The beautiful Weather is Coming

Though I'd share.

I believe I've posted about this before, but good news is good news, right?

Bring on the beautiful weather!

The Londoners Arrive

Our great friends Kerry and Edith have decided they wanted to visit good ole Orlando after Kerry being gone almost a year! We were very excited to have them come done, and Jake was just about besides himself because Kerry is Jake's BFF (best friend forever).

The came down on Monday night and dragged us to the Cheesec@ke Factory for so dinner. And cheesecake, obviously.

The Georgia Peach. Drool.

Edith and I. With our drinks.

If you've ever eaten there, you'll know that the menu was crazy large. Like 18 pages or something ridiculous like that. Edith got her usual thing (I guess it's one of their traditions whenever she'd visit was to go there and she always gets the same thing.) Anyway, I decided to try the chicken chili (so good) and Darin got the fish tacos.

Numm. Grr. Devour.

And then it was time to choose dessert. Darin tried the strawberry shortcake (which came in like four separate packages, so funny), Kerry and Edith got the chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake, and I got my usual Tuxedo. And ate like two bites. Cheesecake makes very good leftovers.

Kerry contemplating life with cheesecake.

My beauty.

And that was that. We had a great time, ate too much, but had tons of leftovers. Here's us all after we ate our self silly. So glad to have Kerry and Edith visit!

Oh Baby Baby

Went to my second baby shower ever on Saturday.

To the great Carrie G. - very good friend, St. Louis native, Florida State alum (yak), and mother-to-be.

We all met up at her SILs house in Kissimmee (crazy far away from where I live, sort of), and just celebrated together with memories (I guess she was like 5 weeks late) and stories, opening presents, and eating wonderful food!

The cake. Very good.

Carrie opening presents - can you see them all?

This was so cool and creative.
Just a whole bunch of outfits strung together on a clothes line.
They just kept coming and coming...

Diana and I.
(Trying to figure out what everything was for.)

The beautiful quilt from Carrie's mother.
Ahh hem.

Big Boy D keeping us entertained.

Carrie spent a long time opening presents - she's very blessed with all these incredible gifts. I have to admit I was sad not to have any games or such, I was gearing up for some. I think I could have done better on ultrasound pictures if given a chance.

Carrie's Family
(Courtney, Carrie's Mom, Carrie, Kristin, Katie, Daryl, and Angie)

The girls:
Del, D., Cherrah, Carrie, Alisa, Becky

Fun times. And now I want some cake.

Update on the Pottery Class

I finally got around to taking some pictures at class last Thursday.

I kind of went crazy with the camera before I actually started with my clay, and then forgot to take a picture of the mess afterward. But, I did take some of the pots/urns/bowls that I made on Thursday and the week before!

My area.

The classroom.
There were 8 people starting and now about 4-5 come.

Ready to go, and clean.

The wheel.
I never named it. Should have probably.

I was very proud of the ones I did. I think I'm finally getting it. Two weeks ago was pretty difficult because our clay was too hard to work with - even our teacher, Barbara, told us so. Oops. This weeks was a lot easier.

This week's three! My best yet.

We have three more classes to go. I'll probably do another class next year - haven't really decided yet. I am really enjoying myself!

My first little pot. Isn't it cute?

From two weeks ago. I still need to trim them.
More cups/mugs to make!

And that's it. I'll try to take more pictures of how dirty I get - as well as how dirty my space gets. I can't believe I only have three classes left, but I am very excited to glaze my stuff. We do all of our pots together on the last day. Can't you wait to see what I create?

"Close Every Door to Me" - Joseph

No, I'm not depressed or anything of that sort. I was listening to Joseph and the Technicol@red Dre@mcoat today at work on my new iPod N@no, 5th Generation.

Woo hoo.

Darin got me one for my birthday - I only had a shuffle I got free from work like over four years ago. I was in need of a new one.

And it's purple.

Love. It.

I finally got around to adding the rest of my CDs to my computer/laptop at home from when I got my shuffle years ago. I'll only probably be about 6 GB after I am done. Wow. Gotta steal some other peoples' CD collections!

Now I get to listen to show-tunes in the lab. Fantastic. They make me super chipper. Tomorrow, Cats.

It takes movies too. Will add one from my birthday later on.

Painting Orange

This past Sunday, Darin and I volunteered at our church to help paint the chapel.

And did we paint it.

It was like being in South Carolina all over again (see, I went to Clemson for graduate school). And everything was orange.

Here were the before pictures. I guess this room hadn't been painted for at least thirty years!

And the after.

It was bright orange. The color was called saffron, but we decided pumpkin was a better description. Plus one of the guys didn't know what saffron was. (There were two other gentlemen 'helping' us out. We can't really figure out what they did while we painted. I guess prepared the other walls?)

And the other three walls were to be painted papaya. Or light pumpkin. Very bright and cheerful this room will be!

Ended up only painting the bright orange and then taping the rest of the room for the guys to paint later this week. Now I don't mind taping at all, but I went through two rolls just going around the room doing the bottom half. Darin was on the ladder taping the crown molding.

But it was actually fun and relaxing. Talked to the other two guys and listened to some football on the radio.

And met a nice camel.

The things you find at church.

Painting Perfection

I was a very evil friend and made people paint pottery for my birthday celebration. You might not think it sounds that evil, but it was. I thought it would be fun to try something new - and everyone did have fun.

We went here - good times. And it was open late - until midnight. And a lot of other random people were there on a Saturday night after 8 pm.

People picked what they wanted to paint - and went crazy.

Anu.

Renee (Janice's high school friend), Tony, and Suzanne.

Anu and Kucku. They're concentrating.

The artist of the group.

Darin and me
(With my new shirt on!)

I think deep down inside, everyone had a great time. It was nice to be able to talk to everyone and concentration on what you were doing. And we were all very creative. I was so happy that we did something different! And my plate came out great if I don't say so myself. I'll take more pictures after they're fired.

When we were done, we wound up going here because the bar across the street was so loud. Like you couldn't even talk to someone standing right next to you.

And I got one of these:

Mmmm. Guinness.

And I had to put this cute picture of Suzanne up - she always is drinking her sweet tea!

Suz.

And that's that. Follow up pictures to come!