Flower Tragedy

Today was the first time in a long while that I felt compelled to bust out my sunglasses. A lovely sunny day in good ol' Spokane. Out in my garden, I found some long-buried green shoots on some of the more robust of my perennials (so robust, in fact, that these babies aren't even planted in the ground and are still revving to go).

Mystery Perennial

To celebrate this beautiful spring-like day, I decided to treat myself with a flower. While at the market I spied a bucket full of gorgeous orangey-pink roses and just couldn't resist.

Rose and Winter Grass

Rose in the Sunshine

While basking in the rare rays of sunlight, I leaned over to inspect a tenacious pansy, and...Disaster!

Tragic

My poor rose broke off just below the bloom. So much for my visions of the flower's long stem gracefully arcing along the curve of my favorite vase. A bit broken hearted I trudged into the house to see if I could salvage the situation. I knew no amount of crazy glue could undo the damage I had wrought to the poor vascular system of my rose, but I still had my bloom and was determined to display it!

Rose in Glass Teapot

It is not exactly what I had in mind when I bought it, but this little pop of orange in my living room still makes me smile.


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PS. I have also found that the discarded stem makes a great cat toy! yay for looking on the bright side. Don't worry, there are no thorns.

Monty with Stem

Dreaming in Color

Just when we thought winter's deep freeze was settling in, we got a glorious reprieve in the form of a warm front. This last week we had temps consistently over freezing, and even enjoyed a beautiful cloudless day around 50 degrees. Dr. H and I used this warm spell to begin running together. To be honest, I do a lot of walking on my "runs". But that's okay! I've got over 3 months to get up to 12K to be ready to run in the annual "Bloomsday" race. And even then, if I feel like walking a bit, that's fine. I'm not competing after all...
Now the cold weather has returned, and we have a fresh dusting of snow on the ground. It is beautiful, but I am missing the greenery. I have an amaryllis bulb just beginning to sprout some leaves. With any luck I will have a beautiful flower up and blooming long before spring thaw.

Beer Making and Butt Kicking

Dr. H is already making his second batch of home-brew, and the house smells sweet and yeasty. Part of the brewing process requires cooling the wort (basically beer tea) down really quickly before you can pitch the yeast. Luckily, we have an abundance of snow outside our door to aid in this cooling process. Here is a picture of me in my super-cool snow gathering outfit.

note the cool rain boots

In other news, I'm continuing on my campaign-to-make-muscles-sore, and have been snowshoeing and running in the past two days. I'm feeling pretty good about myself, I must say. On the agenda for the rest of the day: reading. I have about a hundred books checked out from the library, and they are saying they want them back. So I better crack some pages and get to work.

Thanks a lot New Years resolutions!

Yesterday I decided to kill two resolutions with one stone, and join a meet-up group for some outdoor fun. This outdoor fun was snowshoeing, and boy was I not ready for the intensity of this casual "little hike". Did you know that snowshoeing in powder, in hilly terrain while using poles can burn as much as 680 calories an hour for a person my size? Well, I hiked for four hours yesterday. So now I am officially skinny :) And SORE! Honestly, I am finding it very difficult to do simple activities: like walking. Unfortunately, I can still manage to eat, so this skinny feeling will not last too long. This soreness is also making it difficult for me to keep another of my resolutions: getting good at snowboarding. Ah well...it is raining and above freezing outside, so snowboarding probably wasn't going to happen today anyway. There is always tomorrow though!

Resolutions

How unique of me to decide to kick of this year with some resolutions. Truly a novel idea. My only claim to originality is that I am not making resolutions for the whole year. History shows us that most resolutions end up being very short lived- so, I am only going to make short term resolutions. I am hoping that by putting these up on here, I will give myself some accountability. It is easy enough to blow off a promise made to myself, but it is bit more difficult to blow off a promise made with other people's knowledge. So here goes:

Short-term resolutions 2011

1. Renew my yoga practice (or...since yoga is expensive, renew working out to pilates video)
2. Get better at snowboarding
3. Make it out of the house at least once a day. Harder than you may think when I don't have anywhere that I HAVE to be, it is freaking freezing, and the roads are crap.
4. Start a worm bin :)
5. Do one thing out of my comfort zone.
6. Learn one song on the banjo
7. Go to at least 1 meet-up group.
8. Go to the winter farmers market more often

 Longer term goals

1. Get our finances in order (ie pay off all credit card debt. Shouldn't be too hard once I get a freaking pay check.)
2. Grow a huge veggie garden
3. Create a great composting system

That's all I can think of for now. It is only January, and I am already itching to get back outside and work in my garden. The kitchen and my taste buds having been missing fresh veggies. Ah well... I'll console myself by making some delicious winter stew.

