Books I Read in March

Suri's Burn Book by Allie Hagan

We all already know and love the Tumblr this book is based on.  Though it occasionally feels a little bit wrong, "Suri's" snarky commentary about the other Hollywood families is completely entertaining.  My favorite parts of this book were a section called "Celebrities Who Should Have Babies" (like Leo & Kate, or Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams [sorry, Eva, we're not going to just forget that easily how things used to be]) and a part where she talks about the celebrity child cliques she wishes she could be in (like the Spice Children [all the Spice Girls' kids]).  Her constant reminders that she made her photographic debut on the cover on Vanity Fair, in photographs taken by Annie Liebowitz, on a cliffside in Telluride, after 6 months of speculation if she even existed, make me giggle every time.  If you like Suri's Burn Book online, you'll like it in real life book form too.

(Also, I must thank Heidi for sending me this one for a birthday present!)

The Three Marys by Eva J. Gibson

Though I have about a million qualms with the cover image of this book, I thoroughly enjoyed working through this one with my Bible Study girls.  It is an in-depth study of the roles that each of the three Marys mentioned in the New Testament (Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary of Mary and Martha, and Mary Magdalene) played in Jesus' life and as examples of Christianity (see what I mean about the cover?!  It looks like it should be a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book).  While only seven chapters long, each chapter gives a dozen study questions, which vary between reading comprehension, journaling, and personal reflection - a great variety for a Bible study book.  The many, many passges from the Bible it asks you to read (especially those comparing all four accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John regarding the same event) are so nice to dive really deeply into and get a full perspective.  Wonderful read - maybe our best pick yet!

VICTORY FOR VALERIE (that's me!)

To anyone who reads this blog:

You've probably noticed my posting slowly tapering off to virtually nothing over the past couple of months.  It was for good reason:  I was quite busy making 16 of these...

And now I am FINISHED!  I took on the largest sewing project yet in my personal history of sewing, and I survived!  (And loved about 97% of the estimated 120 hours of sewing dedicated to these 16 dresses.  The other 3% was seam ripping.)

With that being said, as you can probably assume, I did not make 16 of the above dresses for myself.  So now it's time for me to get back to selfishly sewing for a little while!  And oh, do I have plans.

So, to anyone who checked back here on a daily basis (like my grandma!  Hi, G-ma!) and missed me, please rest assured that we've now returned to regularly scheduled programming, and I'm back.

(Oh, and those dresses above?  They are for weddings in May.  I can't reveal all until then!)

Trying New Things: Holding a Parrot

I've been feeling a pull recently to try to do more new things.  Things that make me a little uncomfortable.  Things that I can do one time and then never have to do again because I can say that I did them.

This week, I did one of those things:  held a parrot.

I'm not afraid of birds, and I wasn't afraid of Claude (great parrot name, huh?), I just find animals in general to be a little bit dirty and a little bit germy and just not really something that I want to be touching.  (Can you tell I never had a pet as a kid?)

But this weekend on a little trip with my bestie Rachel (a trip I will be writing about in excruciatingly epic detail very soon), we encountered Claude on the street, and his owner encouraged us to let him perch on our hands.

Rachel was a pro.  Look how he even cocks his head toward her in affection!

And then this is pretty much how I felt about it.

Parrot-holding:  check.

NYC List: Sleep No More

How does this sound for a great birthday date?

Let's go to an old creepy hotel, grab a drink at a swanky bar that looks an awful lot like the Black Lodge on Twin Peaks, throw on some masks as we're whisked away from the bar into a cramped elevator, become separated from each other somewhere in the sea of a hundred other people wearing identical masks, wander alone up and down five stories, chasing actors we stumble upon to watch them play out a variety of violent, sensual, and passionate scenes, and then meet up outside two hours later to discuss what we saw.

Yep, that is what we did for my birthday at Sleep No More.

To describe it as concisely as I can figure out how to, Sleep No More is an interactive theatre experience that immerses the audience in an alternate universe in which you explore (or really just run around) a 5-story building (through hotel lobbies, asylums, a cemetery, an orphanage, a banquet hall, an apartment, a street lined with shops) in search of a dozen or so actors whom you occasionally stumble upon in various encounters with one another.  To say any more would give too much away, though I will say this is now high on my recommendations list for NYC visitors.  It isn't for the faint of heart (both in content and the fact that I went up and down so many staircases I was actually sore the next day), but if you can brave it, you won't be sorry.

