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I promise a post soon about our wonderful trip to Jamaica! I thought instead of getting too far behind, I would post about Christmas and hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

We made out pretty good since we really didn’t want to spend too much on gifts because of our trip. I really lucked out as Yves bought me a new ipod! 120 gb! What a surprise too! I also got some afghan hooks to try tunisian crochet, a zakka sewing book, ‘tell me what to say‘ parenting book and a case for my new ipod! I got Yves one of those furry bomber hats and a pair of Keen shoes (which were a bit too small but since I got it from zappos.com, they were open today and able to exchange them- I LOVE zappos.com and wish all online stores were as good as them!) Sienna made out pretty well with a farm set, baking set, guitar, toy camera and Auntie Joy stopped by later and gave her a Little People’s camping set. She played with it all! My parents had also bought her a table and chair set and some cute clothes. Yves family gave us a nice assortment of stuff that we carried home in our bags. I got pretty earrings and an earring and necklace set, Yves got a book and a t-shirt and Sienna got a pretty gold bracelet, some books and a puzzle board and we are all sharing the Jamaican rubber bracelets and keychain and screwdriver set with JP’s radio station logos on them, a bossa n’ Bob Marley covers CD an Jamaica cap! I hope I didn’t forget anything! I made a bacon, egg and cheese frittata and turkey sausage for breakfast and my parents came over for lunch. They cooked broccoli, baby bok choy and spinach and we ordered Hong Kong style steak and Honey Walnut Shrimp from the chinese restaurant. All quite good! We were able to connect with the family in Jamaica and got to watch them open the presents we got for them. Almost as good as being there!

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Tomorrow we are flying down to Jamaica for a week! woohoo!! While I am NOT looking forward to the 4 hour flight with Sienna, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that all will run smoothly. I posted this picture of noodle soup because the day I got this was dreary, rainy and a little cold! This shot is from last Thursday and I took Joy out for her birthday. We went to try this hand pulled noodle soup place on 60th off of 8th Avenue in Sunset Park (I’m way too lazy to look up the name right now.) It’s a little hole in the wall and the guy hand pulls the noodles right there for your soup. The noodles were delicious!! The meat wasn’t the greatest, a bit tough. So, not being truly satisfied, we headed over to our favorite bahn mi place and tried something different for both of us, the meatball sandwich. It was good. Not as good as the chicken one I get but still tasty. Me and Joy split the sandwich so didn’t make a total glutton out of ourselves !

See ya in a week!

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Yves got himself an early Christmas present! It’s replacing his G4 tower so it’s a long overdue upgrade. It’s pretty cool!

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The custom carved stamp that I ordered from Autumn Whispers arrived on Monday! I love it! I know I originally sent her the image from here but it had to be re-worked for sizing and then I decided to delete a line. AW worked extensively with me on this plus we had image viewing problems! The size of it was a lot bigger than I first anticipated but it just came out so cool and I love the organic feel of carved stamps and she did such a wonderful job, how can I not love it? It’s about the size of a trading card or rather ATC:Artist Trading Card (saying trading cards reminds me of my job at Mada Design– not that I didn’t enjoy my time there but I worked with trading cards so much I was dreaming about them.) So perhaps I will be making trading cards again! 😉

While working on this with me, we were convoing back and forth on Etsy. I’ve done some eraser carving in the past but never could do such a clean job as ones I’ve seen. I told her she has inspired me to give it another try and to use the special materials I bought. I usually do my carvings on the Staedler erasers because they were cheap and I didn’t care if I messed it up. The special material is a large, pink Speedball lino block. She gave me some advice and asked me to keep her updated on my finished product. I thought I would first show her the skill level she is dealing with! LOL! Here are the last 2 carvings I’ve done:

In case you can’t read it “A mix by luluvision@earthlink.net” to be used on my mix CDs. Very sloppy as you can see. I changed my e-mail and made another stamp on the other side of the eraser (because I’m all about recycling!):

Instead of mix, I just did “made by” so I could also use it on other things. See how my carving is just so uneven? It’s a bit better than the other side. Here is a side by side comparison to her stamp!

I think the most important trait you need in doing this is PATIENCE. Autumn Whispers, can you teach me patience? 🙂

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I came across this blog on the swap-bot forums while looking for ways to promote my Mix CD Release Project (more on that in a minute). This thoughtful and creative person will be giving away gifts for 29 days! Go check it out!

Art by Chrysti 29 Days of Giveaways!

