinny spoon, anyway?

The Parisian layout for February was one of Sarah's favorites when I first posted it.

March's St. Patrick's Day layout...I wanna go to Ireland and kiss the Blarney Stone, have I mentioned that before? Lee just talks about how germy it probably is when I tell him I want to kiss the Blarney Stone. I don't care, I'm going to do it anyway (like I need the gift of gab).

April showers with more Whipper Snapper animals. Maybe next time I'll do flowers peeking out from behind the image block...always looking for ways to tweak my layouts and make them better.

Many thanks again to my momma who lent me the retired SU stamp set I used for the sun and moon on here. I also fixed the punched stars below the moon after I took the photo.

It took me a long time to decide what to do for June; this was actually the last layout I did. For the last couple of months, I've been working on unmounting my wood-mounted stamps, so I've gotten to really look through a lot of my older retired stamp sets and that's how I came upon the one I used here, Just Beakause.

This layout makes me want to sing "In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room" from the (you guessed it) Tiki Room in Disneyland. I'm hoping my birds look like fun colorblocked birds and not freaky Frankenstein birds. They do kinda stare.

July, with another bear from Whipper Snapper. I need a cute patriotic stamp set from SU, the ones I have aren't necessarily great for baby books. Well, the WS bear works well : )

At first I wanted to do flamingos for August, but Sarah vetoed that idea (so did Tiana, for that matter...so no matter what, next baby book is gonna get flamingo-fied! 'Cause I wanna do some flamingo pages!) and then I thought pirates since she's in North Carolina now (they had pirates, there are pirate wrecks all off the coast of the Carolinas). Then I (finally) found Fintastic on the Buy/Sell/Trade boards on Splitcoast and that settled what to do for August.

At first this was going to be Tiana's September layout, but I swapped them because Sarah's first book and the teal September in it and I wanted it to look different for the second book.

And October, which probably was the most time-intensive layout in this book what with coloring in Agnes, Frankie and Drac (detail shots on this post).

I figured that since Sarah is a Halloween nut, she'd have Halloween-themed birthday parties for Leora, so I wanted Halloween-ish colors but birthday stamps. I like how it turned out. Once again, the letters aren't black, they're dark purple.

And there you have it, one major item knocked off my to-do list, which is now on a small dry-erase board that I carry around the house with me, because I'm a nerd like that. I can't seem to get anything done unless it's on the list, so I'm just going to go with it. I have a separate list of things we need to do before people arrive for Thanksgiving...not just my parental units either, Bennet and Missy are coming out here too!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wahoo!!! So, um, yeah...lots to do to prepare.

But I have to take tomorrow off from the lists because it's our anniversary. Eight years ago tomorrow, I got married to my sweetie pie and I love him more every year. Don't know what we're doing yet but hey, we'll play it by ear. For now, I think my Peanut M&Ms high has worn off, so I'm gonna go to bed. Nighty night!

King Arthur in Literature and Cinema

2011-10-16T11:43:00.000+01:00

Pretty lofty sounding title for a post about books and movies, huh? That's what I'm going with today, so if you're here for pretty pictures you can give this post a pass : ) So let's jump in.

Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
Ok, this is a cheat...I don't remember much about it. I had to read excerpts from it when I was a freshman in high school and haven't read it since, but this is the seminal King Arthur tome upon which most subsequent retellings are based. Well, this and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which I haven't read yet. It's in my Amazon cart though, does that count for something?

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
I know that MZB's King Arthur story told from the women's points of view is much-beloved by many, but personally I didn't much care for it. I bought the book when I was in high school and couldn't get through it, so resold it to the used book store from whence it came. Then a few years ago I bought it again at the same used book store (wouldn't it have been funny if I'd gotten my old copy back?) and finally read the whole thing, although it was still a slog for me. This book is told mostly from Morgaine's point of view, and she is a great three-dimensional character and much better than the normal "evil witch, end of story" characterization she usually gets. On the other hand, Guinevere and Arthur are total wimps and I *hate* the stories where Gwen is a wimp. There's an entire series that starts with this book, but I didn't bother to read it; to be honest I think I might have sold this one back to the used book store. Again.

The Child Queen and The High Queen by Nancy McKenzie
I first found these two novels in Wal-Mart when I was in high school and picked them up on a whim, and this is probably my favorite Arthur tale. It's told first-person from Guinevere's point of view and covers her life from childhood to fall of Camelot. Not a lot of magic, although Merlin is here, but the characters are well-written and Guinevere is a likable heroine. You can now get both novels in one book, The Queen of Camelot, and there's a sequel about Galahad, The Grail Prince, that I haven't read yet and now resides in my Amazon cart. And now I'm sad that the other two books are in storage and I can't re-read them...hmm, maybe I should pick up new copies of them anyway, they were kinda worn out last time I saw mine ; )

Gwenhwyfar by Mercedes Lackey
I own this book but haven't managed to read the whole thing yet. Mercedes Lackey had been one of my very favorite authors for years, but lately I think she's been concentrating too much on quantity and not enough on quality. She's also in dire need of a better editor (I should figure out how to get into the book editing biz). Reserving judgment until I get through it, although I doubt it will be my favorite.

King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
I just bought this a few weeks ago and haven't gotten very far into it, but I can tell this is going to be the 12-year-old boy reader's favorite version of King Arthur. Arthur pulls the sword from the stone, becomes king, and sets up the Round Table in the first dozen pages, and then commences the tales of various knights who sally forth to do battle against the forces of evil and rescue fair maidens. Seems like it'll be long on action and short on character development.

The Keltiad Series by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
These books were like King Arthur in space, and altogether kind of strange so I'm not surprised they're out of print. I got mine at a used book store (I do so love used book stores, can you tell?). Instead of being set in Britain, the books take place on several planets in a region of space claimed by the Kelts. The author uses a lot of Welsh-ish words that sometimes made things hard to follow, but I did like the Aeron stories.

Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn
So this isn't a direct retelling of the King Arthur tale, but more like a reimagining of it with new characters and new magic, and rather unfortunately a cover that makes this look like a bodice-ripper romance novel (it has romance aspects, but it is first and foremost an epic fantasy). Arthur in this one is Prince Rohan, and his wife is Princess Sioned, who is also a Sunrunner, which means she can weave sunlight and moonlight to communicate with other Sunrunners and she can call fire. This is one of the coolest magical systems I've come across in a lot of fantasy reading ; ) The cast of characters is quite large, but there's a helpful list at the back and all the people are pretty clearly characterized and have fun names (I love the name Camigwen, tell me that's not too weird). There are three books in the Dragon Prince series, followed by another three in the Dragon Star series, and I've read them all more than once. In fact, these are among the relatively few books I have with me rather than being stuck in storage. Highly recommend these six books. Unfortunately Ms. Rawn's more recent offerings (Spellbinder and its sequel, which I didn't read) I felt had way too much sex and cursing and not enough good story or likable characters. Blecch.

