setting up a blog

A few people have asked me for help with setting up a blog, and if setting up a blog is hard to do. I would say, if you're comfortable using the internet, then setting up a blog should be fairly easy for you. Here is a short video I made on how to set up a blog with blogger. Somehow this video ended up being GIGANTIC, so sorry about that!

a weekend in Minneapolis

For my birthday, Nate bought us tickets to see my favorite musician, Ani DiFranco, in concert in Minneapolis. So, we decided to make a weekend trip out of it!

Friday after work we left town and almost 4 hours later rolled in to Minneapolis for the show. It was a GREAT show- Ani and her band sounded awesome, the crowd was nice, and we had pretty good seats! I snuck a picture (no flash) for memory's sake:



Saturday we spent the morning leisurely enjoying breakfast at a coffee shop, and then went to the Walker Modern Art Museum & Sculpure Garden. I love modern art- it's fun to try and figure out the artist's message or interpretation.






And also, it turns out when there's extra large cutlery with a cherry on it, goofy posing is inevitable.





The rest of Saturday was spent shopping up a storm. I found a delightfully awesome store called Crafty Planet that was like Heaven on Earth for someone like me. I bought some cute fabric and yarn and a pattern. Hopefully life will slow down soon enough so that I may actually get my crafty projects finished!

THEN, we ventured to the mighty IKEA store and "ooh'ed" and "aah'ed" at all of the neat model rooms and furniture. We bought a new bedroom set (curtains, sheets, bed spread) although I really wanted to buy just about EVERYTHING.

And after THAT we went across the street to the Mall of America. We walked and walked until I was pretty sure my feet were going to fall off. Ate a late dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant (cheesy, but delicious).

Today before we headed home I dragged Nate to yet another yarn store. I'm missing my favorite yarn store (RIP Purl's), and for some reason a lot of the yarn stores around here have closed. I bought some super soft alpaca chunky yarn and can't wait to put it to good use!

All in all, a busy but very fun weekend! : )

An Awesome Birthday

You say it’s your birthday….
It’s my birthday too, yeah…

I almost forgot the gloriousness of teaching young children, how excited they get for birthdays. Kids know birthdays- to them, it’s serious stuff. So, they all came bounding in today saying things like, “TODAY’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!!” (because maybe I had forgotten..?).
: )

I bought the kiddos Krispy Kreme doughnuts this morning, and everyone got to “read around the room” on the couch, pillows, etc. during independent reading time, and today they just so happened to fill up their class sticker chart to earn an extra recess! My lovely colleagues cooked a home-made Beef Bourginion stew with mashed potatoes (my favorite!), salad, and brownies for dessert. YUM! It is seriously shaping up to be an awesome day.

These photos aren't from today, but I thought I would share anyways!
For more classroom pictures, click here for our class picture album.

From class photos

From class photos

a day with Brandon

Last Thursday my little brother Brandon and I spent the day together. We visited Nate at the library (participated in Nate's video-gaming program for a bit), went out to lunch at Hu Hot, explored the the science center, and then went to see "Kung Fu Panda" at the IMAX (his choice).

One of the exhibits at the science center was a domino creation area. Here is our creation, which Brandon named "The Gazentah":



This domino contraption took several attempts to perfect, and I think we set it up about eight times. My favorite part of the whole thing is the "stairway of doom" which leads to "the cliffhanger". Here's our "last take" on video... not 100% perfect, but pretty close!

The "Gazentah", originally uploaded by michellewithoneelle.

lovely summer

badminton, originally uploaded by michellewithoneelle.

After a stormy Friday night, and an unfortunately productive Saturday (finishing up a paper) the rest of the weekend proved to be quite fun, filled with outside adventures on both Saturday (Katie's birthday barbeque) and Sunday (brunch at the West's). I love outdoorsy weekends!

Iowa sunset

Iowa sunset, originally uploaded by michellewithoneelle.

I always seem to leave my parents' house at just the right time.
a pretty show
for the ride home

...but everything looks perfect from far away...

bodee and me

bodee in bjorn, originally uploaded by michellewithoneelle.

Sometimes when you are really fussy
or stubbornly sleepy
I fasten you up into the baby bjorn
and almost immediately you are content.

(this little man has a penchant for cuddling)

How to make a baby laugh

I love this kid.




