-Emily

I personally do not know many people in the military, but I do have one good friend who I would like to say thank you to. Katie Zoller, one of my oldest friends and one of my favorite people. She joined the Navy Reserves in 2009, braved boot camp, and became a Master-At-Arms. Since then, she’s been doing her duties with the Navy, and recently went on active duty. While she may not ever see live combat (let’s hope!!!), she does know how to handle a gun, which to me is rather incredible since Katie is one of the sweetest, friendliest people I know. Thank you Katie for everything you’re doing for our country!

For many of us who are not intimately involved in the military it’s simply a time where we can enjoy a nice spring day with our friends and family. A premiere to summer – if you will. It feels very summery here in MN today. Those who had an early picnic planned (like my family) got rained out, but it’s now hot and muggy – a nice change to the cold, rainy spring we’ve been having so far.

The day mellowed out to be a beautiful, breezy evening and we did get out to enjoy a small picnic of our own on the patio this evening.

-Emily

Today is Easter, and we couldn’t ask for a more beautiful day – especially considering the gloomy, rainy, cold days that have preceded us this week. This morning we woke up to the sun shining and the birds chirping. To celebrate this glorious occasion I will be heading over to my parents house for the traditional Easter Basket Hunt and dinner, most likely followed by a walk around the neighborhood.

Above are a little bluebird and ducky that I made for a friend for her 2 kids as part of their Easter baskets. They may look familiar to you if you have read my blog before, but I added a few extra accessories. I also added a little knitted Easter basket for each one.

I borrowed a book of crochet patterns from the library and I’ve been trying out a few different techniques, especially the things like flowers and other embellishments. I’m so used to knitting that it’s a bit awkward trying to pull yarn through the hooks, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it eventually.

-Emily

It’s that time of year again. Time for sugary goodness in the form of syrupy eggs, gelatinous beans, and of course marshmallows covered in sugar. But these glorious Easter goodies are not just for satisfying our sugar cravings. They have a second, loftier purpose. Dioramas.

The above photo is the fabulous entry that Briana and I created for the Pioneer Press Peeps diorama contest. (Vote for us!!) We are pretty proud of our work.

Here’s how we incorporated the peeps:
• Clouds – snowman peeps
• Trees and Shrubs – xmas tree peeps
• Sun – marshmallow surrounded by yellow bunny peep ears
• Loons – painted chich peeps
• Bears – bear peeps (no altering necessary!)
• CamPeepers – yellow bunny peeps with felt shirts and toothpick props

I have to give a shout out about the sign as well, since Briana hand cut all of those pretty little letters. The rocks are real rocks, and the sand is made from crushed graham crackers.

Close-up images below.

Impressive, no? We thought we had the competition in the bag. That is, until we saw this entry. That’s right folks, someone recreated THE ENTIRE MINNESOTA STATE FAIR out of peeps. They even carved mini peep butter-heads.

We’re going to have to step up our game next year if we want to beat them. We’re thinking about starting a committee.

For other fabulous peep creations check out the Washington Post Peep Diorama contest. They have neat little videos that explain the diorama-making process.

-Emily

I made this adorable pocket monster for our friends baby. It’s from the Knitting MochiMochi book. I modified the baby monster pattern so that he had feet, and also gave him a little pocket to match the big monster. I think they turned out so cute, and I love the MochiMochi patterns. Check out her website here!

-Emily

We figured that we could just stop in at a craft store to pick up some porcelain pens, but the employees had NO idea what I was talking about. “uh, what do you want the pens for?” and then they would radio someone: “This lady here says she wants some kind of pens that will write on plates.” Then they would inform me that they had no such item.

So, we ended up buying Sharpie paint pens. They write on plates just fine, but are not permanent and you can’t really use the plates. Still, it was a fun activity. Here are the final results:

My plate was inspired by a Scandinavian bird design by Jane Foster that I found through a google image search. She has a lot of amazing screenprints and fabric designs that you can peruse on her site. I hope she doesn’t mind that I hijacked her design for my plate and turned it into hypercolor for this project. They only had crazy colors in the Sharpie pens. Anyway, I think it will look interesting hanging on my wall. Can anyone guess what Briana’s plate was inspired by?

Next time I’m going to order some real porcelain pens online first.

-Emily

Slowly spreading the love - Mr. Snail.

Meet "Heart-kun" a Japanese Chihuahua with a big heart!

"Old Spot" piglet with a heart spot!

Say hello to "Heart" the calf! Born just in time for V-day 2009

Love Kitten from a Humane Society photo contest.

"Nam Choke" and "Boonrawd" (babu cow elephants) show the love

This baby Emporer penguin wears his heart on his chest. Apparently a natural formation when they are molting!

Ok so this is not "natural" but I had to end with a hamster!

-Emily

A cute 8×10 poster by WestWilllow. It’s a BOGO so hurry and buy yours now! My plan is to hang this little guy in my kitchen!

-Emily

I’ve recently been on an Alfred Hitchcock kick. Luckily, I’ve been able to find some of them at the good ol’ public library. The following is a review of the 4 I’ve seen so far and my opinions about them. Be forewarned, they may contain spoilers.

Rear Window
This was one of my favorites so far. An adventurous photographer gets stuck in his apartment after suffering an injury which covers half his body in an extremely uncomfortable-looking cast. With nothing else to do he starts speculating on the activities of his neighbors. He begins to think that one of them has killed his wife and eventually drags his girlfriend and nurse into his personal investigation into the crime.