My Mix CD Release Project is sorta on the same lines as the 29 days of giveaways but not as nice and I’m doing it to get rid of stuff without throwing it away. If you don’t know, I started organizing a montly gathering to exchange CD mixes originally started via snail mail by Josh Benton after he had a reunion in NYC during the summer of 2004. I was tipsy on alcohol when I announced how much fun it was to do it in person and we should do it on a monthly basis! It was really going strong the first few years with always at least 10 people showing up monthly. That means you were getting at least 10 different mixes a month! The excitement of the group has waned within the last year and while we still get together, it’s not about the mixes anymore but the friendships that developed. Now there might be an occasional physical mix exchanged but more likely mixes uploaded online. And we would be lucky that 10 people can make it! Anyway, I don’t mean to digress. You can imagine how many mixes I have in my binder as I keep every one of them after listening to them. If I like the mix, I put it on my Ipod but I don’t access the actual CD anymore and it’s just collecting dust on my shelf. I thought it would be fun to give them new light again. So, my Mix CD Release Project is about people sending me a stamped, self-addressed bubble wrap envelope and I will fill it with as many CDs as the postage allows and you get back some surprise mixes! It sounds like a good idea to me but I don’t know if people will be willing to go through the effort. What do you think?

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Yves says that of all the years we’ve been together, I might have helped decorate the tree once. It’s true that I get lazy in decorating for the holidays so I can’t really dispute that but I don’t believe it was only once! Maybe twice! In any case, I did not help this time. Yves and Sienna decorated the tree on Sunday, a perfect rainy day activity!

Sienna was actually helping by handing Yves the ornaments from the box!

Here is a picture of the tree lit

You can see it better in this photo. Don’t they look damn cute?

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I’ve been wanting to add this new category to the blog to help us remember the movies and games we rent from Netflix and Gamefly. There were a couple of times where we couldn’t remember if we seen the movie or we remember but don’t remember if it was any good (which most likely means it wasn’t that good but then this category would be moot!) Future entries won’t be so long!

So here is the latest:

Into the Wild: It already had 2 strikes against it for Yves even before we put it in the player. 1. It was directed by Sean Pean and 2. it was 2.5 hours long! I don’t tend to like movies that long either but I was interested in the story. It’s about a guy who gets rid of all his possessions to trek across the states and get to Alaska and live off the land there. The beginning was interesting because of all the people he met along the way. Once he got to Alaska, it was a little aggravating because honestly, he was more interesting when he was interacting with people vs. himself. Eddie Vedder scored the music for the movie (the 3rd strike for Yves). I don’t want to spoil the ending but we were both disappointed in it and Yves complained that he wasted 2.5 hours of his life on it. Hey, he didn’t fall asleep on it!

 The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Another long movie, a little over 2.5 hours! Yves didn’t last through this one and fell asleep before the midpoint. He’s not keen on period pieces. I don’t know much about Jesse James and it was a slow movie but I kinda wanted to see it to the end. I had an hour left before I got tired and decided to finish it the next night. I never did. So if anybody made it through and could tell me how he got killed, that would be nice.

Tropic Thunder: I was excited to get this movie after seeing the hilarious trailer (especially Robert Downey Jr.) The movie wasn’t rolling with laughs like I thought it would be (or lead to believe from the trailer) but it was entertaining. RDJ makes it worth it alone!

300: Another period piece and I don’t know why I put this on the queue. The graphics were really crisp but we weren’t into the story. It didn’t make it past the 10 minute point.

Atonement:  I purposely put this on the queue to receive it when Yves was away at the end of October. I knew this was something he would not like. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was in the mood for it at the time because that was when Sienna was sick and then I got sick and I was in a bad state of mind. I’m glad I watched it though. I loved it! I admit I’m a fan of Keira Knightly after seeing her in Pride and Prejudice (another favorite! And the same director too) and James McAvoy after seeing him in The Last King of Scotland (another excellent movie!)

Talk to Me: A slow movie but entertaining. Don Cheadle is a really good actor!

Michael Clayton: Couldn’t get into it. Made it to 20 minutes, I think, before we shut it off.

Some games:

Bust a Move Bash for the Wii: one of our favorite games from  our Dreamcast days. As fun as it was in the past but our old tired eyes can’t play it as long as before!

Space Invaders Extreme for the DS: Oh, this was just terrible! Graphics constantly moving in the background while you are trying to shoot the invaders. What happened to the plain ole space background? I guess that was the ‘extreme’ part. I hated it!

The World Ends With You for the DS: I don’t know why I put this one on the list, I’m not really into RPG. Barely made it past the intro screen as I didn’t want to waste my time.

Top Spin 3 for Wii: We were excited for this game since we love the tennis game that came with the Wii. I didn’t even bother trying it. Yves said it was complicated because you also had to use the nunchucks.

Boom Blox for Wii: This was a fun game and such a simple concept! We really enjoyed this one and kept it for quite a bit!