Please excuse the not-wonderful quality, I took this video on my cellphone! : )

flood photos, part 2

These photos were taken between the Court Avenue and Walnut Street bridges downtown. For someone not familiar with downtown Des Moines, these might not come as much of a shock--but really, no, the water is NOT supposed to touch the bottoms of those bridges. I hear rumors that the levels are dropping... I hope so! I really like our downtown, it has come a LONG way!

flood photos, part 1

So I did what the news people were saying *not* to do... I went downtown to capture some pictures of the "Floods of '08". Here are some photos from the SE 6th Street bridge:

a pretty flood?, originally uploaded by michellewithoneelle.

flood videos

I took two short videos, here is my first attempt at uploading them to this blog!

little sister, big sister

little sister, big sister, originally uploaded by michellewithoneelle.

So Nate and I have had this random disposable camera floating around with us since college. Seriously, it was The Crap Camera that we used to take nonsensical pictures of each other looking bored, etc. We kept saying, "one of these days we'll develop this thing and see what kind of crappy pictures we've got". Out of the whole roll of film, only 6 or so pictures were even somewhat of something. This picture is my favorite from the bunch, and it makes me smile. This picture is when Alex came to visit me in college, picture taken in the living room of Jill and I's apartment. I'm guessing that I had just done Alex's hair in a french braid because she used to ALWAYS beg me to braid her hair, and Mom never got the knack for Le French Braid.

I'm glad I developed that camera. : )

proud sister

Here are some pictures from Brandon's baseball game tonight. They lost by just one point!

got bacon?

A while ago some friends caught wind of this upcoming Bacon Fest happening downtown Des Moines at the High Life Lounge. We read that tickets would be on sale at a certain date, first come first served, and that you had to go buy the tickets in person. We had it all arranged, we pooled our money and Ed and Jordan would go down to the High Life Lounge to pick up tickets over their lunch break for a group of about 14 of our friends. When they got there, they learned that all of the tickets were sold out! Did they not get there soon enough? Was there a barrage of people already there waiting to purchase bacon fest tickets ahead of them? Nope. The owners of the bar had decided to sell the tickets to their friends and bar "regulars" during the week preceding the actual published ticket selling date. This was a pretty big disappointment, even for me. I'm not such a fan of bacon, but I knew how much my friends were looking forward to celebrating their bacon love and now they were rejected.

So... Nate decided that we should take things into our own hands. We hosted our very own first annual Bacon Fest in our home! Things were a bit shaky at the beginning, as Nate almost set our kitchen on fire with his high-heat cooking. The house was VERY smoky due to hours of bacon making, but after we opened the windows it cleared out soon after our first guests arrived. Everyone was encouraged to bring a bacon-centric dish to share. I figured out the total bacon used from everyone's dishes came to over 15 pounds of bacon!

Here's chef Nate frying up some bacon. In the second picture, note the very large bowl used to collect hot grease from the 5 pounds of bacon we made. One coffee cup just didn't cut it!




We had a nice collection of bacon-centric dishes to choose from. I made Spaghetti Carbonara, which is one of my favorite recipes I learned about while living in Rome. It's normally made with pancetta, which is a cubed, cured ham, but bacon makes a good substitute. This dish is made with raw eggs which are added to the hot, drained pasta and the bacon and grease. You need to really be careful that the eggs get cooked thoroughly before serving, take your time tossing the pasta and ingredients together to let the eggs set.

Some bacony food:


Here's the list of the rest of everyone's bacon goodies:

Michelle (me): Spaghetti Carbonara and Buffalo Chicken Bacon Dip
Nate: BLT's
Wes & Katie: bacon breadsticks
Mary: fresh salad with Bacos (she's training for a triathalon and was excused from making something sinful!)
Ed & Christie: Armadillo eggs (bacon-wrapped chicken breasts stuffed with cheese), Salad with bacon-cream dressing
Cori & Clayton: Bacon Cheeseburger puff pastry goodness
Andrea & Aaron: "bacon & eggs" dessert (cute idea-- it was pretzel sticks, almond bark and an m&m for the "egg")
Jenny & James: Beer!

and the dish that stole the show in a very odd way...

Jeff's bacon cookies!

They were a cakey cookie with a maple frosting, milk chocolate and white chocolate chips, and pieces of real friend bacon. I was a HUGE skeptic of these, but if you don't inspect them while eating they do taste like a yummy cookie! It is a little strange to see bacon pieces in your cookie, so ignorance is bliss...





