Well...nobody stopped me... (see previous post)

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As I mentioned earlier, my sister was just down for a few days to visit us.  We had a few adventures and I thought I'd share some pictures.  Because life is fun like that.

Our first stop after the airport to pick Alicia up was San Francisco.  We stayed overnight and spent the next day sight-seeing.  Here we are in front of the "Painted Ladies."  Full House, anyone?

This is me and Nathan in the town hall.  It was beautiful and elaborate and...wow.  Impressive.

After walking a couple miles in the rain, we were cold and wet and hopped on a cable car.  This is a picture of Lombard street (image google it for a better picture).  We only saw it from the top, but didn't really feel like walking all the way down...we just looked at brochure pictures and figured it looked better on the sunny day when the picture was taken than it would have looked this day anyway.

The streets were STEEP.  We walked up and down some of them and my calves felt it the next day.  Tip: Don't drive a standard in San Francisco unless you are VERY confident.  Let me modify that statement: Don't drive in San Francisco with any car, no matter how confident you are.

(You can see a three cable cars in this picture...one at the bottom of the hill and two on the top of it)

We were cold.  Can you tell?  That is Alcatraz behind us.  Beautiful.  Check.  Let's keep walking!

Alicia and I being happy adventurers out on the docks.  Really, we were happy.  Just cold and wet too.  Brr...we were completely soaked all the way through.

We decided to ride on the outside part of the cable car on the way back.  You could see so much better, but the wind was chilly.  By the way, it is the wind that is helping Alicia's hair to stand up at that angle...she didn't style it like that in the morning.

Now for some warmer pictures...we went out the next day in search of a project to do together.  We saw some canvases and paint at Michaels and thought painting would be fun.  We got ourselves all set up (we're Buhlers, so we didn't need any newspaper or plastic between the carpet and our canvases...we're that good) and painted on and off the rest of the visit.  This painting is now hanging on our living room wall.

Beautiful, no?  Nathan felt a bit left out, so we bought some more canvases and did a set of three very colorful paintings for the bathroom.  We DID put newspaper between the canvases and carpet when Nathan was painting with us...

We had one warm, sunny day while Alicia was out, so here we are picking some oranges off the tree here on campus.  Alicia was pretty excited...

She picked too many to carry...I laughed at her...tourist...

At least she put the oranges to good use (see the full bowl in the background?).  She made orange juice and later we made an orange cake with orange glaze.  Yummy.

Another truly Californian experience is eating at In-n-Out burger.  It's quite the experience (at least if you know about the "ecretsay enumay").  It was pretty good...

Someone back home had recommended that Alicia get the Double Burger Animal Style.  It was HUGE.  Apparently not as big as they come, but this one was almost as big as Alicia's head.  haha.  But she says it was good, so that's all that matters, right?

And that was Alicia's visit!  So fun.  It was nice to have some family see where we live.  In some ways it made it feel so much more like home to have my sister see where we live and to experience our life with us for a few days.  Thanks for coming, Alicia!  I can't wait for my trip out to see you in a couple months!

For more pictures and my sister's side of the trip, click HERE.

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Oh yeah, be sure to check out the afghan on the couch behind me in the first few haircut pictures.  Pretty granny-like, eh?  I just finished it two days ago and it's going to my Etsy shop any day now!  I just love the colors!

Good ideas come late at night...

Well, it's late at night.

I've decided that I'm going to give myself a haircut first thing tomorrow morning.

Let's all take a moment to remember what happened last time I decided to give my hair a chop first thing the next morning:

Someone talk me out of this in the next 12 hours...

Not much...

I don't have much to share, but I wanted to check in with the blogging world to assure you all that I'm alive and well and enjoying my visit with my sister very much and will post more about it, perhaps, once she flies away home : (. 

So I guess in the meantime it's your turn to share! 

Question of the weekend:

What up with your weekend? (answer in comments)

Rainy days...sweeping the Sun away...on my way...

