all is calm, all is bright

. . .

We're spending our Sunday evening quietly.

Some warm soup and good bread and cheese.

Lit candles, and sparkly Christmas decorations.

Resting up for the week ahead.

. . .

give thanks

It was a weekend of festivity in apartment 66! Ryan had been in New York and Pennsylvania for work last week, and he came home just in time to celebrate a.) his homecoming (I was lonely!) b.) our first anniversary pre-celebration c.) Christmas decorating gloriousness, and d.) our first homemade Thanksgiving meal. We mixed so many holidays and seasons that eventually the reasons for celebrating got a little fuzzy? but we went with it. And even though we woke up on Sunday to a still frozen turkey, a little ice bath in the sink for a few hours fixed the problem. Thanksgiving 2011, you did just fine.

one year ago

happy 1st anniversary to my beloved.

what a beautiful, difficult, wonderful, blessed year it's been.

i love you so.

a pie and a project

Ryan baked a pie yesterday.

The whole apartment smelled delicious--

even the garbage can!

(it was full of apple peels. mmm.)

And then, in a strange turn of events, it smelled terrible a few hours later.

(rotting apple peels?)

This is what I'm working on today.

We've got big plans for this old guy:

did the grinch's dog have a name?

 though this wasn't the first time we've been seen
snatching up free/forgotten/fallen loot and lugging it home,

we did feel kind of silly gathering large branches from the bike trail and carrying them back to the apartment.

(thank you, teenager who honked at us on kilbourn.)

but it was worth it.

i'm feeling pretty pleased with how these homemade antlers turned out.

and the cost to make them (only $7 for clay)

was much more reasonable than the $80 price tag on the antlers at the thrift store.

an added bonus: ryan noticed that one antler looks quite similar to the antler that a favorite christmas movie character sports...

this is most certainly true.

ps: chair in progress!

i'm not finished with the seat yet.

(i have an idea.)

but, oh, that yellow is the color of my soul.

a date at the museum

Edgar Degas, Three Dancers in Yellow Skirts

For the past month, these terribly beautiful commercials have been appearing on TV featuring the MAM's new exhibit, Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper. It plays Clair de Lune the whole time, and I feel fancy just watching it. I had been wanting and wishing (and hinting) to go, but I knew Ryan wouldn't be crazy about the ticket price. That is, until the stars aligned and the heavens opened and I was moved to check the website for more information. Free on the first Thursday of the month? Open until 8pm? Well, golly.

When Ryan got home from work last Thursday, we walked to the museum and spent a glorious two hours there. Oh it was fantastic. I forgot how much I really love the Impressionist artists. Cezanne! Van Gogh! Renoir! And that Degas, he really is something. I was able to get my nose up in those pieces and study them, which I'm sure was terribly impolite to the other museum goers. Seeing them in person allowed me to notice things that I never did in books or on the screen in class -- some of the works were done on what looked like brown paper bags, and even cardboard! And they were beautiful! I was reminded of gesture drawing. My fingers itched to dig out my charcoal and pastels. It felt good. The best part was that with all of this art class knowledge flooding back into my brains, I was able to impress Ryan with some truly fantastic facts:

Ryan: "This piece was done in gouache. How do you say that? Gowsh?"

Me: "No, darling. It's pronounced gwash."

Right?? I wasn't an art major for nothing.

We weren't able to take pictures in the exhibit, but it was allowed in the other parts of the museum. While I admired the paintings and drawings, engineer Ryan inspected the architecture. It really is such a beautiful museum.

over the weekend

We spent the weekend doing small projects and boring little things that we like. We went on a walk and harvested some branches for an art project, went to McDonald's for lunch, made the fastest trip ever to Home Depot, did the dishes, watched a movie, etc. Some sad little chairs were left by the dumpster a few weeks ago, and while Ryan sanded down his old dresser, I finally decided to do something about them. I gently wiped the sticky old varnish off their sorry forgotten bones (as well as a few other mysterious substances which I am trying to forget about) and told them that I loved them, those poor dumpster chairs. A $3 sample pot of Martha Stewart's "Cornbread" freshened them up, and they are now the most glorious shade of yellow.

Most importantly, it's been a month since our baby girl went to heaven. We wonder a lot about what she's doing, or what we'd be doing if she were still here with us. We still miss her so much. But -- the happy moments of our day are quickly outnumbering the sad, our hearts are getting lighter, and we're thankful that lots of laughter is filling up this tiny apartment again.

Now. Onto the new week!

Apt. 66

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