First Ski Trip

As is wont to happen from time to time, some of my big plans for yesterday did not get realized. The large amount of snow fall prohibited our seeing a movie (we would have to venture down our steep slick hill), and we never found a sled to take out. We did work out, clean the house, make a fabulous meal and trek over to a nearby store in search of Christmas lights. The plan for today, however, will not fail! We are going skiing! This is my first time out on skis, and I am very excited. My hope is that I spend most of the day skiing, and only part of the day falling. Luckily for me, there is a ton of new powder on the mountain, so if I do fall a lot, well at least it will be a relatively soft landing. I'll report back later to tell you all how sore and bruised I am :)

Home

After a whirlwind trip to Southern California to visit with our friends and families, Dr. H and I are restored to our calm, wintry abode in Eastern Washington.  We had a wonderful time getting to visit with everyone, and enjoyed to food, company and festivities of two family Thanksgivings. While we were down soaking up some 40-50 degree weather (I was still cold all the time), poor Spokane was going through a serious cold snap. I am happy to report that our little trip excused us from some nights of negative degree weather. We also missed a blizzard, and have returned to a winter wonderland! There is at least a foot of snow coating this whole region, and we are putting our Subaru to the test on our unploughed streets. "They" also say to expect another 5 inches to fall tonight.  Fun! In this post-card perfect land of ice and snow, I am finding it easy to get into a holiday mood. Tomorrow we plan to sled, cook, go see a movie, and start our decorating. I love this time of year!

Vacation Time

Today was the first official day of our vacation, and it was fabulous! We went snowshoeing on Mt. Spokane, then treated ourselves to some holiday drinks at the dreaded Sbucks (2 for 1! I love you!) We then came home to shower, pack and ready the house (and our cat) for our extended absence as we fly off to Southern California (no it's not SoCal. Actually it is NEVER SoCal) for Thanksgiving. We're both very excited to get to see our family and friends, and we know that this trip is going to be way too short. If you are reading this and are only now learning that we will be back in town, don't feel bad, just call me! Or text, or email.  In fact I have a list of people I fully intend to call as soon as we touch down. (I fully intended to call before today, but somehow the days have gotten away from me)
In any case, we hope to see you soon! And if you are not near California (Mom and Dad) I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Eat some scrumptious food, enjoy a game or a James Bond marathon (or a terrible ABC family movie), and relish your luck at getting to spend time with good people. These are all things I am looking forward to, and things for which I am thankful. 

Snow I'm Not Kidding!

This morning I was roused out of my peaceful slumber by Dr. H yelling, "Snow!" in the other room. In my dreamy state, I thought he was yelling, "NO!" and I imagined the horrors our cat Monty must have committed to elicit such a big reaction that early in the morning. Luckily, Monty had only misbehaved a little in the night, and Dr. H was excited, not angry. There were a good 2-3 inches of powdery wintry precipitation covering the world outside my window, and it stayed there until around 10:30 this morning when it got a bit warmer and the stuff started to melt.

I have known since we moved here that we live on a hill (yes I am observant!), but until this morning I didn't really realize how much of an elevation gain there is between my house and the city at the bottom of the hill. This fact came to light today when I drove from our snowy abode down the hill where the snow abruptly stopped. There was nothing on the ground, and I was the only car coated in snow. I actually got a few looks from other drivers ostensibly wondering where this all came from. So increased snowfall is another reason to like living on a hill.

Art Projects Galore!

Oh the weather outside is frightful! But I'm cozy inside by my fireplace with my new sewing machine, and a bunch of art supplies. When it is cold and rainy outside, what's a girl to do but craft? Some of these crafts can be found in my etsy shop (check out the tab on the right!), and some are for my own personal use. There is a shocking lack of sewn projects so far, but I have a "get to know my new machine" sewing class later this week, so I'm sure to have some fun sewn project up after that. Today I decided my little crafting nook needed some brightening up, and so I painted this:

I bought a paint sharpie especially for this painting, since i love the cartoonish-quality outlining gives.
What do you think?