What is happening these days?  I was just over at my sister-in-law's blog and she was having the same problem.  What to post?  While I feel that she must have TONS to post (being pregnant with twins and moving next weekend and working full time at a daycare) I feel like I have absolutely nothing.  Then again, it might go both ways and she may feel that I am the one with lots to post (being the one living in "sunny" California and planning a trip to San Francisco today/tomorrow and living life on the "edge").  But all my days for the last 5 weeks have been pretty much the same:

-  wake up whenever my body naturally wakes up
-  get ready for the day...try to have this step finished by 12 noon
-  have lunch whenever I get hungry
-  read/crochet/quilt/explore the World Wide Web - pretty much do whatever I feel like all afternoon
-  make supper
-  eat supper
-  clean up supper
-  more reading/tv/crocheting/quilting/whatever I feel like all evening
-  go to bed

Don't get me wrong...it has been a VERY relaxing routine and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.  But 5 weeks of this does get to be a bit much.  And it produces very little to actually blog about.  (Hence all the pictures of my latest projects)

So I mentioned that we're going to San Francisco today.  That's exciting.  My sister is flying in to Sacramento this evening and then we're going to drive to San Francisco where we got a cheap hotel (priceline = $50 a night).  Little did I know that the parking at the hotel is $35 though!!!  I'm used to hotel parking being free!  Then again, I've never stayed in San Francisco overnight.  (Now that I think of it, the parking at the hotel in LA earlier in December also was not free, though it wasn't $35 either)  So we'll head to San Francisco and spend the night and spend tomorrow seeing the sights.  It's supposed to rain (we've been having SO much rain lately - I feel like I'm in BC, not California) so we might end up just buying trolley passes and seeing the city from inside the trolley.  That could be fun too, I guess.  And then we'll drive home because we're only a couple hours from San Fran.  I'm looking forward to this trip, but not as much as I'm looking forward to seeing my sister!  We haven't been together for...9 months?  10 months?  It's been a while.  It should be grand.

Let's see...what else?  Nope.  I can't think of anything.  Is it worth posting, even when there's nothing to really post about?  Let me know, because I sometimes wonder about that.  : )

Have a good couple days!  See ya when I see ya!

Yosemite

Nathan and I went out to Yosemite with a couple of friends on Friday.  It was good, except for these roads driving in:

Winding roads along the side of the mountain + extreme elevation changes = sick me.
*sigh* I bought some motion sickness drugs when we got where we were going and took some before we left to come back.  I think they helped...I didn't get sick on the way back at least!

It was beautiful though:

Do you see the waterfall in the background?  Here's a better shot of it:

Apparently the waterfalls are at their fullest in a couple months when the spring runoff happens.  Makes sense.

We saw some other waterfalls too...they were beautiful as well.  Nathan is an amazing nature photographer.  I will admit, though, I was not always as patient as I should have been when he would park with the camera for 10-15 minutes in one spot...

Then again, he would get shots like this:

And I wouldn't.

We also climbed on some rocks right up to a waterfall:

I like climbing on rocks.  I think my low center of gravity and balance really help me.  In this picture I have something in each of my hands, so I had to catch myself with my other foot.  It worked.  I didn't fall once.  So I guess that book that I mentioned a while ago where I was warned about my lifespan being shorter because I am short doesn't apply to death due to rock-climbing (or any balance-related activity).  Take that, tall people.

Here is a picture of me and Nathan:

Looking pretty good for almost 5 years of marriage, eh?

This is one of the shots that we were climbing on the rocks to get:

Oh yeah, and we saw snow:

It was very grainy snow, not at all like the soft fluffy snow that you get on the prairies.  Here it was just packed ice.  It made me sad that this is all the snow some kids get to experience in their lives. 

And last but not least, something completely unrelated to our Yosemite trip:

 

This is my latest creation that is going to my Etsy site.  I couldn't get the colors to look true to themselves in the photo (boo on artificial lighting), but hopefully you can picture a real brown and a cute pink, cause that's how it really is.  I'll have to get a better picture next time it's sunny outside, but that might be a while.  It's supposed to be rainy at least until the weekend.

Guess who's...

an official Californian driver?!

(I'm covering part of it so everyone out there in blogger-land doesn't see all my important "stuff")

That's me!
I took my driver's test in early November (and passed with flying colors) but there was some confusion with me not having a Social Security Number so it took two whole months for me to get my actual photo ID.  But now I have it!  Whoo-hoo!  Yay for a less confusing identity!

And speaking of cars...you know that feeling if getting into your car after it's been sitting in the sun for a while and it's hot and stuffy and you have to let the heat out before you get in?

