Mockingbird frugivory

(image from whatbird.com)
Today, as I was reading on the couch with the balcony door open, I heard some snapping sounds. Huh? I looked outside and saw a big mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) pecking away at a poor, defenseless Everglades tomato! Carlos and I had seen evidence of his attacks previous to this one in the form of little, partially-pecked tomatoes (they kind of looked like little exploded tomatoes) and guessed that some bird was chomping on them. I scared him off, but saw another tomato that he had killed too. I harvested all of the mostly-ripe tomatoes, but I will have to be quick to get ripe fruits picked before he comes back. Maybe we will have to make a bird exclosure? I hope this won't be like the anole incident of last season...

More pine cone card pictures

I found some more pictures of the pine cone holiday cards I made for my friends this Christmas. It is really cool to see them all lined up -- lots of work, but worth it. I need to buy a little float frame to display the one I kept for myself!

Garden D'Lights

Back in Washington, after Christmas, we (mom, dad, Carlos, and I) went to the Bellevue Botanical Garden for the annual light display: Garden D'Lights. For a $5 donation per family (quite a good deal) you get to walk around and see a ton of beautiful light arrangements throughout the botanical garden. The lights have been prepared by volunteers at the botanical garden and they did a superb job of forming these colorful lights into many plant and animal shapes. Having the lights juxtaposed with the trees and streams in the garden was also very nice. One of my favorite displays was the vineyard, but I loved everything there!

Ex Libris

For Carlos' birthday, I made him a library kit. It consisted of a changing date stamp, black ink pad, hand-made cards with envelopes (return date cards to attach to the insides of books), a master log for recording who checked an item out of his library and when, and finally some ex libris' (ex libri?) AKA, bookplates. I have blurred out his name in the copy above, but they turned out really cool! I drew some things he likes, scanned the image, added shading in photoshop, then printed them out onto inkjet sticker paper and cut them out. I should do this with my own ex libris!

Remlington the wonder pup

While Carlos and I were home in Washington, we played a LOT with my parents' puppy Remlington (at least that's what I call him...he also is known as Remy, Gremlington, Barflington...). He is really fun, but a little rambunctious. Carlos and I used some Dog Whisperer training on Remlington and it really worked well. Remy is very smart and you have to be the pack leader so that he respects you or else he will walk all over you -- literally and figuratively. He is a nice, loving puppy and loves to sit on people! He also really likes cookies and pumpkin pie...

Home cooking/eating

Still on the subject of home and food, we ate and made lots of good stuff while in Washington. Here are pictures of a little sample of what we had.

Christmas lunch spread. We had a great selection of cheeses, crackers, vegetables, fruits, dip, meats, olives, and pickles. This is my favorite type of meal -- SNACKS!


Cheese, fruit, and meat platter.


Veggie and dip platter.


Polish bread home-made by my mama.


Cupcakes given to us by the neighbors.


Spaghetti casserole -- one of the best dinner meals!


Carlos and I tried to make lots of nice dinners for my parents while we were home, but I forgot to take pictures of everything!

Christmas dinner

We all had a fantastic Christmas dinner (there were 6 of us total) while home for the holidays. We always have our traditional foods and we eat in the dining room on a nicely-decorated table with candles.
Our menu consisted of: Polish bread and butter, green bean casserole, green beans with feta, yams with marshmallows, mashed potatoes, maple ham, and green top salad all with merlot, gewürztraminer, and sparkling apple cider to drink. We were definitely completely stuffed by the time we were done! I ate lots of great food while home -- now I need to hit the gym~

Christmas-time

I was lucky enough to be able to travel home to Washington for Christmas and be with all of my family for about three weeks. Our house always looks so great during the holidays thanks to all of my mom's decorating and hand-made things. I especially liked a little mini-Christmas tree with lights that was up in the loft -- I successfully prevented its dismantling after Christmas too because I liked it so much! Weird.

Anyway, we had a beautiful (live) tree this year that smelled wonderful and kept its needles on until we threw it away (for the most part anyway!). I was sad when all of the Christmas decorations started being taken away, but they stayed up until after New Year so that was pretty good! We had a great family-full Christmas filled with cool tunes (Mannheim Steamroller as usual), apple cider, lit fireplaces, and cowboy cake!

Tomato harvest!

