Fun in Redmond & holiday cards

It's been pretty quiet on the bloggie front for the past couple of weeks as Carlos and I have been in Redmond visiting my parents for the holidays. We left DC on 15 December and we've already been in Redmond for about 2 weeks -- time really flies! I have been having a great time here and the weather has been OK (until today -- it is certainly snowing up a storm!). I even had time to visit my friend Molly in Seattle for a couple of days during my first weekend here! We had a great family Christmas at the house and even visited Judy and her family last night for a delicious meatloaf dinner!

Anyway, I had been doing a lot of art prior to arriving in Washington, but I wasn't able to blog about any of it until now because I was giving the gifts to people who read this blog! In this post I will talk about one of my craft projects -- my holiday cards for this year.

This year, I hand-carved a stamp of an agouti and stamped cream cardstock using a copper ink. Above the agouti I wrote "Have Agouti Holiday." I am pretty pleased with the cards and they were a lot of fun to make! I also made dark green envelopes and addressed everything with gold ink. I even had pretty evergreen-themed stamps for the cards that I mailed out to everybody!

I hope everyone received their holiday cards -- I had a lot of fun making them. What will I make for next year?

Recently: Raclette!

Things here have been way too busy recently. I have been pretty busy in the museum recently (starting a new contract with a botany lab and giving a seminar last Wednesday) and I have also been overall busy preparing/buying/making holiday/birthday gifts for everyone and getting ready to travel back to Washington (state) for the holidays.

Carlos comes back to DC Monday night (after being in the field for 1.5 months!) and we are leaving 2 days after that! I am really excited to go home and see my family and friends again -- I hope it doesn't snow there too much this year.

Anyway, I have plenty of crafty things to blog about, but that would spoil some holiday card/present surprises for people so I will have to refrain from posting until later (wah). In the meantime, I have recently discovered raclette cheese -- kind of like fondue but easier to deal with. I roasted some tiny yellow potatoes (awesome ones from Trader Joe's) in olive oil and sea salt then put some sliced raclette over the potatoes and cooked them a little longer -- it's a nice little dinner!

Thanksgiving weekend

It's taken me a while to download my pictures from last weekend when my friend Arietta and her cousin Kira visited for Thanksgiving. We had a really fun Thanksgiving dinner at the house of a friend in Virginia (about 20 people there!) and on the following days, we toured around DC!

On Friday, we went to the National Mall and visited the Natural History Museum (where I took Arietta behind the scenes to the National Herbarium and ant collections). Kira visited the Hirshorn museum and we all met up again for lunch at Teaism (I had a salmon bento box).

After lunch, we visited the National Gallery of Art (Kira gave us a nice tour -- she is an Art History major). We then wandered over to the East building of the National Gallery (more modern art) then took a really cool light-lined tunnel back to the main building then back out to the Mall.

Next we wandered over to the Capitol area to visit the Library of Congress -- I love that place.

After seeing a little of the Library, we walked back home, but stopped for tasty pizzas at 7th Hill along the way.

On Saturday, we started with a visit to Eastern Market (I bought some cool mittens here), then returned home to re-equip ourselves with warmer coats (it was in the 30's F today) before taking the metro to Dupont Circle for lunch at a Belgian cafe called Locolat.

I had never eaten here before, but I will have to bring Carlos here -- it was really good and fresh! We had dark hot chocolates and chocolate lattes to drink and all three of us had the same thing for lunch: a savory potato and chive waffle with grilled asparagus and parmesan shavings -- really tasty!

From lunch, we went back to the Mall and visited the Old Post Office tower for a nice view of the city.

Next, we traveled to Georgetown to stop at Trader Joe's to get a bunch of tasty things for dinner. We had a nice 'tapas' dinner for our last night: five or so different cheeses, baguette, crackers, bruschetta, apple, little yellow potatoes with melted raclette and riesling to drink.

It was such a fun Thanksgiving vacation with a couple of great friends!

Fall pictures

Last weekend I took my camera with me on my weekend trip out to the Eastern Market so that I could take some pictures of the beautiful trees and other fall things around my neighborhood. I really love all of the colors the trees are turning and they match really well with the houses in my neighborhood. I especially like looking down certain streets to see the Library of Congress or the Capitol framed by pretty red and orange trees.

Across the street from Eastern Market is a cute, very small park. I noticed bird houses in all of the trees here and they were really cute -- there were at least 10 birdhouses (some even shaped like boats and little castles!).

Apples are still very popular and delicious at the market and this time I stocked up on pink lady and winesap apples.

On my way home from the market, I saw a puppy that looked just like Remlington! This is Remy's true doppleganger -- the doggie was even as rambunctious as him, dragging his owner across the street!

Apple time!

