More Fun Patterns!

What You'll Get in the Mail

We are very excited this week. We got so many things done over this past weekend, and we are headed to Portland to tie up a few loose ends that need tying. Things are really coming together! It is so much fun (and so much work!) to plan such a big party for so many people! I am so excited to see everyone, and really happy that so many people are headed out to share such a special time with us!

When we get back, we are start our invitations. We ordered a stamp from a rubber-stamp producer, and I really like the effect of it. We are designing all the stationary to be really simple and clean. We also wanted the stamps to have a bit of the Jazz Age in them, so hopefully the fonts and the motifs pull it all together! So far so good!

I'll take some pictures of the assembly line, when it happens, and you can see all of us hard at work!

Wowza

How lavish are these designs?! I love them!

Some Jazzy Ideas

I think I am going to post some of the great Jazz Age stuff I am finding to my blog, because I love it so much! I hope these can give you some good ideas!
The clothes were so sophisticated and simple, and the ladies looked so elegant, so self-assured.

I love the hats and the dresses....

I love that everyone looked as though they were going places!

One place where my time has been....

I am working on making some tablecloths for the centers of the tables. The fabric is lovely (I will probably save it as a surprise), so I hope I can do it some justice! That is another project for tonight (haha - along with doing the dishes and taking out the garbage)! I already cut all the fabric, but I am in the middle of folding the edges and making them look nice and finished off! Next will be sewing, and I always enjoy that! I just wish I had more time for all of these projects! There are so many things I want to work on!

Three Hundred Fifty More to GO!

I have been having a great time getting ready for our wedding in July. I won't lie: my life is much more hectic than I would like lately, and I feel as though I am forgetting things I need to do....
Everything will get done, I guess, and what doesn't get done isn't that important. As I keep telling myself, as long as we are married by the end of the day, things will have gone perfectly.

We have oodles of cranes right now. 650-something, in fact. I am going to make more tonight. We sorted them last weekend, according to size and color, and at that point we had 632. They don't look quite as happy separated into plastic bags as they did all together in one big box, but they have all been accounted for.

Office Under Water

Here is my good friend Caitlin a few weeks ago, in response to what happened at our office:
So this is a little late in coming, but I have a lot to catch up on. Our office had a flood. Vancouver has been having an extremely unusual winter, much colder and dryer and snowier than usual. The pipes froze in the suite of offices above ours, and burst all throughout our floor. All of the elevators were rendered unusable for a few days, and only one out of five is really back to working without any hitches now. The flood thankfully happened a few days before Christmas, and so quite a few people were out of town, which, as you can probably see from the pictures was a good thing. I got some calls after it happened saying not to come in to work the week before Christmas, but I went in after we got back from Oregon for cleanup. One of the calls was my boss saying, "we just poured a bunch of water out of your computer!" I wish these photos could show the damage was done, although it could have been MUCH worse. Mostly, the carpets all had to be pulled up because of mold, and this is still affecting the air quality. Besides that, and tons of ruined drawings that were lying under people's desks (two boxes of archived drawings under mine - whoops!), things are turning out fine. My computer even works! That was kind of a bummer.... I wanted an excuse to have the office buy me a more powerful computer.

To Get Us in the Mood for a little Swing....

When we started planning our wedding, we decided that because music is such a big part of both of our lives, we really wanted to have a band. And we want to dance.
This is the band we are having play our wedding, The Kung Pao Chickens. They are a Portland-based Gypsy Jazz band, in the style of Django Reinhardt. They play locally in Portland every Monday at the Laurelthirst Public House in NE Portland, so if you are in the area, you should check them out! They are really fun and vibrant, and they have such a great way with music. I am really excited that we were able to book them for our wedding. They are going to play during the cocktail reception, and then for a bit before dinner. I hope you like them as much as we do!

In Sebastien's Words

Things are starting to come together, in getting ready for our wedding.  I thought it might be a good time to plagiarize an old post off Sebastien's blog, that I already copied in MY blog, so I apologize to those of you who already read it, and I REALLY apologize to those of you who read it twice.  Sorry, but you are warned.  