A few action shots:



Overall, I give our first Bacon Fest an A+! After everyone got their cholesterol levels nice and elevated we had fun playing ping pong, cards, and of course Rock Band!

And now today, after all the festivities are over, our windows are open and candles are lit in an attempt to get our house smelling like a house and not a bacon factory! : )

amaryllis in bloom

Remember that 3 foot amaryllis stalk? It bloomed and somehow also made itself a twin!


So pretty... Too bad it only blooms once a year!

fondue!

Valentine's Day didn't really work well for us this year. I had parent-teacher conferences at school and Nate was sick with a nasty cold. Instead we celebrated the next day at Crave in West Des Moines. I had been wanting to try out this restaurant for a while now, after hearing some rave reviews from some teacher friends. When you go, you have to choose whether you want to sit in the bar & grill side or the Fondue Room. We went for the Fondue Room because... well, why not?

The first course was a cheddar cheese with beer fondue that you could dip vegetables, bread, and chips into. The server assembles and cooks the fondue right at your table, which is kind of neat to see. The cheese was good, but was a bit much cheese for just two people. Next, we were served salads. We both chose the "Crave California" salad with bleu cheese crumbles and raspberry vinigrette. For the main course we chose a red wine broth fondue with shrimp, sirloin steak, and "soup" vegetables that cooked in the broth. This was my least favorite course, the meat didn't really retain much of the broth flavoring and kind of just tasted like boiled meat. There were a variety of sauces served, which helped somewhat with boosting the flavor. The last course... hands down the BEST course... the chocolate/marshmallow fondue! The server pours some sort of liquor on top and lights it on fire (flambe?) and you can roast marshmallows in the flame to start out. Here's Nate roasting his marshmallow (can't really see the flame due to the camera's flash)


Once the flame dies down, a selection of fruits and goodes are served so that you can dip it in the chocolate/marshmallow HEAVEN concoction. My favorite thing to dip was the rice krispie treat. YUM.


My overall impression of the Fondue Room in Crave... It was very quaint, a neat "date" experience, but pretty pricey. Our total bill came to around $95 and that was for just the "basic" fondue dinner option and no drinks but coffee with dessert. I'm glad I went, but I'm not sure I would do the fondue room again. I checked the menu for the bar & grill side, it was MUCH more affordable and you could still order the chocolate fondue dessert (which was by far the best part of the fondue meal)!

piggy photo shoot

We moved our big comfy chair next to the window upstairs. This chair is now in direct sunlight for most of the day, and thus it has become Miss Piggy's most favorite spot ever. Now she can keep watch over the neighborhood AND bask in the sun!

where would the piano go?

The plan was church & then house hunting, but it ended up being the other way around. Thank goodness for 5:00 service! Today Nate and I braved the 5 degree temperatures to go look at some open houses. Some people might not think that parousing random people's super clean houses as particularly interesting, but I do think it is one of the perks of home-buying. It's like playing with a doll house, grownup style. Sometimes their furniture is still there, sometimes its not but regardless Nate and I always discuss the potential placement of our furniture in each house, and make remarks like, "oh this alcove is where I'll relax after a long day when I feel like taking a nap but don't want to commit to one"; or, "Miss Piggy would like this laundry room" (that's where she lives during the day). The only thing I don't like about Open House-ing is the Realtors. Each and every one want to be SOOO helpful for us, a couple with a house to sell, looking for a house to buy. Sometimes you can almost see the "cha-ching!" and dollar signs light up in their eyes. I didn't absolutely fall in love with a house this time, but it was a nice reminder of the possible light at the end of this never-ending tunnel o'house projects!

I just feel like there's SO MUCH to do still before the new house even happens...
- recarpet stairs
- paint laundry room to make it less scary looking
- completely EMPTY laundry room which means renting a storage space for all of my elementary classroom teaching stuff
- paint laundry room floor
- repaint the cat closet
- touch up baseboards
- redo the caulking in bathtub
- beautify the flower boxes & lawn
- touch up paint where the cats tried to climb doorframes

Wow. So that's really not all that much.. compared to what the list looked like a few months ago! But still, I am really not looking forward to that laundry room. There's so much STUFF (and spiders!) in there.

Here's a trip down memory lane... This was just about 2 years ago, when we first bought our house.



Oh, and the joys of ripping up carpet....


I've learned a lot while owning this house. I've especially learned that Nate is a rockstar at home improvement know-how!

snow day!