Let's move on to movies, shall we?

The Sword in the Stone
This movie is based on the first section of T.H. White's book The Once and Future King (which I have also read), and if you haven't seen it then you are obviously not a Disney nut like I am. The animation isn't slick and clean like more recent movies such as Princess and the Frog (which I think I like better every time I rewatch it) or even The Little Mermaid, but the story is great and Merlin always cracks me up. The movie ends right when Arthur is crowned king, so there's no Round Table or Guinevere, but still a wonderful movie (although my favorite Disney movies are Sleeping Beauty {for Maleficent!!}, Mulan, and Robin Hood).

First Knight
Ok, I read some reviews on Amazon and this gets flack from the Arthurian purists but I still love it. C'mon, King Arthur is played by Sean Connery, how can you not like it? So it's a bit of a May-September romance between him and Julia Ormond, but that's often the case in Hollywood (and real-life medieval marriages for that matter). No Merlin, no Mordred, but Guinevere does get kidnapped (common theme in Arthuriana) and there's lots of sword fights. Point of interest: in this tale, Guinevere hails from Lyonesse, which is a mythical kingdom bordering Cornwall that sank into the sea, so it's kind of like a Cornish version of Atlantis. I wanna rewatch this movie sometime soon (right after The Princess Bride).

Mists of Avalon
I know I gave the book an unfavorable review above, and the movie suffers from the same weaknesses, but it's still kinda fun to watch on occasion. Sure, it's clunky, but the costumes are always fun to look at and Julianna Margolies, Anjelica Huston and Joan Allen are all terrific to watch. Shoulda taken their show on the road and forgot about those Arthur and Guinevere wimps.

Camelot
This is a musical, and is rather slow-paced, but the songs are fantastic. Get the soundtrack with Julie Andrews as Guinevere, it's beyond compare. We read the script for Camelot when I was a freshman in high school and even sang along with the soundtrack (I had a most excellent freshman English teacher). I still listen to the soundtrack fairly regularly; some of my favorites are "I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight", wherein Arthur is terrified at the prospect of marrying someone he doesn't even know; "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood" where Guinevere, also afraid of their arranged marriage, thinks longingly of the simple joys of "a knight pining so for me, he leaps to death in woe for me" and various other kind of violent things (but it's funny); "Then You May Take Me to the Fair" in which Guinevere convinces three of Arthur's knights to challenge Lancelot to duels because she doesn't like him; and "Guinevere" where the queen is on trial and Lancelot rides in to save her and war ensues. LOVE the soundtrack, you should buy it now.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Oh yes, I did so totally include this movie in a compendium of Arthur books and movies. This has to be one of the most-quotable movies in history and its utter silliness is intoxicating (they may have been intoxicated when they made the movie). This was the first movie that Lee and I watched when we got our TV and Blu-Ray player set up (after Lee blew up the Blu-Ray player and then fixed it). Lee kind of just tolerates it, but I love it. We are the knights who say...NI!!! Bwahahahaaa!

Star Wars, the Original Trilogy
This is totally the King Arthur story but with a happy ending. Don't believe me? Try this on for size. Luke Skywalker is King Arthur; he's raised in the backwater of the galaxy by his aunt and uncle and eventually gets a magic sword. Princess Leia is Guinevere in her warrior queen guise; she gets abducted (as in many of the Arthurian stories) but is as much a part of her own rescue as any of the others are. Han Solo is Lancelot, and in love with Princess Leia but since she's Luke's sister this time it's okay (am I giving away too many plot points here?!). Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda are Merlin 'cause they're all magical and stuff, and the Force is kind of like the Holy Grail. The rest of Rogue Squadron are like the Knights of the Round Table. The two Death Star battles are like Arthur's battles, Badon Hill (his first decisive victory against the Saxons) and Camlann (his last battle, only in Star Wars, the good guys win). And the Ewoks are...blinking. Hmm. Still not sold on the BluRay for Star Wars...but I really wanna go watch the original, original one even though I just watched it last week. I could watch the original trilogy every day and not get tired of it. If you're curious, The Empire Strikes Back is my favoritest favorite Star Wars movie, despite the fact that the Rebellion pretty much gets beat up for the whole movie. It's got the funniest one-liners and the budding romance between Han and Leia.

I think I've yammered long enough on here, I'm gonna go watch a movie : D

Kenilworth's Elizabethan Gardens

2011-10-12T17:43:00.002+01:00

I started this post two days ago, but here I am finally with the rest of the pictures from Kenilworth. This castle has a large Elizabethan garden which was recently reconstructed to look as it did when Queen Elizabeth last visited the castle in 1575, thanks in large part to a very long and detailed letter by Robert Langham describing the garden and castle environs.

This is the upper part of a fountain in the center of the garden; the guide book calls these guys "Athlants" but it's in reference to the myth of Atlas holding up the sky.

And from the other side. See what a difference it makes which direction you shoot in?

Each side of the octagonal base of the fountain has a scene from Ovid's Metamorphosis on it, all of them related to Neptune (Greek Poseidon) and/or the sea. So here's Neptune himself with his trident and horses, which he created.

And here's Europa being taken out to sea on the back of a bull who is really Jupiter/Zeus while her sisters look on in panic.

Andromeda chained to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster; Perseus is atop Pegasus in the upper right corner, come to petrify the monster with Medusa's head. Earlier today I read a part in Robert Graves' The Greek Myths about Perseus and he didn't ride Pegasus, he had winged sandals lent to him by Hermes. Pegasus didn't arrive on the scene until Medusa was beheaded and he sprang forth from her corpse; Bellerophon rode Pegasus when he killed the chimaera which is a similar myth. That book is really interesting to me, but Graves writes a commentary about each myth relating it to things like conquests of here or there and ancient sacrifices and stuff, which is kind of like having a magician tell you all his secrets.

According to the guide book, this has to be Poseidon/Neptune and Caenis, which I wouldn't have been able to tell on my own because there are so many ravishments in Greek myth. Zeus and the other gods really got around, the goddesses not quite so much. If I'm not mistaken, Caenis was so upset after Poseidon had his way with her that she asked the gods to turn her into a man, which they did. And then later he was turned back into a woman and squished by centaurs.

Here's a view of the gardens, or at least half the gardens, and once again we had to kind of hurry up to see everything before the rain arrived.

This I think is part of the Great Hall, which is the oldest part of the castle.

And there's the ruins from the inside : )

Up on the second level, looking down to the gardens.

And here's the whole shebang. I think I'm running out of commentary here.

And here's the last photo from Kenilworth, this is Leicester's gatehouse. The castle is in ruins because during the English civil war, it was "slighted" to make it uninhabitable, but the gatehouse was left alone and was later converted into a residence. You can't see it from this direction, but there used to be a pathway running through the bottom of the gatehouse big enough to drive a horse-drawn carriage through; it was bricked up and refurbished into a living space. So there you have it for Kenilworth, and sometime soon I'll be back with photos from our next stop. Or maybe some paper crafting goodies or book recommendations, I don't know what yet.