While Carlos and I were away in Washington, Florida suffered some pretty severe (i.e. freezing) weather -- on a couple of days it was actually colder in Miami than it was in Redmond! We thought that our little balcony garden was frozen to death, but when we returned on Saturday, we were pleasantly surprised to find everything – herbs and tomatoes – alive and well! Here is the resultant tomato harvest from yesterday -- a real bounty!

Our landlord took great care of everything while we were away and we harvested a HUGE tomato crop: Everglades, Early Girl, and Pear tomatoes to last the whole week at least! We made a little basket of tomatoes, arugula, and rosemary for our landlord as thanks for watering the plants.

This was basically how I felt yesterday after picking all of our tomatoes:
(image from cuteoverload.com)

Back in Miami

Carlos and I got back into Miami late on Saturday night and spent yesterday recuperating from our day of travel and getting things organized around the house. We went to Target and bought Carlos' crock-pot (he got a gift certificate from Santa for a crock-pot and he was really excited). With said crock-pot, we made an awesome cassoulet last night for dinner which we ate while watching some movies (The Great Outdoors and The Great Escape). We have the day off today, but will spend it writing and doing more home-related stuff. I miss Washington and my family already, but at least we have a great little house/sanctuary here in Miami!

I will post soon about all of the adventures I had in Washington~

Felt LoZ rupees

I made three felt rupees for my sister as one of her Christmas presents this year -- these are from the Legend of Zelda (LoZ) series of games on Nintendo and I was inspired by a crafter on Etsy who made some rupees like this that were so cute. I think these little jewels turned out pretty great, but they were rather involved to make -- I will have to make some for myself now!
This is the end of my holiday season crafting -- it was a really fun and productive time of year. Even though it was a lot of work, my handmade Christmas turned out really well and I think everyone was happy with their gifts -- I love making stuff!

Red stitched snowflake pins

I made a couple of these red snowflake pins for little Christmas presents and I really like the finished product. Basically I took two circles of red felt, stitched a simplified snowflake design on one circle using white embroidery thread, stitched a pin backing on the other circle, then stitched the circles together -- result: one finished pin! I like these pretty, Christmas-y little badges. I don't think they are really for year-round wear though -- mainly winter-time!

Watercolor humpback whale

Another watercolor project that I worked on last month was the Secret Santa gift for one of my college friends. She really likes whales, so I painted her a cute little watercolor picture of a humpback whale. I really like how this whalie turned out -- swimming against the aquatic blue background of the ocean. I really was on a roll with watercolor painting recently!

Watercolor paca

Continuing in the watercolor Christmas gift vein, I painted a picture of a paca (Cuniculus paca) for my mom since she is the president of the local chapter of the Save the Paca Foundation. Pacas are unusually delicious rodents that are, unfortunately for them, perfect food items for many carnivorous animals including, but not limited to, jaguars, ocelots, pumas, bushmasters, and humans. The main goal of the Save the Paca Foundation is to raise awareness about the paca's plight so that steps may be taken to save these animals from extinction.

Pine cone Christmas cards

I sent cards out to a bunch of my friends this Christmas and I hand-made them all. Since I like pine cones and I think they are evocative of the holidays, I drew a little pine cone on each card, painted it with watercolors, and inked it -- Voila -- a finished card!
I ended up making a total of 9 cards and it took a while, but the effort was worth it. I finished them up by making dark green envelopes with addresses written in gold ink -- I really liked the end product. I even saved one card for myself to frame mwahaha!

Felt foxes

I love making things out of felt -- especially things made from the nice soft alpaca felt that I talked about in a previous post. Though it is hard to use such a precious material, I have found one object that I can make pretty well (resulting in no felt wasting): little simplified felt foxes! I have given some of these as presents to friends and my sister -- everyone seems to like them and I like them too. I especially like using the alpaca felt to make these foxies because it resembles animal fur more than polyester felt that I find in craft stores. My favorite fox is the orange one with blue eyes.

Happy New Year!

I'm not really into the whole partying it up thing on New Year's Eve -- I prefer to hang out at home with my family. We drank some champagne and watched some Dog Whisperer -- then saw the Space Needle fireworks at midnight!

Anyway, after a bit of a blog hiatus, I am back and ready to talk about some of the pre-holiday crafting I've done, some of the projects I'm working on, and some of the adventures I've been having here in Washington. Oh yea, I am also finishing some chapters of my dissertation!

Have a nice new year and I will have some (more) regular blog posts soon (to all 5 of you who read this blog!).