First of all, I don’t think there’s a single person who hasn’t thought about staring at their neighbors through binoculars. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s kind of like a real-life Facebook from the 50′s! I enjoyed the vivid personalities of the characters, as well as the slowly building paranoia … a signature of Hitchcock. Even though the entire perspective of the movie came from the inside of a small apartment (and it’s view of the outside), the movie managed to pack in quite a bit of action, complete with a hokey – I mean… super realistic… special effect of him falling out the window.

The Birds
I had anticipated this movie to be more compelling than it was. I’ve often thought about “The Birds” when I see an ominous swarm of birds in the sky or roosting in trees, but didn’t really know the plot of the movie except that there were scary birds involved.

While it is a terrifying thought to be pecked to death by a swarm of evil birds, I found the scenes to be quite redundant, and the main character a bit stupid. I mean, if you were boarded up in a house, and you knew that you were surrounded by thousands of birds that wanted to kill you, would you wander away in the middle of the night by yourself to investigate a mysterious flapping noise?!?! But then again, it’s classic horror movie mistake so I guess I can’t give her too much grief for acting mindless as women tend to do in this genre.

Psycho
We watched Psycho on the “big screen” at a friends home theater, which definitely enhanced the movie experience. Despite the cheesy acting (the norm for the time period) and being in black and white, the movie provides a lot of bang for your buck. It starts right off with a steamy love scene and before long jumps right into the shower killing scene. And the music is great also.

I don’t think there’s anybody creepier than Norman Bates, with his stuffed birds and “special” relationship with his mother, and for this I give it a 2 thumbs up!

Vertigo
This movie was long and seemed to drag on a bit too long for my taste. Do we really need uninterrupted minutes of silent driving and scenes of staring without dialogue? I confess I did have to watch this movie twice after falling asleep. That being said, it really was a masterpiece of a plot with many interesting twists and turns along the way – although it ended rather predictably after the “big reveal.”

I particularly enjoyed the hokey dream graphics (which I’m sure were thrilling at the time), as well as the whole vertigo special effects. All-in-all a class act flick despite the lengthiness.

A fun fact about Hitchcock, he has a cameo in all of his films. I personally enjoyed watching for them.

-Emily

Even though Christmas has come and gone, the euphoria of gift-giving and receiving still lingers. I had wrapped everyone’s presents in red and gold wrapping paper from a humongous roll I purchased from a department store I used to work at a decade ago (talk about the gift that keeps on giving!), and even put a few sparkly bows on them. There they sat, in perfect color-coordination glory, under my tree in the living room until it was time to pack them up and haul them to Wisconsin.

At the big Bretzel family Christmas, the pajama-clad children get to open their gifts first while the adult crowd waits for the take-away exchange. My eyes started to glaze over as they unwrapped toy after toy in a seemingly unending stream of presents. After an indiscernible amount of time the kids either conked out or started to throw fits which signaled the time for such adult appropriate goodies as lottery tickets, cheap screwdriver sets and packer-themed items. After a few rolls of the dice and some loud arguments about how many times we would exchange the presents I ended up taking away a packer planter with self-watering glass orbs and Ryan a salad-spinner. Not bad!

Grandpa trying out the Wii under Austin's instruction

My father-in-law and I were the only two able to wake up for the 8 o’clock Christmas mass. Turns out we didn’t have to get there one hour early, but it was nice to spend the morning at church, saying all the familiar prayers and singing Christmas carols. We had an eventful day with Ryan’s mom’s family which involved the eating of much food and cookies, playing the new family Wii – we even got Grandpa to try it! He was very displeased that I took a photo of him, but it was worth it. I was very much obsessed with my gift from Ryan’s parents, a Kindle, and spent some time finding free books to download and read.

We weren’t able to have our Anderson family Christmas until a week later after my parents and sisters returned from a trip to South Korea. We feasted on Roast Beast and mashed potatoes, and my dad popped the cork on a bottle of Champagne to celebrate the new year. Among many wonderful gifts including hand-knit booties complete with pom-poms from my grandmother, we received a plethora of goodies from Korea. As we all know, I love everything tiny and cute and therefore was ecstatic when I got a pile of tiny stickers from my sister Carrie and friend Joyce, but who knew that my brother Ben was also obsessed with tiny stickers?

The following photo is a montage of all of the Korean things that were gifted to myself and Ryan:

1. Korean Beer
2. Cute “His n’ Her” Cell Phone Charms
3. Cute tiny Stickers (Have you ever seen a Panda?, Robots, Bunnies, Fruit and little characters shouting things in Korean)
4. Tiny Post-it Notes with a cartoon character shouting things at you
5. Korean Vodka
6. Assorted Hard Candies
7. A Karate Guy Breaking a Brick with his Elbow Statue
8. Various cosmetics and face masks (some including “whitening” for your skin)
9. Christmas pencils
10. Origami in the shapes of Arctic creatures.

I managed to follow these instructions for the origami polar bear. It turned out just as cute as depicted on the package, though I may have squashed it a bit. Note the cute ears on top and paws on bottom!

All-in-all I would say that we had a very nice Christmas and are blessed to have such wonderful family and friends to have spent it with.

Oh yeah, and happy New Year. :-) I say “twenty eleven” is the pronunciation route to go!

-Emily