Shutterbug Mama

in less than a couple of hours, 2006 will be drawing to a close for those of us here in the central time zone. while most folks are probably out drinking too much champagne or miller high life, we're safe and sound at home. cadence is sleeping, ted's looking for a new brew pot, and i'm posting my final entry of 2006.

...we actually did our celebrating last night. ever since we had cadence, instead of celebrating new year's eve, we celebrate new year's eve-eve (a.k.a. dec 30th) so that we can actually hang out with people and still be in bed before midnight. last year was more of an open house type of a party since we'd just moved into our new place. this year, it was back to more of the traditional dxxxxxx siblings-and-their-closest-friends party. mikey brought his gyil, which is a xylophone from ghana, where he's spent quite a bit of time. ted and john joined him on djembe and cow bell, as well as ted's bandmates tim on guitar and matt on cadence's toy piano, and others on various percussive instruments.

...it was pretty flippin' loud. the last time mikey brought his gyil over to our place, he was playing so hard he broke his tree trunk stool and fell on his butt while playing. he's pretty damn amazing on that thing. i love pentatonic instruments. traditional korean music is based on a pentatonic scale, which i think is very blue-sy, so i guess it's kinda in my blood to be fond of that music.

...we cut the music short at around 10pm as a courtesy to our neighbors, and folks just chilled out for a bit. i don't think cadence went to sleep until almost midnight, though, and we were pretty exhausted when we finally turned in for the night.

...we woke up to a rainy new years eve, the kind of day when you just want to crawl back in bed and not move for another couple of hours, if only your 2 year old would allow it. i also had a stage 1 migraine, so we didn't make it to church. i've had the headache all day now, so i'm glad we decided to just veg and watch a movie (thank you for smoking). we were supposed to go to our friend yvonne's for dinner, but i know i would've been no fun to be around.

anyhoo, happy new year to everybody everywhere. may 2007 bring you all peace, love and much joy!

i have found my new purpose in life. it is something that has been welling up within me for the past 9 months or so, gaining momentum day by day, until i could deny it no longer. it is something about which i have wondered again and again, 'can i really do this? little ole me?' it is something i have daydreamed about, something i have sighed long and hard about, something i have longed for with fear and trembling. and now finally, like a flannery o'connor character, i can no longer run away from my destiny.

and that destiny, my dear friends, is to STITCH. no, not like a surgeon. i'm talking sublime stitching like THIS.

...it all started last march at ted's first show playing with tim lowly. i spied our friend katie behind the merch table with a thread and needle and a black t-shirt creating the beautiful creation you see ted sporting above. that's what sparked the sleeping inner crafty goddess in me, and after months of thinking i lack the manual dexterity, let alone the spare time and patience, i finally couldn't resist any longer and last tuesday night, i went out and bought the stitch-it kit, created by the proprietor of Sublime Stitching herself, Jenny Hart (of Austin, TX, not to be confused with Jenny Hart of Chicago who introduced me to Douglas Coupland's books).

i have to confess that i initially hesitated to share this here because now everybody who's reading this will want to go out and buy one of these stitch-it kits (yes, even YOU, josh) and i know for a fact you all are going to be so much better at it then i am. you see, i've never been that crafty kind of girl. oh, sure, i made my own doll clothes and the requisite pin cushions and what not. i learned the basics of crocheting and knitting, thanks to my childhood chum Ruthy's older sister Esther. however, no matter how hard i tried, nothing i made ever had any aesthetic appeal to them. okay, i admit i didn't try all that hard, but still…i'm sure if i had any potential for the mastery of these needle arts, it would have manifested by my teenage years.

i have been sitting on the sidelines during the DIY crafty revolution while my fellow gal (and a few guy) pals have been sitting in knitting circles with their needles flashing and clicking away at blinding speeds. i tried to make my own cards with rubber stamps and fancy scissors, but my creations just sucked. bad. i have toyed with the idea of getting a sewing machine so i can make 'slow clothing,' but who the hell was i kidding?

STITCHING, on the other hand, now THAT is something even a craft clutz like i can do! i had no idea that running a needle threaded with embroidery floss through fabric stretched over a plastic hoop could be so fulfilling. so i decided, six days before christmas, that i would STITCH some t-shirts for presents. ted was a little doubtful at first, but when he saw some of my initial handiwork, he decided to give it a go. we ran out to american apparel for a bunch of t-shirts on thursday, which gave me four days to get everything stitched. i was a bit rushed, but the end results weren't half as bad as i was expecting, if i may say so myself.

