Free Time

Since I haven't been working full-time, I'm enjoying things I hadn't been able to before:

Trying new recipes: Salsa. I'm allergic to tomatoes so I didn't actually try this, but I wanted to because it smelled excellent! It's two large tomatoes, half a red onion (by the way, if you light a match, put it out and then hold it between your teeth as you cut an onion, you won't cry! sounds ridiculous but it worked for me and I usually have mascara running down my face at the first slice), half a huge bunch of cilantro, some garlic, a bunch of chopping, and voila! Kristine gave me the recipe and it's fabulous. I was supposed to add jalapenos as well but didn't know that when I bought ingredients.

Writing Papers at a leisurely pace (my method is to do it curled up in bed in the middle of the day). This paper was for my Romans Jan Term, which has been the only class I've ever taken that I wouldn't have minded taking for an extra week. It looks as if I lost my mind and started hurling things around, but that's actually because I dragged other things over there to be my study breaks without sacrificing the cozy bed. I think I made a card, wrote in my journal, worked on another project for class, and did some reading. Paper writing takes a LONG time, and it could very well be because of my study breaks.

Drying cilantro. Because of the climate, this had dried out by the end of the day. There must be 0% humidity here. Also, I only dried this because they give you a LOT of cilantro in a bunch for .49 at the grocery store.

Eating cheesecake. This particular one had too much chocolate. My dear friend Jillian probably died at that comment, but in the past couple of years I've discovered that I think chocolate looks really tasty, but it's lost its appeal and if I eat it, I consume a small amount and then I'm done. This is excellent news for a person who would exist solely on junk food if possible. The cheesecake part was terrific.

Seeing this wonderful person off to work. He bikes to work when he doesn't have to be there too early and when the weather is nice (actually, often when it's bad also... we share a car so if I need it, he's pretty much left biking to work). He loves his rides but you should see the layers he has on in this picture - it gets chilly!

Watching snow fall from my window (2 feet accumulated just hours after this picture was taken). If you're wondering, that's an overpass and yes, we hear traffic all day. We had to get special speakers so that if we want to watch movies, we can hear them over the road noise.

Home things
Sewing: in one afternoon, I hemmed a dress, made two pillows and mended some holey clothes. This fabric was used in packaging my Christmas gift from Brooke. Everyone should send me gifts wrapped in fabric... not kidding. The other side is red and white houndstooth fabric.

Made this little lopsided heart pillow because I wanted to see if I could, and I wanted to use the fabric but it wasn't large enough for a square pillow. It's silky something on one side and burlap on the other :) I like it. At its tallest part, it's probably 8 inches (but that's my best guess and we all know I don't estimate well).

My Valentine's decorations are a bit sparse. I couldn't think of a good, cheap filler so I punched circles into Valentine-colored paper and threw it in a hurricane glass.
If you're wondering why I've decorated for Valentine's day, it's simple: I took down the Christmas decor and wanted to replace my decorations around the house with something else appropriate for the season. Since everyone still associates snow-themed decor with Christmas, that was out, so I chose Valentine's Day. After that, we'll see. I only theme my decor and change it often because I feel the need to create and make things pretty and if I didn't do that I might decide to paint a mural on my walls and we DON'T want that. This is the best option.

Mom made this garland. It says LOVE but I couldn't get a good picture since the snow was making it so bright!

Made paper flowers with drinking straw stems for the table, again in Valentine colors. I'll come up with something not quite so third-grader in the future but making this was 100% free. The flowers are fun and easy to make. Down the road, I'll invest in pipe cleaners or something a bit more chic ;)