Craft Club #5: Floral Arrangements

Goodness, I almost forgot to post a recap of Craft Club #5!!!! WHAT IN THE HELL WAS I THINKING?! *Slaps self on the wrist*..... *Immediately thinks of slap bracelets*.... *giggs*

First of all, yes - I'm back from my trip to Panama, and YES - it was AMAZEBALLS. I've still been getting back into "non-vacation mode" brain, which means I haven't even bothered blogging about any of it yet or editing pictures. I'll get to it, obviously. And when I do - I suspect you'll know about it.

Anyway, back to Craft Club. In late March, my friend Kim hosted our monthly craft seshhhh, and this time we were learning some basics about floral arrangements! Fun bonus fact: Kim was super preggers at the time, but she has since given birth to a bouncing baby boy named Benjamin. I haven't officially met him yet, but I assume he's the best.

Joined at Kim's house by Abby, Jenna, and Anna, we spent a late weekend morning/early afternoon munching on brunch foods, gabbing, and arranging beautiful flowers into glass vases.

Kim had prepped for the day by purchasing a ton of flowers -  blue and white hydrangeas, cream, yellow and pink roses, green and white mums, and hypericums for accents. She also happened to have about a million spare glass vases around her home, thanks to her wedding last summer! #Recycle.

Admittedly, we spent most of the time chatting and eating. The food spread for the day was spot-on: fruit salad, 2 different types of homemade quiche, donuts, Waldorf salad... mmm!

A couple of the tricks/tips that Kim taught us...

1. Arranging flowers in 3's (triangles) makes the overall look balanced, rather than rigidly symmetrical. For example, the pink roses in the below pic are forming a triangle (even though the one in the upper right is hiding a bit!):

2. Don't be afraid to wind/weave the stems of flowers into each other. You don't need them each to stand up beside each other like soldiers. LET THEM MINGLE!

Here are all of the finished arrangements from the day.... though I can't for the life of me remember whose is whose! Mine is the only one I know for sure - it's the top-center in this picture:

Another successful Craft Club with good food, good friends, good conversation, and good creativity! I believe the next one will involve drawing/coloring/picnicking out by the Charles River in Cambridge, and I am very much looking forward to it!

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Amateur Photography Is My Happy Place

These days I find myself going outside with the distinct purpose of taking photos of things. It appears that "photography" - rudimentary though mine is - has officially become one of my hobbies. I'm cool with that, but won't be referring to myself as a "photographer" any time soon.

That said, I hope you'll indulge me in my efforts to improve my photo game by checking out what ya girl has been snappin' lately. I take my camera with me almost everywhere - from my own home to the beach to restaurants to walks. Behold:

Spiders love my porch. LOVE it. I knock down spider webs almost everyday (it's necessary, or else I literally could never go out onto my porch in the warm months), but they rebuild every single time. Resilient little mofos. 

I spotted these three amigos walking together on the lawn at Kits Beach, 

looking like they were off to an afternoon friendship gigglefest:

 Look what I found reflecting in my iPod:

Ivy creeping up a tree: 

My friends and family back east have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that it's palm-tree climate here in Vancouver. They think "Canada" and they think "Arctic snow."

The rain makes all the green things so green...

Pretty things can still have spikes:

People keep such beautiful gardens around here.   No wonder I like walking around and taking pictures so much! I spotted this colorful pot of flowers from about 100 yards away, and made a bee-line for it:

Look at this little guy, nestled into a wall of greenery:

I know this looks like lavender, but I'm not positive that it is lavender. What do you guys think?

Telephone poll in the city = urban bulletin board.

Stoppin' to smell zee roses:

Seeing bundles of pretty colors all juxtaposed makes me feel happy... 

fuchsia, purple, lavender, violet, mint, green, sage, lime:

These roses look like they are ready to be painted red, don't they?

Flowers and green leaves against a tin shed:

Hopefully you aren't all getting sick of seeing pictures of flowers on my blog. There are just so many gorgeous ones around here that you don't see back east. I want to appreciate them all while I still can!

