Snow time

The snow is here again!

First Saturday of snow to do list:

1. shout about snow. something like “it snowed! even more!”
2. Mr. Wood makes waffles
3. Shannon interrupts Mr. Wood with crazy schemes like “we have to knock all the snow off the tree branches before they break. All we have are snowballs!”
4. stick face in snow.
5. Take 1 hour to make waffles.
6. Make homemade maple syrup
7. Fulfill childhood dream inspired by "little house on the prairie: pour hot maple syrup onto a bowl of fresh snow.
8. Actually work on being a teacher
9. Mr. Wood take a nap after shoveling sidewalks

done and done

Shannon

Beautiful Places

Mr. Wood and I took an opportunity a few weeks a go to do some bird watching at the Provo Airport Dike. There won’t be many leaves left now, but it will still be gorgeous, and there will still be some insane bird sounds.

If you go, try to find this secret field. The ground is all cracked and prehistoric.

all you need is a sturdy car and you have a lovely loop of water, sky and mountain.

Afterwards we went to the newly renovated Station 22 downtown. It was gorgeous, cozy and the food was delicious. The specialty soda menu was also a wonderful surprise. It was well worth it. A perfect ending to a perfect night. Well, maybe going to bed at 10 was the perfect ending. High schoolers do that to me.

Shannon

Adulthood

Like many things. I hadn’t realized it until I wore the costume.

I got the job 2 days before school started. I teach foods & nutrition, and ProStart. I am a cold and efficient master. I take advantage of casual Friday and wear jeans.

if you were wondering.

The shirt is very high quality.

Shannon

Happy Birthday 23

Well friends. My birthday was the best ever. Sure, I didn’t get home till 5:00 because of work training in West Valley, but, it was my birthday! And, as many of you know, Mr. Wood is a wonderful person, spending the day with him is practically “wonderful day” insurance.

I woke up to french toast (my favorite breakfast) with buttermilk syrup!

When I got home I was greeted with a bath scrubby sponge (the thing I’ve been asking for for 3 months) and a riddle

Okay, Mr. Wood had to help me figure out the choices, hence the underlines and markings. But, I did figure them out! We went to Red Robin and used my birthday coupon. They gave us a huge booth! And I ordered a super spicy burger, the waitress was surprised.

Then, I opened another package which was all my bird watching stuff, plus a new book!

Woohoo! You all know I love to look at the sky, now I can do it in a more informed way, and look at this cover! It is a beautifully made book.

So, we went off to a secret place to watch birds and clouds. The secret place turned out to be Powell's Slough in west Provo. Oh my wildflowers, it was gorgeous.

 

It was incredibly more amazing then these little photo. There weren’t many birds because of the impending storm (did anyone see that dust storm yesterday?). We were walking around in a field and about 10 minutes before the dust and wind came up we saw flocks of birds and huge hawks come up out of the marshes and fly south, it was amazing. And, I have to admit the sound of wind howling through the fields and power lines buzzing overhead is spooky. So we headed back to the car and I opened my last present, which was something Mr. Wood has been working on for a while in Book Repair:

 

A lovely little box for a very special book. Some of you may not know that it is with this book that Mr. Wood proposed to me.

He is very skilled and creative.

Then, he whisked me off to “The Chocolate” in Orem for my birthday cake, or rather, a slice of cake. How cute is that place? I’ve never been, and always wanted to go. I’ll say this: the frosting on the Brooklyn chocolate cake is divine and they serve milk in chilled glasses.

Anyways, it was the loveliest birthday.

Shannon

Our Life: Let’s wrap up July

So many things happened that I forgot about writing.

July has been wonderful to us. Our little garden started growing, filling our meals with pure joy.

We got to go to the first Twilight concert of the year at pioneer park in Salt Lake

Featuring Beach House, whose singer we found (to our delight) is a woman, not a man.

This song is wonderful:

Really, she sounds more like a woman in real life. She was incredibly kind.

We made our first and second batch of ice-cream in our magnificent ice-cream maker.The second was a masterpiece of chocolate chunk mint, the likes of which have never before graced our tongues. I used fresh mint from our Chocolate mint plant, brewed a creamy custard mint tea and whipped it up as ice-cream. I followed this recipe. Using like 5 grams of leaves (which was as much as the plant was willing to give). I used my fathers trick of melting the chocolate with butter before pouring it in the ice-cream, so you get soft chips instead of hard stuck in your teeth ones.

