Christmas, haircuts and the Louvre

I haven't blogged in a while. Christmas was rough this year. My boyfriend of almost 8 years broke up with me right before Christmas. I went home for a few days and got really sick on Christmas eve, which just ruined it all that much more. Yup, good times.

I didn't take many pictures from the holidays, being sick and all, but here is one of the fam:

Here are the Christmas cards I sent out this year. I'm really into making cards with fabric and paper and my sewing machine.


Oh yeah, and I made a baby blanket for my nephew. I'd originally planned to knit it, but ran out of time. It's the first quilt I've ever made. I made it based on one I had (and still have) when I was a little girl.
One of my Christmas presents was a garmin, so I took a little solo roadtrip to Minneapolis a few days ago. Remember that terrible haircut I had in August? Well, it was time for another haircut and I made a promise to myself that I would never get my hair cut in Wisconsin again. So I went to Moxie in Minneapolis. I'm pretty happy with it. Hurray for asymmetrical bangs!


But I didn't just go there for a haircut. The Institute of Art had some stuff on loan from the Louvre. The show ended yesterday and it was the last chance I had of seeing it. So I went to that. It was pretty awesome. They had some just beautiful paintings. Some of them I could have just stood in front of all day. They had The Astronomer by Vermeer, a cloth study by Da Vinci, an Ingre portrait and a religious painting by Lorenzo Lotto. Those were my favorites. And these drawings by Pisanello that were just so, so amazing. The museum itself had some really nice regular pieces, too. They had a Van Gogh I'd never seen before with a sun and it was just radiant. And a lot of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, who I'm just really drawn to for some reason.

I didn't take any pictures, just this one on the way home of the skyline. I was at the museum from 11-5 and got to drive home in lovely rush hour traffic on a Friday. Thank God for Garmin, which diverted me to side roads to avoid it. I love that thing!!