abandoned

I have not been feeling the wordpress vibe lately, hence the lack of posts here.  I think I’ve found myself a new home, so come visit me!

http://snippetsofmb.tumblr.com

Hope to see you there!

 

not ready!

Today is January third, and this is what my grocery store looks like. Too soon for me!

 

huh. blog.

Oh, right.  I have a blog!  Considering I last posted over a month ago, I apparently had forgotten.  Hi, blog friends (Jenny!).  How are y’all doing?

December was a pretty good month for my family.  I feel much better.  I’m pretty sure this is directly related to the fact that I’ve found more jobs to apply to, and thus feel more productive with my time.  Justin also had a week off, so it was really nice to hang out with him.  So, what else have I been up to?

I got some pretty awesome Christmas gifts,

Had some delicious Christmas Eve dinner with my family,

Hot pot is AMAZING, and I will cut anyone who disagrees. I did have a lovely Christmas with my in-laws as well, but did not take any photos of that.  Oops.

And cooked some fun dishes.

top: roasted butternut squash pasta, bottom: bacon fried rice

My cats enjoyed the life also, preferring Christmas present packaging to their catnip mice gifts, and generally lounging while being fat and lazy.

bed was also a Christmas gift to the cats.  Sadly, only one likes it. 

I had a good time seeing friends (like this girl and her beautiful baby!) and eating waaaaay too much.

pork belly hash and gigantic biscuit from The Blue Pig.  deliciousness.

I did have time to make some adorable Christmas presents too.

And of course, I HAVE to add the gratuitous adorable niece photo.  SO CUTE!  I am sad we did not get to see her this holiday season.

We sent the new year out with a bang, celebrating with friends.  Clearly, to celebrate the new year, we (well, Z did it.  I filmed.) had to saber open a champagne bottle.

Yes, that is me going “yeah!” at the end of the video.  Shut up.  It was awesome.

Hope your holidays and new year celebrations were fun!  The real blog absence reason is I’m not sure where this blog is going.  I’ve felt very little urge to write in it lately, but I am not sure if that’s a function of where I am in life, or that I really don’t like the blog anymore.  I hope to figure that out.  I’m sure everyone will miss photos of my cat though.  I promise I am only kind of a crazy cat lady, even though I took up knitting.

 

on slowing down

I have less to talk about on this blog than I did before.  Life’s just a lot slower when you are unemployed.  We are working with less than we had before, and while it is working just fine, it’s definitely a quieter life.  We don’t go out to eat, and we don’t do as much as we did before, purely because it’s less expensive for us to hang out at home.

That’s not to say I’m not enjoying it.  I think it’s been a really good time for us to slow down.  Life was a little too hectic.  I often found myself just hoping to get through the next few weeks of activities, and just to survive it all.  With a mindset like that, time just flies by and when you stop to take a  breath, you wonder where it all went and why you didn’t savor it more.  I think that’s something I was really missing in my life; the awareness to enjoy the moments instead of looking forward to the next thing.

I feel I’ve been able to enjoy time with my husband better, to enjoy my house, to enjoy time with my cats, and to enjoy seeing family more.  I think those things often fell by the wayside when I was trying to get ahead at work, or sacrificing relaxation/unwinding time to see friends every weekend day.  I feel a lot more centered lately, and I’m betting it’s because I’ve been able to slow down.  It’s nice.  I hope I’ll be able to hold onto this when I return to working.

 

it’s like i’m turning 85

I mentioned in my last post that I have used this period of downtime to teach myself how to knit.  It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.  I attempted to learn to crochet a few years ago and that never worked out for me.  I really enjoy knitting though, and it’s been a lot easier than crocheting.  I taught myself by watching YouTube videos.  It’s been really fun!  I showed the dog sweater I made in my last post.  This weekend, I made my first attempt at knitting with double pointed needles, and managed to knit a cute owl.