...of course, i had to choose the most difficult design for my first project. this was for auntie lore who would be coming in for christmas with her douglas all the way from sweden. all those french knots and lazy daisies took me HOURS.

...the kitty cat was for becki, uncle dave's fiancee whose cats cadence loves to play with (although i don't think they return the sentiment). this was much simpler than the butterfly shirt, thank goodness.

...and this last design was for uncle dave, which ted drew himself. i finished it sunday afternoon, which was the very last slot of free time i had before christmas morning, when we were due to go out to the P's. what can i say; i love living dangerously.

anyhoo, i am anxiously awaiting my shipment of hip design transfers from sublime stitching so that i can make the coolest tea towels on the block.

Labels: me.so.crafty

we wish you a merry christmas,

we wish you a merry christmas,

we wish you a merry christmas,

and a happy new year!

xoxo,

sarah, cadence & teddy

...for the past 4 years, christmas would not be christmas for me without some sufjan stevens. i was one of the lucky people who saw sufjan live before he hit the bigtime, and i was able to get a hold of actual copies of his first 3 homemade annual christmas EPs. this was back in 2002, when sufjan was little-known enough to personally respond to my email and ship me copies of the CDs himself. i always thought he’d make a killing if he issued his christmas albums properly, and that’s just what he and his asthmatic kitty family did last month. they seem to be selling really well, as amazon.com was out of copies when i checked today. by now, the number of his christmas albums has grown to 5, and just as i wished, instead of combining these EPs onto full-length CDs, he’s maintained the original form and order resulting in a beautiful box set complete w/ wordy liner notes, artwork, lyrics and chords so you can sing along, which is what these little gems were originally created for.

i think that the next step for sufjan and his friends would be to give concerts in which they play all the songs from these christmas albums from start to finish. it would be like a christmas rock opera. they would make soooooooooooooo much money. which they could then stuff into the tin container of the nearest salvation army bell-ringer.

Labels: christmas, music, sufjan

...not quite what i had in mind for getting TAGGED, but it seems we have a budding tag artist on our hands.

so it all went down this morning. ted was home sick in bed. i was in the bathroom getting ready to go out to meet my cousins kris and rachel for breakfast, and cadence...well...she was busy too...it's totally my fault for leaving the sharpie where cadence could reach it. (i have to keep in mind that she's in the 89th percentile for height.) when she ran into the bathroom with a blue face and blue hands, i thought that was the worst of it. i nearly fainted when i went out into the dining room. she had drawn a MURAL on one of our dining room benches as well as on the floor of her playroom, and there were few toys within her reach that escaped becoming her doodle pad.

of course, this all happened 20 minutes before i was supposed to meet my cousins at the restaurant...oh, JOY...CADENCE JOY...

Labels: art.by.cadence, cadence

i've been kinda crazy busy w/ work and getting stuff ready for christmas, but thanks to MB for tagging me so i have something to write about other than how frazzled i've been the past week. so here goes: 5 things you probably didn't know about me (unless you're my mom or my brother).

1. i am a sucker for condiments. 'where's the beef?' who cares?!?! just slather on the ketchup, honey mustard, chipotle mayo, sweet pickle relish, chopped onions, BBQ sauce, salsa, hot peppers, etc and i'm in condiment heaven…i don’t really even like the taste of meat if there are no condiments involved. cadence seems to be following in my footsteps in this regard. she will repeatedly dunk the same french fry in ketchup and lick it clean over and over again.

2. i have never been to europe. or africa. or south america. or australia. or antarctica. i bring this up now because my friend bokumbop and her family have already been to paris this fall and now they’re getting ready for a trip to peru for the holidays! i feel so provincial in comparison. truth be told, i am no cosmopolite. the only other countries i’ve spent any significant time in are canada and my motherland. my friends matt and laurel have been teaching english in spain for the past year, and reading laurel’s blog often makes me want to sell all my possessions and move my family to a quaint village in europe where they have things like siestas and olive groves and whitewashed walls with bright blue doors. i am neither an anglophile nor a francophile nor a spanglophile (?), but europe holds a special charm for me for some reason. even the word itself, EUROPE--the fact that 4 out of its 6 letters are vowels is something i find utterly irresistible. i will admit that i have a special interest in belgium. how such a small country could produce so much good beer and chocolate is beyond me. i’ve never had belgian cuisine, but i guess if you just add the right (e.g. copious) amount of chocolate to anything and wash it down with any one of the fine ales available in that country (esp. one brewed lovingly by monks), you really can’t go wrong. someday, our little family will make its way to belgium, i just know it...

