Cute Art that I Love

I found these artists on apartment therapy. Love their happy spacey enthnic looking art!
APAK.

Fun Hat Day!

In order to make the holidays a little brighter under the flourescent lights and beige-y grey cubicle walls, our social committee and supervisors come up with raffles and competitions.

Today we have fun hat day! The winner gets Chipotle gift certificates. I hope I win.

Oh Fashion

Browsing fashion this week, I found some pants I love (rust colored, opposite a very interesting dress). I do own a pair of low slung wool pants with pleats, and have more recently acquired a skirt in a similar style, but I think I just can't get enough.
I also love most of the shoes in this series, and the multitude of bracelets.
A little scared of those haircuts, though... but of course, I love the hats.

Ideas for Winter

Winter doesn't always provide us with the easiest solutions for centerpieces or flower arrangements. Sticks and branches are fun, and there's the ubiquitous poinsettia, but between keeping the regular house plants happy (ours are forced into a small window sill that is too cold and they do not like it) and keeping christmas tree needles off the carpet, who has time to search for interesting flowers? When there isn't much inspiration on the walk from the house to the bus, and the weather pushes planting, dirt, or really anything alive, to the back of your mind, the ever pleasant bouquet gets lost.
Here is a fantastic idea that I think I will try as soon as I find a teacup and have a chance to run by Home Depot or Portland Nursery.

More Christmas

I've been complaining right and left that I don't really get Christmas this year because I only get the 25th off. I feel like Bob Crachit for goodness sake! Lame. This is normal for most people, I know, but I'm used to being in school and having Christmas break - time to bake cookies and make crafts and watch Christmas movies. So far all I've done is helped make one batch of cookies, watched the new A Christmas Carol (which was fantastically fabulous), and made Christmas cards. It's fun, but I'm just greedy. I'm like the opposite of Scrooge - MORE CHRISTMAS CHEER PLEASE! Anyway, it makes me a little crazy and Tiny Tim might not be down with my manic excitement about the season, so I'm trying to focus on the awesome Christmasy things I actually have gotten to do.
Such as... Gospel Christmas!
Tracy and I had a lovely time getting our soul on! Mmm. Yes, Jesus! Talk about passion and the birth of the Savior! (Also Christmasy is the Schnitz and getting dressed up for the freezing cold... I wish I had a picture of us all decked out.)

More Exotic

Nativity scenes have sheep, goats, camels... sometimes a pig or a donkey for variety. At The Grotto, while they don't have a live nativity, they do have a petting zoo near the nativity and it has more than sheep and donkies - they have a lama!

(They also have a lot of really cool lights, but I haven't emailed those pictures off my phone yet.)

Not Thriving

I'm a temp. It doesn't always feel like it, as I work the same hours, answer the same questions, and fulfill the same duties as the actual employees at my job. One of the main differences and drags of being a temp is that I do not have a permanent cubicle. I move around. That isn't all so bad, because I get to know more of the people I work with by moving around (and really get to know the ones who have vacated their desk for a day or a week by staring at their stuff all day). Some people are clean. Some people are messy. Some people are organized. Some people are creative. Some people have amazing talent with orchids. Some people are obsessed with their kids/grandkids.
Some people have really nasty weird plants. Or... one person does.


Who does this to their plans? Why??
It was gross and distracting. Thankfully I had a window at this desk so I wasn't so inclined to look at this poor plant all week.

Kick-Starting the Season

Decorations! Lights, candles, greens... Mmm... I love it.


Josh and I get a little shopping done early at the Rebuilding center.
And then Josh takes me to Cinetopia to see "A Christmas Carol" in 3D. Amazing!

To Get You in the Mood...

...for Christmas.
:D
The Nutcracker

(with beatboxing)

We Eat Meat

Steak is not something we eat often. And it's not something I really enjoy *that* much. But this? This was good.
Thanks to Lance, we had a lovely dinner of deer steak!

Well, at least it tastes good?

My toothpaste claims it offers "protection against acid attack": one more for the list of things I never should have had to worry about.

