Lion Brand Yarn Studio

Back when I was unemployed and watching Martha Stewart everyday at 11am I saw her do a show from the Lion Brand Yarn Studio. She was of course doing some really fabulous project that would be really hard for everyone else but it definitely made me want to go check out the yarn studio. Lion Brand isn't the nicest brand of yarn, its kind of basic, the stuff you get at Hobby Lobby and Michael's. Its definitely not the good stuff you get at cute little yarn shops but Martha definitely made it look that way. I was certainly intrigued :)
I finally made it by the yarn studio this winter and it totally lived up to expectations. This was not the same old stuff they carry at craft stores, they had cashmere, baby alpaca, mohair and lots more; I was impressed! Their displays were also pretty impressive, I don't know if you can tell from the pictures but the snowlion above is knitted and the lion head below is crocheted!In my exploring the yarn store I decided to start a new project and try to re-learn to crochet. I'll post pictures when/if I finish :)

Weekend Getaway

John and I both had this past Monday off for Martin Luther King day so we decided to take a little weekend trip. We rented a car and drove about 5 hours up to Vermont to go skiing. It was a little bit of a long drive and there are certainly closer places to ski but John was excited about driving after almost a year without any. We also choose to go to Vermont because my sister Emily is in a town close to Montpelier right now and we were able to swing by and pick her up so she could ski with us too.It was Emily's first time skiing and I decided that I wanted to try snowboarding for the first time so she and I both took lessons the first day. John usually skis but has snowboarded before and decided to give snowboarding another try. Of course he was able to just pick it right back up with no problem because he's naturally athletic. I'm not jealous or anything :)The second day of skiing didn't go as well as I would have liked, the conditions weren't as good as the first day and I was pretty sore. Both of the pictures are from the second day by the way, you can see the visibility was pretty poor and it was really cold. We ended up calling it a day early but no one really cared because by that time we were all sore and tired.

I love ski trips because besides the crazy physical exertion, they are pretty relaxing. You ski during the day, take a nap when you're done in the afternoon, eat a big dinner, soak in the hot tub and then go to bed really early because you're so tired. The places you ski are also usually in quaint small towns so the people are always really laid back too. We stayed in this tiny town right around Sugarbush, it was a beautiful area. This is the creek that ran behind the inn.
Rosie got to come with us on our little weekend excursion. The inn allowed pets and since we drove we figured we would bring her along too. She didn't get to go skiing with us but she certainly enjoyed walking around the creek. Vermont as a whole was much more rural than I was expecting. On the drive up we saw signs for moose and bear crossings. Before heading back on Monday we hung out in Montpelier; it was an adorable town but I was not expecting the capital city to be so small. I guess I have it in my head that the Northeast as a whole is really densely populated. I was very shocked when I looked up the population and Vermont's is less than a quarter of what Arkansas's population is! Apparently we will have to take more of these little weekend trips to explore the Northeast so I can get a more accurate picture of the region :)

Fantastic Windows

I told you that I would post more about the Bergdorf Goodman windows later, well here it is....

The men's store had a separate theme from the women's store and even though I thought the windows on the women's side were cool, the men's side was even better.
The windows displayed the original sets and characters from the movie "Fantastic Mr. Fox." For those of you who haven't seen the movie, its based on the novel by Ronald Dahl and its directed by Wes Anderson who has a history of quirky movies like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." The movie has a ton of stars like George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson to name a few. Even though its an animated movie the humor is really more for adults, John and I thought it was awesome!I hate that this picture is a little blurry because its such a good close up of the characters.This is a scene with the mean farmers from the movie; I love how Bergdorf's still managed to display some of their products in the movie scenes. Its not weird at all to have giant shoes next to tiny people :)At least the bow ties don't look so out of place in this one.This scene is from the end of the movie where the characters sneak into a grocery store. You can see the actual movie filming in the small tv at the bottom (ok YOU probably can't, but you could if you were viewing the windows in person).

The Holiday's in Review

It was back to a more normal routine today, the last of my family left last night after a really great visit. Unfortunately my mom and youngest sister flew out of Newark and had to deal with all the craziness going on over a security breach. They barely caught their flight, their bags didn't but at least they made it home on time and weren't delayed for hours like so many others were. It wasn't the greatest way to wrap up the trip but we sure had a great time beforehand.We didn't do quite as much this trip as when my mom and sisters were here for spring break; I don't think anyone had the energy to do that much this time around. Mostly we hung out, ate good food and enjoyed each others company. I think we managed to see every major Christmas tree in the city (ok, probably not but it sure felt that way .... pictures below). In actuality, we probably did see all of the ice skating rinks in the city, at least all of the outdoor rinks.

On to the parade of trees...

