Hi! Monkey! continued

I'm getting ready for a long day of St. Patty's-ing tomorrow.  As we have for the past few years, we're heading down to our friend Jon's apartment, which overlooks the Chicago River, to catch a glimpse of the river being dyed green.  It's a great yearly affair, with bagels and beer.

I am contributing a snack this year of Lucky Charms treats.  I basically followed a regular Rice Krispy treat recipe, added some green food dye to the melted marshmallows before adding the cereal, then used Lucky Charms instead of Krispies (obviously).  I followed a normal recipe, but I wish I had found these lovely step-by-step set of instructions before I made my treat!
I should look for my pipe cleaners, because Hi Monkey also has a nice, easy St. Patty's day craft.

Hi! Monkey!

My aunt put a link to this site on facebook.  I think she actually knows the person who does the website - I will investigate more, but after only a couple of clicks I knew this was a site that needed to be noted on my blog.  Craftiness and monkeys!  What could be better?
Hi! Monkey!

Trip to Arizona

Ack!  I went a whole month without blogging!  Well, it's not because I wasn't doing anything interesting, that's for sure.

            Actually, I can't remember what was doing before last week, because the awesomeness of my vacation washed all other memories away.  On Saturday, Feb. 20, Nate the Great and I flew off to Arizona for a week's long vacation.  We spent 2 nights and one day in Tucson, where I visited my mom's cousins and uncle - we had a nice home-cooked meal, and we checked out some great museums.  We spent the morning at the Pima Air and Space Museum, looking at old planes.  We continued on to the Sonora Desert Museum where we saw some friendly little critters who were happy to pose for pictures.  We also spent a few hours at Old Tucson Studios, where I went as a kid when we would go out to visit family.

            On day Monday, we headed way north, up to Flagstaff, through Sedona.  The routes I had planned kept us off of the main highways for the most part, so we had a beautiful, snow-covered drive up to Flagstaff.  Going up to about 6000 feet, we took a lot of windy roads and enjoyed the scenery.

            On Tuesday, we stopped at Meteor Crater (no "the!") on our way out to Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "shay").  If it hadn't been for the stop at Meteor Crater, it would have been a 4.5 hour drive of nothing (pretty nothing . . .) but then again Meteor Crater is just a big hole, so it pretty much was anyway.  At Canyon de Chelly we hiked down to the bottom to see the White House Ruins.  It was a really nice hike, even though it was only in the mid-30's.

            After spending the night with Nate's aunt in Ganado, and checking out the Hubbell Trading Post, we drove south, again off the highway, through the Petrified Forest, then down to Scottsdale, our final stop.
We spent 3 nights and 2 full days in Scottsdale.  We visited Taliesin West (Frank Lloyd Wright's home and teaching campus) and went on a great gallery tour around the town.  On the second day, we ventured over to Phoenix and checked out the Heard Museum of Native American Art and the Phoenix Art Museum, both of which we loved.
I will try to do another post or two on the trip, specifically about the art in Phoenix and Scottsdale, when I feel up to it.  For now, just enjoy the pictures!

Summer in January

Tonight I'm off to a lovely dinner party at my friend Anna's apartment.  It's a BYOB, pot luck, summer-in-January themed dinner, since we've been living with freezing cold temperatures here for the past week.  I volunteered to bring a dessert, and going with the summer theme, I made my first ever American Flag cake.

It's angel food cake with a cream cheese/whipped cream frosting, and berries (obviously).  I had some extra batter too, so I made some cupcakes; I already know it's going to be good!
Here's hoping we have some umbrellas for the drinks!

Ginkgo Pillow

When Nate and I went to Philadelphia back in October, we spent some time at the Fabric Workshop and Museum.  At the museum store there, I found this ginkgo fabric and instantly thought of my friend Shailer. She got married this past summer and I made that Amy Butler Midwest Modern quilt for her.

            Shailer's wedding theme was "lovebirds," but originally she had planned for it to be "ginkgo."  I happily bought a yard of this fabric so that I could make a pillow for her birthday, coming up in February.

            I thought that the sage color would go with some of the leftover quilt fabrics, but it didn't.  Then I brought a swatch of the gingko fabric to JoAnn's and couldn't find a single fabric that looked good with this stuff!  Desperate to put my own mark on this project, I finally decided to embroider some of the leaves with "veins."  It's only my second attempt - that I haven't thrown out - at embroidery.  And this is my first attempt at making a pillowcase.  The zipper was a little . . . frustrating.  But I persevered!

There's Nothing to It.

"There's nothing to it.  All you have to do is hit the right notes at the right time."  -J.S. Bach

             When I was younger, we had this quotation framed, and sitting on my piano.  It's just a funny little thing, but oh so true.  I thought of it yesterday when I had a little "aha" moment with a student.
            The previous week, she had been working on a piece that was a song with verses.  In each verse, the basic notes are the same, but since the words change, so does the rhythm (more 8th notes to fit in more syllables, etc.).   She had an impossible time with it and I tried everything with her (well, everything I could think of) to figure out these rhythms.  She's had trouble with rhythms before - sometimes she just gets them right off, and sometimes to take a while.  Sometimes she never figures them out and we just move on (terrible, I know).
            Anyway, yesterday she played the piece for me with perfect rhythm.  I said "that was wonderful!  How did you get the rhythm so much better?"  Her response was that she just played the notes at the right time.
Oh!  Why didn't I think of that?!