Plus you get to leave with these sweet masks.

Sleep No More has been on my "Things We Must Do Before We Leave the City" List, so here's to another activity checked off!  Our clock is ticking....

Button-Down to Swingy Tank

From my non-achievement in top-making last week, we have learned that I don't like it when clothes are too tight.  (I think this comes from when I was in junior high and everyone was wearing tight clothes and my mom told me that if I tried something on and I thought it fit, I should buy one size larger.  Good advice for the time.)

Below is another shirt that is not disastrously tight, but the buttons still pull a little at the chest, the armholes are all up in my armpits' business, and the gapping at the bottom indicates that the shirt doesn't fit properly around my hips.  Therefore:  too small.

In one of the quickest top makeovers of all time, I was able to solve all three of the above problems.  I simply cut off the sleeves and used the as triangular inserts in the side seams to make a fun little swing top!

I love this silhouette as a fun, casual, springtime top, but if I'm feeling a little too swingy, it also belts really nicely to create a peplum shape instead!

In case anyone is interested, here's the easiest tutorial ever:
1.  Cut up side seams and cut off sleeves.
2.  Cut sleeves into long triangles (make sure the sides are as long as your side seams).
3.  Pin and sew triangles into open side seams.
4.  Double fold and sew armholes.
5.  Hem triangle insert.

And that's all, folks!

28 + Changes

Hey, so I turned 28 on Monday!  And I'd like to get introspective about it, if you don't mind.

My 27 was a year of strengthening:
building my business (there are many things going on behind the scenes, and it's grown more than I could have imagined),
learning evermore about my husband and my marriage and who I want to be as a wife,
investing more deeply in my most meaningful friendships,
finding physical healing from the back problems that had been causing me a great deal of pain (when I had reached a point that I wasn't sure I would ever feel good again),
becoming a scholar of the Word rather than just an occasional browser.

27 very much felt like a gearing up year, a year of getting ready and getting prepared.  And I feel like I am.

28 is going to be a year of change:
new city,
new home,
new job,
new time zone,
new endeavors,
owning a car again for the first time in four years,
starting our life as a military family,
transitioning from being a dental student's wife to a dentist's wife (I still can't believe we're almost at the end of this road).

A total shake-up of all that we've known for the past four years is coming for us as we leave this era of our life and dive head first into a whole new one.  

Thank you, 27, for helping me get strong.  28, I can't wait to see where you take me.  I hope you exceed my wildest expectations.

A Beautiful Day for a Bike Race

Saturday brought sunny skies, the highest temps since last fall, and a really great day for a cycling race!  Scott's been part of Columbia's cycling team this season, and while most of his races this spring will be at other universities, this one was at Columbia here in the city, so I went to watch as the loudest-cheering wife there was.  It was a criterium race, which is a short course that's ridden several times in a given time period, so I got to see him pass by lots of times (lots of opportunities for cheers).

Not a bad place for a starting line, eh?

Possibly the main thing we learned from this race was that I am completely incapable of taking pictures at the precise time when Scott is riding by.

See Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:

And then there is this one, which I snapped on the lap right before there was a GIGANTIC BIKE CRASH RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES INVOLVING SCOTT.

Scott isn't quite sure what happened, but the two guys right in front of him went down, and he was too close to avoid them and got caught up in their crash.  All in all, there ended up being 10 or 12 guys involved!  UGH.  I don't like crashes, and I especially don't like witnessing crashes involving my husband!  (A broken collarbone would be about the worst thing right now for somebody trying to finish up clinic work to graduate from dental school in 2 months!)  In the end, Scott got away with just some crooked handlebars, but he didn't get to finish the race, which was disappointing.  However, he also has these awesome battle scars!  (I am sparing you what the actual wounds look like under that sleeve...not pretty).

But this story has a happy ending:  Though Saturday's bike race didn't go the way he had hoped, Scott totally redeemed Saturday's crash-out during Sunday's race, where he placed 9th out of 43 in his division!  So proud!