'Tis well into the fall season and that means the leaves are changing (and falling on my car) and apples are everywhere! At the Eastern Market Farmer's Market last weekend, I went to buy cucumbers (they sell really good ones there), but they weren't there -- I guess cucumber season is over. BUT, there were lots and lots of apples in many varieties! These apples are from a farm in Virginia and they are really good (they taste way better than grocery store apples). I had more apples than this, but I ate lots of them before I took this photo.

On the left are 2 Honeycrisp apples, in the middle is 1 Winesap apple (a new favorite!), and on the right is a Cameo apple. I am eating at least one apple a day and I need to go stock up next weekend and try some new varieties too!

Super Mario Bros. 3 cross-stitch IV

Here is another progress picture of my Super Mario Bro. 3 World 5 map. I really like how it is turning out and I have made a little more progress since I took this picture about a month ago.

However, at this point, I am stuck! I have run out of blue, black, and green embroidery thread and there are no craft stores in DC where I can buy more thread! It is kind of absurd. There are a couple of art stores around here, but no place I can get craft supplies (like a Michael's or Ben Franklin). It is really lame -- the closest craft store that I could find is out in Rockville (1.5 hours away by metro/bus). Well...I think I will take my cross-stitch home with me to Washington so that I can stock up on thread at Ben Franklin and maybe finally finish this project!

National Zoo visit

About a week ago, I visited the National Zoo. It was a beautiful sunny yet cold day and I brought a thermos full of hot apple cider and pretzels for a sort of mini-picnic -- it was great! I saw lots of awesome animals (as usual) and in all, I visited the Small Mammal House, Amazonia, and the Reptile House.

When I first entered the Zoo, there is a sign describing the black color morph of squirrels and how a population was introduced to DC from Canada. There always seems to be a black squirrel hanging out near this sign (this isn't a real exhibit, they just happen to be in the area -- they aren't exhibiting local squirrels here!). Today was no different and I saw a little black squirrel intently hoarding a seed in the dirt and piling lots of maple leaves on top -- he was really into it!

After my squirrel adventure, I went to the Small Mammal House and visited rock cavies and my favorite acouchy (pretty much just like an agouti but with a longer little tail).

From the Small Mammal House, I saw prairie dogs on the way to Amazonia. The rain forest exhibit is really nice and it is so fun to walk around the "forest" and to recognize many plants (and animals) that I've seen in La Selva.

After that, I visited the collared peccaries, but they were inside (it was too cold for them outside). Next, I went to the Reptile House and I really liked seeing lots of little froggies and other herps. My favorites were the pancake tortoises!

My friend Arietta is coming up for a visit during Thanksgiving and I think a visit to the zoo will be necessary!

Super Mario Bros. 3 cross-stitch III

It's been quite a while since I worked on this cross-stitch project. I had put it away for many, many months while working on my dissertation in Miami and during the move to DC. I took it out of the trunk a couple of weeks ago and felt like doing some stitching to relax at night and I have made a little bit of progress. (I have actually made more progress than what is pictured here, but that will be shown in another post. I took this picture right when I took the stitching out of storage). Woo-hoo, cross-stitching is fun!

Plummers Island

A little over a week ago, I went to an oyster roast held by the Washington Biologists' Field Club (founded back in 1900!) on Plummers Island. Now owned by the government, the island is in the Potomac River (actually not very far from the beltway) and is one of the most studied places in North America. Many Smithsonian scientists have studied the animals and plants on Plummer's Island and it is a really beautiful place.

The Washington Biologists' Field Club built a cabin on the island where the members hold annual oyster roasts. After exploring the island, trying to find wild turkeys (but only finding a deer track) I returned to the cabin and chatted with a bunch of people before sitting down to eat oysters. This was actually the first time I had ever eaten an oyster and they were pretty good (no way and I eating a raw one though!).

The island was really pretty and the oyster roast was a fun and pretty unique experience. Maybe I will be invited back next year!

Carlos' update from the forest

Carlos is currently back in La Selva, Costa Rica, gathering data for his post-doc project. I really miss the forest (and Carlos too!), but he sends me pictures of what he sees when he is out and about and it is fun to remember La Selva. I plan to go back in February though for a couple of weeks.

The peccaries of course are still all over the place -- Carlos has even seen a really tiny baby that looks just like one that we named Poofles the last time we were there. This is probably Poofles Jr.

Carlos has seen LOTS of cool animals since he has been back -- including this snake in a tree that was trying to intimidate him by whacking its little tail against the tree trunk (kind of like a rattlesnake shakes its rattle). So cute!

I am excited to go back in February for a little while (to scout out things for the project I am writing a fellowship for) and I will also be back for 2 months this summer as professor of the next graduate-level OTS ecology fundamentals course (where we travel all over Costa Rica doing projects in many different habitats).