Yup.

California.

Today.

Beautiful.

What am I doing these days?

I run from one activity to another like a 3 year old with a high on sugar life.  Among my latest are:
-  reading "The Gospel According to Lost" by Chris Seay
-  reading " Paul's Idea of Community" by Banks (and writing a paper on it for class - I finished this one yesterday!)
-  making my first actual "quilted" baby quilt - this I also finished yesterday
-  cleaning all the loose threads off my first rag quilt - this one gives me blisters, so I haven't picked it up for a few days
-  crocheting a scarf for my Etsy shop - would only take an hour or less to finish, but it's kinda nice knowing that there is a project sitting there in case I get bored with something else
-  thinking about a pattern for my next baby quilt - any ideas?

I guess while I'm making a random list of mostly projects, I'll share a few pictures of the latest.  Yesterday was a warm, sunny day, so I took advantage of the natural light and got pictures of everything.

A toque that I have listed over at my Etsy shop:

Scarf that's going to my Etsy shop just as soon as I finish it:

Baby quilt from the fabric I showed you here.  It's not perfect or professional, but I'd say it's pretty good.  Hand-stitching the binding was BY FAR the most time-consuming part of the entire project.  But I enjoyed it all. : )

And last but not least, a flanel, double-layer receiving blanket.  I found this fabric at Walmart in their sale basket (end of the roll) and loved it.  So I picked it up and later found that I actually had some navy blue flannel on hand from another project that would work perfectly for the back.  It took a bit of piecing (added white flannel strips to two sides of the back) to make it all fit together because it was made from all scraps, but I really love it.  I haven't been able to decide if I'll sell it or keep it in my stash for future gifts or (perhaps) personal use?

I picked a pomegranate today.

PoSt SoMeThInG...aNyThInG!

Don't you sometimes just want to post but have absolutely nothing to write about?  Yup.  I thought so.  I guess I'll just share random thoughts.  Those can end up being entertaining (not to mention, enlightening), right?  Let's see...

-  I started doing homework again today after almost a month off.  I was just not feeling like this was the right time to become a full time student again, so I put the books aside and re-evaluated what I was thinking.  I ended up deciding that I would go through with the whole application thing and then take whatever courses caught my eye.  So I won't be actually trying to complete any sort of degree while I'm here, but I feel so much more peace about this decision.  And this way I'll have some seminary credits sitting around in case I ever get around to finishing my BA and decide that I would like a Masters degree.  How is the homework going, you ask?  Well...how do I put this?  There are a few other things that I would rather be doing right now...

-  I wrote a bunch of letters yesterday.  It always takes me so long to actually get myself to sit down and write a personal letter.  I LOVE getting them though, so I can't expect any to come if I don't write them myself every once in a while.  So naturally, when I picked up the mail later that day, I expected our mailbox to be full of mail.  If I write some, I should receive some, right?  I DID end up getting a book in the mail that was part of a Christmas gift, though.  That was exciting.

-  Right now I'm babysitting our friends' daughter.  She's NAPPING so I'm sitting here at their place, with my laptop and homework reading, hoping that she won't wake up too soon so I can actually get some homework done.  But then again, if you remember my comment from earlier, obviously I would rather be having fun with an 8 month old than reading about Paul's idea of community!

-  It's raining outside...well, misting/sprinkling really.  It's been so foggy lately that we haven't really seen the sun for a couple weeks.  I thought California was supposed to be sunny all year round!  Apparently not.  It is foggy and cloudy and today it's raining.  We are in the middle of a drought, near a desert, though, so even when it rains, it doesn't get you too wet and doesn't last that long, so I really can't complain.  And it has been around 7 degrees during the day, so I really can't complain about that either. : )

-  I am working on a scarf for my Etsy shop...also almost finished binding a baby quilt that I plan to list.  Fun stuff.  Thing is, it takes money to make things, so the beginning has been unfortunately slow...

-  Does it seem to anyone else like pregnancies go in spurts?  It seemed like there was a huge amount of pregnant women that I knew back in 2007/2008.  And now there seems to be another swell (no pun intended) for 2010.  I counted the other night and there are 12 women I know who are either pregnant or who have had babies in the past week.  And most of those babies are due in June and July.  Wow.  Is it that alot of those 2007/2008 babies are going to be older siblings, that the timing between kids is the main factor?  I guess that could make sense.  But alot of the babies are firsts for the parents.  So I have no idea why they all group together like that.  Weird.  Must be some kind of conspiracy...

