Wordless Wednesday

Mr. Perfect on Christmas morning

I had to post this picture just because he is so cute. I love you, Mr. Perfect!

Wordless Wednesday (Merry Christmas!)

The Little Drummer Boy -- Pentatonix style

If you don't know this group, you should.

Wordless Wednesday (yes, I know it's Thursday)

Because it's Christmastime

(And yes, Percy and Harry have made a come-back. More of their adventures to come!)

Because everyone should take a grand piano out onto an ice rink

Wordless Wednesday

The Manger of Bethlehem

I wish I knew the name of the boy who is singing. What a pure voice. The composer is Rob Garnder, and he is the head of an organization called Spire Music. Thank you for this amazing song and video.

12-12-12

My favorite version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Thanks, Straight No Chaser.

The lights on my tree, I wish you could see

Every year, I like to take artistic pictures of the lights on our Christmas tree. This year, we decided it was time to bite the bullet and go with eco-friendly LED lights. It's made for some interesting differences in my yearly tradition.

O Come, Emmanuel

Wordless Wednesday

Signs of Christmas

We put the tree up this weekend, but didn't get any lights or decorations on it. However, there are other signs that Christmas is fast approaching. In today's world of technology and internet shopping, nothing says "Christmas Gifts" more than boxes left on your doorstep with that heart-warming, familiar Amazon.com smile.

See?

What you can do with 12 cellos (Merry Christmas)

Is Mr. Perfect a hipster?

Mr. Perfect got some new glasses for Christmas. We had a lot of fun picking them out, and he really, really likes them. Then, one of the guys at work said, "So, they look real good if what you're going for is a hipster look."

We had no idea what he was talking about. So we went to work to find out exactly what it means to be a hipster. The Urban Dictionary has a couple of really good definitions. Our favorite is this one:

"Referring to young people of around 18-30 years of age, who drink cheap beer (most often Pabst Blue Ribbon, on occasion Budwiser), smoke Parliaments, Lucky Strikes or hard to obtain foreign cigarettes (such as Gauloises) and take recreational drugs, coke being the most popular. Use a great deal of sarcasm, claim to be ironic. Are usually less than 5% body fat, drink copious amounts of coffee and eat children's cereal. Listen to Indie Rock, rely heavily on Pitchfork Media to tell them what's cool. Don't dance at concerts. Wear a mixture of thrifted clothing and items bought at American Apparel (commonly Tri-blend v-necks) and Urban Outfitters. Extremely tight jeans worn by both sexes, pairing these with either a band or b-movie t shirt and a plaid shirt/v-neck and a cardigan along with Nike hi-tops/Vans/Keds. Females often wear retro style dresses and racerback tank tops without bras. Eschew public transport and instead choose to ride fixed-break bikes. Often claim to know about literature and film - will have googled a good deal of Vonnegut and French New Wave cinema."

Mr. Perfect wants it to be known that, although he may wear the eyewear of a hipster, he will never be a true hipster because he refuses to wear skinny jeans.

He was really just trying to go for the Buddy Holly look.

My favorite:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I know it's been a while since I blogged. Life gets like that. We had a wonderful Christmas, with a fun Christmas Eve Brunch with all the kiddos. The girls brought their boyfriends, and a fun time was had by all. Presents were opened, food was eaten, games were played, and quality time together happened. What more can you ask for from a holiday? Not much. Game Boy also came over after church on Sunday to see what we gave each other and basically hang out. Hanging out is fun.

New Year's will probably be on the quiet side. Game Boy will be with us for movies, games, food, whatever. If we seem boring to others, at least we're having fun.

I hope you all have a save and happy New Year!

Another new birthday tradition for Mr. Perfect

So, a couple of weeks ago, on Mr. Perfect's birthday, we went to The Forgotten Carols. This year, he also asked if we could catch Voice Male's Christmas concert. Well, I love their music almost as much as Mr. Perfect does, so of course I said "YES!" and we bought the tickets right then.

Oh, yeah. This will definitely be a new Christmas tradition for us, whether or not it's part of Mr. Perfect's birthday or just something we do this time each year.

I love spoiling my man. He so deserves it.

Papa Carrot

So, I've been making mini carrot bread loaves to give out for Christmas. I found this amazingly wonderful loaf pan at Orson Gygi (highly, highly recommended store, and no, they are not paying me to say this). It makes 9 mini loaves at one time. And they all bake at the same speed! Just look!

Well, as you may have read, we had a bumper crop of carrots this year in our garden. We weren't able to harvest all of them before the cold weather, but Mr. Perfect knew what to do. You cover the plants with leaves or tomato vines and you can pick them throughout the winter. In fact, the ground wasn't even frozen under the mulch. Hurrah for our side!

And so it was that I discovered the father of all carrots. It was HUGE! Not just huge; massively huge. Well, at least for us. In the following photo, the red pen next to it is just a standard sized pen.

Isn't he a beauty? And don't worry, I picked enough that he was not sacrificed to the deliciousness of carrot bread. He will probably end up as sticks or slices for a salad.

A Grand Experiment

Okay, I got an early Christmas present. It came very early so I could use it at the Christmas Recital, which turned out to be a really good thing. The place were we hold the recitals usually records them so I can give the parents a CD of their child playing. Well, this year, when I got to the hall, they told me that their recording equipment wasn't working and they wouldn't be able to do the recording. Voi la! We pulled out the Christmas present, and were partially saved.

You see, the new present is a lovely, high-def, fully-1080p camcorder. Yes yes yes yes yes yes!

So this experiment is to see if I can put the movies on here and have them work. I won't post the one of the recital. It's just too big. I don't even know if it will fit on a DVD so I can give it to the parents yet. But here's one of Mr. Perfect discussing our cabling problems. You see, the camcorder takes various cables, one of which is HDMI so you can hook it up to things like high-def T.V.s or an HDMI-capable laptop. It took us three cables before we got it right and could watch the videos on the T.V. Hurrah for our side!

Anywho, here's the vid from YouTube:

Now here it is imported straight into the post:

Hmmm...the color is not as good, but I can control the display size. I think I like that trade off.

Now I just have to figure out how to make DVDs for each of the piano families...