Christmas spirit, in a nutshell.

While trying to come up with project ideas that can keep 7 year-old hands busy for an hour, be somewhat educational, and cost virtually nothing to make, I find myself reminiscing about the things I made as a kid. A wooden clothes pin doll topped with an acorn hat, beads strung on safety pins and traded in friendship (which, by the way, are still fun to make but its so not cool to trade them, let alone wear them on your sneakers).

Maybe its the teaching, maybe its the move 1700 miles from home, or the things I find discarded at thrift stores, but I've found myself reminiscing even more about those little handmade treasures this holiday season. Bells fashioned from cups and pipe cleaners, decorated with foil stars; popsicle sticks-turned stars, carefully wrapped in yarn; one-of-a-kind snowflakes cut from coffee filters. It's these sweet, simple ornaments, made from toss-ables and scraps, that truly represent what the holidays are all about.

For Dave's parents, its a very special house crafted from a milk carton that is hung on the tree each and every year.



For me? It's a plastic baby Jesus, sleeping on a bed of golden tinsel, tucked inside half of a walnut shell. I'm pretty sure its a Catholic and Sunday School standard. I love its simplicity, its tiny scale. And I love the contrast of the small baby, asleep in a humble half-shell, surrounded by Vegas-worthy tinsel.

Whether you celebrate the baby that's nestled inside, the little hands that made it, or the memories that come with it, we hope you find your Christmas this season too.

Rainy season is upon us.
Having lived the past 30+ years with snowy winters, we certainly don't mind the rain or the 55º temperature that comes with it. It does, however, make for some pretty soggy weekend adventures. Which in turn puts a damper on our blogging activities.

Between the errands, wet dog walks, and finally understanding the benefit of fog lights, we are continuing to carve our own little nook in the Pacific Northwest - and we'll be back real soon to tell you all about it.


(Ewe. On the way to Eugene.)

Self-portrait taken in Central Park. Obviously.

We were in NYC about a week ago. While a usual day-trip for us tends to end with anywhere from 300 - 800 photos, our 5 days in the big city left us with a paltry 100 or so. I credit it to being in a place where your entire focus is trying to get where you want to go without getting trampled.

So, we are left with some nice shots of the Brooklyn Bridge at night and the one shown above - the only photo of the two of us taken on the trip. Not to be confused with the self-portrait shown below, taken early this summer on the coast. Obviously.

Meet Fin.

This little bundle of amazingness was born to our dear friends, Becky and Francisco, in late September. I was lucky enough to spend some time with the new family last week.

Babies are relatively new for us. With each new arrival I still get that, "How can we be old enough to be parents?!" feeling. Just like I have a hard time accepting that our friends can be, and are, doctors, dentists, teachers, etc. Maybe its because of the history, of knowing them when they couldn't be doctors or teachers. Or maybe it's the realization that, at 30, I do not possess the worldliness and wisdom I thought all doctors, teachers, well, adults, had.

And I have a hunch that the feeling will never really go away - just merely replaced with more milestones.

While meeting Fin proved to be another lesson in time passing, it was also quick to remind me of time present. Yes, we are 30-years-old-enough to be parents. But we are also 30-years-young-enough to break a collarbone while skateboarding on a half-pipe.

Here's to Fin, his beautiful new parents, a speedy mend (Francisco), and lessons learned while in Milwaukee, WI.

Cheers

to us... and to five happy years!

(Photo taken by Mrs. Ewald Sr. at Cannon Beach. September 2007)

Fall visits our alley.

Their plumage might not be as flashy, but we think the evergreens are pretty spectacular too.

Random Question #2: The Ascot.

They call them random questions for a reason, I suppose.

One night, while checking the spelling of a word, we started actually seeing the illustrations speckled throughout our paperback dictionary. Where before they had fallen into the visual noise, small drawings of castanets, bongos, peanut plants and the diamondback rattlesnake seemed to leap from the pages. We were happy to have stumbled on to our favorite of all the dictionary illustrations - The Ascot - for a variety of reasons.

And seeing the gleam in the ascotted man's eye made us question - How does a dictionary choose the definitions that should include illustrations? The number of instruments illustrated suggests that there's a method; though the variety throughout the book made us think it was completely random. Perhaps certain words require more than other words to give them meaning.
Could/would you illustrate a verb?

These are the questions that, in their own small way, keep us up at night.