Tis the Ides of March

March 12th, 2008, I went with some friends to tour Greece and Italy (we had all just finished classical literature). I had waited over a year to go on this trip, and in 14 days it was over. What remains is the memories and the friendships that were made. So, here's a sampling of our little adventure. :)

Picture it- you've been up for almost 18 hours flying across vast oceans and continents. As you cross mainland Europe, it's complete and utter darkness except for the lights of the small villages you're flying over. As you approach Northern Italy - the sunrise. The fairytale land of Italy suddenly emerges from the darkness as the light swiftly rises across the horizon. Your plane lands at 6:30 in the morning Italy time and you hit the road running to maximize every second of your dreamlike stay.

We were in Rome on the Ides of March, so this Caesar statue was all dressed up for his day. In case you don't know the story, go brush up on your Roman history. ;)

The Trevi Fountain - if you throw one coin in, you will go back to Italy. If you throw 2 coins in, you will also find true love. I threw two in. ;) PS - the romantic rome you think of because you've watched too many movies does exist - underneath all the tromping grounds of tourists. You just have to get off the beaten trail and explore a bit. ;)

The Titus Arch - General Titus earned an arch for him after he besieged Jerusalem and destroyed the last of those 'rebellious' Jews. Because of this arch, we know what the candlestick and many more of the temple treasures looked like before they were taken away (they're all depicted on the inside of the arch)

And how could you go to Rome and not see the Coliseum? That building is absolutely ENORMOUS!!! And to think it was built to make killing people a spectator sport... :'(

This is the Porch of the Maidens on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. A cool note on the history of the building - when it was built a certain nationality was chosen "because they are the only ones strong enough to support a roof." Well... If you look at the rest of the building anything that the ladies weren't holding up did fall down. Hmm... ;) And an interesting note on the weather - I guess that in the middle of March, winds from the FAR south pick up dust from the Sahara desert in Africa and bring it across the Mediterranian to Greece. That's why the sky is so dusty.

This is the bridge that connects mainland Greece with the Pelopenesse (sp?), the cow-udder look-like peninsula hanging off of Greece. Before this bridge was built it took hours to get around to the island. A special note on the water in Greece - go ahead and jump in when you're at the beach! The water is so clear and clean! Because it was colder when we went, we just got wet up to our knees. ;)

It's been two years... I can't believe that time has gone by so fast! I really hope that I can go back and explore the areas that we didn't get to see very much of.

Wall Flower

As promised- here is a work from one of my classes this year. It is a Shakespearean sonnet entitled "Wall Flower" that I wrote for my British Literature class

Wall Flower

All alone along the wall she stood there

wanting to be special; it's her first ball.

She feels as if she's vanished into air;

the host stands up, beginning dance does call.

Other ladies seemed far more beautiful

although she was in his very own eyes;

the men were anything but plentiful

"What's the wrong with me?" she quietly sighs.

Attracted to her by her modest dress

He came to her; she fiddled with her hem.

Light of foot fantastic they did finesse;

her knight in armor, his treasure'd gem.

The eve'ning wore on, together entranced

om each others' arms, together they danced.

Who's to say?

Maybe I'm catching spring fever early this year, maybe it's the unusually warm weather that we're having for this time of year - but for some odd reason, I want to get a fruit tree. This has never happened before, but something just blew across my face when I was going through the Raintree Nursery catalog and saw a Weeping Santa Rosa plum. Now, I've always loved ornamental trees, drapey trees, trees with something unique and special about them, but this tree is different - it bears fruit. So it's a useful decorative tree! :D It has the classic pink plum blossoms in the spring all across it wispy draping branches, and later in the year, there are lovely plums that you can go out and pick. Oh, another plus - it only gets to about 8 feet tall! So, yeah, I'm considering getting a tree now.

First "big" job

This is a size 8 girl's pioneer costume. =)

This is taken by my lit teacher - yes, the same one that bought the doll dresses for her granddaughters. One of her granddaughters has a birthday right after Christmas. =)

This is the birthday girl! <3 Apparently she wants to meet me now, and she slept in the dress the night that she got it. ;)

Can you believe that this doll dress is made completely from all of the leftover fabric from the girl's costume?

Teaser!