The ice-cream was herbal and fresh, a flavor that I am still craving right now.

Mr. Wood and I parted ways at the end of July, him to Chicago and I to Toquerville. He got culture and I got fresh air. Him rural sociology conferences, She rural landscapes.

Mr. Wood got to present a paper he has been working on about Escalante + intergenerationality + sustainability. Yeah, it is that complicated.

I got to spend time with my gal pals and do some sight seeing. The big event was trying to spend a day in Kanab, I say trying because it is too small.

  

Kanab Utah is the “little hollywood” of Utah. They used to film a butt-load of western movies out there. There is a little museum out there of movie set stuff (be warned it is outside) and someone taught the local raccoons how to play cards.

Among other news. We had pioneer day, which in Utah is a day off work where you should go swimming and see the new Batman Movie. Holy stars! It was epic! It didn’t feel like we were sitting in the theater for 3 hours at all. I want to see it again.

In the end July was lovely, Mr. Wood and I would rather not spend time away from each other all the time, and have you seen the sky?

Shannon

Enjoying the Locals, and their movies

This one seems odd, since Blair Sterret is really more a friend then a neighbor. But boy, he is someone you should meet.

A while ago Mr. Wood and I stopped by for Blair’s practically weekly “Incredibly Strange Movie Night”.

I know what you are thinking. No, this isn’t a whole bunch of hipster college students getting together because someone has a copy of “Dark Crystal”. These are actually the strangest movies known to earth. And, Blair isn’t just some random hipster. He is the curator of the Lost Media Archive. He is the expert. ISMN is over a decade old you know.

Here is the Lost Media Archive official statement:

LMA is a Utah-based collection of mondo/ kitsch/ cult/ ephemeral/ experimental/ historical/ obsolete/ forgotten/ unearthed audio-visual and textual documents. LMA is also a resource for those who cling to bygone media formats. The LMA was founded by Blair Sterrett and works together with loaf-i productions, the Free Form Film Festival and Salt Lake City Film Festival to arrange screenings, viewings, and concerts. The LMA also promotes and initiates the creation of new and unusual films, albums, performative projects, and book events. We accept donations of any and all projection, recording, and filming devices. When possible, we maintain these machines for use by recordists and filmmakers. (We now curate over 35,000 films.)

This is what we watched last night. “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies”, for which ISMN was named after. So, you see, it was a special night. As we learned from Mr. Sterret, Ray Steckler (director) doesn’t use a script. So his movies are essentially made up as they go along, depending on materials available, what he gets bored with and so on. Yes, it was ridiculous. But somehow charming. We got to watch a bonus interview of Ray Steckler before the film. Apparently he gave it the ridiculous name because he thought bigger name, bigger movie.

If you want to see Blair's archive or partake of his extensive strange movie knowledge, look at the Lost Media Archive site. All year he is also doing an ISMN show once a month at Brewvies movie pub in SLC (which are free!) This month is going to be incredible (if you are interested in George Melias, or just wonderful things). Find out about the film here on the facebook page. Check it out tomorrow! July 31st.

Here is a trailer for all the shows he is showing at Brewvies in 2012.

Which sums up ISMN pretty well.

If you are at all curious, you should go to one of his shows. I can honestly say, that no matter how odd the movie was, I’ve never regretted going to ISMN. I can also say that Blair Sterret is possibly the nicest, kindest, and most mysterious man in Utah County. Plus, he has the best stories to tell about all the incredibly strange things.

Shannon

Forgotten Dresses

This is what I wore last Sunday. A dress I haven’t worn in probably 2 years. I don’t have a very good explanation. Sometimes I just get shy about my dresses or something.

Back in the day I made a new dress every spring. This was one of those wonders— Circa probably 2007 or 2009. It is very different then most dresses I’ve ever made because A. It isn’t cotton (at least not the top layer) and B. It doesn’t suggest pioneerism.

Anyways. Here is why. Once I was at Good Will with some friends in high school and I saw a sea foam vintage night gown. I was in love. It was all gathers and lace and softness. It was also all snags, shortness and sheer, so it rarely got wear. But it did inspire me to make this sea foam chiffon dress of essentially the same design.

