Peanut & Purls & Herringbone Knits!

I've been a knitter for a number of years now, however, I've never attempted the herringbone stitch. Not because it seemed too daunting or anything, but I never really thought about there being a herringbone stitch. I mean really, who knew!?!

Insta-sista

This may look familiar to you if you caught my post on making charm bracelets earlier this week, there sister beads! Well sort of, they're some beads Catherine and I bought when she was visiting last week and we did some beading. If you haven't guessed it already these are going to be sister visit instagrams, so get excited!

Time out

As Christine mentioned on Monday, there's a lack of inspiration as of late. I think a temporary hiatus is on the horizon. More on that later, but for now, I'm already running late for work. I wish I could keep driving south today. I would like to drive south all the way to Disneyland and have myself one of these Mickey ice cream sandwiches. That would be a delight!

Insta-sista

Joy of joys! It's my beloved Cascades! Aren't they stellar and dreamy? Of course I'm still in California vacation love mode, so you're getting subjected to yet another round. Are you as excited as I am? Probably not. Sorry. Just look away...

Home and away: California

While California is home for Monika, it's certainly away from home for me. I saw lots of amazing things during my minibreak there last weekend--including dolphins! Take a peek...

Insta-sista

 

All the sisters are together in Burbank, CA this weekend! As per usual, whenever they visit we away to Disneyland.
Here's a brief look at our visit, instagram style... 

Visitors from afar.

I recently had a week of visitors, well two visitors split up this last week. Ben's mom who traveled south from Washington to have some birthday fun, and Dawn made the trek (she flew, she didn't actually trek) from Austin, Texas.

Here is a peek of the fun times we had via instagram. Yea fun!

Ben helped me sew a Happy Birthday banner for his mom out of felt.
We used this to stage a fun little birthday party at Disneyland with party hats, pom-poms, and all that's good.

 We saw some men climbing the Matterhorn, they are the little blurry red dots way up at the top.

Instaweek: California Edition III

Yeah, this actually falls under the insta-a-couple-of-weeks-ago-gram. I was waiting for one of the sisters to post something about Disneyland, but no one did!!! So now we're going with CHRISTINE'S DISNEYLAND. Mwa-ha-ha-ha. (That's supposed to be a villainous laugh.)

Here are some wicked fake crags at the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
We rode a couple times, including once after dark. Monika is convinced
all the rides are faster after dark. Where's the logic in that?
 Any Disney insiders who can support or refute her claim? 

MONSTRO!!!! You can ride a little boat through his mouth. I think that's
part of the Storybook Land ride or something. Monika kept talking about it,
but she never delivered. Rudeness, sister, rudeness. 

Sadly, the Matterhorn was closed. But Monika has heard tell that the Disney
engineers or Disney-neers, as I've just decided to call them, were doing a
Brave makeover. 

Catherine smashed this quarter. Hold up. A quarter, you say? Yes, she is that
ritzy. And then we talked about how her hand looks like a butt in this picture.
True story. 

The ferris wheel in California Adventure. We didn't actually climb aboard
because the park was closing, but Monika, Ben, and I did take a wild ride
on that rollercoaster: California Screamin'. Hello? It goes upside down.

Lanterns suspended over the Teacups. The last ride of the evening was,
fittingly, Alice in Wonderland. Pretty black-light. Pretty magical. 

I feel like this caption should be: Y'all come back now! Too much?

In spite of the fact that I went into Disneyland without the necessary excitement (Catherine, especially, seemed bummed that I was not more psyched.), I had  a terrific time. I know, I know. Who would go to Disneyland and come away with a ton of complaints? OK, maybe me. But I didn't! So, you see, that counts as a Disney win...or maybe a sisters win.

Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand!!!!!

Yup, you guessed it! The sisters are heading to Disneyland. Now, Monika goes all the time, and I've gone twice in the last 2 years, but Christine hasn't been there since high school Girl Scouts (yeah, she was one of those.) The 3 sisters haven't all been together at Disneyland for like 22 years!  Check out some old school Disneyland with the Nicolai's!

Favorite picture...EVER. We re-created that picture once. It was awesome.

Those OshKosh's are amazing!

Look how happy Monika is that I get to meet Donald! Oh wait, she's actually being a bitch. Typical 7 year-old Monika.