Okay, so since I've been lazy and not taking pictures of what I told you I would - I'll just get up what I got. ;) So... the paper above is some of the packaging. I guess you could say the Polish magazine was pretty exciting - especially with the "football" - the literal sense of the word "futball"

And here it is!!! at least the box...


Yes, we got a spinning wheel!!! Now we can start working down all that llama wool that's been in the attic since last spring! Just to learn how to use it... ;)

Maybe I finally found a direction?

So an unexpected request was brought to me last November, my lit teacher - she has two granddaughters - asked me if I'd be willing to sew doll dresses for their American Girl dolls for Christmas presents. I had already been sewing doll dresses, but never to sell. I agreed to make the doll dresses and off I went. The only request was that one dress be purple (because it's the girl's favorite color) and that both dresses be pioneer-esque. The rest was all up to the creative juices. So as I'm making these dresses, my aunt asks if I could make her daughter a dress for Christmas as well! So I sold 3 doll dresses, and now I'm beginning to wonder if I should go a sewing direction.

The dress that is pictured above is the one that I made for my cousin. =)

This is the small drawstring bag that I made to go with it

The hat.

This dress is one that I made for my lit teacher. It took me about 3 tries to get the ruffle on the hem right... but I say that the stress of it was worth it! =D

Close-up of the neckline. I had to venture into a section of the craft store that I never go in - the beading aisles. And I successfully found something that would work for the cameo! Sorry that it's so blurry...

Detailing of the cross-stitch that I added to the hem of the pinnafore

This dress is the purple one that was requested - I absolutely LOVE how it turned out. The fabric is all from my scrap collection!

Close-up of the apron and shawl. I cut out the flowers from the solid lavender and sewed them to the center of the apron tie. The way I had to lay the fabric out left an ugly seam right down the middle of the tie. So I covered it up with the flowers!

And this is the back of the shawl - the little girl's name started with an "L" and her doll's name was Lily Anna. So I did this for them. ;)

Wow...

Ahh!!! I am so :terribly: sorry that I haven't blogged for a LONG time!!! So to catch y'all up because I'm noticing the last post was from the Hoe Down in October...

Right now, I'm taking 3 classes from an absolutely AMAZING teacher: British Lit, Shakespeare, and Old Testament Survey. As well as a Spanish class from another teacher who is quite skilled in the art of the language, but it really isn't my favorite class in the world... the four years of Latin behind me hinders and helps, if you know what I mean. ;)

A couple of years ago, I got through about half of the British lit program by myself (the teacher gave me her curriculum and schedule), but due to some health issues, I wasn't able to get very far... So this first half of the year has been review for me, but I feel like I'm getting more out of it by sitting in the classes and listening to the lectures. Let's just say that I've been a note-taking monster. ;) I'll have to post some of the stuff that I've gotten from the teacher later! =D

The Shakespeare class has got to be one of my most favorite classes EVER!!! We're going through seven (at least, I think that it's seven...) of the plays in depth and casually acting out the entire play with Mrs. English stopping to unpack all of the hard metaphors and language. I never really thought that I would enjoy Shakespeare except for the little kid books that have illustrations and simplified story lines... but, oh my goodness, the people in the class are great, the goofy things that we do to make the stories more enjoyable, ect, just make the class all the more wonderful!

In Old Testament, the same teacher as the above two classes, I know isn't she amazing!!!, is essentially taking all of the stuff that she learned in seminary and turning it into a class - complete with learning ancient Hebrew, some of the words (the language is so much more beautiful, deep and descriptive than English! English is such a shallow language when it comes to expressing things). I'll have to post some of the stuff that I've gotten from that class as well... Take the Hebrew word hesod for example. When translated into your simple english bible it is "loving-kindness" but in actuality, it means so much more! It shows God's love, a love so deep that he would make a covenant with mankind, for us. Truly, most of this stuff is over my head, but what I have gotten makes the Bible so much richer and fuller and so much more meaningful.

The Spanish class... well... I did learn how to say "Live long and prosper." - Spock.
(whatever you hit to make and upside down exclamation point) Que' Viva used y prospere!
yeah, it's beneficial. ;) No seriously, I'm getting more than that.

So that's my school life... homework. Lots of it.

