In Costa Rica~

Right now, I am in my old office at La Selva after a full day of hanging out in airports and airplanes -- exhausting! I am getting ready for bed now, but I am writing this post to say that I will probably not be able to make regular blog posts for a month while I am in the field. La Selva is the only site where I have access to the internet -- other places that Carlos and I are visiting don't even have electricity. We come back to DC on 23 February -- I am sure that I will have a lot of fun things to post about then -- chau!

Disney pins for me and Shannon

Last weekend, I was in a crafty mood and decided to make some little pins for me and my sister for our Disney trip in September (yea, it's far away, but we are really excited!). I embroidered two Disney characters: old-fashioned Donald Duck for me and Figment for Shannon. I am pretty pleased with how they turned out -- a good first-time embroidery attempt!

I am going to attach my Donald Duck pin to my little bag for the park -- it looks really old-fashioned!

Refurbished library card catalog drawers

Last week I finally got around to refurbishing my little library card catalog chest of drawers. I still wanted it to look old and used, but a little neater. First, I took out all of the drawers and sanded all of the wood lightly with fine sandpaper. After brushing off the wood dust, I stained all of the wood with walnut-colored stain (trying to keep the color pretty close to the original color). Once I wiped off all the stain, I made labels for each drawer (containing different sorts of art supplies) and lined each drawer with red velvet paper. The papers are actually 3 different colors (dark, medium, light red) from the top to the bottom. I am really proud of the final product and I love it even more than when I first got it!

Cephaloleia + Zingiberales painting

For Carlos' birthday, I painted him a watercolor of the beetles (Cephaloleia spp.) and plants (from the order Zingiberales) that he studies. It is kind of an abstract style and not really meant to be realistic and I like how it turned out! We still need to get it framed and I think it would look nice hanging in his office at the Smithsonian!

Here are some photos of the process involved in painting this piece:

Globe artichoke painting

As a Christmas gift for Judy and her husband Terry, I painted a picture of a globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus). I wanted it to look like an old botanical specimen painting and I really like the way it turned out in the end.

I painted this using watercolors and I especially like the effect of the background -- the colors work pretty well together! I am glad that Judy liked this gift and it is now hanging in her kitchen with all of her other beautiful artichoke specimens!

X-mas 2010: Food

This is my last post from my Christmas trip up to Washington. Here are some of the tasty things with which I stuffed myself silly -- good thing I do a lot of walking here in DC!

On Christmas day we always have a great lunch of snacks including: cheeses, fruit, vegetables + dip, pickles, olives, crackers, and this time we also had avocado and licorice wheels. This is one of the best lunches!

Our Christmas dinner was also delicious as usual and included honey-baked ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, yams with marshmallows, and green-top salad (the orange jell-o concoction) -- so good!

One night, we had a great fondue dinner with multi-colored potatoes, cornichons, and bread to dip in the cheese (with a delicious Riesling to drink).

For Carlos' early birthday celebration I made a "Jungle Pie," AKA peaches and cream cheesecake. It is called Jungle Pie because my mom, Judy, and I made a couple of these in La Selva, Costa Rica (the jungle) for my birthday a few years ago when they came down to visit!

While home, I made chocolate con queso (hot chocolate with cheese) for my mom a few times -- she liked it! This typical Colombian treat may sound weird, but don't knock it 'till ya try it (you must use Mexican/Colombian hot chocolate and a soft salty cheese like Havarti).

For Christmas, I gave my dad a whoopie pie cooking pan as a gift and also made some whoopie pies using the pan -- it worked out really well (thought my whoopie pie filling melted...I blame it on not being able to find Fluff on the West Coast so I had to use marshmallow creme!).

Whoosh, that was a lot of food -- good thing I am going to the field soon to burn off some of those snacks/meals!

X-mas 2010: Seattle trip

While I was home in Washington, I made a weekend trip out to Seattle to visit with my friend Molly. She lives in a great apartment in Capitol Hill and we wandered all over the city for a couple of days on the weekend after I arrived in town.

We met up at Westlake Center (I took the bus from Redmond to Seattle) and chatted a bit in the food court before wandering down to the bus tunnel and taking a free bus to the International District. We had a delicious lunch at a little out-of-the-way Vietnamese restaurant called the Tamarind Tree. The food here was great and inexpensive (I had chicken and ginger rice cooked in a clay pot and a great limeade+sweetened condensed milk drink).

From there, we wandered to Uwajimaya and bought some snacks before heading back to Molly's place on the Hill. It was a cold, rainy day so we visited a nice nearby tea shop called Remedy Teas and it was so cute! We each had a small pot of tea (placed over a little candle to keep it warm) and had a great time chatting and staying warm in this cozy shop!

We returned to Molly's house and hung out for a while before dinner at Café Presse -- a cute little French restaurant. We had wine, fries with mayonnaise, and a Gruyere sandwich -- all very good!

We walked off our dinner on the way to Molly's friend's house and we stayed there a bit before heading back for the night. The next morning, we walked to a tasty brunch place and stuffed ourselves with potatoes and eggs. We next returned to Westlake Center to take the bus back to Redmond. This was a fun trip -- I love Seattle and it is so great to see Molly again!

X-mas 2010: Snow!

It snowed quite a bit while Carlos and I were home in Redmond -- it was pretty cold too! One morning we woke up and saw giant flakes of snow coming down so we went outside on the deck and played in it for a little bit. It also hailed one night! The worst part was that it was so cold, everything froze and it stayed a little icy for a few days.

Here in DC we seem to be getting a little snow about once per week and it melts fairly fast -- I kind of like it (mostly because I don't have to drive in it!). It is fun living in a seasonal place~

X-mas 2010: Remlington

Ah yes, one of the highlights to any visit home (aside to seeing my parents of course!) is visiting with our dog Remlington/Remington/etc. He is really happy and funny and loves to play with and sit on Carlos. The feeling is mutual.

Remly loves to play with and destroy tennis balls and toys. He especially loves to eviscerate any toys containing stuffing -- it is actually pretty funny to watch him pull out the stuffing and any squeakers that he finds inside. Remy also has a pretty long rope that he loves to tug on and whip all over the place!

X-mas 2010: Decorations around the house

Before Carlos and I left Washington DC for Washington state, we stopped to have a look at all of the beautiful decorations in the National Museum of Natural History. I especially liked the trees dressed with birds and sea life!

Our house always looks really festive during the holidays. The tree looked (and smelled) great this year with all of the colorful LED lights and our assortment of awesome decorations (complete with the drunk angel on the tree top!).

My sister gave a jellyfish tank to Carlos for Christmas and it is so cool! The little rubber jellies float all around very naturally and a colored light shines on them creating a pretty tranquil scene. We had some great decorations this year~