I’ve been enjoying my new Chemex coffee maker that I got to have at the studio.  Of course, I love the way it looks and how it makes you feel like a scientist making coffee.  Larry says I like it because it looks like it is wearing a little necklace.

I’ve been taking beginner ceramic classes and practicing making mugs at a ceramic studio here in town.  These are a few that I recently brought home.  It’s harder that it looks and the clay shrinks more than I thought it would.  These are apparently coffee cups for children. : )

Here are a few Christmas songs I’ve been enjoying this month!  Merry Christmas!

This year as one of our advent calendar activities, we had an ornament decorating party.  I got a few paper mache ornaments from the craft store and they were so easy and fun to decorate!

I painted mine blue and added glitter.

Larry collaged his with pages from a Christmas comic.  Now we have a few more ornaments for our first Christmas tree!

I’m moving into a new studio!  It’s a lovely space with lots of great light.  I’ll share more pictures when I finish unpacking and setting up inside.

Here are a few photos from a lovely birthday trip to Washington, D.C.  Larry and I enjoyed exploring some new places and visiting a few we had never checked out before.  We started our day in Chinatown, because neither of us had ever been there before, and we wanted to check out Chinatown Coffee Co.  There wasn’t too much to explore in Chinatown, but the coffee was amazing!

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the National Museum of Natural History.  (You were allowed to touch this triceratops cast, I swear!)

We also saw an IMAX movie, Flying Monsters 3D.  Larry said the caption to this picture should be, “I can haz tiny popcorn?”.

I loved all of the mineral exhibits.  These rooms were quiet and empty compared to most others.  We stayed here taking pictures until almost closing time.

We tried a few restaurants in D.C. and they were all great!  Busboys and Poets was the clear favorite(you get to wander around a little bookstore while you wait for your table), but Comet Ping Pong and Sticky Fingers Bakery were excellent as well.  The wait at Comet Ping Pong was long, like their website says, but luckily it’s right down the block from Politics and Prose bookstore.

There were so many fun things we wanted to do, but we ran out of time.  Anyone have any recommendations for our next trip?

I love this old super 8 footage of snowmobile races in Rudyard, Michigan.  The old snowmobiles came in such cool colors.  I especially love this, because my Grandpa was one of the people racing!

One lonely purple carrot we found hiding in the garden.

Summer means picnics, but with how hot it’s been here lately breakfast picnics are the way to go.  We had breakfast sandwiches with lettuce, hummus, hashbrowns, and leftover black bean veggies burgers.  The chocolate peanut butter whoopie pie is my variation of a recipe from the “Sticky Fingers Sweet Cookbook”.

After breakfast, we headed off for a short hike where I spotted this cute turtle sunning on a rock close to shore.