First Snow and Holiday Boutique

This morning the residents of Spokane awoke to gently falling flakes of snow. In our house at least, this is happy news. I love the snow. It is only 8am, and the thermometer is hovering right around 30 degrees, so I know this snow won't last. But there is something so romantic about watching if fall. This also creates the perfect wintry backdrop for some holiday crafting I have been doing. I'm about to launch my holiday craft boutique at Autumn's Fancy Etsy! Can you feel the excitement?!

Homemade/homegrown pizza

Last night we used the very last of this season's crop of tomatoes to top our delicious homemade pesto pizza. These tomatoes I picked and brought inside when just barely pink-ish. They slowly ripened inside the house away from killing frosts, and I have to say they were delicious! If we have a super short growing season again next year, I am definitely going to bring in all the slightly pink tomatoes before the first frost.

This pizza was made using the following dough recipe (which is basically this recipe with a couple of tweaks)

Pizza Dough
Makes 1 large pizza (size of a cookie sheet)
Oven temp 400 degrees F
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes

1 cup warm water
1 .25 oz packet active dry yeast (.25 oz = 2 1/4 tsp)
2 tsp sugar

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

 extra olive oil to oil pan, and semolina flour to coat bottom of pan

In a small bowl mix warm water, sugar and yeast. Stir until no clumps of yeast remain. Let proof for around 10 minutes, or until mixture looks creamy. Add olive oil.

In a large bowl, or in a mixer, add flour and salt. Pour in liquid mixture, and mix until dough pulls from the sides of the bowl. Add a bit of oil to the bowl to keep the dough from sticking, and cover with a warm damp towel.

Make sure to set your dough in a warm spot to rise. I set mine next to my fireplace, because the rest of the house was too cold! Let rise to about double it's original size. This will take around 30-40 minutes.

Roll out dough. I rolled mine out directly onto the oiled cookie sheet. When rolled out to around the right size, pull dough off and coat pan with semolina flour. Return dough to pan and press around the edges to fit the dough to the pan.

Add whatever toppings (we added homemade pesto, tomato slices and fresh mozzarella)
Bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes, or until edges are golden brown.

Enjoy!

Sewing and Caffeine

I bit the bullet and bought my new sewing machine last night. ~LOVE~ So...this morning I spent my time sewing up a couple of wallets and drinking too many cups of coffee. Seriously, I have the caffeine shakes! I looked up around noon-thirty, and realized I hadn't eaten anything yet. I had, however, downed something like 4 cups of coffee. Woah! That's a lot for me, especially on an empty stomach. I'm feeling better now and am getting ready to do the other two things on my list for the day: go on a walk, and finish raking up all these pesky leaves. But first I figured I would post on here to give you all a little taste of what I am making. Cutesy pink wallets! You like?

The thermometer is hovering around 30 degrees this morning, and a thin layer of frost is coating the world outside my window. On mornings like this I am grateful to be able to snuggle up inside my house with a cup of coffee and a book. My reading material of choice today is "Three Cups of Tea"by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I am not going to offer a true review of this book; but I will say that if you are at all interested in education, mountain climbing, Middle Eastern politics, or philanthropy, then this is a book you should read.
In other news, I'm on a sewing machine hunt today. I found a little shop here that specializes in Bernina sewing machines (aka extremely fancy machines), and they sell used machines! I'm going to go check it out to see if I could possibly get a high-end machine at a low-end price. I'm really interested in getting a machine that will last for a long long time. I'll definitely be more willing to get a machine serviced if I know it is worth more than the cost of servicing. I also have some more work to do out in the yard (darn those pesky leaves), and I have a nice clean canvas prepped and ready for my brushes. Yay!

Great Sewing Machine Drive!

