Last month, I spent a few days in Phoenix for work. I had a few hours to kill one afternoon, so I paid a visit to the Desert Botanical Garden. Everyone said “oh, it’s hot there, but it’s dry heat, so it’s not so bad.” Not true. 110 degrees is hot, regardless of humidity levels. I only stayed for an hour or two at the gardens, but saw a huge variety of cacti and some beautiful big skies.
This guy was my favorite – Old Man Cactus, all covered in soft white fuzz.
I love light & shadows – they create such interesting patterns if you stop and look at them. I’m trying to be more intentional about carrying a camera with me and actually taking pictures. What a concept, I know. This is one of the gates to our apartment building, facing west. I pretty much only use when coming home from work on my bike, because there’s a ramp leading up to it rather than a flight of stairs.
Happy 2nd anniversary to me! and Ryder! Accompanied above by our anniversary cards from our parents…
We lately returned from a quasi-biennial family vacation/reunion in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Highlights this year were 3 refrigerators, massive multi-day castle building, which giant ghost crabs promptly took possession of, a kayak tour of the canals, Ryder surviving a 80-mile bike ride, good food, and of course lots of games & puzzles and general silliness. Lots of photos here.
(for comparison, see last trip’s photos)
Ryder and I made cookie stuffed cookies this weekend. They are approximately equivalent to eating 3 cookies at once. Mmmm. Recipe found here.
Christmas in general, much like my Christmas Crafts (part 1, part 2), was a multi-part event.
Part 1 of our actual Christmas travels was a 10 day trip to Michigan, starting in Midland to see my dear friend Anna get married, followed by a few days of working remotely from my sister’s couch, and ending in Grand Rapids for several packed days of visiting as much of my extended family as possible.
Somehow I feel like this sums up the trip, mostly because this is Chloe’s couch and I spent a lot of time sitting on it.
Another highlight was making everyone stand outside in the cold for an hour and a half to get in to the Santa House. It was cold. But we got to play in Santa’s Sleigh!
Of course, no Christmas would be complete without a picture of the girl cousins on the couch. See all the photos.
Ryder laughs at me every time I say this, but I have been feeling rather conflicted about this blog for a while. I like posting photos I’ve taken, which often are of my family or trips or just random things. But I also like posting crafts I’ve done, and want to have posts that are interesting to other blog-reading-crafters. So for a while this blog has served dual purposes, but I’ve felt weird about putting family photos up one day, then a post about how I made a clock, then photos from a wedding I attended. So, I’ve started writing about crafty things over at La Casa de Crafts. I’ve filled that blog with my posts from the now-mostly-defunct Winck N’ Crane blog so there are some things to browse through there.
Now we’ll see if I can manage to keep posting on two blogs…
