Christmas Decor

Before it is too late for me do so, let me post my favorite pictures of our Christmas spirit in Judd Haven!


The Noel Train is one of my childhood decorations. When my sister and I took our leave from the proverbial nest, we were allowed to choose a small handful of favorite Christmas decorations to take with us. This is one of mine. :)


Since Pippin can't seem to help but get himself into trouble, we opted out of a buying a Christmas tree--what, so the cat could knock the whole thing over? So he could break ornaments and hurt himself while we were away at work? I don't think so!--and I came up with this alternative. Also, it was free, and Christmas trees are not.


And the other side of the windows...


Above my kitchen window.


My grandpa would have approved, I think. :)


You will want to click through on this one so you can see the entirety of my nerdiness come to life. I was inspired by this tutorial and kept going.

blanket forts

Early last week, Eric and I had a very unsettling day. I don't need to go into the details of that here, but for the sake of exposition, know that we had a gloomy day and by the end of it, we weren't sure what to do.

My idea? Make a blanket fort.

So we did just that, pulled a bunch of our living furniture together, quilted it up, and pulled in plenty of blankets and pillows and cushiness so we could shut out the world and forget about hurtful comments and unkind words. I can't remember everything we did that first night although I'm pretty sure we ate dinner inside the blanket fort and I know that we definitely played xbox.

Let it be known that there are few things in life that can make me forget about my worries more than a digital chainsaw used against digital zombies. Also, Eric and I make a pretty good zombie fighting team.

The only downfall to our blanket fort was Pippin, our beloved domestic shorthair, who could not understand that his weight would pull down the blankets if he ever attempted to cross over them. Which he did. Nightly. Occasionally, he tried to walk over the blankets several times a night, each time resulting in Eric and I having mini panic moments when the fort collapsed on top of us. Ok, maybe it was just me having the mini panic moments.

Last night, we finally caved and pulled the remains of the blanket fort down. We have yet to rearrange our living room back to the way it ought to be, but that's ok with us. Eric is currently napping on the blankets from the fort in the middle of the floor. I've been reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which is nothing like I expected it to be at all. And furthermore, it is making me crave coffee and sandwiches. Mmm...sammiches.

Christmas is around the corner. Hard to believe it's just five more days away.

Caroling, caroling through the snow...

This past weekend, Eric and I had the privilege of caroling with a group of friends for Kirkland's Tree Lighting Ceremonies. We spent four hours rotating from stage to stage in the downtown area, singing in the very cold weather. It was a lot of fun, we even got to sing in my hotel's lobby and in an art gallery and coffee shop, and then we got a free dinner at a local Greek restaurant as part of the deal. Woot!

Anyway, the Downtown Kirkland Association put together a little video on the event and they put our group as the musical background! You can see me in the little video clip thrown in the middle of the slideshow. Also, forgive that not quite high G at the end of the song. Both sopranos in the group (myself being one of them) are solid second sopranos, and after singing for that long in the cold, our voices just didn't quite hold out.



Either way, we all had a blast and got rave reviews. In fact, they've already asked us to come back and sing again for ambiance for holiday shoppers, only this time, they're willing to pay us. Cool, eh? No final details worked out, so who knows if it'll actually happen, but it was a really neat experience. :)

Side note: when picking songs to sing for these types of events, don't throw a socialist type song like Good King Wenceslas into the mix when singing to a very bourgeois crowd. I swear we got crickets every time...

Side note 2: everyone loved that we sang Carol of the Bells. EVERYONE.