3. when i was in high school, i was on the boys’ swim team. i have the photo in the yearbook to prove it, although i won’t post it here (all the guys were in these skimpy speedos. i think josh would kill me if i posted that photo). the funny thing is, i barely even knew how to swim back then (i’m not much better now, either). i got roped in because so many of my friends were on the team that i was at every single swim meet. the coach finally told me to make myself useful, so i became the scorekeeper. i can still recall the smell of the chlorine, the humidity, the adrenaline flowing as we cheered for our guys. to this day, i get a thrill out of watching the olympic swimming events on TV. and no, it’s not because of the skimpy speedos. yuck!

4. the month before my family moved to the U.S. from korea back in 1978, i was 5 years old and apparently too much of a distraction to have around while my mother packed for the Big Move. so i got to spend my last few weeks of life in the motherland in Wonju, a town located in the heart of the korean peninsula, where my grandfather ran a kindergarten. although my memories of those weeks have faded into a sepia tone, i can still recall the simple joy of playing in the countryside. i had a lot of freedom for a five year old and often wandered about on my own. i was SUPPOSED to be attending classes with the other kindergarteners, but since my grandpa was in charge, i basically came and went as i pleased like the wind, and the teachers never said anything. i still remember having the playground all to myself while the other kids were inside at class. and every afternoon, there would be the delicious aroma of freshly baked donuts wafting from the school kitchen. good times...

5. about 6 years ago, i spent a week canoeing with 3 other people in the canadian boundary waters just north of the minnesota border in quetico provincial park. my good friend john berton was our very able guide. i’d been such a city girl for almost all my life that i had no idea what it was like to be out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, no running water or plumbing, no stove, no warm bed, nobody else for miles and miles. being the only girl on the trip, i was expecting john to be a little easy on me. boy, was i wrong. some of those portages were long and steep and rough, and i still had to carry my share of the load. he also made sure that at some point on the trip, i carried my own canoe, gathered and arranged wood for the campfire, pitched the tents, and did whatever else needed to be done. that week changed my life. it was my introduction to caring for the environment. i can’t begin the describe how absolutely beautiful it was up there. the mist on the lakes in the morning as the sky starts turning pink…the echo of the lonely loon calling out to its friends as it runs across the lake and flies away…the perfectly calm waters mirroring the nearby island and sky…the warmth of the sun as you bake sleepily like a lizard on a rock…holding your breath as you catch a glimpse of a bald eagle and its chicks in a nest…gliding silently across the waters in a canoe as a gentle rain envelopes you…and at night, the blanket of stars so bright and numerous like you’ve never seen them before…*sigh*…that was probably one of the best weeks of my life…

and now, it's my turn to tag bokumbop, lakeline and ESY.

...cuz i'd probably make better time than in a car out on the roads right now...yes, the snow has been falling non-stop here in the northern suburbs. wait, what am i doing at work in the northern suburbs when i live 30 miles away in rogers park in chicago, and the winter storm warnings have been broadcast nonstop for the past 24 hours all over the midwest? i'm an idiot, what can i say?

you see, i haven't been in the office since last tuesday due to the thanksgiving holiday, vacation days, being sick and what not, and i actually have things that i need to get done that required coming into the office. i was also wide awake at 2:30 am with no sleep in sight, so i got up at 5, showered, ate a bowl of cereal, futzed around, listened to NPR, bundled up real good with my pants shoved inside my granny snowboots, and trekked out to the train station. it was a blistery half mile walk, but totally doable. the train was on schedule for the most part, and we were only a few minutes late pulling into the Lake Forest station. the shuttle bus was waiting for us, and it was crowded today as more people than normal chickened out of driving. this was one of the few times i didn't get a seat on the bus and it also happened to be the longest shuttlebus ride of my life. one of the roads on our route had turned into a parking lot of wiped out cars to the left, the right, and the middle of the road. it took us 40 minutes just to travel 2 miles of that road. apparently, lake county prefers to plow its roads only AFTER all the cars are off the roads, which means, NEVER, thereby leaving dozens of cars stranded and hopelessly stuck and in the way of our rather large shuttlebus.

we did finally make it to the office an hour later than usual, but we got off easy; the people on the later train were late by 3 hours because the shuttlebus itself got stuck in the snow.

so that same road has been a mess all day, and although my first thought was to do what i needed to do in the office and then catch a cab back to the train station as quickly as possibly, it occurred to me that such a cab ride might cost me a fortune if the length of the shuttlebus ride was any indication.

so here i am. snowbound. at work. and i really could have gotten by with staying home until monday because everybody in our department except our VP and the guy who lives down the street stayed home today.

happy friday!