I really like the way he turned out!  I’m working on learning to knit these little stuffed animals.  They are a popular art form in Japan, where the art of knitting or crocheting little stuffed toys is called amigurumi.  I find a lot more patterns for crocheted amigurumi than I do for knitted, but so far I’m sticking to the knitting.  I may dig out my crochet hooks at one point and make another go at it to see if I can make cute little stuffed animals.

All I need is a bunch more cats and I can officially be 85 years old.

 

brain dump, in no particular order

1.  Apparently, when I go a month with daily prompts to share I forget to look at my blog when it’s over!  I had a lot of fun during the October photo challenge.  I always want to share more what I see every day.  Lately, though, since I’m still not working, it consists of a lot of pictures of my cats.

see?

2.  I got myself a pretty new toy!

Yep, I am a proud owner of the new iPhone 4s!  It’s amazing, for sure.  It is so much faster than the 3Gs I was rocking, and the 8mp camera is awesome.  I take a lot of photos on my cell phone.  Siri is fun too.  I’m actually using the calendar on my phone these days, since scheduling on it is so easy.  Having to type appointments usually made me steer clear on my old phone.

3. Halloween was fun!  We had a bunch of little kids.  We passed out a few full sized candy bars, then switched to the fun sized stuff.  I’d estimate we had around 60-70 trick or treaters?  No punk-ass teenagers showed up with no costumes, which is good.  I would only give candy to older kids that showed up with a costume.  When the trick or treaters are older, I firmly believe that no costume = no candy.  Effort must be made!  Oh, I also loved our pumpkins this year!

heehee

4. I’m starting to get antsy.  However, I have no idea where I am supposed to start in order to remedy this.  It’s been a long time since I job hunted or interviewed.  I am pondering a lot of possibilities, so hopefully one of them pans out.

5.  I’ve been learning to knit while I am full of free time.  It’s actually been really fun!  So far, I’ve made a few scarves, and a doggy sweater.

made for my friend’s dog Sebastian

The doggy sweater was probably the most fun to make.  Scarves just take a long time and they get boring after awhile.  I modified a pattern I found on Ravelry.com to make the sweater.  I am considering whether he needs another one!  Next, I’m going to try to make a hat, and/or some amigurumi animals.  I’m liking the challenge of knitting projects.

 

it’s holiday card time!

It’s that time again!  Last year, I participated in Shutterfly’s holiday card promotion.  It was a lot of fun and I got to go through a ton of cute cards, which I love.  I don’t have a ton of friends that send out holiday cards.  They are so much fun, especially photo cards.  The ones I receive get put on the console table in our family room to look at all Christmas.  I’m also the kind of person who has a hard time getting rid of photo cards.  Justin has so far been very good about getting them out of the house after the holiday season is over.

I think this year, we may go with a simple one photo card.  Last year’s card was hilarious, though.  I don’t have one anymore, but it had a photo of Justin and me on vacation in Hawaii, and a photo of the cats wearing holiday gear.  Stella wore a Santa hat, and Ruben wore a red and white scarf.  They looked SO mad in the photo.  It was hilarious.  I have found some contenders for this year’s card.

This card really spoke to me.  For some reason I really love the modern-looking pinecone design.  I have the perfect photo for a card of this orientation.  The nice thing too is that on most Shutterfly cards, you can put a small photo and a message on the back of the cards too!  That’s really nice if you have a hard time deciding between photos, or can’t find a good card that’s the proper photo orientation.

This one is so cute!  It could have something to do with the cute girl on the card already though.  I like the simple lines and the colorful happy holidays greeting on the card.  I also like that it lets the whole photo show through underneath the words!  That is fun.

I love that snowman!  I like how the edge of the blue box is done to look kind of like a stamp too.  This one would fit a fun photo from our travels this year nicely.

I found this one last minute.  I just love the wreath and bird design.  The card really looks like it has such personality.  I have had a thing for wreaths lately, so that might have something to do with it.  I think this card could really be the one this year!