-  Nathan has started blogging again!  He wanted to get in on book reviewing, like I'm doing, so he has resurrected his old officehourthoughts.blogspot.com.  You can find him on my sidebar as "A Short Step Down From Thought Provoking."

Well, I really have no idea where to go with this post from here.  As always, I am open to post suggestions or random questions in my comments.

Have a good week!

Cookie-making

I decided to make peanut butter cookies today.  I made 36.  And then I got sick of making individual cookies.  I seem to remember not having the patience for individual cookies ever since I was little and helping my mom make cookies.  I usually overcome my boredom and end up making serving-size morsels of goodness.  But every once in a while at least half the batch of dough ends up on one pan, baked into one HUGE cookie.  I like to call them "cookie-squares".  Why not, right?

Hahaha...I love it!!!

Tastes of Canada

Today was an exciting mail day for me!  I was sitting there quilting, minding my own business, when Nathan came in and told me that he was going to open up his prized bag of Ruffles All Dressed chips that he got for Christmas from his parents. (they don't have such chips in the States)

Here he is enjoying his chips:

I took that interruption as a good excuse to get up from my sewing machine and go get the mail.  As I walked to our box, I was preparing myself, as I do every day, for empty nothingness in our box.  But I got a WONDERFUL surprise!!!  It was not only a good mail day, it was a great mail day!

Let me show you:

I joined a book review club over Christmas week and requested my first book.  And it arrived today!  This seems like a great deal.  I request a book.  Once I get the book, I read it and post a 200 word review on my blog, on a review site of my choice, and on the original site (I think).  Once I've done that, I can request another book!  And the best part...it's FREE!  I'll always take free books...especially if all I have to do is write 200 words.  No problems here!

(I think I'll be posting the reviews over at another blog that I set up especially for books that I've been reading...you can find it HERE)

And the second exciting mail item:

That, my dear friends, is a CARAMILK BAR!!!  From Canada!  My amazing, sweet sister-in-law and brother-in-law sent it to us in our Christmas card!  I'd been craving a Caramilk bar, even going so far as to say that it was all I wanted for Christmas (alongside a baby, of course).

Well, back to my quilting I go!

Date night!

Last night was date night at the McCorkindale house!  I always love date night.  It doesn't happen nearly often enough...

Mmm...

I picked out some fabrics today.  I'm going to start a quilt today.  It's going to be fun. 

(I just had to share the excitement!)

Time for another list!

I like lists.  I like crossing items off of lists.  I like writing lists.  Everything in life just seems more organized with lists.  So today I will be making a list of all the different types of lists that I've made!

-  shopping list (duh)
-  to-do list (another given)
-  list of books I want to read
-  list of books that I've read
-  list of things I'd like to make
-  menu items for easy supper ideas
-  Christmas gift suggestions
-  qualities I'd like in a husband (who hasn't made one of these sometime in their high school career?!)
-  girls names that I like
-  boy names that I like
-  all the clothing items that I have (and consequently what I still need)
-  Christmas card/letter list (though there hasn't been a Christmas letter for two years now)
-  list of instructions of how to make something
-  things I'm angry about list (for theraputic reasons only! haha)
-  things I'm thankful for
-  friends I have (good one to do when feeling lonely: it always surprises me how many people I consider friends)
-  boys I'd date (another one from high school!)
-  who, of our high school friends, will get married (first to last) - I believe Mike won that one...and we totally called it

Come to think of it, back in high school my friends and I made TONS of lists!  We had pages and pages of lists about everything under the sun.  I wonder where those lists are now.  I'm not sure that I have any...no wait!  I do!  I totally have a whole binder somewhere that's stuffed with notes from high school!  I'm going to have to find that when we move back to Canada and open all our boxes again.  Sweet.

Life is dangerous...

 

I was looking through this book that we picked up off of a free books table a couple months ago and found something very interesting.  I quote:

"A lack of height can cut your life, well, short."

See, people?  I KNEW that being short isn't all the blessing it's cracked up to be!  Apparently taller people earn more money, are more respected, and actually live longer than shorter people.

