The night before I left Munich I had a very vivid dream about my dad. We passed each other in time, like the rabbit hole where I was falling down and he was coming up. He was 30 or 40 years old, said living life backwards makes much more sense...

Practicing saying "Ich Liebe Dich" for my trip to Germany

Vanilla Sky

Somehow in the chaos of the semester, I have made vanilla extract ("I HAVE MADE FIIIIRE!").
It smells absolutely divine- I poured it into small bottles and gave it out for Christmas to a few friends. Actually didn't leave enough for myself, so that's on my to-do list once I get back from Germany.

Soaked vanilla beans in vodka for 2 months

Cut my own corks from my wine cork collection

Such a pretty bottle of vanilla! The champagne cork was my favorite cork.

Crafty crap...

I am ITCHING to do craft stuff lately- maybe even start on etsy so I have an outlet for all these items I'm imagining producing.
I'm remembering the birthday where I got a little sewing machine. This was a long time ago, in the Graham Street house. This was before the bed was moved against the west wall, before Dad built a canvas divider so I could have my own "space" in the long attic room. So it must've been my 7th or 8th birthday because the bed was against the east wall- I can remember Carrie and me lying there and practicing our faux espanol, a treasured activity. I picture everyone in my bed in the morning: Dad, Mom, Carrie and Baby Erin. It seems strange that I was opening presents in bed, because birthdays were normally a fairly formal event ("formal" is used very loosely here), around the table, opening presents and eating my mom's chocolate cake with the white frosting and the words in scripted, unsweetened chocolate across the top...

So all of my family piled around me, and I open....THE SEWING MACHINE.  I'm not even sure it was real. I think it was plastic and worked by punching yarn through cardboard or something. Nevertheless, I've been crafty since then, though I'm really not great at crafts- I love making things!
I have been looking at tooth fairy pillows so I can make some pretty ones for my nieces, whose tiny teeth burrow deep into the sheets while their mother searches blindly in the dead of night.

And the semester is over.
And I have a pile of books.
And piles of yarn.
And ideas....