Well.... it had to happen someday, but I was hoping it wouldn't come so soon. My sewing machine is kaput. More accurately, it has lost its ability to sew even stitches without eating the fabric. Sew.... (haha get it?) I guess I'm getting a new machine. In order to make this purchase possible, I have a proposition for you: for a mere $25, I will make you one of these beautiful and functional wallets. I have a variety of fabrics and colors to choose from in my fabric stash, and should you have a specific color request, I can always go out and buy some more fabric to make your order. All I need is for 4 people to decide that they can't live without this wallet. With only 4 orders I will be able to purchase  

a rather mediocre machine that will enable me to make fabulous stuff! Or, if I decide to just go ahead and buy the better machine I'm drooling over, 4 orders will help make the decision to spend more relatively painless. AND you get a beautiful wallet. Seriously, I carry around both of these, and I get tons of compliments.

So.... let me know what you think!
P.S. Here is (soon to be) my new sewing machine.  I'm super excited. If you are in the market, this machine is almost identical to the Janome DC2010, and it is fabulous!

Lazy Sunday

It is a cold and drizzly day here in the great Inland Northwest. The leaves are falling as steadily as the rain, and the trees will probably all be bare by Wednesday. We are actually expecting a little dusting of snow later this week, and I have to say, I'm looking forward to it. Dr. H just finished one of his more strenuous rotations, and we are enjoying the first full weekend we have had together in a while. Yesterday we raked all the leaves in our yard into a couple of huge piles, only to have the ground covered almost immediately with more leaves. We are telling ourselves that by raking what was down yesterday while it was dry, we saved ourselves some heavy work. I don't know if it is true or not, but it makes us feel better. Actually raking leaves was pretty fun. We took a ton of pictures, and jumped in the piles when we were done. There is something comforting in the earthy smell of a pile of leaves. If I could have been assured that I wasn't jumping into a big pile full of spiders it would have been even more fun.

Boo!

I am frustrated. My darling sewing machine has decided that it is fun to break the upper thread and eat my fabric every ten inches or so. I have tried adjusting the tension and all the other trouble shooting things I could think of, but alas, it is still misbehaving. I guess I am just going to have to take it in to get serviced. It is really a bummer too, because I am finally back in a crafting mood.

The other day I made this lovely little piece of paper crafting genius.

This art form is commonly called Scherenschnitte meaning, you guessed it, paper cutting. The English translation (according to some online translator) is literally "shearing cuts". I guess it is probably closer to "scissor cuts". However you say it, this art form is fun, challenging, and creates some beautiful simple art. It is also the cheapest craft I like. All I need is paper and an exacto blade. So since my sewing machine is on the fritz, I guess I will be scherenshnitte-ing for a while.

Ski Swap, Halloween and Sore Muscles.

So this post is basically a little weekend update. In my last post I bragged about being up (comparatively) early, and going to yoga. The thing about yoga is, I haven't hadn't gone to a class in a little over a year. While I was pleased to discover that I was pretty much able to keep up with the class while we were there, I was totally unprepared for how sore I would be afterward. I mean OH- MY- GOODNESS! I am sore in places that I didn't even realize I had muscles to get sore: like on my ribs. It is kind of good to be sore though. It reminds me that I did some real work!

In addition to yoga on Saturday, Dr. H and I went to the annual Spokane Ski Swap. This is a very cool event. How it works is this: people sell their old ski/snowboard equipment to the swap on Friday, then the swap opens on Saturday and Sunday and re-sells all that stuff at great prices. Dr. H and I both got outfitted with downhill skis, boots and poles for less than $80 each, and I got a snowboard and boots and bindings for $50! Unheard of! We also got ourselves some snowshoes, so bring on the snow! Since I am still looking for work, this expenditure is a bit stressful for me, but I'm calling it Christmas come early, and it makes me feel a little better.

And finally, Halloween.  It is officially interview season for medical students and residency programs, and Dr. H's residency plans "get-to-know-you" dinners the night before every interview day. Last night was our first. I refuse to give up the opportunity to get dressed up for Halloween, so I went to this dinner dressed as a talking doll. My costume was complete with pull string, and I have to say I felt pretty cute.

Hurray for Holidays!