Showing posts with label Calligraphy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Calligraphy. Show all posts

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Six Miles, Loads of Dirt, and a Haircut

Last Sunday night (2/16) Todd and I went to Burger Lounge in Hillcrest for dinner, followed by Songwriters Acoustic Night at Swedenborg Hall.

Burger Lounge is our favorite burger in San Diego.  Todd got a chance to try the limited time available elk burger.

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The elk burger warranted a Todd Shot, apparently!

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I had the Baby Lounge burger.  Just my size and right up my alley.  Gotta love it when the meat is so much bigger than the bun! 

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Poster for Songwriters Acoustic Night.

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Todd is friends with Pete, Jason, and Isaac, so it was great to see them all together on stage in one night!

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They each sang a song, then circled back again and again.  Such a fun night of local music.

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Todd got me a Roomba as an early birthday gift.  Because, as I say all the time:  vacuuming is the bane of my existence. 

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It usually takes me an hour and ten minutes to vacuum the whole house.  I spend way too much time vacuuming every week.  The Roomba does all flooring surfaces too, so it will clean all our carpet and tile flooring.  It is really disgusting to find out how dirty your carpet/floors are though.  We vacuum regularly.  We vacuumed with our Dyson before turning the Roomba on.  The Roomba still got this much dirt and cat fur!

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Not only is that gross… we programmed the Roomba to vacuum for an hour every day when we’re at work.  And every day this week, it has picked up this much dirt and fur!  I’m grossed out but at the same time so happy, ha ha.

We watched “Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan” this week.  I hadn’t seen it since like, college.  I had totally forgotten the plot.  You know one of my favorite movies from last year was “Star Trek Into Darkness”.  I’ve seen it, oh, like 5-6 times already. 

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Without giving the plotlines away, if you haven’t seen either movie… I was amazed at how much Into Darkness paid homage to Wrath of Khan!  If you like either movie and haven’t seen the other, I recommend seeing them together some time.  Wrath of Khan first. 

I took Friday (2/21) off work and got a haircut.  My last haircut was in October, so it was about time.  My hair was getting a little too long to manage.  Here I am, in the midst of styling.

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This is my hair now.

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The left pic is my normal smile.  I still don’t really like my smile with braces.  So I tried smiling with my mouth closed and the end result was an accidental duck face.  Sigh.  Here’s the back of my hair now.

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After my haircut, I bought some hand soup and hand cream at Bath & Body Works.  Then I headed to Barnes & Noble.  I guess I felt like it was a splurge day, because somehow I ended up with a caramel flan frappe and a red velvet cupcake!  I enjoyed them while perusing magazines.

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I did end up buying this calligraphy book and started reading it this weekend.  This book has been on my wishlist for months now, ever since I took the calligraphy class.  I’ve also taken this Skillshare calligraphy class and highly recommend it. 

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I’m in the midst of training for a 15K race at the end of March.  And after the extra calories on Friday, it was a good reason to get out to the lake and run six miles. 

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The six miles this week actually felt great compared to the five miles last week!  The temperature wasn’t as high, I wore shorts, and I was armed with water, Cytomax, and a GU.  I ate the GU after three miles and it helped power me through the last half of the run.  I felt really good on this run.  I felt like I could have gone further!  The weather was overcast yesterday too, that might have helped.

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Ah yes, some Noodle cuteness.  One morning last week I came downstairs and it was quiet.  I love quiet mornings with a cute cat snoozing on his perch!

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Noodle hid under the dining table on a chair and played peek-a-boo with us.

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It was a little too much cuteness for one cat, really.

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Oh I almost forgot!  We cooked this Pesto Alla Trapanese as a homecooked splurge meal this week and it was SO.GOOD.  We had forgotten how good it was! 

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In fact, I blogged about this dish once before, and I was actually a Blogger Spotlight on America’s Test Kitchen blog!  One of my proudest blogging moments ever. 

PS – I finally switched out my blog header banner, after over two years.  Click over to check it out if you are reading my blog in a reader.  :)

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Thursday, December 19, 2013

Calligraphy Class @ Paper Tales

Lately I’ve been really interested in modern calligraphy, because I’ve seen it all over Pinterest and on blogs.  It seemed like it would be really fun to learn calligraphy and make my own quote prints or journal cards for scrapbooking.  So when I found out that my awesome local scrapbook store Paper Tales was holding a Calligraphy class, I signed up!  The class was taught by April Joy Hill, whom I was already following in the scrapbooking world.  What a small world that she lives in San Diego!

Practicing calligraphy this weekend on Project Life journal cards.
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Calligraphy class was held on Sunday 12/1 from 1-4pm.  When I had lunch with Pearl, she said she was thinking about attending the class too.  When she found out I was planning on going, she signed up too!  Here we were in class.
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April the instructor, showing us the type of paper to use to practice calligraphy on.
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My first time using a pointed-tip calligraphy pen!  We got a straight pen holder with a Nikko G nib.  Using black sumi ink
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My first strokes felt weird and unnatural, lol.  I wasn’t used to holding the pen and the nib.  I practiced some basic strokes first.  Then using the basic strokes to build the lowercase alphabet.
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Practice, practice, practice.
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With some mess-ups along the way.
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The other ladies in the class, hard at work practicing their alphabets.
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After practicing the letters, I practiced putting words together. 
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The instructor April and I.
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I got to meet my Instagram friend Mariko!
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I had a lot of fun in class and learned so much!  In fact, I sort of got obsessed with calligraphy and signed up for a Skillshare calligraphy class called Introduction to the Art of Modern Calligraphy.  I spent a bunch of time practicing yesterday.  Here’s some that I scanned into the computer.
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Some more on journal cards.
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I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t practiced enough to find my own style yet.  I see all the accomplished calligraphers out there doing amazing lettering, and I’m far from where I want to be.  But it is so fun to practice and explore.  I have a feeling that this hobby will stick!

Just for fun, I scanned in the “be jolly” that I wrote above, and made this 3x4 journal card in Photoshop.  I printed it onto a Project Life 3x4 blank card
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I’m giving the journal card away as a free download!  If you like it and want to print your own, you can download it here:  listgirl 3x4 be jolly journal card

Please link up in the comments if you use it to make something.  I would love to see it!  I’m having so much fun with calligraphy!  :-)

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