In Conclusion...

I awoke this morning to snow covered trees, a bright blue sky, and frigid temperatures. It is 3 degrees outside right now, and that is officially the coldest temp I have ever experienced (for now). As Dr. H left for another 30 hour shift today, he said, "Happy last day of 2010." This got me thinking,  "What did I do in 2010?" While the whole world is focusing on what they want the upcoming year to be like, I would like to take a few minutes to reflect on what has happened in my little life this past year.

2010 in a nutshell:

Dr. H and I lived in Portland, OR;  Orange County, CA; Atlanta, GA; and Spokane, WA all in 2010.

We drove up and down the West Coast, visiting Napa wine country, Monterey Bay, Portland, Seattle and finally Spokane.

We traveled all over Western Europe, Spent a couple of weeks in NYC, visited friends in Boston, and looked for bears in Glacier National Park.

Dr. H graduated from Medical School

I earned my Masters degree

We grew our family with the addition of Monty the cat.

I went both skiing and snowboarding for the first(ish) times ever.

I both applied for, and got in to graduate school, and made the difficult and very grown-up decision not to attend.

I grew my first vegetable garden, and made plans for big improvements on this years garden

I wrote a bunch of songs, painted some pictures, and did a ton of crafting this year

I helped put on Dr. H's big graduation/birthday bash

I helped organize a major fund-raising event for a local environmental group

I searched and searched for a job, and when I found out the job I want doesn't exist here, I went out and made myself a position.

***"Designed the landscape plans for my aunt's back yard and did some very heavy duty construction projects like; rototilling, rock wall building, flower bed building, tree planting, sod laying, flagstone path making, and slate floor tiling" :) Thanks Aunt Molly

All in all, 2010 has been a pretty full year. Now I just need to figure out an appropriate way to celebrate the closing of this year, and the dawning of the next.

What were some some of the major events of your year?

Back to Real Life

The family has departed, Dr. H is at work, and I have chores on my agenda. It is back to normal ladies and gentlemen. Too normal in fact. I will be spending this lovely winter day getting my trunk fixed down at the local Honda dealership. Boo. The stupid thing won't stay stay closed. There are few things I dislike more than getting my car fixed, so to make up for having to spend my day waiting around for my car, I plan to treat myself to something warm, liquidy, and sweet.

Belated Weekend

My weekend in brief:  Busy, Physically demanding, Crowded, Tasty and Cleanly. This weekend was a whirlwind of activity. Dr. H had his golden weekend (a whole weekend off. gasp!) and we used this time to complete our holiday shopping, get our gifts wrapped and in the mail to friends and family in distant lands, go snowboarding (my first time. LOVED IT), bottle our first batch of beer, and bake up some super cute gingerbread houses. To glue the houses together I used Rachel's brilliant idea from over at HeartofLight. It was definitely a bit scary, but those suckers are stuck for life! Fun Fun Fun~ Last night we had a couple of friends over to decorate the gingerbread houses. It was so much fun, and the houses all came out so cute!

 And because our house is patrolled by a hungry kitty, our houses have to spend most of the time safely hidden inside the oven. What a lovely display case.

 Now my house is clean and trimmed, I'm redonkulously sore, and I have a nice pot of mushroom leek soup simmering on the stove for dinner. I'm digging this domestic DIY holiday.

Goodbye Snowman

Tragic, isn't it?

O Christmas Tree

This big guy was too cute not to take  home with us. I'm a sucker for tall, gangly men, er... trees!

I love how sparse this tree is. It brings a very woodsy feel to my house.  It is an alpine pine, and was harvested from below power lines. Usually the areas below power lines are basically clear cut, and the trees are discarded and left to rot, or are harvested for firewood.  Most Christmas Trees come from tree farms, and a few are thinned out of overgrown forests. Taking trees from under power lines was a new idea to me, and it seems like a pretty inspired one.

I also found a bunch of new (to me) ornaments from a cute antique store.  Bonus: they are made of wood so my crazy cat cannot break them! Not the best pictures, but you get the idea.