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I'm Still Alive! So Here Are Some Pretty Pictures :)

Why hello there! DID YEW MISS ME?!

... I will interpret your silence as a "hell yes!" and just take this moment to console you and hope that my absence these past few weeks didn't take too much of a toll on your daily life and general morale.

I have finally returned to Vancouver after being away in New England since June 6, and it is good to be home! The travel between hither and yon is never (EVER) easy on me, and often stretches into two days of travel in each direction. On June 6 my day began with a 7:00 AM, 5.5-hour bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle, followed by a 2-hour wait in the SeaTac airport, followed by a 5-hour flight from Seattle to Boston which landed at around midnight EST. From there, my brother picked me up and brought me to his Danvers apartment (about 25 mins north of Boston), where I slept for the night before continuing my jaunt to Western Mass the next day. I didn't get into Pittsfield till about 2:00 PM on Saturday June 7.

Returning from Mass to Vancouver was, again, a 2-day process. I got a car service from Auburndale, MA to Boston's Logan Airport on Monday June 23, took a 1-hour flight from Boston to JFK, had a 2-hour layover there before a 6-hour flight from JFK to SeaTac. That got me into Seattle at around 9:30pm, which was too late for me to take a bus back to Vancouver, so I had a hotel room for the night in Seattle before another 7:00 AM, 5-hour bus ride back north to Vancouver... culminating in a cab ride back to my home. By the time I walked in the door, I was ready to kiss the carpet in my apartment and not move for the rest of the day.

But that was just the getting to/from nonsense. There was an AMAZING array of fun and joy and love and family and friends that were experienced in the time between!! Being with my besties and my family is rejuvenating, fo sho.

Rather than try to overwhelm you or myself with a recap of the trip just yet, I thought I'd ease back into my little blogging hobby with some photos that I snapped in Vancouver the week before leaving for my trip in early June. Enjoy!

I spent an inordinate amount of time perched above the following little scene... the colors all just seemed so lovely to me that I kept snapping away...

 

And yes, today is normally my nails day, but I'll post one of those for tomorrow instead. Stay tewnnnnned.

It's good to be back... and thanks for sticking around  :)

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It's Almost Summer Around Here!

The beautiful spring-turning-summer stuff that's happening around Vancouver lately is making me slightly bummed to be leaving the area for Massachusetts later this week. I mean, obviously I'm ultra psyched to be seeing my family and friends - but the weather in Vancouver has just been spoiling me rotten. The temperatures around here are almost always comfortable - even in the wintertime, generally. I've experienced less than a handful of thunderstorms since moving to the Pacific Northwest in January 2012. Massachusetts summers, on the other hand, are hot, humid, and peppered with thunder and lightning storms. Mostly I'm worried about the humidity... it can really make me a cranky (and sweaty) biatch.

All that to say that I've been soaking up the outdoors around Vancouver lately and really appreciating the beautiful area that I live in - perhaps more so because I know that it will be in my rearview in a week.

Last Sunday, in lieu of taking a hike (as I'd mentioned we might) Dave and I went for a nice long walk through Pacific Spirit Regional Park near his UBC campus. The park is a nature reserve on the west side of town, with miles and miles of trails and woods, but somehow it was my first time checking it out.

It was a grey day, but our 5-mile walking through the park's winding trails was full of lush, green trees.

The moss on many of the trees in the park had a distinctly mint-and-kelly green ombre effect, 

which I loved... 

There were some tallllllllllll trees in that park...

And we even ran into a few big-ass slugs along the way...

Another recent walk around my neighborhood revealed that the Kitsilano Public Pool is open and starting to see some action:

And elsewhere, I continue to randomly enjoy all of the plant-life surrounding me...

Yesterday was GORGEOUS outside - not a single complaint to be had. Spectacular blue sky and a light breeze that kept you from getting too hot in the sun. Dave and I spent an hour just lying out on a blanket on the Kits Beach lawn, soaking it in. Such a relaxing way to spend an hour.

Any signs of summer sprouting up around your hood?
What does summer weather feel like for you in your area?
Hope you're all breaking out your sunscreens!!!

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