I had to wear the dress because I got an incredibly sparkly and pastel cardigan I was hoping to wear. It was incredible—one of my sunbeams stroked the front of my sweater for 10 minutes. If it can keep a 3 year old engaged and quiet it has some considerable power.

I love the lace details and the soft folds of chiffon. Chiffon is possibly the most feminine fabric in the world. There are so many mistakes in this dress I laugh when I pull it out of the closet. But that is when the beauty of pastel chiffon comes into play. It is so lovely nobody notices the weird threads, snags and stitches. And I’m okay with that.

Shannon

What I’m Making Over Here

Hi,

So, You know I make little things here and there and put them up in my Etsy Shop BowKnots?

Well, I’ve been up to something new these past 2 weeks-ish. I’ve opened another shop. It sounds odd, but it has been fun. I wanted to make the sweet, cute, little stuffed toys, and have a place to put up little paintings and art. It is called Dear Sweet World (didn’t see that coming right?) Here is a sampling of some things in the shop.

Mr. Wood is in love with the star wars friends that I've been making. I might have to make some for him for his birthday. Inspired by lovely Julie’s children and their obsession of star wars everything. They are the reason (and with Mr. Wood’s suggestions) that I decided to open another shop.

I have to admit that Little Luke is the cutest thing I've made in a while.

Some paintings that I painted.

And, what I'm working on this week—babushkas. My goal is to use remnant material and some of the vintage niceties I've collected to make these one of a kind plush dolls. Also, as an excuse to develop more of my hand embroidery skills.

So tell your star-wars-obsessed/russian-folk-loving friend! And take a look at the new shop here

What do you think?

Shannon

Our Life: 4th of July

It was a glorious fourth

We started it off with a bike ride to the Hot air balloon festival. We missed the launch off, apparently 6:15 am is late, but we did run into our good friends and enjoyed watching the poor helpless balloons try to fight a northward wind.

The pig couldn’t catch a break…

Then we wormed our way through the parade crowds to get a breakfast. Waffle breakfast to be exact. From that waffle guy with a mustache at the farmers market. They were delicious. Both to eat and look at.

He makes them from a sugar incrusted dough, instead of a batter. So you get this rich, caramelized, sweet-dough type of waffle. Just sayin’.

Then we rambled down the parade route, trying not to hit people with our bikes, and saw the festivities. Obviously starwars came.

If Mr. Wood were here I would tell you who these people are. Alas. He is not. Tough luck.

Eventually I had to use the bathroom so we interrupted our friends quiet breakfast, and spent the morning chatting with them, and of course going to see more parade!

 

Erik and Q were busy being intellectual, while Mr. Wood and I just did our job flanking them and being cute. Just kidding, they are as ridiculous as us.

Afterwards we hurried home in the hot heat, trying not to run over the crowd. The rest of the day was spent preparing for the lovely meal. Mr. Wood made a blueberry cobbler and potato salad, I made buffalo wings, and we churned up some toasted almond ice cream in our new ice-cream maker!

We also managed to read books, take naps and play a “mysterious Benedict Society” video game. Aren’t holidays glorious? Naturally the evening ended with stadium of fire fireworks—which are huge.

Shannon

Changes

bet you didn’t see this coming

New!

Glasses!

Shannon

Ridiculous

Why?

First: I wore this to the grocery store today. I’ve finally satisfied my recent and intense desire to wear stripes.

Anyways, I had to buy another watermelon because of my next point.

Second: Mr. Wood and I are addicted to the Watermelon Milkshake. To be honest I winced when I first saw the recipe. Water+melon+milk seems wrong. But I was desperate to use up a less-than-delicious and more-than-ripe watermelon we had. So I whipped it up for dinner. Mr. Wood almost died because he apparently grew up on watermelon milk. Who knew?

Want to know the truth?

It is delicious.

Like, forget nostalgia, and it is still delicious. We are having it again tonight. That makes 3 times in 2 weeks guys.

It is freezing cold, fresh, creamy, light and probably healthy. I don’t know guys. And it is the most glorious pink color.

Watermelon Milk Shake: Serves 2

3ish cups of chopped watermelon

1 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

up to 1 tbsp sugar

*Freeze watermelon chunks beforehand on a cookie sheet so they don’t stick together.

1. Put ingredients in a blender.

2. Blend that fool up

3. Add more milk/sugar to taste

 

Shannon