Climbing

Seth and I joined Kendra and Ian for an afternoon of climbing at Brooklyn Boulders this weekend. It was my first climbing experience, and I am pretty convinced that I to want to go climbing again!

I am a bit out of shape (well - I don't formally workout - ever) and I would say I have pretty weak arms. Yet, I was able to feel some success with a couple tries and a few deep breaths to take away my fears of being high up off the ground (high up off the ground = 20 feet... high for me;)!

We climbed until we physically couldn't climb anymore. Our arms got so shaky that we both finally had to stop! We are both feeling a bit sore today (so sore that we can't even massage each other's arms to make them feel better!)

Love.

Date Night: The New Museum

Months ago, I found a great idea for a date for Seth and me. We don't often go on "real" dates, but after our mystery date to Sleep No More I decided it'd be fun to plan dates for each other... Unfortunately, this date has been postponed Thursday after Thursday. 

We were down to the wire with this one though. I hadn't told Seth much about it, because I thought it'd be fun for it to be a surprise. Yet, he figured it out after I mentioned I had seen an ad on the subway (of course, immediately after that, the subway we were riding on happened to have the ad right in front of our faces & Seth figured it out!) 

 One of the highlights of the exhibit was called Untitled (Slide). It was, in fact, a huge slide. One that went started on the 4th floor and ended on the 2nd floor!

 It was quite a fast ride and over in only moments! The gallery on the 2nd floor had bright flashing lights and a few other exhibits to experience.

Another highlight was a slow moving, shiny swing. 

There were mushrooms which contained 3 different mushrooms in one. 

The one thing we didn't get to try out were the goggles (if you look in the mushroom photo you can kind of see the person to the left who has a pair of the goggles on). Thursdays are Free night (we didn't take advantage of it - standing in line outside just didn't sound too ideal for this cold evening & paying money towards art is ok by me) and by the time it had started the line for the goggles made us quickly lose motivation. 

Anyway, date night was a success - fish tacos before and our first visit to the New Museum with a ride on one of the biggest slides I've ever been on (inside a building ;). 

kentile floors

i love taking photos of the kentile floors sign from the f and g trains. i actually have two other photos of this same sign... one of the morning sunrise and one in the fog. the photo above was taken mid-afternoon on the first day of 2012. the sun case a perfect soft light across the city as it headed down. 

waiting room

Kendra gave me an iPhonography book about iPhone photos for Christmas. It's inspired me to get back to using my photo to see again. I am often taking photos with my phone, but using some cool aps and being more purposeful, I'd like to try take more artsy photos.

pinterest obsession

it seems like everyone has become obsessed with pinterest lately (ME INCLUDED!) my boards are here, if you are interested to see what i've been pinning.

what i thought was interesting tonight, as i continue to pin past my bedtime, is the pins that have been posted of some of my photos that i didn't realize were posted... check them out here.

happy new year!

i always have the best intentions of sending out some sort of card, letter, photo around the end of the year/beginning of the new year... i rarely succeed at getting it sent out. this year, i even painted our holiday greetings and still didn't get them sent out! AND because i stamped the date (including the year) i can't reuse them next year... they ended up being gift tags on a few gifts we gave, but otherwise, i have a pile of them to admire or something.



as a backup, seth and i picked out a favorite photo from 2011 to share in an email greeting, and then i left it up to the blog to share the updates of the past year (not that i've been the best blogger this year... maybe in 2012 i'll be better.)

hope you 2011 ended nicely & the start of 2012 has been enjoyable so far! we celebrated the ending of 2011 with dinner at manhattan inn (a piano bar in williamsburg/greenpoint, bk) with family and friends and an evening of games, dancing (kendra was teaching me lady gaga dance to her song bad romance), champagne, and lots of laughs. and since our night didn't end until early in the morning, we spent the first day of the year sleeping in late and heading to rockefeller center, grand central station, dumbo, and back to relax at home this evening.

Top of the Rock

We have guests in town visiting. Having guests is about the only time we really get out and do any sort of "sight seeing" in the city. Today, we were off to the Rock to see the view after sundown. 

 

Brunch

For Christmas, one of my grandmothers always sends Seth and I a Brunch on her! Today is the day to enjoy our brunch on her! Seth and I used to be pretty regular about our weekend brunches, but lately we've been more regular about eating crepes at the little crepe and coffee place down the street.
So excited for the last brunch of 2011!

Photo

Saturday morning

I've spent the whole week not feeling well, and even took off one day (when I should have taken 3). And I'm still not feeling well. So here I am, Saturday morning, drinking warmed milk with honey, cinamon, ground clove, and ground ginger. It's a nice replacement for the 8 mugs of chamomile I drank yesterday. (I'm also thinking it's a great replacement for coffee...)

Our First Live Christmas Tree

Seth and I have never had a live Christmas tree before. We actually haven't often had a Christmas tree at all... Maybe our senior year of college? I'm not HUGE on Christmas. Personally, I feel the holiday is a consumer trap... I always feel guilty when people give me gifts, because most likely, they aren't getting one. Picking out gifts for others is a quite stressful thing for me to do (First it's: What to get people - I should know, they are family, right!?! Next is when to get it? How to get it mailed (considering my work hours)? How to get it mailed on time?... etc. etc. It's stressing me just thinking about it!) The positive thing that comes from the holiday is the family time (minus the fact that Seth and I don't actually travel home for the holiday... but in the past, that has been the up point of the holiday).

Seth and I have been talking about the holiday and how we'll celebrate it when we have children... Right now, we have opposing opinions about it, but since we don't currently have kids, I guess we have time to come to a compromise.

Anyway, as we were walking through the neighborhood yesterday, Seth mentioned wanting to get a tree, but bahumbug me said no! (That would be the point in which he started calling me Ebenezer.) Last night, when we had our friends over to celebrate Seth's 30th, he was graced with a gift of a Christmas tree from our dear friends, Scott & Sarafina. He's so lucky! And what a gift to hit the nail on the head for Seth! I do have to say it smells amazing, and as I was telling a co-working, the lights on the tree do give the room a relaxing glow that I've always loved!

And just a note, I'm not completely bahumbug, I've decorated the tree with a few homemade ornaments. I need to find the rest of my ornaments (ones my grandma made me) to hang on the tree too.

Seth's 30th

Seth celebrated his 30th birthday earlier this week! Last night we had a little get-together with friends and family, which included homemade pizzas, the game LIEbrary, a slide show of photos of Seth from his birth to now ;), and 80s music in honor of the decade Seth was born in!


The above photos is a pano photo shot by one of our friends of the banner I hung for him. I like the banner so much I want to leave it up :) ... Maybe I'll make a new banner to hang when we take his birthday one down.

Below is the cookie cake I made for Seth - I'm surprised it turned out, considering how impatient I can get when baking desserts!

a few of my very favorite people

 sweet baby zia

and phoenix and tristan

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