For those of you who didn't read that entry, this is the story of how Sebastien and I got engaged:

"Hope and I are engaged!

....Hope and I went to see Radiohead in concert. The show was incredible. The music, the lights, and the rain all made for a very inspiring and emotional night. Hope and I were unfortunately separated during most of the show. During the first encore, Hope became overcome with emotion. While the crowd was shouting for a second encore, I found Hope. --And during the last song, as the band played the opening rifts of Paranoid Android, Hope turned to me to ask, "will you marry me?" I was pretty shocked. It was the end of an amazing show, and here, Hope just asked me to marry her. Not finding any words, I kissed her, with 10,000 people pressing around us. Of course I told her yes, and the last five minutes of the show were surreal. Smiles were plastered on our faces.

We thank each and every one of you for your blessings and support.
Love to all,
Sebastien & Hope"

That is how it happened! It was THAT easy! Hehe. All I had to do was ask....

Also, on a (sort of) related topic, if you were enticed by the links at all, listen to this concert, recorded by NPR's All Songs Considered at the Santa Barbara Bowl. The show was fairly similar to what we saw, in terms of songs, etc., but the sound quality is AMAZING. Please, if you like Radiohead, take a listen!

Welcome (to Wedding Stuff)

This is the first post on our (wedding) blog!  Hopefully we can keep you all up to date on our progress on some of the projects we are doing for the wedding, etc.  

One of these projects, probably the most extensive, is making 1001 paper cranes to hang at the wedding.  Making these birds has always been a way that we communicated with one another, when we were first getting together, as much as now.  Right now, we have approximately 500 cranes already finished, taking into account some of the ones we made for one another over the years that we have been dating.  

Please feel free to comment on anything you see.  We are looking forward to seeing you at our wedding in July!  As of today, that is about 7 months, 21 days and +/- 2 hours from this posting.

Girls Say Yes

This was sent by a good friend of mine, and whoever did the photo - GOOD JOB! gObama!

Not That I'm Biased At All....

In honor of the debates, here is an interesting comparison.
Also, a red / blue breakdown. Enjoy!

Sew.... Long Time, No Talk

Okay, so Thia's website isn't the only thing I have been doing. Last week our internet was down, and I set up my sewing machine. It is kind of a pain to get the machine out and set up, and then take it all down when you are done, and I would love to be able to just leave it up, so I could do small projects on it, without getting annoyed. Once I get it set up, though, I love to do little projects on it. I finished our bedroom curtains, and we are very happy with them. They are linen, and the light that comes through them is so nice, although I couldn't capture that in the pictures.

I have also been getting more and more excited about some gorgeous fabric I got from Marie-Helene (Sebastien's mother) when she and Tim (his dad) were in Vancouver. I was super excited about the fabric when I first got it, but then it just sat in the corner, in a bag, making sad eyes at me. The summer was really busy for me, and there wasn't much sewing going on..... So, the fabric sat and sat for much longer than a month, calling to me when I came into the room, "Hey you! I'm still here, in this bag! Take me out and use me!" So last week I did. --Or at least I started.

I finished our curtains before anything else, and then moved into hemming some of our tableclothes, and then I finally took the fabric out of the bag, and (gulp) made something. And it felt good. And what I made was a tiny little bird.

I thank my wonderfully crafty friend, Jenn, for getting me going again (she gave me the pattern). I am going to try (please, please don't quote me here) to make enough to make something for our room, and sell some at a Christmas church bazaar.

I sewed for a large portion of the weekend, and once, when I got up to get some air by the window, I even had a little friend in our parsley! He was so cute that I had to take a picture.

Shameless Advert

I have been beyond busy lately. Lots to do at work, and lots at home. I am working on a website for Thia, my first boss in architecture. I am really trying to get that finished and ready for her to run with. Right now, there are quite a few images of her projects online, but I am working on incorporating verbiage with the images, so the website is cohesive, informative, and fun. If you want to check out the website, please do. Send it to any of your friends who are wanting to build a custom, sustainable house. Her work is beautiful and personal, and she has a lot of fun with design. Anyway, check it out. This is my top priority right now.