Kenilworth Castle

2011-10-10T10:42:00.001+01:00

I'm back once again with more pictures of jolly ol' England, this time from the Midlands. Our GPS sometimes cracks me up; you know the part in the movie A Bug's Life (I think it's that one, what was the other bug movie that came out around that time?) where something falls in the path of a line of ants carrying leaves, and the ant right behind the obstruction starts caterwauling "I'M LOOOOOST!!!" So we had some trouble finding our hotel in Warwick using the address or post code until we remembered that the GPS also has hotels loaded into it, so we got it that way. The silly thing navigated us right to the hotel but once we got in the parking lot it decided it was lost and couldn't find anything else. We couldn't get directions to anywhere unless we waited to program it when we were on the highway (obviously I did that while Lee drove). Every time we went back in that parking lot, the GPS got lost again. Weird, since it's the one that took us there in the first place, but there you have it.

The first place we went in Warwickshire was Kenilworth Castle, which started as a Norman stronghold in the 1100s and was enlarged and refortified several times over the centuries, but is now most associated with Queen Elizabeth I, who gave the castle to her favorite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. I never made the connection before between Robert Dudley and Lady Jane, the Nine Days Queen: Jane was married to Robert's brother Guildford. Jane, Guildford, and his father the Duke of Northumberland were all later executed for treason when Bloody Mary took the throne. I know I've talked about Lady Jane before; she's always been interesting to me and I always pitied her for really getting the short end of the stick. So anyway, Elizabeth having such an attachment to Robert Dudley was a bit of a scandal not just because Robert was already married but because of his recent family history.

Anyway, photos.

Once again, I had charge of the camera, and Lee kind of rolled his eyes that there were like four people on the castle grounds when we got there (including us) and I got one of them in my picture. He always wants pictures with no people in them which just isn't possible sometimes, and I'm not as picky about it as he is : )

This is the old stables, which now houses a little cafe (which I find amusing) and an exhibit about the castle's history.

This is the Great Tower, which was built in the 1120s by Geoffrey de Clinton and remodeled by Robert Dudley in 1570.

This is Leicester's Building, which was built by Robert Dudley in the 1570s to house Queen Elizabeth and her retinue when they visited the castle. Elizabeth liked to travel and during the first half of her reign, she would make progresses through the country, staying at the homes of nobles along the way. She stayed at Kenilworth three times during her reign, the last time for 19 days, longer than she ever stayed anywhere else while out on progress.

These are the ruins dating back to the time of John of Gaunt, in the 1370s. And I think the ground slopes to the left so maybe this picture isn't as crooked as you might think ; )

I think this is the south side of the Great Tower that faces the courtyard, across from Leicester's Building. John of Gaunt's Great Hall forms a third side of the courtyard.

More ruins from John of Gaunt's time.

There's my sweetie pie! Isn't he cute : )

Ruins of one of the towers. I like the stone they used on this castle, it's got a nice warm color to it.

This is the Great Hall; the hall itself would have been on the second floor and the first floor (ground level) would have been storage. The Brits call the first floor above ground level the first floor whereas Americans call it the second floor. Does that make any sense? Americans go from ground/first floor to second, whereas Brits have a ground floor, a first floor, and a second floor for three total stories. Not sure I'm explaining this well, but let's move on nonetheless.

Those are some gigantor windows. We were wondering if they had just plain glass in them or maybe some stained glass, because stained glass would have been beautiful especially in the evening since these windows face west.

Great Hall taken from the second floor. Or is it the first floor? Now I'm confused.

Got a bit of lens flare in this one but I kind of like the effect. Pictures usually come out better if you've got the sun behind you when you take them, though--colors are richer where if you're shooting towards the sun everything looks more washed out. See? I have learned something about photography!

View over the countryside from the Great Hall. In medieval times, several streams were dammed to create a lake that came up right next to the castle on two sides, and a moat encircled the rest of the castle.

One more just 'cause I liked this picture. I've got a few more pictures to share for next time before we move on to the next place. For now though, I'm going to go write out a shopping list and maybe try to work on Sarah's baby book, which is still not finished. I need more peanut M&Ms. Believe me, those two thoughts are related.

I'd Like You To Meet My Mother

2011-10-08T10:11:00.000+01:00

The mustache is a new development.

In case you're wondering, last week they had a Mad Fan dress-up day at her work (and oddly enough, she doesn't work at a school or daycare or anything of the sort) so she's dressed as the mascot for Oklahoma State University, Pistol Pete. Here's what Pete looks like:

They (meaning my parents and my brother and sister-in-law) are going up to Stillwater this weekend for the OSU game, and since I pretty much ignore all things football related, I have no idea who they're playing. I don't think Mom is wearing her costume to the game, but I could be wrong about that. Wish she'd sent me a close-up of her necklace; she told me she made OSU necklaces for herself and Adrienne but I don't know what all is on them.

By the way, Mom, Missy and I think you should dress up as a Baylor Bear next year.

Fair Face, Part 2

2011-10-07T14:23:00.002+01:00

In the last few days, I've gotten a couple of comments from people other than my mom, so HI!!! I'm so glad you stopped by! Gee, maybe I should be pathetic on the Interwebs more often if it makes people comment. Just kidding, I will try *not* to be pathetic. Much.

It's time for another Scarlet Quince cross stitch update. Behold!

(Phase 1 is here if you would like to compare.) I did A LOT of black this month. Like multiple skeins of nothing but black. I only worked with two symbols, the plain black and one that's a blend of black and slightly brownish black. As a reminder, here's what she'll look like on the twelfth of never:

I've decided that "Take the Fair Face of Woman" is too long a title, so she needs a name. I thought of Titania, Queen of the Fairies, but for some reason that didn't work for this fairy (I think Titania should be either an ice-blonde or have raven hair, don't ask me why), so I was trying to think of a name to go with a girl who has red-gold hair when inspiration hit. Her name is now Eilonwy, after a character in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, who was always described as a princess with red-gold hair. I've always loved the name Eilonwy anyway. If you've never read the books, I cannot recommend them highly enough, 'cause I know you come here for my book and movie recommendations (more of those soon).

If you're curious, I managed to put in a whopping 10,547 stitches this time around, meaning that this piece is now just a bit shy of 16% finished. 20,057 down, 150,943 more to go, ha. Next time around I won't be able to do quite so many stitches because I'll be working on the many zillions of color changes on her butterfly crown, but that will be fun. Nice change from black, although I think a lot of the symbols in the butterfly crown are some color blended with black, so I won't escape it entirely. But that's okay.