So there you have it.  Tall people, rejoice.  You, apparently, are the chosen ones. : )

Late nights...

What to do when the clock is ticking later and later and your body is nowhere near ready for sleep?  Our schedule has taken a beating since classes ended in early December.  While there were classes, we tried to be in bed by 11 or 12 and slept until 7:30 on class days, and about 8:30 on other days.  We had a pretty regular routine. 

And then winter break hit.

*dun, dun, dunnnnnn*

We've been staying up later, and as a result, sleeping in later, and therefore staying up even later, and sleeping EVEN later.  Not good, people.  My body has NO idea what to do with itself. 

The other morning I decided that I was going to start getting myself back on track and got out of bed at 7:30am.  Nice work, right?  Well, I started reading my book on the couch...in my pajamas...wrapped in a blanket.  And then I napped until noon.  Of course I couldn't sleep that night until 2am.  Arg.

Well, last night I was suddenly crazy tired at 9pm.  I was so excited, but tried not to let my excitement wake me up.  I put on my pajamas, crawled into bed with my book, and ended up shutting off my light at 9:46pm.  Impressive, right?  And the most impressive part is yet to come.  I slept 13 hours straight, waking up at 11am.  So guess what?  Now it's 11:18pm and I'm not tired in the least.  So should I go to bed and lay there in the dark, frustrated because I can't sleep, for two more hours?  Or should I scout the internet for interesting quilt patterns, crochet projects, and fun blogs?  I'll go for the latter.  Though reading my C.S. Lewis book would probably put me to sleep much more effectively.

Before I go, I'll answer my mother-in-law's question (and probably a few others had the same question): "What's an etsy seller? I don't understand. Could you please teach me about it?"  Absolutely.

An Etsy seller is someone who sells things on Etsy.  But I've heard that you should never give a definition of something using the same word that is in the original term in question.  So next I'll answer what Etsy is.

Etsy is "Your place to buy & sell all things handmade."  - Etsy.  It is an online group of "shops" where people from anywhere, really, list things that they have made and people can see these things and buy them directly from the maker.  The maker then is responsible for shipping the handmade item to the buyer.  I call it the Ebay of the craft world.  I'm sure it is not really very much like Ebay...but it kind of gives you an idea of what it's like. 

So being an Etsy seller, I have my own "shop" where I can list things that I have made and sell them to people around the world!  Pretty fun, I'd say.  So far some things that I've thought of making and selling on my site are:

-  afghans (crocheted blankets)
-  crocheted hats/toques/beanies
-  quilts?
-  scarves (also crocheted)
-  anything else that I find to crochet or sew
-  perhaps one day I'll try to sell some photography...but for now I like to keep my camera skills mostly to myself : )

So that's that.  Well, I think I'll head offline and see if C.S. Lewis has any interesting things to teach me. (I'm reading The Great Divorce, which is quite good, as are all things Lewis that I've read.)

Etsy

It's official...I'm an Etsy seller.  I just need to personalize it and add items.  But after four hours of trying to think of a name and setting up an account, my head is hurting and I'm done for one day.  Feel free to check out my shop in the next couple days and hopefully I'll get some stuff up soon!

UniquelyMeDesign (uniquelymedesign.etsy.com)

If anyone out there is an Etsy seller, PLEASE give advice/how to.  I have no idea how to:
-  add a banner (to personalize the shop)
-  sell items
-  ship items (from the States)

HELP!  email me or facebook me or comment any advice you have!

Busy Bee...

I've been crocheting more than ever since moving down here...it helps that I taught a few friends here how to crochet (at their request) and now it's the thing to do when we get together.  So far I've made an afghan, a shawl, a cowl, a baby toque/mitten set, and the following is what I've made in the last few weeks:

Old Man slippers for Nathan...he loves them!

 A basket to hold a few of my balls of yarn.

 

Two baby hats...for nobody in particular, but they're fun to make and SO cute!

And my biggest project since moving down here...a hammock.  I had no pattern, so I have yet to see if it will actually hold bodyweight.  I think it'll probably hold me, but I'm not so confident when it comes to anyone else!

(Sorry about the quality of the pictures...I took them last night after sundown and it's really hard - impossible? - to get good lighting inside at night.  I did want to give you an idea of what I've been making these days though!)