Virginia lake house and battlefield

instaweek: Washington State

Wonderful Washington State

Wind turbines at Ryegrass Summit, near Vantage

Moon over Ellensburg

Heading into North Bend

Fairchild AFB 

Snoqualmie Pass

The Columbia River and basalt cliffs

Farm and cloud outside of Ritzville

Mt. Rainier from Auburn

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Kittens inspired by kittens 2012!

A couple of kittens manning the phones at IBKC fundraising headquarters. Photo by Laurie Cinotto.

It's that time of year again. Perennial Nicolai sisters' favorite, The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, is participating in the annual Tacoma/Pierce County Humane Society fundraiser! Yup, Laurie and the IBKC gang are raising money to improve the lives of homeless cats and kittens in Tacoma and Pierce County, WA. Last year, $66,000 was raised by the IBKC! Isn't that incredible?

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Bruno Jenkins woke long enough to look incredibly cute. 

Catherine graduated from her Masters program! 

The Mister and the Master heading home from Evergreen. 

Mom and I stopped at the Hess Bakery and got delicious bread. 

Signs at the European deli. The dude looks like he's drunk walking.

And the lady looks like she's posing for a career woman magazine. 

I rubbed this sweet clover all over my wrists. Instant perfume!

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Paper body tissue art...yes please!

If you haven't already seen Lisa Nilsson's amazing body tissue series then you are missing out. Lisa creates detailed cross-cut pictures of human anatomy using paper and a technique calling quilling. I mean seriously, check it out.

Be sure to check out all of Lisa's work by visiting her website here.

We three to D.C.

Heads up: the Nicolai sisters will be out of town for around a week, so this little blog will be out of commission during that time. How is this different from all those other times the blog drops off the face of the universe for weeks on end? Well, this absence is planned...unlike those other times when we're too busy, or lazy, or consumed by ennui. Truth.

Where are we going? Washington D.C. and its environs. The impetus for the trip is a memorial lecture for our father, held at the JAG School (Judge Advocate General--basically the legal branch of the military) in Charlottesville, VA.

Without delving too deeply into all the military ins and outs (too many acronyms that I don't entirely understand), I'll just say that our dad's Army career was dedicated to the JAG Corps. This is a huge honor for our family, and we know that our dad would have been really touched...even though he might not have shown it. We're generally a pretty stoic bunch. (OK, most of the time.)

We might check in from time to time, or we might just get swept up in our trip, family, friends, and explosive sister fights--there's nothing like six days of sharing a double bed with your sibling to make you remember why you despise her, right? Hey, it's happened on more than one occasion. This would be an example of an instance where we are nowhere near stoic.

In conclusion, if you see instagrams from The American Museum of Natural History, please don't take that as an invitation to break into our houses. There are actually still cats, dogs, and people (in order of importance) living there.

Have a great start to summer, dear ones. Stay sweet!

♥ Christine, Monika, and Catherine

Baby sweater!

You've heard about Maya (one of Christine's BFFs) before and how wonderful she is. Maya doesn't just teach, write poetry, win poetry contests, get books published etc, she also is going to have a baby boy any day now. To celebrate this exciting new addition in her life, I decided to go ahead and knit a little baby sweater with a hood. The pattern is called Jasper Diamond Hoodie and it's published in Vintage Baby Knits...

My hipster instagramssssss

My last week via Instagram.

Mom's backyard.

Graduation flowers from sister Christine--Delivered to work no less!

Master picture with my mentor!

Celebration lunch at La Tarasca!

Honeysuckles in the backyard.

Peanut on a rare outside adventure.

Monday crafting.

Carrots for the horse.

New desktop background at work. It might be my favorite yet. Genevieve is such a weirdo!

Follow me at @cnic why don't you!?! Then I can follow you and we can be instagram BFFs!

$1 Wreath

I've been meaning to get some kind of festive spring/summer wreath on the front door since the day I took down my Christmas wreath (mind you that wasn't in December, I took it down February-ish--stop judging). I had an extra wreath form leftover from Christmas. I bought mine at the Dollar Tree. They're wrapped straw, and they worked well for covering in tree branches at Christmas and covering in yarn for summer!

Step one: acquire a wreath.

I'm a knitter, so I always have leftover yarn sitting around. Most of this is acrylic yarn that I don't really use for many knitting projects. I grabbed a bunch of colors to pick from

The bad cat was sleeping, so I wasn't disturbed. The next part took about an hour to do.

All you have to do is start wrapping the wreath form with whatever color you want. I started with gray and wrapped until I was satisfied and then switched colors.

When you want to switch colors just cut the yarn and start wrapping the next color. I always overlapped by just a couple strands to secure the previous color and anchor down the new color. I didn't use any glue in the entire wreath.

I picked the colors as I went, and at the end, I tucked the final piece of yarn under a couple of wraps. 

It's a really easy wreath that could be customized for any holiday or birthday. Someone will probably do a red, white, and blue wreath, but I'm just not that festive. Another bonus is that the wreath is super light weight, so you don't have to worry about hanging it on any wall. This wreath would also look cute in a bedroom or living room.

 This wreath certainly livens up my front door and it only cost me $1. 

It also looks nice from the back which is perfect since my front door is a bunch of glass panes.

Head over the dollar tree and while you're there, grab some tissue paper which your cats will love. Throw some in a box and call it good.

They also have a really good deal on some seashells. I bought 4 or 5 containers of them, but I haven't figured out what to do with them yet.