For this month, I'm taking a break from the Scarlet Quince rotation to finish up some other projects so I can give them to my mom for framing. But I'll be back to attack The Accolade in November, and I might work on that one for two months since my parental units will be out here and we'll be so busy with the holidays. I've only got a tiny start on that one anyway and it's the biggest of the pieces in my current rotation, although believe it or not I've amassed most of the supplies for an even *bigger* piece. And one more. 'Cause I'm crazy. But you knew that already.

I got my sweetie pie back today so I am now a happy camper. No firm plans as to what we might do this weekend, although there may be a trip to London involved. As long as I get to spend time with Lee, I'll be happy : ) Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Glastonbury Abbey Again

2011-10-05T10:48:00.000+01:00

People, I have to admit I'm feeling a little lonely on the Interwebs of late. Sadie and Vader don't read the blog, Lee's still out of town, and it's all quiet on the comment front (except for Mom). So yeah, bit lonely here.

Regardless, I have some more pics to share from Glastonbury Abbey.

Kind of neat how there are just large bits of wall still standing in random places.

Again, leaning to the left!! Right in front of where I was standing when I took this picture is a little trap door you can lift up to see some medieval tiles, still in place from when they were the floor in the church. But I didn't take a picture of them, don't know why not.

More stone carving, 'cause I thought it was interesting.

Here you can see a big portion of the ruins in a single shot. The lady chapel is on the left.

I really liked the looks of this bit of the ruins so I took several shots of it. I forget what that is in the foreground, I don't think it was Arthur's grave.

In the foreground of this picture, only the foundations of the building remain. I think it was the monks' kitchen. They had an exhibit that we walked through before we went out into the ruins and it listed the monks' typical daily diet, which included a pound of bread, a few other things like fruit and nuts, and something alcoholic like mead or ale or something. They did the alcoholic drinks because the drinking water had so much gunk in it, it wasn't safe to drink--the distilling process killed all the critters. But not a whole lot of food, and they were mostly vegetarian if you don't count fish.

I know I've done pictures like this before, but I can't help it, I think it looks neat to have the new church framed in the window of the ruined one.

Lady chapel seen from the side.

Past the monks' kitchen is an orchard where they had lots and lots of apple trees. The people who run the abbey still harvest the apples each year and make cider, which they sell to tourists.

I liked all the colors in this shot. The building is the abbot's kitchen.

One more shot of the ruins...

And here's the abbot's kitchen a little closer to. The abbot had his own kitchen because important people like kings and dukes and earls and such would make pilgrimages to the abbey, and they couldn't be expected to eat the same food as the monks, so the abbot had a much more elaborate kitchen and a lot more meal choices.

Lee took this picture while he was waiting for me to come out of the gift shop. He was sitting on a bench under the flower planter and took this facing straight up to t he sky. Kind of an interesting angle.

After we wandered all over the abbey grounds, we decided to go out in town to find something for lunch and discovered that Glastonbury is full of New Agey types. We passed at least a dozen shops where we could have had tarot readings (we didn't do it though) and I lost count of how many places sold crystals and incense and magic items. Kind of weird, and not helpful for us in that we wanted to find some gift things for several family members with fall birthdays. Hmph.

So we left there and drove a couple more hours towards Warwick, which was where we stayed for the second half of our road trip. We had a little bit of trouble finding our hotel because the GPS didn't seem to know where the post code was (a lot of times here you can navigate to something just by the post code, it's a much smaller area than a ZIP code in the States would be) so it took us probably an extra hour before we found it. But on the way we saw this:

The GPS took us up this hill on a narrow windy road and we had a nice view of the village we'd just driven through.

Warwick is in an area of England called the Midlands, and it's pretty but for our money Cornwall is cooler. More pics later. I have to work on the last of my three goals while Lee is gone: finish Sarah's baby book. I already unmounted all my stamp sets and watched all of the Superman movies (I've been on a Superman kick lately, not only did I watch all the movies, I started watching the first seasons of both Smallville and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman). I have 10 pages left to do...well, I'm almost done with the December layout, so that means 8 pages left (4 layouts) and I'd better get my rear in gear if I want this done before Lee comes back. TTFN!

King Arthur's Final Resting Place

2011-10-03T15:49:00.000+01:00

It's a beautiful day in England. You should be jealous that you're not here with me : )

When we last left young Arthur, he had assumed his rightful place as King of the Britons ("King of the who?" "The Britons." "Who are the Britons?" Sorry, bit of Monty Python there for ya.) with Merlin and Sir Ector among his chief advisers. Arthur soon assembled a court made up of the noblest knights in the land, and set about making a set of laws for the protection of everyone but especially fair maidens. His knights rode across the land, righting wrongs as they discovered them, and the kingdom prospered.

In due time, Arthur met and fell in love with Guenevere, daughter of King Leodegrance of Gwynedd, and they were married. Guenevere proved herself to be a strong queen and a good compliment for Arthur, and she was much beloved among the entire populace. Arthur set about ridding his land of the threat of Saxon invasion, and through the course of twelve great battles he defeated the Saxons so soundly that he ushered in a new period of peace and prosperity called the Pax Arthuriana. King Arthur and Queen Guenevere ruled the land from their magnificent court at Camelot, and the people loved them.

However, there is always at least one malcontent who cannot see anything good without wanting to besmirch it. Thus Mordred, a young knight who was the bastard son of a northern lord, came to Camelot and began wreaking much mischief. When Arthur was away from Camelot, he left his bravest knight, the good Sir Lancelot, to protect the Queen in his absence; this had been their practice for a number of years and Guenevere and Lancelot were close friends. Mordred saw this and spread the rumor that Guenevere and Lancelot were lovers, although this was not true; Mordred had such a silver tongue that the other young knights left at court, who were his cronies, believed what he said and the rumor caught like wildfire.

Arthur returned to Camelot in great haste when the rumors reached him and found the court in an almighty uproar. Mordred and arrested Lancelot and the Queen, saying that he had caught them in a compromising position, and Arthur was unable to secure their release because Mordred had ensconced himself in the castle with the help of his friends. Soon there was nothing for Arthur to do but attack his own castle, which he did with great reluctance; the court was split apart with the older knights siding with Arthur and the younger, more impressionable crowd siding with Mordred. In the fray, Lancelot overpowered his jailors and escaped with the Queen, spiriting her away for her own safety before returning himself to fight on Arthur's side.

When the battle was done, many were dead. Lancelot lived, and he found that King Arthur had killed Mordred but was himself mortally wounded. Lancelot took the king to the monastery at Glastonbury, where he had left Guenevere, so the king was able to see his wife one last time before he left this world. They had had no children to inherit the kingdom after them, and the kingdom was in a shambles anyway; Guenevere declined to return to court and instead took the veil and became a nun at Glastonbury. Lancelot left for his native Brittany and lived for some years as a quiet hermit, never to return to England again.