And now back up to November 2009. We had company; lots of family all over the place! =D and some family that I haven't seen since forever ago (think little kid and I hardly remember). Actually, when I walked into the door, my great-aunt thought that I was my mom. Apparently I have my mom's mouth - that's what she said! ;) Day after thanksgiving - Black Friday - our Christmas tree farm opened for the season. Oy vey, talk about busy. It was the kind of busy that if you added one more thing, you would just break down and go absolutely insane. On second thought - it was insane...

So Christmas break wasn't neccessarily a break per say. It was more of a take on the world and fall over exhausted.

While all this chaos was going on, December saw some of the most frigid December I've seen. (now for a political note: almost ironic since Obama and the world leaders were meeting in Coppenhagen to discuss global warming. shows them what they know. God will make foolishness of man's wisdom). Our well pump decided to die. Well, it was a little more complicated than that. Some pipes in the barn froze and essentially burned the pump at the bottom of the well. That was an exciting weekend in the midst of all the Christmas business. And my grandma was coming the next week. Imagine - a family of 7 without water for several days and more company on the way. The disaster zone that was created in a mere day was hazardous enough...

So... continuing on with the story. The day after Christmas (remember my dad's mom was still visiting us) my dad's brother and his daughter snuck in and gave Grandma probably the best Christmas present that she got. =D Grandma's facial expression when my cousin snuck behind her while she was doing the dishes and gave her a huge hug. ^_^

So that's a quick catch up with as many details as I could remember for now.

Thank you for reading!

When all is said and done... You look back!

Yes, I'm having flashbacks of last week's party-putting-together... Here are some pics from the trip we made to pick up the pumpkins for the pumpkin toss. ^_^
Count them: 21. That's right! A local farm DONATED twenty-one #2 pumpkins to our party for the pumpkin toss. =D Yet another reason to go to the small farm stores in your area. You can usually work some sort of a deal (the original deal that I worked was $2 a pumpkin, but when I went to pick them up, they said that they were going to give them to us!). And small farms are run by humans. Not some freakishly controlling, money monger, greedy CEO. So, lesson of this paragraph - support your local farmers. =)

The back seat of the car. More pumpkins! And cider too! =D (and gym bag and booster seat...)

Hoe Down!

Hoe Down/Harvest Party!

Setting up!

Must move towards the light!

My little brother. =)

O_o

*reverent silence

Bonfire!

We even had live music! =D

Dancing!

Ooh! Pretty lights!

This isn't what it looks like... ;)

More dancing!

In the barn

Some of our musicians

The Virginia Reel

Laura, our dance caller and music supplier, was running late, but, thank goodness, some people had brought their instruments, so we impromtued the first couple dances. =)

We even had a full moon!

There was so much food!

Playing in the loft!

At the end of the party... =(

Fire!!!

Wow! What an evening! This whole party was the brainchild of a drive home from ECD one evening at the beginning of the summer. We were thinking that a harvest party would be fun, and we just ran with it! =D My parents were excited to host the party at our house, so we even had a great farm location (complete with farm atmosphere)!

Unfortunately, the week leading up to the event, the forecast started out as showers on Saturday, Oct. 3 (the day of the party) then changed to thunder showers. We were all praying really hard that we could not have any rain on the event... Saturday morning was cloudy and overcast but in the afternoon, it cleared up, we had sunshine and blue skies! That night we even had a full moon to complete the whole experience! =D

Another unfortunately... I was getting migranes almost every other day leading up to the Harvest Party... To give you some backround, I had fallen off a horse the week before and made my neck, head and back go out of alignment which leads to migranes. >_<>

So, all things summed up, I want to do this again next year! =D

PS- Most pictures made possible by Daniel S. and Nathan B. Thank you!

Arg! This be a pirate ball! P-)

Finally! I'm getting the "prime selection" of pictures from the Pirate Ball from Sept! Wow... can't you tell that I've been super busy lately... Can't you tell that they're siblings?

this is what you were greeted with when you enterd the party ship! Arg... I can't talk pirate...

Me and a very good friend! <3

Someone got a little too creative with the knife on that poor melon! =D

Pirate lasses! P-)

Please meet Chris the parakeet! He was very popular that evening