a new year

happy new year, everyone! i hope that you all had a nice holiday. i actually had a couple of weeks off from work, which was awesome. i am actually driving back down from my parents' house tomorrow to my place. i am going to be sad to go. it's been nice just hanging out and not doing anything. we had a great first christmas with my niece, who is the cutest thing ever. don't try arguing with me because you won't win. here's a blurry picture of her.

even though this is way out of focus, i think you can tell how adorable she is. :) i also saw a few movies including the hobbit (awesome!), django unchained (thought provoking and over the top), and jack reacher (tom cruise being super intense as always). the weather in norcal has been quite cold and was pretty rainy the first week i was up here. luckily my brother and sister-in-law gifted me with some really cool rain boots.

puddles fear me now. i bought a lot of nail polish which i am not going to show you. though i will show you the mani that i wore for over a week. it was seriously beautiful and wore like iron. 

you can't really tell from this picture but it is seriously sparkly and shiny. it is a pink red with bits of scattered holo glitter in it. seriously one of my favorite polishes that i found this year. 

and i ate. a lot. my mom is a great cook and i eat as much of her food as i can while i am at home. here are just a few of the tasty things i had over the break.

christmas dinner

beef pho

banh xeo

i will definitely miss the cooking when i am gone. that's about it. i read a couple of books but not as many as i'd hoped. i also pulled out my mom's old sewing machine to see if it worked. and it was working right up until it jammed. so now it's at the repair shop. i am hoping it just needs a good tuneup. it's a super old machine and it's not going to be worth putting a lot of money into it to fix it. if the estimate is too high i may just have to purchase a new one. 

since it's a new year, i should probably think about what my crafting goals are for the year. i cleared out my ravelry queue to only be 6 pages long. that took a couple of days. i used to queue everything i liked instead of favoriting it. now i know better. i only kept the things that i would realistically make and the list is still quite long. i do hope to get a lot more knitting done this year and learn to sew. 

and of course i'd like to blog more consistently. i say that all the time and i still haven't quite gotten the hang of it, but i'll keep trying. what are your new year's goals? :)

a little vacation

Happy Independence Day, everyone. I know it was technically yesterday but hey, I'll take what I can get. Right now I am on a little vacation up at my parents's place. My brother just had the most adorable baby girl a couple of weeks ago and I took the whole week off to just chill out and visit with my niece a lot. I've visited a lot of crafty stores since I've been back. There are some really great yarn and fabric stores not too far from where we are and I am hoping to post about them soon.

Life's been a bit of a whirlwind lately. Last month I went to a ton of book events (for those that don't know, I am a big reader). After my July 4th vacation I will head back home for 2 days and promptly take off again for San Diego Comic Con. I am super excited about Comic Con! It's one of the events I really look forward to every year. I'll try to be good and update again soon. I am leaving you with a picture of my adorable new niece. Have a wonderful weekend!

i like to call this her zoolander face.

holiday cheer

it's cold and rainy and twinkle lights abound. what can it mean except that the holiday season is here once again. i made the drive back up to northern california a few days ago. i was a little scared that it might be a bad drive because, a few days before, a bunch of the freeways and roads had been closed due to SNOW. yes, snow in southern california and las vegas even. unfortunately i didn't get any actual snow where i was but it was close enough that they closed the grapevine down for a day (which is exactly how i drive home). luckily the worst of the weather only lasted a couple of days and my drive was quite uneventful. however, i did see this while driving through the mountains.

i've seen snow before. in california even. but i still had to resist to urge to just pull over and touch the snow on the hills. the last few says have been filled with last minute christmas shopping and last minute knitting, too. i don't usually do too much gift knitting but i do like to make my family hats and things for the holidays. i started kind of late this year so it's going to be a race to finish everything in time. i'll try to post those fo's once they are done.

hope everyone else is having a fun filled holiday. see you in 2009!