The Saxons took advantage of the power vacuum left after Arthur's fall, and they soon overran the whole of England, bringing the country into the Dark Ages. There were some of the folk who remembered the glory days of Camelot and they say that King Arthur was not killed, but merely ensorcelled to sleep until England should have need of him again. This is why he is called "the Once and Future King".

I love an excuse to use words like besmirch. And ensconced. And ensorcelled. And I left out the icky part about Mordred being a child of incest because eww. Actually I left out lots of parts, like the Round Table and the Holy Grail, but this was just a quick-and-dirty version anyway.

So you know where we went after leaving Cornwall: the ruins of the abbey at Glastonbury. This was once one of the richest monasteries in England until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539; the abbey's library was destroyed and the buildings heavily damaged. Successive generations of Glastonbury residents carried off the stones for other buildings, but enough is left at the abbey site to give an idea of its former grandeur. The first place we went into was a small chapel which was I think built on the site after the Dissolution, so it's not nearly as old as the other buildings on the site (or at least, what remains of them).

Then Lee took this picture while I went to check out the restroom facilities.

I think it's pretty cool, I like the contrast between the bright yellow stalk and all the texture on the wall behind it. Anyway, after that, we wandered through the ruins and I took a bazillion pictures.

And they lean to the left! I think I need to drink more V-8.

Here's Ree with some of the hydrangeas growing up by the wall that encircles the abbey grounds.

I'm being artsy with the cross in the background.

This is the door leading into the lady chapel, which is the most complete building left on the site other than the abbot's kitchen. A lady chapel is usually the largest chapel in a cathedral and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, hence the term lady chapel. Much of the stone used in the abbey buildings was beautifully carved.

Taken from inside the lady chapel, which is like three stories tall but open to the sky. Seems like the floors and ceilings are the first things to go in old ruined buildings.

More carving, 'cause I thought it was pretty.

Looking across the lady chapel.

And here's a view of it from the outside. It was kind of hard to get a picture of the whole thing where you can tell how big it is, and I wish that the other buildings were still in existence because the main cathedral was a LOT bigger.

Part of the cathedral. One of the things I like about England is they have all these ruins, many of which are 500-1,000 years old, and people will bring picnic lunches out to the ruins and just sit for a spell.

I liked the lighting in this picture.

So here's a sign above the reputed site of King Arthur's grave. The cathedral at Glastonbury burnt down in 1184, which was some 650 years after Arthur's time, and the monks needed to raise a great quantity of money to finance the reconstruction of the abbey. Therefore, the abbot of Glastonbury commissioned a search and claimed to find the graves of Arthur and Guenevere, which naturally helped to bring in many more visitors and money to reconstruct the church. King Arthur has been strongly associated with Glastonbury for many, many years so this turned out to be a really good PR move on the abbot's part; the new cathedral was grander than ever.

Until Henry VIII destroyed it all. Grrr.

Maybe this picture kinda shows you how tall the ruins are : ) And dangit, this one leans to the left too. You'd think all the buildings in England are like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but it's ME that leans apparently.

Here's a wider shot of that same piece.

Last one for today; here's the carved stone around the doorways in that bit of ruins. Reminds me of a crimped pie crust...mmm, pie...yeah, I've been craving pie lots since I re-watched both seasons of Pushing Daisies. This week though I've watched all five Superman movies (I am really looking forward to Man of Steel that's in production now) and I just watched the first episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. The effects are cheesy but that only added to the hilarity factor. I like me some cheesy movies and TV shows. Now that it's October, I should start watching both Ghostbusters movies and Young Frankenstein in constant rotation. Which is no hardship, I love those movies!

Boscastle

2011-10-01T10:19:00.000+01:00

After we left Tintagel, we were going to the Arthurian Center when we came on a bit of a traffic jam, which seemed a bit odd since we were out of the town and the only things around were fields and a few houses. When we got up closer we saw what was causing the delay--an Irish setter was weaving through the cars looking for all the world like she was asking for help.

Now, I have a real soft spot for dogs and it tears my heart out to see one on the road, worrying that it's going to get hit by a car, and so I convinced Lee to stop. He pulled into the next available driveway about a hundred yards away and that Irish setter high-tailed it right for us like she knew we were there to help her. Luckily she had a tag on her collar that had a phone number on it (note to self: get tags with a phone number on them for my kiddos), so Lee called the number and as it turned out, we were sitting in the driveway of the Irish setter's house. So a kid came out and let her in the gate and we continued on our way knowing that we had helped out a sweet little girl dog who couldn't figure out how she'd gotten out in traffic.

The Arthurian Center was a total waste of time, so I'm convinced we were only on the road to go there because we were meant to help the dog. At least the admission for the place was only 3 pounds apiece, but it was still pretty lame. They did have a tacky little board done up (I could have made something better with my paper crafting supplies) listing several of the recent King Arthur books and movies and giving a short critique of them. They pretty well castigated the movie version of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, which I almost got a little huffy about until I remembered that I wasn't a huge fan of it either. Yes, she made Morgan le Fay into a much more sympathetic character, but I hated how Guinevere was totally useless and Arthur really wasn't much better--he definitely did not come off as a king of legend in that story.

But anyway, I think I'll give my own list of Arthurian critiques at a later date. Suffice it to say we were not at the Arthurian Center for very long before we went back to Boscastle, the picturesque little town where we stayed in Cornwall. We had enough light left to walk around and take some pictures around the town before dinner.

This totally looks cool, but I think I'm just as happy that my house doesn't have this stuff all over it. I wonder though if it works like insulation...well, right when we got here the lady from the house rental agency mentioned that a lot of houses with the ivy all over them have issues with mice, and mice are pretty much only cute in Disney movies.

This narrow inlet leads into the town's teeny harbor, and this shows you the difference the light makes. This photo is just about a silhouette because the light is in the direction we shot the photo; the next one was taken within a few minutes of this one but with the sun to our backs.

And there's the town. We found a path that went up in the hills so we went up there to take pictures, even after all the gabillions of stairs at Tintagel and walking around all day. The one bad thing about little English towns like this is that a lot of the shops don't open up until 9 or 10, and they close at 5 or 6, so after spending most of the day at the castle ruins we didn't have a ton of time to shop around (we have LOTS of fall birthdays in our families, and I do Christmas shopping year-round). There was also a museum of witchcraft within two blocks of our hotel but we didn't go in...figured we'd rather get some good sunset pictures of the town.

Lee's getting pretty good at finding a place to set the camera down and then setting the timer to get both of us in a picture. Which is extra-good because when we ask people to take our picture for us, a lot of times they're intimidated by our camera since it's not a little pocket-size point and shoot, and then we end up blurry. So now Lee finds a place to put the camera and I go stand in frame and have like six pictures taken of me while he makes sure it focuses right and then we get our picture together. Voila!