In Sebastien's Words

I am pretty positive you have all heard that Sebastien and I got engaged about a month ago. I have had some questions about how we got engaged, and I thought that instead of writing it out, I would let you know, from Sebastien's perspective. This is what he wrote to family and some of his friends. SO, here goes:


"Hope and I are engaged!

This past Tuesday, Hope and I went to see Radiohead in concert. The show was incredible. The music, the lights, and the rain all made for a very inspiring and emotional night. Hope and I were unfortunately separated during most of the show. During the first encore, Hope became overcome with emotion. While the crowd was shouting for a second encore, I found Hope. --And during the last song, as the band played the opening rifts of Paranoid Android, Hope turned to me to ask, "will you marry me?" I was pretty shocked. It was the end of an amazing show, and here, Hope just asked me to marry her. Not finding any words, I kissed her, with 10,000 people pressing around us. Of course I told her yes, and the last five minutes of the show were surreal. Smiles were plastered on our faces.

The last few days have we have been telling our parents, our friends here in Vancouver, and been discussing the next step. We have no definite plans made yet, only a few ideas, which we will share with everybody in the coming weeks and months.

We thank each and every one of you for your blessings and support.
Love to all,
Sebastien & Hope"

That is how it happened! We'll keep you posted about specifics, but we are going to get married next July! It was THAT easy! Hehe. All I had to do was ask....

Also, on a (sort of) related topic, if you were enticed by the links at all, listen to this concert, recorded by NPR's All Songs Considered at the Santa Barbara Bowl. The show was fairly similar to what we saw, in terms of songs, etc., but the sound quality is AMAZING. Please, if you like Radiohead, take a listen!

Prior Engagement

Well, now it is more official than ever. Sebastien and I got engaged about a month ago. We are super excited about it (of course). I proposed to him at a Radiohead concert (and it was COMPLETELY spontaneous). Sebastien still wanted to be able to get me the ring we designed together, and he surprised me with it yesterday morning, amidst much tickling. It is a beautiful ring, and even more so because we designed it together. Even though it is just a "thing," it is nice to look down and think of how lucky I am to have such a wonderful person in my life!

"It doesn't rain here in the summer."

Lots has been going on with me lately. Mainly the things that are going on are only peripherally to do with me (Christine and Chip having a "bun," newly out of the oven, for one. Colette ALSO having a baby the same WEEK, for another). The things I have been up to are really REALLY minor, in the scheme of things. I started sewing. I am trying to get back into doing artwork. I want to volunteer at the University of British Columbia, helping out with architecture reviews. I am planning on going back east to see my family, and I am planning a trip to see Sarah and some girl friends. I am a pretty lucky lady right now. I got a new bike, and I need to make a habit of riding, now that I am equipped. It is raining in the middle of the summer, and I love it. I am tired of the humidity, and want to get a little wet. Bring on the new air. I think my blog is going to be a series of new starts. A series of rains in the summer. Some people can keep this kind of thing up; I can't. I will be continually re-starting to blog (and re-starting to do a lot of things), and I am trying to be okay with that. Here is to fresh air tomorrow.

In the Dead of Winter - Grand Central Freezes

What I wouldn't do to be part of this group.....
"And FREEZE!"

(I got this link from T's blog actually - thanks T!)

He's done it again....

Chip's friend Adam is an awesome picker (banjo, that is), and he has another of Chip's songs up and running. It sounds great.

SO: Monkey Man (Not Fully Robot; Yet Not Fully Man)

Watch it. Again, it is really good.

"My Bro is the BOMB (diggety)" or "He's a Lyrical Gangsta"

So, all I am going to say in this posting is that Chip is SO rocking.

He writes songs, and they are now starting to get the air play (or You Tube play) that they deserve.
Please listen.
He is so Rad.



This is a picture of him (Chip is in front - our friend Bill is behind him), and here are some of his songs (two sung by him; two by others - thank you to Old Dirty Banjo and Adam):
They Didn't Know That They Were Robots
Monkey Man
Cool as a Pool
A Song of Hope

Anyway, take a listen.... tell your friends too.