Beneath the Heather Lies the Meadowlark

I'm sure you all noticed the gap between the last post and the one before, but let me tell you, there is a reason for it.  My New Year's Resolution was to post more often on the old blog, and I've already slowed that down.  Not anymore, my friends!

The reason I've not been posting the last few weeks is that I was using my computer time to scour the internet for the perfect green dress to wear to Andrew and Juliana's wedding.  Nordstrom, Asos, Lulu's, Boohoo, Macy's, and Tobi, among many others.  It's been quite a process, but I've found several possibilities.

The four below are the ones I've already ordered.  As you can see, they all have similar characteristics: maxi length, a bluer shade of green, a light, summery fabric, and a bit of floral or lace detail.

Here are a few I haven't ordered yet, but like.  Upon further reflection, a wrap-style dress may be a good option, as it is more casual and summery, and might be a little more comfortable.  I'm also thinking that a more mid-length dress would be better for dancing.

Mom ordered several different dresses and jumpsuits as well.  We're planning to have a try-on party at my apartment this weekend to see if any of them work.  We may find something or we may just see what silhouettes work and which ones don't for the next round of ordering.  Stay tuned!

(photos collected from lulus, nordstrom, macys, asos, amazon, and tobi)

Completing the Christmas Saga

A few more events happened during the December timeline.  I hosted a cookie party at my apartment.  Mom, Dad, and Taylor came over one evening for festive cocktails and a bit of baking.  Mom and I manned the kitchen while Dad and Taylor sat at the table decorating.

It was a marvelous bake, as Mary Berry would say.  Later on that same week we decorated the Christmas tree at home.  It's always fun to get out the old favorites and put them right in the middle at eye-level so they can't be missed.  We even combined two classics: sledding drummer boy rafting down the tree!

We held a GH Works company gala down at Dewey's.  It was raining when we left so I pulled out my handy mini umbrella and Taylor put on his hood for the walk home while Mom and Dad got a ride from the Kirkwood Jitney.  It's meant to drive people from their cars to whatever Kirkwood destination they are headed, but they were happy to oblige a couple residents who don't live too far out of the downtown loop!

I completed a project commissioned by one of my work friends.  He had two big, old windows that he wanted painted with the houses of two of his family members, and beyond that he didn't really know what he wanted them to look like so I thought it would be neat to make them look like old greeting cards.

I started off with a little festive red cursive to add some color and get the spacing for the rest of the composition.  I decided to do a black line drawing of the houses and add a snowy white landscape around it.

The houses were difficult, but I drew an outline from the pictures he sent me on a piece of paper then put it behind the glass and used a paint marker to trace it on the final surface.  After using a sponge brush for the ground and trees, I added a little snow on the house roofs to bring it all together.  For the final touch, I used a poinsettia leaf dipped in white paint for a little textured, falling snow effect.  I think they turned out pretty good, and they were a fun little Christmas project to work on after finishing my tree.

And finally Christmas arrived.  I packed up an overnight bag and headed back home for a couple days.  We spent Christmas Eve with the Hunt side of the family, completing the traditional activities of drawing on the kids table and exchanging gifts white elephant-style.

We had a nice, leisurely Christmas morning, opening gifts while drinking coffee and examining our cool, new things.

Later that night, after cleaning the house and setting the table, we hosted Mom's side of the family for Christmas dinner.  Dad made a delicious orzo and crab cake dish, and we had another white elephant gift exchange, followed by a rousing Dollar game, which, as usual, Uncle Gary won.

And there you have it!  What a lovely Christmas season it was, and quite fun to go back through all the photos.  And fittingly, as today is the twenty-fourth, next Christmas is only eleven months away!

(photos by e.hunt)

Gopher's Not Going to Like This

We got the Christmas tree for Mom and Dad's house a few weeks before the big day.  We met up at our usual tree lot and roamed the rows of Balsam and Fraser Firs.

We found a couple good ones and Dad held them up to compare while a lovely sunset colored the sky behind us.

We found the one!  Dad and Taylor roped it to the top of the car and we raced the couple of blocks home to get it through the window and into the stand so we could enjoy the festive tree smell with dinner.

Later that week I came over again to put on the lights and view one of our Christmas favorites, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too.

Dad was whipping up some awesome crab cakes and a vegetable pasta medley, which turned into a test run for Christmas dinner.