I thought it was pretty cool there's a dude out there, sitting on a bench on the hillside and reading the newspaper. Much more interesting place to do that than the kitchen table would be.

Lee took this 'cause he liked the lichen on the rock. That is lichen, right? Whatever, the yellow stuff.

Know what? I think Lee took all the pictures for this post. I took most of the photos up until we got back to town, but I gave him the camera here. It gets heavy after a while.

I like the colors in this one. I sat down on some rocks and watched the waves while Lee climbed all over taking pictures.

I know this one is really similar to a picture I posted earlier, but I liked the rocks on the left side of the picture in this one.

We walked back into town when we got hungry and ordered food at an outdoor cafe kind of place. It was nice weather to eat out in the little courtyard, and Lee took this picture of the flowers hanging up on the wall just 'cause he liked them.

Last picture of the town. We spent two nights in Boscastle at the Riverside, which we really enjoyed. I think we both would have been completely happy to spend all five of our road trip days in Cornwall, but after two nights we packed up and drove north towards the Midlands, which, although pretty, just wasn't quite as awesome as Cornwall.

Tintagel, Part 2

2011-09-29T09:53:00.001+01:00

I was waiting for my mom to comment on the last post before I added another one, but I still got nothin' from her so after putting on sackcloth and ashes and wandering around the village wailing for an hour, I decided to do a new post anyway : ) So here's the other half of the pictures from Tintagel, which I am posting while eating DoubleStuf Oreos for breakfast (thank you Missy!) and listening to the Bangles. I know my mommy loves me even if she hasn't commented on here, 'cause she went to Barnes & Noble and got me the BRAND NEW just released Tuesday Bangles album, which she promises to ship to me (I was going to order it on Amazon, but the BN one has two exclusive tracks and I couldn't pass that up, Bangles fan that I am!).

Oh yeah. Pictures.

This is a ruined wall on top of the headland which the guidebook says may be the remains of a medieval walled garden, although it's a bit odd to have a garden in such an exposed place and so far from the keep. Those wacky medieval folks.

Here's Lee on the Danger Cliffs...seriously, they had signs all around the headland that said Danger Cliffs, so we figured that must be their name. Kind of like the last set of cliffs was White Cliffs.

As we were going through all the pictures the first time, Lee commented on how many of my photos seem to lean just the tiniest bit, most of them to the left but this one seems to be leaning to the right. Wonder why that is?

Here's Lee falling off the Danger Cliffs : )

Hanging on by his fingernails! Really, there's another set of rocks under where he's standing so it just LOOKS like he's dangling over the water. He just thought it would be a funny picture and remind my mom of the time she thought I was going to fall in the Grand Canyon (I didn't).

Hmm, this one leans to the right as well. Anywha, this is a view from the headland over the gorge between it and the mainland, and the village in the background. You can see some fields divided by hedgerows way in the back (if you click the pictures you can see them enlarged).

Here's the southern side of the Danger Cliffs.

This is the curtain wall that I showed you in the last post, but taken from above and the opposite direction. I like how the light is hitting just the top of the wall all the way down. Behind the wall you can see the ruins that are on the mainland.

Another shot of the curtain wall, aimed more towards the water. That big building in the upper right is the Camelot Hotel; we heard about it when we were looking for a place to stay but all the reviews were negative for that place. Sure it looks cool, and it's close to the castle, but the rooms are tiny and prices are ridonkulous. We really liked the place we ended up staying.

This is the inside of Merlin's Cave; we waited for low tide to go down to it since it was kinda underwater when we arrived. The cave goes all the way through the headland close to the narrowest bit that connects it to the mainland, so that's why you can see the light coming through the back of the cave. We did walk into it for a ways but decided against trying to get all the way to the other side. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to tell you that Lee took this picture and the next one.

This little waterfall is across the way from Merlin's Cave. There's a small stream that we saw near the visitor center when we first arrived, and this is where it goes.

One more shot of the bit of land that's across The Haven from the Tintagel Castle headland.

And there's the headland and just a small fraction of the stairs we climbed.

We climbed up a bazillion more stairs to go see the mainland side ruins and this little dude caught my attention, so I took his picture.

These are the southern Danger Cliffs as seen from the mainland. That dark spot might be where Merlin's Cave lets out, I'm not sure.

Last picture for Tintagel. I hope you enjoyed your tour!

If you made it this far, I have a funny story for you. Lee's on a business trip for a few days, and he left early yesterday morning, and I told Tiana yesterday afternoon when we talked that the spiders were going to start invading the house since he's not here. Sure enough, last night I was in the kitchen unpacking the box of Oreos and canned pumpkin from Missy (thank you Missy!) and a ginormous arachnid strolls across the floor in there. As you know, spiders totally freak me out, so I don't even want to get close to kill them. I looked at the full box, then at the spider, and the proverbial light bulb went off over my head--I so totally dropped that box right on top of the spider and squished him dead. I was even brave enough to pick up the box and make sure he had joined the choir invisible, and then I smack-talked him as I deposited him in the trash can. Booyah!

The Legendary Birthplace of King Arthur

2011-09-26T16:37:00.001+01:00

I do have pictures to share today, so if that's what you're here for you can skip all the typey stuff at the top of this post. For those of you who want to do more than look at the pretty pictures, I thought I'd start with a retelling of the start of King Arthur's story because I think it'll be fun. Here goes.

It was a dark time for the people of Britain. Rome had withdrawn her legions over a century before, and the desperate King Vortigern had, a generation or two previously, invited the Saxons into Britain by granting them a small bit of land in exchange for their help in fighting off the Picts, Irish, and Scots, all of whom were harrying the borders of Britain. Once they had a toe-hold in Britain, the Saxons gradually increased their numbers and soon became a greater threat to the native British population than ever the Picts had been.

Uther, a fierce warrior, was at this time a powerful British king who had spent his life fighting the Saxons. At a conference of British leaders, Uther met and fell in love with the Lady Igraine, who was already married to Gorlois, the lord of Cornwall. Gorlois could not help but notice Uther's love for his wife, and so in anger he attacked Uther and his armies, but he was no match for the younger man and Gorlois was killed in battle. Uther's adviser Merlin, a great enchanter, bespelled Uther to give him the face of Gorlois and Uther then went to Gorlois' stronghold, the castle of Tintagel on the wild Cornish coast, and he impregnated the Lady Igraine.

When news arrived of Gorlois' death in battle, Uther dropped the enchantment and revealed his true identity. He promptly married Lady Igraine, and in due course they welcomed their son Arthur into the world. Though Uther was a great king, Merlin had foreseen that his son Arthur would be greater yet, and he convinced Uther and Igraine to give him the child for training; thus did Arthur disappear for a number of years while Uther grew old and eventually died.

