May 8, 2009

Happy Anniversary to Us!

On Monday, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We decided to take the day off and trekked to the zoo, one of our all time favorite places to go.

Here we are in the African Pavilion, which had been transformed into an oasis of orchids. The weather was perfect and the crowds were very minimal. We had an excellent day together wandering from exhibit to exhibit. We got to see ever animal we didn't get to see last time, and the ones that were sleeping last time were awake this time! The only lazy bones on Monday were the lions, but it was late afternoon by the time we got to that part of the zoo so I'm sure they were exhausted from a long day of being looked at by humans.

I've posted a few of my favorite zoo pictures (taken by both of us) to the Flickr album. More will be coming as soon as we weed through all 330 of them.

Mom and Aunt Gloria stayed over Sunday night after their weekend at Victory Junction Gang Camp. We had a good, but very short, time with them.

Friday afternoon (going through this past weekend in reverse order if you haven't noticed by now), we headed over to Reynolda Gardens to have a go around the nature trail since the afternoon was very pleasant and we both wanted to stretch our legs. I sneezed my head off the ENTIRE time, but still liked the walk very much. We took lots of pictures in the woods (it was very green) and took some pictures in the gardens too. This part of the season is sorta in-between for flowers. The spring flowers (tulips, daffodils, etc) are mostly gone, but the summer flowers (day lilies, roses, etc) haven't started blooming yet. All of the pictures from that little trip are in our Flickr album too.

In a few weeks, we'll be heading down to Charlotte for the Carquest Auto Parts 300 Nationwide Race. YAY! Fast cars! VROOOOM!!! Also another great place to take photos.

April 16, 2009

On Easter Sunday we headed over to Greensboro to visit the Natural Science Center. We saw lots of neat stuff, including TIGERS!! I took lots of pictures, and they're uploaded to our Flickr account.

Also check out the new pictures of my craft projects on the Jewelry page of Stylishly Crafty. I've been a busy bee. I even just finished with an attempt to marble some paper. It didn't work out too well. Out of about 10 attempts, only two pieces of paper came out looking like marbled paper. The rest looked like some kindergartner's messy fingerpainting page. OH well. I didn't have the right supplies so I was just winging it. My mom and I did a WONDERFUL job with a paper marbling kit when I was in middle school, but we had all the necessary supplies.

Today at lunch, since it was such a nice day, I snapped some pictures of the lovely garden on campus. Those pictures are on Flickr too. But here are a few of my favorites.

April 10, 2009

Happy Easter!

We haven't been up to much lately. The weather has been edging towards nice, though we have recently had some very chilly days. The past couple of days have been nice enough for me to get out to take some pictures of the pretty spring colors. I've uploaded a few flower pictures to the Flickr album. This set of pictures is the first that I've done some post-editing in photoshop. I didn't do any adjustments on the lighting, color, balance or anything fancy like that. I just framed the pictures a little better. It's amazing how a photo straight out of the camera can go from eh to wow with just a little crop work. Here are some examples:

Straight out of the camera:

Here is the photo cropped:

Straight out of the camera:

Cropped:

See the difference? The subject of the photo is a little more apparent. This bed of tulips is in front of one of the signs for our apartment complex. It happens to be at a busy intersection. I bet the people going by in their cars thought I was really weird there in a bed of flowers down on my knees with a camera. Enjoy the other photos in our Flickr album, and I hope we get to make some trips oot and aboot to take more pictures! I really hope we'll get to Grandfather Mountain sometime this spring. We're just waiting for a nice weekend to head off to the zoo. Plus we're going to the Nationwide race in Charlotte at the end of May.

I've been extremely crafty lately. Two co-workers gave me a TON of beads and stuff for my birthday. So far I've made four necklaces, a bracelet, and three purses. I need to get pictures of that stuff to add to my crafty page.

March 2, 2009

March blew in like a lion. A big snowy lion.

Needless to say, with 3 inches of snow on the ground, I didn't have to go to work today! YAY! Three-day weekend. I don't have to go to work until 10am tomorrow morning. The temperature stayed at or below freezing all day so most of the snow is still around or has turned to ice. For more pictures, see our flickr album!

February 27, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Today is my mom's birthday. Her best birthday present was having her last radiation treatment today. YAY!

This past Sunday was my birthday. Monday I came home after lunch and stayed home for the next three days with what I guess was the flu. I went back to work today. Ugh. It was awful. At least I wasn't stuffy and could breathe just fine. But I felt horrible and kept a fever for three full days. Now I sound like I'm trying to hack up a lung. I'm moderately better now. For the first day and a half I just sprawled in the recliner staring at the tv. I have no idea what I watched. My dear sweet loving husband took very good care of me.

I had a sunny little welcome when I got home from work this afternoon. Daffodils!

Maybe sunshine and warm weather are on their way! (Well...maybe after Sunday, when it's supposed to be cold and wintry again...bah)

February 16, 2009

It's finally February and it's time for Crazy NC weather! Two weeks ago this was the scene:

At roughly 4pm or so, it started snowing. By the time I got home an hour later, it looked like that. It stopped snowing by 6pm. We were the only school in the entire county that didn't have at least a 2 hour delay the next morning.

Last Wednesday, I had lunch outside with no socks on.

Today, I saw a few random snow flakes flutter by my window around 10:30am.

I either want a foot of snow or 70 degrees and sunshine. I'm tired of the in-betweeness!

HORRAY that race season has started! Now there will finally be something to watch on tv on Sundays!! YAY!

Jamie and I had a lovely Valentine's day. I made a superb Chicken Parmesan that got the following comment: "This is better than they have at Olive Garden."

January 20, 2009

My favorite antique in our place is a cabinet that is probably at least as old as my grandpa, maybe older. The cabinet lived in the pantry of my great-grandma's (Grandpa's mother) house. When she passed away and the family was divi'ing up furniture from her house, I asked if I could have this plain jane cabinet. At the time it was white and I think the inside was painted green, but maybe I'm imagining that part and the inside was actually white too. But anyway. It was such a unique little piece and I wanted it. Mom kept it for me until I got my first apartment. Then she painted it for me to go along with the decor I was using for my kitchen/dining room theme at the time. Here's what it looked like:

Jamie and I have slowly been moving our kitchen colors away from pinks and purples to bolder, autumn colors. I didn't especially want to repaint the cabinet because it would take a lot of time and I had no idea what to paint on it. Then I had a stroke of genius last night. I got a set of fall colored scrapbook paper for Christmas, and wondered if I could just tape the paper on the door's panels. Here's how that turned out:

I took six pieces of paper, trimmed them to fit the spaces, scalloped the bottom edge of three pieces, and taped them in place. I am rather pleased with the outcome. I do keep wondering if I need something to go on the top paper in each panel, like a diamond or an oval in a different color. For now, it's going to stay like this.

Update on the family: Mom had her last chemo treatment on December 23. I think I forgot to mention that. This past week she started her round of radiation therapy. She will go for treatment five days a week for six weeks. Luckily the radiation place is close enough to where my grandparents go for their rehab that she gets to ride with them three days a week. But the treatment isn't horribly long or draining on her system, so she drives herself the other two days. My poor broken Mema is on the mend. Mom said Mema actually walked a full two miles last week at rehab.