What do you think?  Do you like any of the designs best?  Which do you think I should pick?

***As it was last year, this is essentially a sponsored post, as I am participating in Shutterfly’s current blog promotion.  Bloggers who participate can receive 25 free holiday cards. Shutterfly is great; I’ve used them for everything from photo holiday cards to vacation books!***

 

 

 

october photography challenge: the rest of them

Determined to finish!  One day late isn’t too bad right?

Day 25: something pink

Day 26: close-up

Day 27: from a distance

Day 28: flowers

Day 29: black and white

Day 30: self-portrait

fin.

This was fun!  I started to get stumped near the end, but I’m glad I finished.  I did skip the long exposure because I couldn’t find a thing to shoot.  I may try that one later.

 

october photography challenge, days 20-24

Day 20: bokeh

look!  tiny sunflare too!

The photo is of our beautiful Japanese maple in the backyard.  The tree almost died when the other tree fell on our house.  It’s looking kind of scraggly now.  It used to be such a beautiful tree, so I’m hoping it recovers soon.

Day 21: faceless self portrait

Day 22: hands

Husband loves video games, but doesn’t get to play much.  Weekends he likes to play for awhile.  Currently, he’s playing Forza 4, which is kinda fun because I get to see fun cars.  The graphics are so advanced on this edition that the cars look almost real.

Day 23: sunflare

This was the best sunflare I could get.  The sun peeked out today so I ran outside with the camera (after googling “how to photograph lens flare,” of course).  It’s kind of pretty.  The salvia is the last flower left in my garden.

Day 24: animal

This is how my cat took a nap the other day.  Superman!

Challenge here

 

portland food carts: the ramen truck and whiffies

It’s no secret that I love the Portland food cart culture.  When I was working, I worked near one of the largest pods in downtown Portland, and I would visit the carts pretty frequently for lunch.  There are plenty of carts not in the downtown pods though, and sometimes on weekends Justin and I will venture out to sample them.

It’s also no secret that I love ramen, despite discovering the joys of it only a few years ago.  Again, not that crap that comes in packets for eight cents, but the real stuff, with delicious broth and handmade noodles.  I’ve been on a quest to try all available ramen in Portland ever since I moved up here.  When I heard that a food cart had opened that specialized in ramen, of course I had to try it.

The Ramen Truck was tucked away behind a store in a back parking area off of Hawthorne, at 33rd.  33rd is actually a small alley, so we kind of drove through looking for it.  The broths available are tonkatsu, garlic tonkatsu, and peri peri, which is their new spicy one.  Justin and I tried the garlic tonkatsu broth, with the handmade noodles, seaweed, green onion and chashu (braised pork).  We each added some corn and a hard boiled egg (an extra 50 cents and $1, respectively).

I was actually kind of disappointed.  The noodles seemed like they were homemade, but they were probably overdone, as they were way too squishy.  The broth too was just not good to me.  It tasted like it was thickened with cornstarch, which I didn’t enjoy.  The broth consistency reminded me of egg flower soup from Chinese restaurants that is thickened with cornstarch.  I didn’t end up finishing my order.  Additionally, the bowl was really small!  We paid extra for the bigger portion, but that bowl pictured there is much smaller than a ramen portion size that I am used to.  We were glad to try this cart, but we probably won’t be driving back to the east side to eat there again.

Since neither of us was full after ramen, we stopped by another pod at 12th and Hawthorne and got some hand pies from Whiffies.  Justin had a bbq beef with mozzarella pie, and I had a chicken pot pie.  Both were excellent!  I would definitely go back to Whiffies.  They also had sweet pies in addition to savory pies.

We really like trying new things by visiting the carts.  It’s too bad we live in the ‘burbs and don’t get to try them more, but most are delicious!  And I should know better than to cheat on my gluten-free diet, but it was tasty.