The crab cakes were so fresh and delicious, and the pasta was so light and zucchini-filled, that we knew it would be perfect for our Christmas night dinner party.

After dinner I made a delicious decaf K-Cup and added a splash of Bailey's in preparation for that classic 1991 Christmas TV special, Winnie the Pooh.  This one isn't quite as well known as Rudolf, or Charlie Brown, but it's a great Christmas story, and quite quotable.  We had some troubles finding it on any of the streaming services, and since it wasn't on tv earlier in the season we didn't have it recorded, so we had to resort to a lower quality YouTube recording.

The one we found was a screen within the screen and had some animated, moving background so Mom ended up putting a blanket over that side of the screen so we could focus on our lovable woodland creatures and their hijinks.  And as always, we quoted Eeyore, Tigger, Rabbit, and Gopher for the rest of the Christmas season.

(photos by e.hunt)

Cafe Mochas and Little Poinsettias

I happened to have a Saturday off one of the weekends in December, which was a miracle because I work every Saturday the rest of the year, but Saturdays during holiday are all hands on deck!  Anyway, I took advantage of it by joining Mom, Debby, and Nana on a little trip downtown to this cool brunch place called Cafe Osage.

Housed in a charming old brick building with wrought iron details and big, multi-pane windows, it made for a lovely brunch.  Everyone ordered coffee and picked out something from the menu.  They had the classics, but with unique twists.  I ordered pancakes but they came with some strange homemade jam spread on top, which turned out to be pretty good.

Afterwards, we walked next-door to the conjoined shop that had all manner of gardening things, festive plants and pots to put them in, and other assorted books and trinkets.  After wandering around a bit and checking everything out, I settled on a cute little mini poinsettia that is still going strong, I might add.

(photos by e.hunt)

No, Mr. Bond, I Own the Club

Around mid-December, I went to my first Drury Alumni event, held at one of St. Louis' country clubs and complete with complimentary drinks, food, and valet parking.  A couple of my friends were going, and I was curious what one of these things would be like.  So I put on a festive outfit, completed the look with a longer wool coat, and was on my way to the club.

It was an interesting evening.  The crowd was mainly made up of elderly people and then about fifteen or twenty people in the recent-grad age group.  My old greek life advisor and her husband were the only middle-age representatives there.  Part of the reason for the event was to unveil a grand campus makeover, complete with several new buildings, making the center lifeline of campus, Drury Lane, a walking-only area, and updating many of the current academic buildings.

My friend Mindy and I were looking over some of the drawings for said revamp when a man who graduated in the sixties started talking to us about what Drury was like when he was there.  It was pretty interesting hearing about how different it was and then the conversation took an unusual turn.  He asked, "Now, did you all pledge?"  "Yes, we were both in Zeta," I answered.  It was only after his confused "Oh, that's nice," and quick exit that I realized that he meant pledge in the donate-money way, not the join-greek-life way.  Oh well, Mindy and I had a good laugh over it.  And there ends the story of my first Drury Alumni Event.

(photos by e.hunt, and collected from drury.edu)

Holiday in the Apartment

After a couple weeks worth of spending most of the evenings painting, I finished my grand Christmas Tree banner!  Remember Taylor's idea of adding some non-Christmas-y imagery to make it more me?  Well, I capitalized on that and had branches for all of my favorite nerd franchises.  There's Gandalf and Frodo leaving Bag End, the Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer Bumble putting the star on the tree, the animal conservatory behind my parent's house, the grandest Game of Thrones castle in the North, Winterfell, the Harry Potter Hogwarts Express chasing after the golden snitch, and Luke facing off against Darth Vader while the Millennium Falcon outruns a couple Tie Fighters in the background.

I had a lot of fun working on it and coming up with ideas and then converting them to match the overall style of the tree.  Doesn't it look great on the wall?!

The rest of my apartment got dressed up in the Christmas spirit as well.  And it snowed!  Taylor had to fulfill one of his tacked-on job requirements and go in to plow snow (on Christmas Eve, nonetheless), but it was so pretty and so nice to have a white Christmas.

(photos by e.hunt)

Hello Again

Welcome back, everyone, and happy 2018!  It's been over a month since I last posted, and it was a busy month, indeed.  Between hunting down Christmas gifts, several ongoing art projects, family Christmastime traditions, a few holiday parties, and exhausting holiday shifts at work, I did not have much free time.  I did take pictures throughout the month though, so get ready for some recap posts!

(photo by e.hunt)