Upon Uther's death, the other British kings began to fight between themselves trying to determine which of them was strong enough to succeed Uther as leader of all the Britons. Therefore Merlin cast a great enchantment, placing a sword into a stone and anvil which was inscribed "Whoso pulleth out the sword from this stone and anvil is the true-born king of all Britain." Many men, from king to knight to lowliest servant, tried to remove the sword from the stone, but it would not budge. Several more years passed with the leadership of the Britons still unsettled, until at last the kings decided to hold a great tournament with the winner acceding to Uther's mantle of High King.

One of the competitors in the tournament was Sir Kay, a young knight. This was Sir Kay's first tournament and in all the excitement, he accidentally left his sword at the inn where he was staying with his family. Sir Kay's father, the elderly knight Sir Ector, sent Kay's squire to retrieve the sword, but upon returning to the inn, the squire discovered that it was locked up and that everyone had left to watch or participate in the tournament. Desperate not to disappoint Kay, the young squire happened to see a sword stuck into an stone, and thinking to himself that the sword was doing no good there, he slipped it out of its rocky sheath and ran back to the tournament.

When he saw the sword that the squire had retrieved, Sir Ector recognized it immediately as the famous Sword in the Stone, which caused a great commotion at the tournament. He did not believe at first that the squire had taken the sword from the stone himself, and so they along with all the competitors at the tournament went back to the stone and replaced the sword in it. The squire was told to take it out again, and this he did easily, though everyone else who tried to remove it was unable to do so. Still, the men were unwilling to acclaim the young man their king until the enchanter Merlin reappeared and revealed to all that the young squire was in fact Arthur, the son of Uther, and therefore the King of the Britons.

When I was a freshman in high school, my English class spent an entire term studying the King Arthur stories. We read excerpts from Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur as well as the script to the musical Camelot. (I still listen to the soundtrack to Camelot on a regular basis; Julie Andrews is Queen Guenevere and it's *awesome*! Vanessa Redgrave played Guenevere in the movie adaptation.) So you can imagine my excitement at having the opportunity to visit Tintagel, where Arthur's story began. Giddiness, even. So how 'bout some pictures!

Tintagel is on the cliffs of Cornwall, and the nearest parking lot is at least a half mile away, so we walked from the town to the castle of the same name. This is a view from the path leading to the visitor center, which you can't see from this angle; the white building sits across from the visitor center and houses the cafe. You can see some of the castle ruins up on the headland on the left. The castle doesn't date back to Arthurian times, but to the 13th century. It was built by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, probably because of the legends connected with the place because otherwise it doesn't make much sense to build way out here. There are some Dark Age ruins up on the cliffs though.

Half of the castle was situated on the headland which juts out into the sea and is connected to the mainland by a thin piece of land and a bridge; this photo is of the castle ruins on the mainland side. And a really cool sky, the clouds were very cooperative when we were there taking pictures.

The headland piece again, and you can see Merlin's Cave. When the tide went out, we climbed down there and went in the cave (picture of that later).

And there's a wider shot of the headland, once again with the cave but in the lower left of the photo this time.

There is where the headland connects to the mainland, and the bridge between. I think this place had more stairs than the rest of England combined! And we went up and down the stairs and walked everywhere. It was like being back on the Great Wall of China, only English instead of Chinese.

I forget which section of ruins this is. I took a LOT of photos here.

This was taken facing away from the castle ruins; that bit and the headland where the castle ruins are together form a small cove called The Haven.

Just because I'm proud of this picture : ) Lee and I both totally loved Cornwall, it is gorgeous and not just the cliffs here. The whole area we drove through on the way to Tintagel is stunningly beautiful as well.

Ruins of the great hall on the headland.

And there's my sweet husband, who happily drove me to Cornwall to see a ruined castle 'cause he's that awesome.

More of the ruins on the headland. The great peril at Tintagel is erosion; there used to be more castle ruins but the ocean eroded the cliffs and part of the castle collapsed into the sea. This of course reminds me irresistibly of King Haggard's castle in The Last Unicorn.

Very proud of this shot!! I had to wait to get a picture with no tourists in it but I think it was worth it to get this picture. This is part of the curtain wall.

This is a shot of the other side of The Haven taken from the top of the headland.

Self-portrait! Lee set the camera down on the ground and got this shot, and then we found another tourist who took one for us:

That's all the pictures for today, which is about half of the ones I'm going to share from Tintagel. Hope you enjoyed both the story and the photos. Sadie and I are going to go spend some time in my craft room now : )

More from Old Wardour

2011-09-22T11:05:00.001+01:00

Back again with more pictures, mostly from the inside of Old Wardour.

Just 'cause I liked the curve of the walls and the interesting perspective.

Carved lion above one of the doorways.

It was difficult to take this picture since it's kind of backlit, but I think it turned out kinda cool in the end.

View of the courtyard from one of the upper floors, facing down towards the back of the castle and the lake.

I think this was part of one of the ruined towers.

Caught Lee in another picture : )

This is the "ancient" stone grotto on the castle grounds, it's a manmade cave that just looks kind of cool. Not too far away from it, the owners of the castle moved a 4,000-year-old stone circle onto the castle grounds for more ambiance.

I like that word, ambiance. It's so...French.

Again, the lighting was wrong to take a picture from this side of the castle, but I had to try it anyway.

And this one you can actually see the castle instead of just a silhouette. I would not have minded another hour wandering around the castle and grounds, but we had to leave so we could make it to the coast in time to check into our hotel and make our dinner reservations. We're planning to take my parents out to Old Wardour when they're here in November anyway so at least I get to go back : )

Next up, more King Arthur stuff. Or possibly a baby book update, I haven't decided yet. For now, I'm off to take my sweet little doglets for a walk. Or maybe get into trouble shopping on the Bath & Body Works website. That Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin stuff just looks so good...

Old Wardour Castle

2011-09-20T15:14:00.001+01:00

After we left Stonehenge, we drove into a town whose name escapes me at the moment and had lunch at a Gucci Pizza Hut. Lee and I both graduated from Baylor University, and there are three HEB grocery stores near the campus, which are nicknamed the Ghetto HEB (closest to campus), Gucci HEB, and Taj maHEB (and you pronounce HEB not as initials but "heeb"). So that's what I'm referencing when I say Gucci Pizza Hut : ) Missy will get it!

After lunch, we set out for Old Wardour Castle which is 15 miles away from Stonehenge. Once again we thought our GPS had lost its marbles, but it turns out this castle is just kind of out back of beyond--the GPS got us close enough to the castle that we were able to follow signs to it when the GPS started telling us to go weird directions. You have to drive up a couple of miles of narrow windy roads, narrow enough that it can be difficult to pass someone going the opposite direction, and you don't really see the castle until you're practically on top of it. But the area is beyond gorgeous so it was a pleasant drive for all that, and here's what you see from the small parking lot when you get there:

I chose a tree branch shot for you, Miss Vicki : ) The sunlight was coming from the wrong direction to make this picture look really good, but we did get some very nice shots from the other side of the castle. This one was never a residence of royalty; it was initially built by John, the fifth Lord Lovel, in the late 1300s, and then acquired later by the Arundell family and updated and altered in the 1570s. Lord Lovel's wife, Maud Holand, was related by marriage to the royal family, and they were able to use that connection to increase their own money and power.