Medieval

My new reason to giggle (thanks to Kristin D and my insanely geeky English Stained Glass book from the library):


We like to call it "Jesus gets His rap fingers out"

Horticultural Update

Our spider plant continues to grow! It's arm is now rather threatening, or it would be if it weren't all covered in flowers.
Also please note my rather sad -but evident!- attempt at fall decorating (I also have a couple of chestnuts, acorns and oak leaves) and our beautifully growing aloe plant.

More Leaves...

A Walk in the Park

From our weekend walk around Laurelhurst.

Learning is Habitual

I don't know if it comes from being taught at home growing up, having been an English/Art History major where books, even novels, are a student's primary source of learning/education/homework/etc, or simply from having this be my first year after about 18 out of my 25 years of life where Fall was not synonomus with "Back to school", but I find myself unable to keep myself from rabid reading these days.
In the last couple of weeks I've read ravenously. Some of the speed that has gone in to reading these books has come, in part, from the fact that they are not all exactly sitting in the stacks at the library waiting for me to request them to be drug up from the depths (as is usually the case). We've had some things on hold for weeks that finally came - and then I was stuck in a long, non-library book I wanted to finish, so the race was on: finish the non-library book fast enough to be able to read the others, and make sure to read the last ones really fast since Josh had to read them all first, too. Crazy.
So, the last few books were read as follows:
Inkspell, C. Funke
A Monstrous Regiment of Women, L. R. King
The Case of the Late Pig, M. Allingham
A Wind in the Willows, Grahame
Birthing the Elephant, Abarbanel and Freeman
The Unlikely Disciple, K. Roose

Fog!

[I suppose I should mention that usually I can see not only these buildings in their entirety, but also the river and downtown.]

Organization, or Lack Thereof

Sometimes at work one of the supervisors walks around with a cart of seasonally appropriate healthy snacks. I took my banana and nutragrain bar and hot cocoa to my desk, drank the cocoa, and bagged the snacks.
Turns out its a good thing I did as the single breakfast food in our house this morning was morning star patties. I love them, but usually in conjunction with at least some other food. No eggs, no bread products, no cereal, no yogurt.
It appears Josh and I have forgotten to grocery shop recently I guess. Maybe we should get on that.

Fall Skies

Hooray! More Leaves

One

Sunrise is the One redeeming factor to getting up early.

My Favorite Time

Fall is my favorite time of year. I LOVE it, but have sadly not had the chance to really get out and enjoy it. I snagged a couple pumpkins from WinCo (real ones and candy ones), picked up a handful of chestnuts from across the street, and had to call it good. Hopefully I'll have a few new fall scented candles soon, and I grabbed a jug of cider from the store that I haven't been able to cook yet. (I did drink some Tuesday night when we hung out with Evan and Karen, though, which was fabulous!)

Fortuitously, the other day when I got off work and discovered Josh was going to be probably about an hour away from being able to pick me up, I took the opportunity to be outside and decided to walk to Trader Joe's. We were going shopping at some point anyway, so I figured I'd just meet him there.
About a thousand beautiful leaves and trees, a few streets I've never walked on, and 40 minutes later, I made it. Really could have used a bathroom somewhere along the way, though.
I wanted to share a few of the trees, but unfortunately, these pictures are pretty terrible. The leaves are incredible- the smell, the crunch, the color. These pictures don't even show that the sky was blue. Oh well, what can you do.

And, ps. I have become rather obsessed with this yogurt.

Work Work Work

I noticed last week that I haven't been blogging recently. I was bummed about it, but was too busy to do anything about it.
We've pretty much been working all the time.
But it's not all as serious as it sounds.
Here's a little snap shot of our first dance of the year:

Growing...

Our spider plant has grown a huge branch thing and now has a flower!

3-D!

Josh and I decided to go on a friend sponsored date last night. With leftover gift cards from the Drinnons and Tracy, we went to Olive Garden (we had been previously unaware of the $8.95 endless pasta bowl deal and are now enlightened) and to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". They rung us up and we were Shocked at the price, then even more shocked when the ticket guy gave us little plastic packages. Little geeky glasses? Yay! We accidentally chose a 3-D movie. And it was the most fun movie watching I've experienced in a LONG time. It was fantastic! Everyone should try it. Everyone probably has, I suppose... we are a little cheap and behind the times.