MONSTRO!

Youngest sister Catherine does quite the oil paintings, as you probably already know if you follow the blog. Note the recent post Amateur oils. Luckily, I am her sister and get to benefit from these lovely oily gems.

This most recent Christmas she painted me a picture of one of my favorite scenes from Disneyland. Monstro, the monstrous sperm whale from Pinocchio! He opens his mouth up wide to swallow the charming little boats from the storybook ride. The trick is not to be scared because when you emerge from the darkness of his belly, you are in a magical world of miniatures, which I love!

"Pinocchioooooo..."

The Christmas prior to that she gave me this sweet little portrait of Miss Olive B!

"Oh Olive."

If you love pet paintings as much as we do you should definitely check out these other painting posts by Catherine!

You should probably paint your pets

Cats and corgis!

Whiskers on kittens!



Nought Christmas Happened!

Peanut was the only one left standing...or sitting.

Nought Christmas is over, and it was oh-so-merry. We are going to be blogging about tons of craft tutorials in the next couple of weeks. The gifts have been given, so they're all safe to talk about now. Until those tutorials happen, here are some memories from (Nought) Christmas to feast upon...

Bruno helped celebrate.

PRESENTS!!!!!

Kitten angel!!!!!

Monika gave mom this profile picture of her from Disneyland. Mom cried. Duh.

Sisterland!

Monika and Catherine in the Badlands circa 1993

Monika and I spent this last weekend making memories. Every time something unfortunate happened, Monika would say, "whatever, we're making memories!" It wasn't in a sweet way, it was sort of a shut up we're having fun kind of way. Our first set of memories were made when we decided we would walk 7 miles to the mall. Memories!

Here are some of my memories from this last weekend.
Scroll down to make my memories your memories!

Olive (or "Crispy" as Monika has started calling her) was a big part of this weekend.

These are Monika's leaf garlands. She made them with Christine.

There are so many damn leaves around her house. 

I'm jealous and it's definitely a part of a memory I made.

We made lots of memories at Disneyland.

Including this one that involved a Disneyland opossum.

The opossum kind of freaked us out. That picture isn't zoomed in. It was just hanging out next to the Nemo submarine ride. I guess if I were an opossum, I would live in Disneyland too. Do you ever think about how if you were a bird where you would live? I used to do this all the time. I would pick someplace cool like the White House, Buckingham Palace, or Woody Allen's penthouse balcony.

Thanks, sister, for all the memories!

Disney knows what's up.

Most girls grow up watching Disney and thinking about how cool it would be to live in a castle (at least I did, and I'm sure my sisters did too, and boys probably think about being princes and what not). Hey, I don't even care if I'm the princess, just get me in that castle. Now, I would never want to be a maid in "castle times" because that was the hardest job ever. I just want to castle-sit for a museum or a king/queen and be in a castle for a few days. Today was probably as close as I am ever going to get. Nicholas and I traveled to Hillerod to visit Frederiksborg Slot (castle). Apparently, Frederiksborg is known as the Versailles of Scandinavia. At least this is what Rick Steves told me before we lost his guide to Copenhagen (please note this was our second and final guide to Copenhagen that has been lost in as many days). 

There were only a handful of other visitors at the castle, so it was easy to pretend,
just for a second, that I was alone in a castle hundreds of years old. 

It was neat and lovely.

Here's what it looked like.

sigh.

From Monika

My birthday card from Monika arrived!

She included a swell business card from terri planty. 

In case you're curious about the birthday card, it's by:

The silhouette reminded Monika to tell me that there's a shop on Main Street in Disneyland where you can get a silhouette made of yourself. Little does she know, I already have a Disneyland silhouette.
It's from a thrift store and is super cute. Go, vintage Disneyland!

Jenny, Mickey Mouse & staunch copyright infringement.

Jenny, about to model her new Mickey head band.

I made it with love for her birthday.

Macaroons made with love for the Matterhorn.

Jenny loved eating Mickey's head. Who wouldn't?

Another awesome pose waiting for Peter Pan.

Not a macaroon, the actual matterhorn.

Jenny & Brandon, not a complete bob sled team.

Me & Ben... now we can slalom.