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The past few Fridays haven’t been terrible but they weren’t very pleasant because they were filled with doctor appointments. The 14th was for Sienna’s chest x-ray and blood test. Her new doctor wanted her to get an x-ray because of the coughing she was still having just to double check. The blood test was to test for lead, apparently that’s a new thing and recommended by the American Association of Pediatrics (I guess her old doctor didn’t follow the AAP). Yves took off to go with me because I didn’t think I could handle the x-ray. Well, the x-ray went smoothly, no tears! It was the blood test that produced tears! Poor thing! They had to get 4 vials of blood (not filled) and by the 3rd one, Sienna wasn’t very happy and no matter how me, Yves or Bob tried to console her, the tears came. We went to the library after that (we were in and out in an hour!!) and she was fine for the rest of the day. Me and Yves were more traumatized and Yves felt like taking a nap! LOL

The next Friday was my turn, going back to see the cardiologist for a follow up. I try not to get annoyed at waiting for 2+ hours to get in but I can’t help it. Either they overbook or the doctor comes in late or something because I always ask for the very first appt. and the assistant assures me I’m getting it yet I still wait so long. UGH!! I was supposed to do a stress test back in October but the insurance wouldn’t cover it so the doctor went to another center and somehow I got in. So the following Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for a stress test. I couldn’t eat breakfast or have any caffeine and the test took about 2.5 hours. It didn’t feel like that long because I hardly had to wait for anything (how pleasant!). They took a sonogram of my heart, pictures of my heart then I had to walk on the treadmill for about 3 minutes and then they took more pictures of my heart. I had to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours, a little gadget with wires attached to my chest. It’s not a big deal, I had worn it before several years ago when I was getting heart palpitations and that’s how I found out I had mitral valve prolapse. I had to drop off the monitor the next day so we’ll see what happens! I hope these next few Fridays will be doctorless!

There were 4 more of these plugs on my stomach area

Here’s the monitor around my waste.

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On Sunday I met up with Pete and Joy for some chop chop lunch at Big Wing Wong. I haven’t been there in ages and it did not disappoint! Joy ordered for us and got congee, roast pork, roast duck, wonton noodle soup, rice noodle with roast pork and noodles. YUM! Ya can’t beat that for just $10 each! We headed over to Fay Da to get some pastries (which I ended up bringing home) and then to Ten Ren for hot bubble tea.

Pete also gave us the things he got for us from his trip to Japan. I had asked him to just pick me up some crafty magazines that he thought would look cool so I can peruse the pictures and just marvel at their ingenouity, since I can’t read Japanese. He ended bringing me back 4 very cool books! 3 were magic shrubber books- crochet and knitting tawashi (used for dish washing/face washing/any kind of dusting and cleaning, etc.)! I couldn’t believe the luck as the term tawashi just started popping up for me. There was a tawashi article in the latest Craft magazine and a tawashi swap on swap-bot (which I just joined). All the patterns also include charts and I’ve never done crochet via chart before. I’m very excited to give it a try! I found some really cool links to help decipher the codes in the chart but the books all have pictures for each symbol showing you how to do it. I already made a cheat sheet on the symbols, except for a couple I couldn’t figure out (although I’m a graphic artist, I can’t seem to learn visually). I decided to give one a try and picked a super duper easy one, a heart!

The fourth book on the upper right is a pom pom book-make cute creatures out of pom poms. Pete thought it was cute so got that for me too! Aren’t I lucky? Arigato Pete!

Ok, so this might not be very challenging but I figured the edging might be so I figured I’d dip my toe into it with the heart and maybe by the time I got to the edging, I’d get the hang of looking at the chart. This blog entry really helped!

I also made this flower tawashi to use up the rest of this cotton yarn from a dishcloth I made for a swap:

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Thursday night I went out to dinner with Brenda and Joy to Franny’s. I’ve been wanting to check this place out since it made Time Out NY’s top 10 pizza places a couple of years ago. It did not disappoint! I ordered their homemade grape soda and it was very good! I’m not a big soda person and it was perfect in that it was overly sweet. For appetizers, we ordered this proscuitto special and the pork sausage. Delicious! We ordered 2 types of pizzas to share, the Buffalo Mozzarella, Garlic and Extra Virgin Olive Oil  (no tomato sauce) and Tomato, Anchovies, Chilies and Parmigiano Reggiano. So good! Thin crust and we had to cut it ourselves (which was entertaining!). We also ordered 2 desserts to share: the Cannolo (which is singular whereas the plural is cannoli) and the Chocolate Sorbetto. YUM! Needless to say, we were all stuffed! Again the pictures aren’t the greatetst because I don’t have much patience!

(already cut into! the roasted scallions were a great! What a surprise!)

(with Brenda’s finger)

Looked much nicer before I cut into it!

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