A Day Away

I've wanted to visit Longwood Gardens since I lived in Philadelphia, but hadn't yet made the effort. A few weeks ago I purchased a discounted ticket through Groupon and had to use it before the end of this month. I decided yesterday was a good day to do so, and got an early start to my day off to make the drive into southeast PA with my Starbucks travel mug full of coffee. Though none of the outside gardens are blooming yet, there was a lot of land to walk around, and a few cool buildings to visit (the former home of the Du Pont family, who used to own the Gardens, some treehouses built to get elevated views of the grounds, and a chimes tower). And I spent the largest portion of time walking around the seemingly endless rows and rooms of flowers and plants in the Conservatory. The sights and smells filled me with awe for God's amazing creation. The place is a photographer's dream. I'm far from a professional, but I took a ton of pictures and did ok with my little Sony digital camera. It was a successful outing, and I feel like there was plenty to see even though it's still winter, but I would like to go back again in the summer to see the outdoor gardens in bloom and the many fountains running with water. I hit Panera (one of my favorite restaurants) for a late lunch and did a little shopping on the way back. And I came home to a dog who was happy to see me and ready to go for a walk. After that, I spent the evening relaxing with my latest book (The Paris Wife) and a few episodes of Gilmore Girls. It was a good day.

5, 6, 7

I've made a little bit of progress on my list in the last few days. I should be adding at least one more finished book very soon. Over this past weekend I tried my first new recipe of the year: Butternut Squash Risotto. I think it sounds really fancy, but it was actually pretty easy to make. And I honestly wasn't sure whether I would like it, but it was really good. (I realize that picture doesn't make it look super appetizing, but trust me.) It doesn't really work for leftovers though, so next time I'll have to make it when it's not just me.


Also over the weekend, I finally spent a few hours with my sewing machine (and old episodes of Bones on Netflix) and completed 8 blocks of my mystery quilt, which also means I can move on to the next "clue" (which is 8 more different-patterned blocks).


And as you can see from this last picture, I finally got over being intimidated by knitting cables! It's not on my list, but it's trying something new. I found a simple pattern to try as a dishcloth, and its not hard at all! Granted, there are other cable-stitch patterns that are more complicated, but now I'm not so afraid to try them.

A Weekend Away

In January I started thinking ahead over the year to try to plan out my vacation time. I had some vacation time already planned for May and I wanted to spread out my Sundays off through the year if possible. I decided with the busy seasons of Lent and Easter I wanted to take a weekend off before May, around this late winter/early spring time. Lutherlyn, the camp I attended as a kid and worked at as a counselor, has several off-season retreats, and at least a few of them are related to crafty things and often attended by my friend Mandy and her mom. I found out that they were having a "Mystery Quilting Retreat" the last weekend of March, and confirmed that Mandy would be attending, and decided to sign up and use it for a Sunday off. I decided to make it a long weekend, and I headed home to my parents' on Thursday, and then made my way to Lutherlyn Friday evening. Unfortunately Mandy had caught the flu and spent all day Friday in bed. She was feeling better by Saturday though, so luckily it was only a 24-hour thing (as of this posting, I am still feeling ok, and hoping I avoided catching it!) and we were still able to spend some time together, even though she wasn't feeling 100%. Her mom and I each worked on the mystery quilt project, and Mandy worked a little each on a t-shirt quilt, some placemats, and a stuffed rocket (see below). The way the mystery quilt worked was that we received a list of how much fabric to get and how to make the first cuts, all before we got to the retreat. Then we received clues every so often, and you work one clue at a time and when you finish it you move on to the next clue, so that you don't know what the completed quilt will look like. And everyone can work at their own pace. Even though I waited until I was at the retreat to cut any of my fabric, I was still able to catch up to about where most of the women were. The first few clues involved a lot (a LOT) of tedious cutting, sewing, cutting, and squaring, all to make the small squares that will be put together to make the blocks. You can see a lot of these squares in the picture below. Out of 9 clues total, I only made it to clue #5, but because of all the prep work, I think most of us ended the weekend around the same place. I was able to complete one block, and put enough rows together to complete 7 more blocks when I put those rows together. Then I can move on to clue #6! My completed block is the last picture below. I wasn't expecting to complete a quilt in one weekend, so I still feel pretty satisfied with what I was able to do, and I look forward to continuing to work on my quilt. The weekend was a nice break from the normal, and a great time at a place I love with a good friend. It was also nice to see my parents for a few days, but the time definitely went too fast, so I am looking forward to them coming out to visit me for Easter.

Signs of Spring

Looking through a new lens

It was time for an upgrade. I decided to use some money I received for Christmas and buy a new camera. As much as I would have loved to really upgrade to one of the SLR professional cameras, I had no idea how expensive they are until I started researching them. So I decided to stick with the model I already had (Sony Cybershot) and just upgrade to a newer model, with more megapixels (I went from 6 to 14). I haven't played around with it a whole lot yet, but I was excited to discover that there's a setting that automatically puts the camera on whatever setting it should be for the picture I'm taking. For instance, when I was taking pictures of the lighthouse, it switched to landscape setting. I just took my new heading picture today. I decided my blog needed a new look, and a new picture. And as long as we're stuck with snow and winter I might as well look for the beauty in it.

Renovations

So the parsonage I live in is pretty great. One of the things I love is that there are hardwood floors in the living and dining rooms and carpet in all the bedrooms. And they refinished the hardwood and put in the carpet only about 2 years ago. They were waiting to do the floors in the kitchen and bathrooms though until someone moved in full time. So those floors were pretty ugly vinyl. When I got a new refrigerator I saw that the kitchen floor was in bad shape (as was the master bath), so the church council and I decided to get the floors done ASAP. So I picked out some tile, and also picked out a new toilet, vanity top and faucet for the master bath (which also needed to be replaced). And last week the floors guys came and everything was done in less than 3 days! We also have a guy on council who is a carpenter, who ripped out the ugly laminate wall coverings in the bathrooms and put up wainscoting. The wainscoting still needs to be painted, and I think I might paint the vanity and put new handles on it to update it a bit, but the changes have already made a huge improvement.

These are the "before" pictures of the floors in the bathrooms and kitchen.

And these are the "after" pictures! The first is the tile in both bathrooms and the second is the kitchen.

More Pictures...

Welcome to the Jersey Shore!

I have internet access in my house. FINALLY. This means that I can share some pictures of my new place with those of you who haven't seen it yet. The house is right next to the church I'm serving for my internship. It previously housed offices for an NJ social services organization, and was completely gutted and renovated, and also received an addition. Now half of the building is my residence (kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom, two bedrooms, basement) and the other half is church/public space (two large meeting rooms, restrooms, kitchenette, food pantry, and storage), with a sunroom/breezeway/small meeting space connecting the two halves. The house was completely furnished and decorated with all new items, as well as a fully stocked kitchen and other household items such as towels, sheets, and cleaning supplies.

The people have been very welcoming and helpful. The community the church is in is small, but nice. It has a population of only about 8,000. But Toms River is right next door, which is a pretty large area, and Ocean County is the fastest growing county in NJ. AND I can be at the ocean in just 15 minutes! In my opinion, that's the best part. ;) I've already made it to the beach a few times. Sadie and I have been settling in nicely, and enjoy walking through the neighborhood on a nice path not too far from the house.

Enjoy the pictures... in my next post I'll share about my birthday surprise. :)