Christmas day we opened presents, had our big Christmas meal and then went to see the Radio City Rockettes which was awesome. After the show we walked around Rockefeller Plaza and saw the tree and ice skating rink.The weekend after Christmas we did a little shopping and tried to see the Statue of Liberty but it was super crowded. Instead we went to the South Street Seaport and saw their gigantic tree. They also have the Big Apple Chorus who performs only around Christmas. They are a bunch of older gentlemen and they were really fun to watch.Later in the week we went to the holiday market at Bryant Park. Pretty much all of the parks put on holiday markets around Christmas. They have tons of vendors and usually some pretty cool stuff. This was my first time visiting the holiday market at Bryant Park and of course they also have a gigantic tree and ice skating rink.We didn't do much for New Year's Eve. We weren't brave enough to stand in Times Square in the freezing cold for 8 hours to watch the ball drop so instead we went out to dinner and watched it drop on tv. The next morning though we got up and headed to Central Park. We saved the best ice skating rink for last; me, John, and Mary Grace all went ice skating at Wollman rink. None of us had been ice skating in a long time, it was definitely an experience.On to our final tree, the Museum of Natural History's origami tree. Another really large tree, this time the tree was completely covered in handmade origami ornaments. They were really impressive! I told John we are going to learn origami and make ornaments next year, he isn't as enthusiastic as I am about this :)

Christmas Windows

Here are some pictures of the windows at Bergdorf Goodman. This is only from the women's store, I have pictures of the men's store as well but they are totally different and deserve a post of their own :) The displays were inspired by Lewis Carroll's books and you definitely get the Alice in Wonderland vibe, although the polar bears below remind me a little more of C.S. Lewis and the Queen of Narnia. The crazy part is that the displays take a whole year to produce!I love the polar bears but the picture didn't really do them justice. They are made from fringe and their faces are buttons and sequins, really beautiful!This one is pretty awesome as well with the greenery horses. There were several others but I liked these the best. It was freezing cold and really windy the night I took the pictures so several of them weren't the greatest pictures. It was way too cold to worry about picture quality though!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, I know I did! My mom and sisters came up for Christmas and it has been so great to have family here for the holidays. Its even been surprisingly painless having five people in the apartment.

I wanted to share my Christmas decorations with everyone, even though I put my tree up a couple of weeks before Christmas I didn't really put the finishing touches on my decorating until the very last minute, so here it is, better late than never :)I was trying to do kind of a modern Christmas so I chose a less traditional green as my accent color (I was looking for lime green but it turned out to be hard to find) and then I just did mainly silver and white for the rest. I found this really awesome crocodile silver foil wrapping paper at TJ Maxx. The tree ended up being pretty monochromatic which I've never done before but I think it turned out nicely. John mentioned something about there not being any color though so maybe next year I'll have to change it up a little. I didn't bring any Christmas decorations to New York when we moved so in an effort not to spend a fortune I made these cute snowflakes from pipe cleaners. I found the instructions on Martha Stewart's website. I think they turned out great and they were so easy and cheap.
I made this wreath from wire coat hangers and left over branches, its kind of more of an oval than a circle but I was bending the coat hangers myself and I think I did a pretty decent job. The tree vendor was really nice and threw in a big pile of branches from other people's trees since he didn't cut much off of our tree. I had more branches than I knew what to do with, I could have made at least two more wreaths! Just in case you didn't know, everyone in New York gets a real tree because there's no where to store a fake tree the rest of the year. My poor husband had to lug our really decent sized tree several blocks back to our apartment.

PS - I'm up at 2 in the morning blogging because its wintertime in New York which means our apartment is sweltering so we have the windows open and apparently a building very close to ours is on fire because I can smell the smoke and hear every single thing (sirens, breaking glass, chainsaw, etc)!

Winter Is Here

...well technically not until tomorrow, but 11 inches of snow sure says winter to me! It started snowing Saturday and by Sunday there was almost a foot of snow. I'm so glad it was over the weekend and not while I was trying to walk to work because it was freezing. Saturday night John and I took Rosie on a walk and went out to dinner and it was soooo cold! Poor Rosie's paws got so cold and icy she wanted me to carry her (she normally hates being carried). It was really snowing hard when we were out walking around and the wind made it pretty unbearable.Sunday was much nicer to go out and see the snow because there wasn't much wind and it had pretty much stopped snowing. We went to Madison Square Park and let Rosie run around and then we got Shake Shack for lunch. Shake Shack, for those of you unfamiliar, has a really awesome burger and its pretty cheap. Unfortunately those qualities make it highly desirable and there is ALWAYS a line. They even have a live web cam just so you can see how long the line is. John and I like to go when its really cold outside because then there's only a small line :)