I think teachers love snow days just as much as the students do- or at least I know that I LOVE them! Yesterday we got out 2 hours early due to the snowstorm, and today after the sky finished dumping almost a foot of snow on us I got that glorious phonecall at 5:28am letting me know that today was indeed a snow day! I probably could've used this time off to be super productive, but really- I'm caught up with my lesson plans and a nice, obligation-free day to just veg out sounded realllly good.

So, I spent some quality time with the animals, watched some "Gilmore Girls", "Saved", and a really cute foreign film called "Once". And while all of those things were happening on screen, I was a busy girl making this:

This was the perfect project for a snow day! The hat knit up very quickly, the yarn was double stranded. The fair isle pattern was very easy to follow, although I’m not sure how I feel about the shaping of the top of the hat. It makes a very angular top.

Even though my gauge was just about right on, the hat ended up being almost too big for me. If I were to make it again I might not knit the two plain rounds after the pattern chart & between the decreasing rounds. Oh, and I used two different colored skeins of Lamb’s Pride yarn, but I have probably enough left over to make another hat. I used my new KnitPicks Options interchangeable needles, size 11 circular. I got the pattern from one of my favorite knitting websites, knitty.com. The pattern is called "Center Square".

And now, Nate and I are going to venture out to go to Ash Wednesday services...

i'm a craft artist

So, today I was reading one of my favorite crafty blogs (whipup.net) and lately they've been posting a bunch of "kid crafts". Today they posted a tutorial for this snowglobe necklace that was written and designed by a super cute & crafty 6 year old girl named Marian. Here she is in a t-shirt that she designed:

Marian is waiting to get a bone marrow transplant in a few months, and in the mean time she is raising money by selling her crafts & artwork through her mom's online etsy shop, "Purple Petunia". From what I understand, the proceeds go towards arts & crafts supplies for children in her pediatric unit. Well, Marian has her own blog called "I'm a craft artist"(I think her mom transcribes), and it is really cool! That is such a neat idea & someday when I have kids I would love to help them document their crazy adventures, hopes, dreams, art projects, life. So neat!
Click here for Marian's blog. It will make your day! : )

out of control amaryllis!

So Lana gave us this amaryllis a little over a year ago, and last year it bloomed so prettily and was just such a quaint little flower. This year, I don't know what we did, but this sucker is over 2 feet long and still growing! No bloom yet, but she looks close!



Nate said I needed something in the picture to get a sense for this monster plant's size:


This amaryllis is taller than Miss Piggy!

She's a little bummed out about that.

my first quilt!

I got a fabulous sewing machine for Christmas, and this is its first official lovechild! I made probably the simplest quilt ever (yet at times it was quite irritating). I've sewn before (it's been a while), so this was a good project to get back in the groove of things. Hopefully Bodee will like it!!




One side is cotton, one side is chenille.

one year older

Tonight we celebrated Alisha's birthday at On The Border. Yum!

cosmic bowling

I love to bowl, even though I'm not that great at it. Here's a shot from when Nate, Clayton, Cori, Ed, Christie and I went "cosmic bowling" at Val Lanes.

Congratulations to Lori and Alex!

Woo, babies!

I was able to spend some quality time in Iowa City visiting the Mc girls and my new "nieces"! : ) They were born a bit early, so they're still in the hospital, making sure everyone's healthy and good to go!
(This picture courtesy of Jill)

Meena says, "Get this scary man away from me!"

Beautiful Inara:


I have a feeling Meena will someday be a star student, she's already practicing raising her hand!



I love this picture of Aunt Jillian and Inara! It looks like they're telling funny jokes to each other:

we've been busy...

So busy that we had a baby.. Surprise!



OK, so we didn't really have a baby. But after seeing this picture we jokingly contemplated maybe sending it out as a Christmas card next year because it does kind of look like a "new mom/dad" picture. That, and Bodee (the baby) is just so precious. Here he is with his actual parents, the very proud Kim & Steve. Congratulations!

Museum of Modern Art

I love modern art museums, and the MoMA in New York City ranks up there (although I think my all-time favorite modern art museum is the Pompidou in Paris). The MoMa has 6 levels and a maze of galleries, I liked the photography and the recent aquisitions exhibit the best.



Saw some Andy Warhol:



I'm not sure of the title, artist, or even the meaning/function of this piece but it was pretty cool to see. The colors complimented each other very well, and it was a unique design.


