Christmas 2010

Can't say I'm too impressed by Boston's idea of a "wicked blizzard" that shut down most of the city (but not me because I'm apparently essential personnel), but the fact that there aren't that many other people here gives me a few minutes to post some pictures



One of Debbie's projects this past year (since she won't let anyone see her watercolors, I can't talk about them) was to make us some beautiful stockings as can be seen above.

Over the holidays, we made the trek back to Michiana (or thereabouts depending on your definition of the word) for a week and a half or so with our families. During that time, we had several celebratory gatherings and I've posted links to the pictures below (sorry none of the gathering at the Yoder house as my battery was dead and had misplaced my spare-in my luggage where it was supposed to be as it turns out).

First there was the gathering at Grandma Ultz's house
where there was much merriment

some card tricks

and we watched the Lions lose once again. The rest of the pictures can be found here.

Then there was the shower at the church gym

which featured some good soups and salads

and some highly competitive games. The rest of the gallery from the shower can be found here.

A bit later in the week,

we celebrated the Himes family Christmas

with some angels

who like to hide in cupboards,
go sledding,
and read with Grammy.
Oh, and Callie the wondercat was there too. The rest of the pictures I took in Sturgis are here.

On Christmas, we went to the Mullenix celebration

where there was much food,

and many presents. Here's also where my camera battery died, but the rest of the pictures I got on that battery are here.

In our last gathering (after a battery recharge), we went back to Sturgis for the extended Himes family gathering, which, due to some untimely illnesses, was much smaller than expected.
We still managed to have our usual white elephant gift exchange, but with only 6 people we had a bit harder time not grabbing what we'd brought.
In the end, though, a good time was had by all (even if Mom and Dad did have more leftovers than anticipated). The pictures from that gathering are here.

Lots of old photos

Way late (after I thought I was going to be better about it), but I'm finally posting some pictures. For the first, back in June, we went on a duck boat tour of Boston followed by a tour a Fenway Park. The pictures are here.


Then, in October, we went to Mount Washington and took a train to the top to see the fall colors. Pictures of that trip can be found here.

Then we have some pictures from our Thanksgiving, which are here.

A tale of watching whale tails

So Debbie and I went out on a whale watching trip on Saturday. We saw a couple of humpback whales. Don't have really good pictures of them because I was always a bit slow on pushing the button and the couple that I had where I think I would have gotten a good picture of them, someone's head was in the way (stupid rule about tall people having to stand in the back - how is it fair that just because of a genetic disposition totally beyond my control I've had to stand in back of the line all my life?). Anyway, what pictures I do have are here. Overall, it was quite fun, but it got cold once we got way out there with the wind and all, and the crowding inside during the brief rainstorm wasn't the most fun. I think the most fun sighting of aquatic animals was watching the seals in at the aquarium while we were waiting in line for the boat to come.

I'm getting better (or Our Trip to Seattle)

Well here it is, a post about an event that just ended yesterday. Debbie had a meeting last week in Seattle so I flew out Friday night so that we could spend the weekend out there seeing the sights. We saw lots of stuff and had a pretty good time; didn't get to sleep much though. A scary hotel room had something to do with that, but even at the nice hotel, the pillows weren't my friends. Anyway links to some of the photos are here. I think I've passed my limit to what I can upload, so the rest may be upcoming as I clear out some junk.

Edit: Looks like they're all there now.

Only 6 weeks late

A month and a half or so ago, Debbie's parents and her brother, Jon, and his family came out for a visit. Unfortunately, in the only picture I took that them all it it, they all had their backs to the camera. The rest of the pictures I took that day are here.

Our project: a new coffee table

So a couple of months back, a local Crate&Barrel location closed and we bought some of their shelving to in the hopes of making it into a new coffee table.


We put the three boards together to make the basic shape.


Unfortunately, the table made with just 3 boards wasn't sturdy enough, so we needed to add a shelf to stabilize it. The board needed staining, because it was unfinished.


Because the top board was scarred and had a lot of holes that needed filling, we decided to paint a pattern on the tabletop to mask that.


First, we had to sand the finish off the top, which made a huge dusty mess all over our apartment.


Then we had to mask off the tabletop for how we wanted our pattern.


We decided to go with a simple geometric design.


We went with black paint to match our bookshelves.


Even though we don't play many games,


we decided making a game board on the table would be fun.


Once we were done painting,


we had to put the shelf in.


Then a number of coats of polyurethane followed,


and finally we ended up with our new coffee table.

Paperweights

A couple of weeks ago, Debbie and I took a class in making glass paperweights at a glassblowing school. It was lots of fun, though very hot. We each made 4 paperweights: a clear one, one in which we just did some free-form experimenting, one in which we made bubbles with a pointed object that we pressed into our colored piece, and one with which we used a flower mold. Pictures of the final products are here. And no, I don't know why the picture above is cut off. It's the full picture in the link.