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!!

New car!

Yay! I bought a new car today! Merry Christmas to me! It's a 2004 Subaru Legacy SE. It's their 35th anniversary edition Legacy. Pretty fancy. It almost feels TOO nice. My last car was a 1984 Volvo (RIP Old Blue) with 215000 miles.Faux woodgrain. OoOOOooO.
Power Moonroof. *little hearts*

Yay! So happy! There's a cd player but no aux jack for my iPod so I might go see about getting a new stereo installed sometime this week. I don't want to drive to Illinois and back without my iPod. Time to go for a drive!

Buttons, candy and snow!

This was a busy "makin' stuff weekend". Of course, none of the stuff I made was for Christmas presents. I'm still only half-way through making my Christmas cards... finishing those is on the agenda for tonight. Unless I get distracted making Dorset buttons! I just found out about these yesterday and they're totally addictive! I want to make buttons, pins, earrings, everything! out of them. Here are the four I made since last night.

So watch out, they might be coming your way this Christmas because I can't stop making them.

And I made this painting of a brick wall. I can't say more about that just yet.


Last night Howie and I got a gingerbread house. It was the messiest thing ever. The frosting came dry in a bag and had to be mixed. Well, I don't have an electric mixer and it felt too thick doing it by hand so I added a little extra water. Yeah.. it pretty much melted everywhere. Baubles slid down window panes, the doorknob fell to the ground and the door tried to melt off the face of the house. I'm not even going to mention the avalanche of roof "snow"... yeah. It was everywhere. But I think it turned out pretty decent. I just had to keep pushing things back into place until the frosting hardened. But, trust me, you don't want to see the back of the house. I had a lot of extra candy bits and just stuck them all back there. It looks like a candy monster threw up all over. I'm totally looking forward to eating it, though.


Speaking of snow, we had a HUGE snowstorm here about a week ago. Here is a picture of our neighbor's car, just to give you a little taste of Wisconsin in December.

Tour of Altoona (and Beyond!)

I've been wanting to go around and take pictures of town, but it's been cloudy for 2 months. The sun actually can out today so here you go. This is for everyone who hasn't been up here yet. First I had to bundle up against the cold, Wisconsin weather. Hurray for knitwear!
Here is the ever popular Altoona Family Restaurant. Even the seagulls have to wait in line.Then there is the Just Local Foods Co-op:And Tangled Up in Hue (they sell art and handmade stuff, yay!) and Yellow Dog Knitting.

The antique shop and the budget theater.

The bookstore, which has a really nice little sitting area upstairs, and Infinitea Teahouse.

The river and some randomness:Then we went to Chippewa Falls to see the Christmas lights. It was pretty cool. The pictures didn't really work. You'd have to see for yourself. Come visit! You know you want to!

Festivize!

It does not feel like Christmastime. The stores have had the Christmas decorations out since before Thanksgiving (so wrong!) but it just doesn't feel right. Maybe it's the lack of snow or because they just don't really know how to decorate up here, I don't know. I put the Christmas XM station on tv and dug my decorations out of the stinky basement.
Since we've moved to a bigger apartment, it seems like I have a totally inadequate amount of decorations. And I'm too cheap to buy more. Mostly I just put up my tree. It's barely over 6 feet, but I put 1250 lights on it. I think it could still use more near the top but ma says it's a fire hazard.

My tree isn't exactly uh... traditional... Here are some ornament highlights:

And then there's the tree-topper, which is a dog angel wearing red velvet and leopard. Oh yeah!

Alpaca Hat!!

I'm finally done with the alpaca hat (Andean Chullo)! I'm so excited! Crazily enough it didn't take me any longer than knitting a pair of socks. Three weeks start to finish and that was with a little hiatus (didn't want to do the i-cord edging and tassels. Tassels are a hassle. Not really. But they aren't as fun as knitting.) So here it is, in all it's alpacay glory. I'm so in love with this hat. It's my favorite thing I've ever knit. (Don't tell the socks!)

Monster Dash!

I did a little something different for Halloween this year. My dad and I ran the Monster Dash Half Marathon in Minneapolis, MN. I was a little worried about this run since I had been sick for about two weeks and hadn't run. And I still had a nasty cough. But mostly it was because I hadn't run, and my longest training run was about 4.5 miles.

Sound familiar? I did the same thing a few months ago when we did the Ohio Half. I messed my foot up that time and could barely walk for a week. I could feel (and hear) the tendons in my feet moving. So I really didn't want that to happen again.

But I had a pretty good run. It was FREEZING at the start. I couldn't feel my fingers at all until mile two. My legs never warmed up. (Note to self: probably not a good idea to wear shorts in Minnesota at the end of October when you plan on being outside for over 3 hours.) I started to drag a little at mile 5, but kept a fairly steady pace. At mile 8, I broke out the iPod and some caffeinated "goo". After that I felt pretty good. Music really helps.

Until mile 12 when nothing helps but being finished and sitting down to a huge french toast breakfast with hashbrowns and fruit. But I finished. My time was 2:47. Not great, but better than the last one. I wish I'd trained better. I passed my dad right near the end. He was having trouble with calf cramps, probably from cold legs (stupid shorts!), but finished just a minute behind me.

It was pretty fun though. The goody bag had a really nice long-sleeved running shirt that I actually wore (first time wearing a long-sleeved running shirt for a whole race). And the medal is pretty awesome. It doesn't say Minnesota so I'll have to remember, just like I have to remember I did Iowa even though I got NOTHING for finishing that. Grr. Stupid Iowa. Anywho, here is the medal. It's also a belt buckle. Neato.


Disney World Marathon in January is next, right? :)