Weeelllll Maybe Just a Little Present....

After posting about my "No more gifts!" soap-box rant, I found this video roaming around the internets. Now I gotta have me one of these!

via Swissmiss, originally made by Carnegie Mellon.

The Holidays...

I've been thinking about this for a while now, I've started to dread the holidays. Having to rush out find something which usually winds up being meaningless because by the time I start shopping, it's two weeks before the day and I'm in a blind panic because I know that I NEED to find something because that's just how it works... right? This year I want to do something different.

In high school we had a representative from Heifer International, a charity that sends animals to countries in need of food and clothing. It's extremely inexpensive (you can buy a whole goat for $120 or a share in a goat for $10... or honey bees for $30). If you stop and think about, really think about what you spend every year on things you're not sure the other person will like or use and then translate that into some good you can be doing other people in the world... I think it makes a big difference.

I've created a registry(http://www.heifer.org/myregistry/hannahmaier)

for Heifer and I might look around for a few more so for now, and these upcoming holidays, I would like you to think about giving to this charity instead of buying me anything, or donate to a charity of your choice. In the end it's more about the people and relationships than it is about the gifts and shopping.

Thanks, List of the Day

I just discovered Kids in the Hall. I'd always heard then name and thought people were talking about Saved By the Bell so I just ignored them and couldn't understand what was so funny. Now I know, and so will you!

Ponoko

Ok, so I stumbled upon this site called Ponoko today. It seems like a person (such as myself... or you-self) can draw a product (meaning the piece of, say, a bench or some coasters or something) and then upload them to this site where they will laser cut it out of about a half-dozen stock materials (your choice) and then send this product to you. You can either sign up to sell them through their site or just make them for your own personal enjoyment (and I mean personal). The maximum size of said template that you send in is 31 x 15 inches, which is large for all practical purposes.

Anyway, it's a neat. Here are some examples of things people have been making, will you be next?

I am SOooooo Easily Amused

(NSFW: Language)

It Appears that I'm Still Unemployed...

because I'm still making things while I sit eating toast and playing Spore in my jammies at noon. Sigh...

In any case, this little guy is in the etsy shop,
and this one now has a new home on my shelf. I like him too much to sell!

Ah the peril of crafting things...

Happy Birthday Mummy!

>Peep eep<

Sad News....

Oh, and I went to feed Mr. TicTac before I left for New Hampshire and discovered that while he doesn't really ever move.... EVER, this time he wasn't faking it and he had passed on to the great unknown quite some time ago. A pretty clear-cut case of "Oh.... I thought he was sleeping.... ohhhhh.... that's bad." It didn't look like he'd really survived his moulting beyond that first day.

R.I.P. TicTac.

Since I've Been Gone

The little thingy that keeps track of the blogs I like to read has been steadily filling up. I thought I'd share two things from the magical world of internets that caught my attention:

A Rare Breed is a series of pictures this lady did of redheads because "Some say we're going extinct. As a redhead myself, I think the world needs more pictures of our Rare Breed." Pretty cool.

And, remember those triops I insisted on raising? Well I was going through my linksies and I found these old etchings of what look suspiciously like those weird little guys (that I never need to own again).

The Wedding (Saturday)

Saturday was the big day of weddingness. 10:30 the hairdresser and makeup trio arrived, 1:30 the photographer, 3:30 the wedding. Busy busy busy! (Oh and I forgot to mention earlier that Joe and Ashley have a blog up about post wedding days and info here.)

Ashley with her makeup, but before the final hair.
I was roped into getting my hair done too.
Final hair! The hairdresser curled everything and then instead of using bobby pins to put everything in place she sewed the hair into a curly updo bun. Very pretty.
Mummy and Carol.
The dress! there were tons of buttons down the back and a long train. The train was able to be tied up to create a bustle effect for dancing and anything requiring actual movement.There was alot of hopping and tip toeing around in it before the ceremony. Buttoning all those buttons that seemed like such a good idea at the time...

All ready for the ceremony, watching the photographer and Ashley in the backyard.

When a breeze is actually a good thing.

The chapel.

The inside of St. Matthew's.

Walking down the isle.

(unfortunately I didn't get Joe's parents walking down, there was a bit of miscommunication between Jessie and I over who would be taking the video)

After the ceremony when everyone lines up to shake hands, pat backs and offer general congratulations all around.

Tyler in his wedding gear (after being harassed into shaving by Poppi).

Uncle Jim.

Poppi and Janet.

Mummy and Carol.

(In these pictures it looks like Mummy is taller... but I don't think she is. I think there'll have to be some investigation into this...)

Going through the line starting with Aunt Carol... or is it Mummy? Noooo that's Carol. Probably. Heehee!

Poppi, looking a little epic.

Ok, there's a story here. Uncle Jim is a fervent Republican. Everytime we visit he has O'Reilly blaring and at some point he attempts to badger us into submission with his crazy-man logic. Mom was scheming about hunting up and Obama sticker and plastering it on the bumper of his royce but that lost some steam. Luckily someone else stepped up and stuck it right over his McCain sticker.

------------The Reception------------

(instead of a single, massive cake, Joe and Ashley made a small cake for themselves and many cupcakes for everyone else)

Uncle John.

The after-party when most people had gone home.