The next two are by one of Nate's (and now mine) favorite modern artists, Umberto Boccioni. The gold sculpture is called
Unique forms of continuity in space and the huge, beautiful painting behind it is Dynamism of a soccer player.

Statue of Liberty

New Year's Eve Day we went on a boat cruise around the island of Manhattan, which I think was one of my favorite things that we did while in New York. The tour left at 4pm, while it was still day, and by the time it ended a few hours later it was night & we got to see the New York skyline all lit up. There were also a group of Italians on the boat and as the boat trip finished up, they were all counting down the seconds until Italy's new year and then had a mini-celebration. It was a neat experience.

Here are a few photos that Nate and I captured of the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island.

so this is the new year?

I kind of feel like the past two weeks have been but a blip on the radar. Winter break passed by so quickly, but I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. So now here I am, wondering what in the world happened to 2007 but also feeling very optimistic about 2008. Here’s why:

1. Babies are sprouting up everywhere!
2. Trip to Tucson to visit Jill and Bret! This will be my first trip ever to Arizona, and I have such a lovely tour guide awaiting.
3. Trip to Portland to visit Ashby! Our third trip to that beautiful, fabulous city that is home to the one and only Ashby.
4. Hopefully, possibly, a new(er) house for Nate and I!
5. I’m planning on graduating with my Master’s degree in July (which will be fun, but the process leading up to that….. a bit arduous)

I’m not sure I’m going to go all crazy with the resolutions this year. I think if I just aspire to be happy, healthy, and grateful then maybe things will find a way to work themselves out. Which kind of reminds me of that verse in Galatians. Yep, those things all sound quite nice. I’ll take an order of that please, God, with a side of world peace. Thanks.


Happy New Year! Cheers!

Coming soon once I upload the world: holiday pictures from Quincy and New York City! :)

I would love a spiral house.

We visited the Guggenheim (modern art museum in NYC) and I was blown away by its impressive architectural layout. We started at the bottom and walked our way up the spiraling museum, stopping at each level for the various exhibits.






The main (temporary/traveling) exhibit was an artist named Richard Prince, who I wasn't too fond of. This is what the Guggenhaim has to say about Mr. Prince:

"Prince's work has been among the most innovative art produced in the United States during the past 30 years. His deceptively simple act in 1977 of rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own ushered in an entirely new, critical approach to art-making—one that questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object."

I get what the artist was trying to do- get you to look at some aspect of our culture in a different way, but I didn't like how most of his pieces were actually just parts of old advertisements from the 70's blown up 300 times their original size.
See Marlboro Man piece:



It made me think, "is this art, or some guy making a lot of money on old magazine ads and random '70s stuff because he says it's art?" (he had autographed headshots and '70s celebrity memorabilia) This coming from someone who appreciates a good, abstract, weirdly unique modern art piece. I did really enjoy the permanent Guggenheim collection, and there were a couple of Prince paintings that were neat.


(image from a google search)

blog makeover?

So, last year I ambitiously started this blog in the hopes of taking and posting a photo each day. Well, I started out with plenty of steam, but eventually the "everyday" thing kind of fizzled out. Truth be told, it was a bit intimidating knowing that I had made a resolution to post something *every* day because some days I just didn't feel like it, and others I was too wrapped up in things that I forgot! (Kudos to Sara who dilligently worked at keeping her photoblog resolution!)

However! I'm thinking that I would like to keep this blog around, and have it not be specifically a photoblog but more of a "here's what's going on in my life!" blog. Let the fun begin! : )

a pregnant, madrigal Alex

So, my darling sister got to be the pregnant one for her Madrigal Dinner! I was such a proud Aunt until the show ended and her belly miraculously regained the shape of a pillow.

the world's crappiest picture

Hey look! It's Oprah and Michelle Obama!
I got one of Barak, but it's even worse (believe it or not). This was one crowded rally, and I was approximately 11,000 people away!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Nate and I put up our Christmas tree! Complete with our own childhood ornaments!




(Spiderman is new, but who knew he was a b-ball star?)


We got a fresh wreath from Grandmother Alice in the mail today! It smells WONDERFUL!


Keema concurs.

shower time

I threw a baby shower for the fabulous Kim & Steve & of course their baby boy who will be here sometime this month!






We took a "family" picture and then a "friends" picture (shown here).