Again, not the best angle for the shot, but hey, it's proof that we were there. The castle is an unusual hexagon shape; the back side of the castle was destroyed during the English Civil War in 1644. Wardour didn't really have any tactical value, but was attacked because the Arundell family supported the Royalist cause and the neighboring Hungerford family (or at least part of it) supported the Parliamentarians. (If you don't remember, the English Civil War kind of boiled down to the question of whether the king had "divine right" to rule any way he wished, or if he should be subject to the consent of Parliament. The Parliamentarians eventually won and England became a Commonwealth with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, who later canceled Christmas. True story.) So Hungerford attacked the castle more to keep the Arundell family from using their wealth and power to support the Royalist cause; Hungerford won the castle in 1643 and Lord Arundell besieged it in an attempt to win it back, so he was the one who blew the wall off his own castle by accident.

This is a view of the lake with the castle's back side directly behind us. Told you it was a pretty area.

After it was rendered uninhabitable, the Arundell family eventually built a new (much smaller) house a couple of miles away and used Old Wardour as a "romantic ruin". They landscaped the area to make it look pretty because in the 1750s, romantic ruins were very popular not just with the artistic set, so this was kind of like a mini theme park. I do have to say that the ruination of the castle does make for some interesting pictures, and the castle has also been used for films. Go watch the beginning of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (I'll wait), and the castle where Robin's dad lives is Old Wardour. Cool, huh? So no King Arthur connection for this place, but Robin Hood is fun too.

The shadow on the ground is from the small Banqueting Hall that was added to the grounds when the "romantic ruin" thing was so popular; I just liked the pattern of the shadow on the grass.

I took lots and LOTS of pictures, like over 80, so of course I won't share *all* of those with you ; ) but I couldn't pick just a few favorites.

Lee loved the lawn here, and wishes that our lawn was like this. Won't happen as long as we have two nutty dogs who don't confine themselves to a single patch of grass when they relieve themselves though.

K, too much shadow in here for a really good shot, but that's Lee looking in the well inside the castle courtyard. When it was intact, the castle was 4 or 5 stories tall and the courtyard was completely enclosed, so it would have been *really* dark back in the day. I think they used the courtyard for the part where Robin finds his dead father.

Kind of gives you a sense of how tall the walls are with Lee standing there. Since he insists that I take most of the pictures now, he's in a lot more of them than he used to be, haha. He didn't consider that consequence when he said I had to take almost all the pictures from here on out.

I don't know exactly why, but I just loved this castle, it's one of my favorites thus far. I like all the details like the arches on the doors and the carving everywhere; on behalf of English Heritage I was irritated to discover how much graffiti there is inside the castle. The stones are relatively soft, so people have carved their names and stuff all over the place, which is just...argh. Why do people do that?

Another courtyard shot. Geez, I really thought I skinnied down the queue of pictures but it seems like I don't catch some similar shots until I've got them on the blog. Well, whatever.

One of the many stairways in the castle, we liked how this one started out going to the left and then curled up to the right. It seemed like there were stairs everywhere, I think my confusion with the layout is due to all the alterations to the original design in conjunction with the damage sustained in the Civil War. Plus I really do think there were stairs everywhere : ) I have more pictures from Old Wardour but I'm going to wait to post the rest just because I like to drag things out a bit, ha!

I still haven't given Lee the chance to edit any pictures either, so the only thing changed on these is that I shrunk 'em down a bit to upload faster on here. I'll just make sure Lee edits pictures how he wants them before I print them out for scrapbooks if I *ever* get back to my own books. Guess I'd better go work on those baby books a little more today...TTFN!

Merlin's Stone Circle

2011-09-19T15:33:00.001+01:00

We got back from our road trip late yesterday afternoon. When we rolled into the driveway at the kennel to pick up Sadie and Vader, my iPod started playing "Who Let the Dogs Out?" by the Baja Men, which I thought was pretty hilarious : ) We had some really great weather the whole time we were gone; we only got rained on a bit when we were driving home yesterday and other than that, we mostly got pretty blue skies and fluffy clouds in our photos. Lee's going to be a little cranky that I posted pictures before he got to edit any of them, but Mom really wants to see photos and that coupled with my own impatience trumps Lee's desire to photo-edit. Hee!

So, our first stop on Wednesday was Stonehenge. We're planning to take my parental units to see it in November when they visit us, but since there's a chance Lee won't get that time off we decided to go see it on our way to Cornwall because a.) now Lee can say he's seen it and b.) if I'm driving my parents without him, I at least know where I should be going.

It's really windy on the Salisbury Plains where Stonehenge is located, and that makes it feel a lot cooler than the temperature would lead you to believe, so we were glad to have our jackets. Mom, it's gonna be FREEZING in November, trust me!

To be honest, since we couldn't go inside the circle, seeing Stonehenge was kind of anticlimactic. We can't do an inner circle tour with my parents either, since they don't do them in November, so we'll have to go back a *third* time to take pictures from the inside.

One of the fallen stones in the center. I bought the guide book but I haven't read it all yet...I'll save all the historical stuff for when I have more impressive pictures to share.

We thought it might rain on us when we stopped, but luckily the clouds cleared out a bit as we were walking around the site so we got some good sky photos.

The birds aren't under the same no-touchy-Stonehenge restrictions that people are.

Hey wait, this one looks like that picture from earlier...I took like 50 pictures or so at Stonehenge but they kidna all start to look alike after a bit. : P

Just 'cause I like the sky in this one. And then I took the same shot but horizontal instead of vertical.

The road right behind this stone is the one we came in on, the A344 goes right next to Stonehenge. Other than that road and another one that forms a triangle with the A344 a bit further away from Stonehenge, the landscape is mostly grazing land for sheep, so it's nice not to have ginormous skyscrapers and other modern structures in photos of Stonehenge.

Yeah, I didn't write a lot on this one...like I said, I'm saving all the historical part for sometime later when I have cooler pictures. But I will explain the title of this post...one of the legends that sprung up to explain the construction of Stonehenge says that it was magically transported to England from Ireland by the great wizard Merlin to commemorate a huge battle between the Britons and the Saxons (King Arthur's victory at the Battle of Badon Hill, perhaps?) so that's my Arthurian connection for this weekend's trip. Funny thing is I didn't know that story till after we got there : ) That story doesn't explain how it was first built at Ireland, and there's the problem that King Arthur's time was about 2500 years after the construction of Stonehenge. But, as you will see, my mantra for all things King Arthur-related is "Let's not let the hard facts of history get in the way of a good story."