Napa 2011

Last weekend over President's Day Thor and I took a trip down to St. Helena, CA to visit our great family - Linda and Garry Rose!  Linda is Ralph's cousin, and we always enjoy seeing them, and getting a chance to visit - it always involves lots of coffee and fun chats!  Anyhow - we had a fabulous weekend, but I feel like I'm getting behind on posting pictures, so I'm just going to toss them up here and put captions on everything.  As usual - I can't remember how to upload the pictures so they show up in the correct order, and I also have trouble figuring out how to move the pictures around once they're uploaded....I know, I'm hopeless! 

Linda & I at Benessere with the sign welcoming us to the winery! This cracked us up. Linda & Garry know the wine maker at Benessere - so he 'rolled out the red carpet for us'

A close up of our welcom sign

On our last day in CA Thor and I did a great hike up out of Calistoga. The colors were beautiful - here's a shot of Thor heading down the trail.

The trees were all draped in this beautiful lichen

The view from our lunch spot

Giving Thor the karate chop - with my ninja hood up. It was quite chilly up at the top!

On our way down Thor spied a little finger of single track snaking off into the woods.  We followed it and came across a great biking trail - complete with banked turns and this crazy teeter-totter

 

I'm showing off how tall the poison ivy is in this shot here - waaaay over my head - and thick on both sides of the trail!

Took this early morning shot on my jog Sunday morning.

Another jogging pic

The weather was cold, cold, cold when we showed up on Friday night. We went to visit Pride on Saturday, and there was snow up in the vineyards!  They said it hasn't snowed in the valley like that since 2007.

Self portrait - Pride Vineyards

lichen on a rock along our hike

Snow Day!

The weather reports have been threatening snow all week with weather advisories posted everywhere. Of course, nothing had materialized as of last night - so I completely gave up hope of seeing anything white & fluffy on the ground, and then we woke up this morning to a nice layer of snow covering everything! Excellent!   It's nothing like the snow coverage we had back in 2008 - but it's still fun to get a dusting, and it makes my heart happy to wake up and peer out the window from my bed to see the first snow of the year. It makes me feel like a kid again! 

What I was struck by this morning was that when I first opened my eyes I knew that it had snowed just because of the color of the sky. When there is snow on the ground the dark sky is brighter (more like a dark brown). I'm not sure if this will make sense to people who didn't grow up where it snowed during the winter because I think the difference is pretty subtle, but the black of the night sky is brighter when there is snow on the ground reflecting all available light back up into the sky.



Thor - on the sidewalk in front of our bank.

Rodeo & More Sewing

Last weekend Thor & I hit up the Professional Bull Riders tour stop in Portland with our friends Katie & Joe - it was a great time, we saw a few cowboys get tossed, and the main rodeo clown was an amazing dancer - he was hilarious!  It was also a great venue for us to proudly display some of Thor's grandmother, Tat's, south-western jewelry.  Tat had an absolutetly amazing collection, and Thor & I don't attend too many events where we can show off the pieces we have - we always enjoy it when we can though, and it's a fun way to remember Tat!

I also did some more sewing over the weekend - and was able to finish off a third pair of pants for our friend Jenn who is due in April.   Jen's having a boy - so I left off the ruffles this time around. I love the fabric on this pair though!

Kathryn & Brian Wedding Photos - Sneak Peak!

Kathryn & Brian's wedding photographer (Amelia Soper Photography) has a sneak peak of their wedding photos and a super sweet write-up on her photography blog.  Check it out!

Stormtrooper

I keep forgetting to post this hilarious picture of me in our friend's stormtrooper helmet. Or I should say, in one of our friend's stormtrooper helmets. They have multiple. And a pretty sweet collection of autographed Star Wars memorabilia to boot.



It's Baby Girl Season - Ruffled Pants for Little Ladies!

Last weekend I got busy at the sewing machine and cranked out two pairs of sweet, ruffled pants for some friends of ours who just had baby girls.   The purple pair is for Becky & Daren's new daughter, Avery - and the pink pair is for Andy & Katy's daughter, Ella.

Initially I was worried that the pants were going to be too small, but once I delivered them Katy showed me that the pants were practically taller than Ella right now, so no worries.  Apparently I have absolutely no concept of how big a newborn is. =)

I used the Britches & Bloomers sewing pattern - and it was pretty straight forward and easy to follow. This is a great beginner sewing pattern that can be accomplished in one evening if you need to whip up a quick gift!

Avery's Pants!

Ella's Pants

Sweet Pugsley Video

This is a neat video shot by some guys up in Whitehorse.  This is apparently how I need to learn to jump my bike - in the snow!  Somehow launching off a jump in the snow seems waaay less intimidating. Awesome video editing too!