I think it's safe to say that Mom, Dad and I didn't take the Cadillac to the wedding, we'd learned out lesson the night before. Plus I was wearing substantially less (a gauzy thing over a teeny tiny slip) than I did for the barbecue (pants, long sleeved shirt and we were inside) and I was cold THEN. However, Jessie and Tyler were insane enough to try it. There was some sort of kerfuffle over squeezing Ty's chair in the back seat and setting the horn off for a good long time (plus Jessie was wearing what amounted to a short silk tunic and the temperature was well in the low 30's). INSANITY.

Everything went well in the end. We left the next morning (Sunday) at 6 am, got to the airport at around 8, boarded the plane at 9:30, arrived at 3:30 and got home by 4:20. Not bad, but I'm sooo tired!

Pre-Wedding (Thursday-Friday)

The alarms went off at 3 am and we were out the door by 4, on our way to the airport. When you have to be somewhere that early you just know it’s going to be a long day. The plane took off at 6:05 and we were on our way to New Hampshire to see my cousin Ashley’s wedding. Manchester at 7:30 pm and Franconia by 9:30 which meant that we took off in darkness and pulled into my Aunt’s driveway just after dusk. Traveling isn’t my forte… at least everything was on time and went as smoothly as possible. We managed to crawl in bed by midnight after food and a little bit of visiting.

The Corgies, who are just too cute to NOT include in here somewhere!

(Sam and Dolly)

I was lucky enough to wake up before Uncle Jim hauled out his bagpipes (a little bit of background… every time we visit Jim finds some obscenely obnoxious way to wake everyone up at about 8 am. Once it was fireworks, a couple of times it’s been bagpipes and the others have been too long ago to remember… or maybe I simply blocked it out as part of a mild case of Jim-induced PTSD) AND an old trumpet he managed to scrounge from a garage sale. I still think that if he was going to play the bagpipes in the first place, he should have gone all the way and slipped into his kilt and that little purse that keeps the kilt from flying up and turning the situation into a Discovery Channel experience. He has both, so it’s only fair that if the ear piercing racket he produces has to happen, he should put a little reciprocal effort into the ordeal, eh?

My cousin Tyler made turkish coffee, Poppi and I went on an excursion to Farmway and, after getting more than a little lost on the way home, found some homemade ice cream alongside the road. Now, Poppi has a bit of a soft spot for ice cream. In Pennsylvania his freezer is stocked to rival a supermarket… just in case, you know the mood strikes and it does fairly often. We finally made it back in time to get changed for the barbeque that was more of an hors d'œuvre-y thing where people chatted for hours. Let me back up a bit, though. Jim has a collection of old cars. For the wedding, he sent out a message asking who wanted to drive one to the wedding as part of an old car parade fiasco. We picked the blue one (of course) which happened to be an old Eldorado convertible. That thing wasn’t so much a car as it was a land-boat that steered like a whale and consumed more fossil fuel than any car has a right to do. We decided to drive it to the barbeque as a sort of test run. Mom and I were in the back seat and as we set sail the wind (which wasn’t anywhere near what I’d call warm) started to swirl around the back seat turning into an icey-tornado. We thought “haha, this is ok!” We clambered out to brave the party. Between four and five hours later we finally hustle back to the car. It’s night time, dark, we can see our breath in little clouds as we scamper across the gravel parking lot. Open the door, put my hand out for balance as I prepare to wiggle behind the front seat and horror begins to spread through my brain. “Ohhh no! It’s SLIMEY!?” My face scrunched up in confusion while I tried to comprehend how my hand could have betrayed me by coming into contact with that kind of texture. Who knew that dew falls before 9? Or that when car leather gets wet it becomes a freezing slimy version of Moby Dick? All I could think about was “Haahaa, who in their right mind buys convertibles? Bwahhahaaa, I’m FREEZING!” By this time the temperature had fallen well into the low 30’s and none of us had dressed very appropriately. After a good toweling and some gritted teeth we climbed back into the car for a MUCH colder version of our earlier drive but THIS time we missed the turn back to the house. Mom and I had been crouching in the back with our heads between our knees trying to avoid the near arctic conditions so we had no idea what had happened until mom popped her head up and cried “WHERE ARE WE!? THIS ISN’T RIGHT!!” Turning that beast wasn’t easy either and the maneuver took up the entire parking lot we’d pulled into complete with a little bit of tire-squealing for maximum effect. We finally made it back and I spent the next 30 minutes shuffling around the house trying to build up some friction between my frozen feet and the carpet.

The next day, Saturday, was the wedding day. Hairs were done, dresses donned and shoo fly pie consumed.

Busy Busy Finger-Bees

Sooo.... I haven't completely been sitting around twiddling my thumbs the last two weeks. I've been puttering around the new house attempting to be an extra pair of hands, I braved the dreaded DMV for my brand-spakin'-new license, I struggled through the hours at the bank to change my washington account to the (apparently) alien Oregon account in the SAME bank. Oh, and I made this little fellas who'll be making an appearance in the etsy shop shortly. I'm going to be making them some little fabric houses to go with whatever of them don't sell before I get around to it. Anyway, enjoy:

Bun bun

I think perhaps Spore has been influencing this one.... but that's only mostly likely.
Bird bird... bird in a tree.And finally another Spore-esque hand-holdable.