Yay Momma! Happy Birthday...

   Yesturday was my Mom's 70th birthday party! We surprised her with a bit of an impromptu gathering at Applebee's in Littleton, CO
Originally, her friend Beverly Wise had invited her out for her birthday and Mom had invited me to come along. Now, little did she know that Thomas, Stephen, Carrie and Dianne would all be there as well! Surprise!

I was actually really lucky, because after posting on Facebook that I was going out to dinner with Mom that evening, my brother Thomas called me to ask if I was going to Mom's party. I asked him which party that was, and he told me their plan. Good thing too, because I lucked out and was able to get a 1/4 sheet cake from our favorite bakery (Indulge Bakery) for Mom's party. You might think you don't like cake... I think its just because you've never tried theirs before... trust me, its amazing. They also did our wedding cake. Best cake ever. Hands down.

 Clockwise from the top left: Beverly, Thomas, Dianne, Carrie, Stephen and Momma Edith.







            It took Mom a little while to get to the restaurant, because she found out at the last minute that she had another patient to help across town and ended up getting there about an hour and a half later than planned. We were all having fun, though and were all about two or three drinks in before she got there. It was so much fun, catching up and telling hilarious stories about mystery gas and the adventures of youth. By the time Mom got there, we had finished our appetizer smorgesbord and were ready for dinner and the guest of honor.

             Once dinner was done, we were ready for cake and candles. At first, Mom was fighting us on how many candles to put on the cake. We finally settled on 7. One for every decade she'd been around. She tried to tell us that if we put all 70 on the cake that it would burn down the restaurant. It would have been pretty until then, though. LOL

A Beautiful occasion for a Beautiful Lady!
Happy 70th Birthday Mom... and here's to many, many more to come!

Pancakes, Snowstorms and IKEA... Oh my!

Hello again!

C'est Moi...

   I'm writing this as I cook pancakes and watch the snow accumulate on my porch here in Boulder. Its beautiful, but I'm not looking forward to going to work in it. Been out already today for an 8am meeting, and the snow has only gotten worse since then.

   I guess I should say that I'm actually making crepes. When I was a kid, I'm still fuzzy on why we did this, but crepes were "thin pancakes" and regular pancakes involved grated potatoe. We'll chalk it up to a "quirky German" thing. :D

   Two things I have to stress when making crepes, as they were an issue today: 1. make the batter a little runny so that its easier to coat the bottom of the pan, and 2. Use MILK! Fellow lactose intolerants will agree that Almond milk, while better on the tummy when eaten with cereal or drank, doesn't cook well. Plan accordingly.

Here's a really good recipe and a tutorial, btw: Basic Crepe Recipe, Easy Tutorial

   Snow always makes me want to do two things: Wax poetic and rearrange my house... and sometimes to bake cookies, but we won't go there today. The rearranging thing usually takes the form of "trying to get organized." Its quite the uphill battle for me, as I tend toward the pile in the corner system. Not very effective when trying to find things.

The other problem I run into is that I like things to be pretty in their functionality. Enter... IKEA! I'll admit it, I have a little bit of an addiction. Its a good thing that its in Centennial, or there would be a greater addiction at hand.

Here are some pics of my new shelves and some pretty frames. Now I just need to put pictures in them!

 Shelf one, from IKEA, and surprisingly heavy but easy to assemble.
















Shelf two from Bed bath and beyond... also very easy! This one is designed by Martha Stewart... I'm thinking she went to IKEA before designing it, though...

 

And pretty pretty frames! Sean helped me arrange them on the wall to look artistically off kilter. I think it works very well with the chest of drawers and salt rock. Chic and pleasant... Good stuff!

Little Peter cottontail... Hopping round the coffee table

Now that I've done a trial run with the less expensive clay and molding materials, I'm ready for a more detailed piece.

Meet Peter rabbit, or just a rabbit in a bowtie if you're a negative Nancy. :)

In any case, I made him last night with a crude wire frame covered in plastillina #3, a much harder and quicker to cool material. It also should hold up better during the molding process.

A dog's life... as a sculpture, that is...

From time to time, I get a wild hair and decide to dabble in a new art form. Sometimes, its just a new take on some old ideas. Sometimes, its taking up a new hobby, like scrap booking or learning how to make a wedding dress. I'll post a bit about those endeavors later, seeing as I haven't blogged here in a while.

But today, its all about sculpting and molds!

Oh, what a cute litttle doggie...

Well, it sure would be swell to have another one... maybe I should make a mold? *giggles* Yeah, duh, I guess...

I had a couple of options for this, as I'd been thinking of doing some sculpting/molding with the lady that I was working on before. I didn't end up being very inspired to finish it, so instead of letting it sit in a corner, gathering dust, I decided to cannibalize the plasticina from the project and try and figure out molding. Originally, I wanted to make something that I wouldn't care about too much, but that would be cute. Actually, I ended up loving this little doggie. He turned out really cute.

I put this little guy in the freezer to harden him up and then I put the molding epoxy on the doggie after testing it on a little star guy I made.

Next was cleaning out the mold and casting a trial run...  I couldn't find my plaster, so I ended up using the other mold mix that I had. Since the yellow 2 part epoxy is an oil based mold and the other brand is a water based mold, there was no chance of them sticking.

Then, voila! Or, Ta-dum... or presto... or whatever. LOL

Not quite what I had set out to make when I started earlier this afternoon, but cool none-the-less. Next stop will be Meinningers tomorrow to see about getting some molding resin and some mother mold casting epoxy. Should be good! I'll keep you posted.

I LIVE!!

As a general rule, if something tastes a little funny, I won't eat it. But, as it happens, I was very, very hungry at dinner on Monday evening. Its not an excuse, just a logical reasoning as to why I kept eating even though the chicken strips were very old and mealy and the ranch I was putting on them was god knows how old out of a refrigerator that has a tendency of not getting closed all the way.

I got food poisoning from that meal. Or, as I like to call it: a supremely painful pyrotechnic event in which my insides became my outsides and my outsides just cried in pain... I'm still amazed that I didn't seriously injure a few of my organs. Even after the evacuation of my system subsided for the night, I felt like I had been run over by a mack truck, repeatedly. All said, as of this morning, I slept a total of 23 hours.

I feel fine now. A little shaky, a little weak, but fine. I also feel like a jerk for not finding a replacement for my shift on Tuesday. But, again... I really thought I was going to die. Honestly, I'm surprised that I didn't. Glad... but surprised none the less.

There were repercussions, obviously. My boss is very upset with me, and I'd be surprised if I didn't get written up or worse once I finally get in touch with her. Also, I'm reasonably sure that I've lost about 5-10 lbs in this endevour. Most of it was undoubtedly water weight. I could actually feel my body drawing from the fat stores of my legs and behind to aide in the evacuation process. I was throwing up much more than the amount of liquids that I'd taken in the past week. It was really scary. I tried to call my Mom at 2am, but was unable to get a hold of her.

If the waves of nausea and diarrhea hadn't stopped by 4am as they had, I would have gotten Sean to take me to the hospital. As it was, I'm still pretty wiped out. But food is staying down, and I'm taking it easy today. Yesterday was a complete wash, as I was in bed til 4pm, got up for some chocolate milk and a restroom visit, then went back to bed til 7pm. I parked myself on the couch for the rest of the evening, dozing here and there, then went back to bed a few hours later. 23 hours of sleep is only counting the actual time I was in bed. I don't count the time I spent on the couch, though I was sleeping much of that time too.

But, the important part is that I LIVED! Yay! Now, time to clean up and try and eat something. Gotta get my strength back up... Whew... that coffee I made earlier is really hitting my system, so I think maybe I'll not drink the whole thing. Half the cup should do it... Wow

New Website!

So, technically this could be posted on any of my three blogs (Overkill, I know... LOL). But I think that this should suffice for now.

After four days off, I have a cleaner house, a slightly cleaner mind, and some plans in place for my future.

I won't spoil the surprise, however, as to what I'm doing... that wouldn't be much fun. However, step one was to fix up/spruce up my web page. Please let me know what you think!!

www.monikagraf.com

What to do?

It occurs to me lately that I may have lost sight of the big picture. It's a grand statement I hear a lot on television and in referrence to young people's directions in life.

The next question is what to do about it?

But "therein lies the rub!" I suppose that this could be an occasion to make a list of pros and cons. An evaluation of what I have going for me and what needs to change. I guess it could be yet another example of my narcissism and hubris, but even with all I have going for me, I'm still not content.

Question: How does a person find happiness with their current situation or place when they're constantly looking to the horizon for something more? "Stop looking and be happy" is the answer I get fairly often from the wise-types in my life. Stop worrying is another common answer. But above all, I hear "be patient. It'll make more sense when you're older."

I'm gonna call shennanigans on that one... Bullshit. Suck it up and just stop trying?

If something is not right, then something is wrong. True, there are shades of grey in every seemingly black and white case. But, I stand by my statement. If I can't move forward, I get nervous and start to over-analyze my situation. It's a sort of defence mechanism against boredom that I've developed since childhood.

But, it still begs the question. What is it that I should do with my life? a