FFF5

John F. Kennedy Library & Museum

Playing bass at church!

Anniversary dinner at Russell House Tavern.  Harpoon cider is DELICIOUS.  And Harpoon is local!

I had scallops.  Three of them to be exact.

Tim had steak frites.  Much more substantial.  Than three scallops.

                                  

2nd Anniversary Cruise! Part 2

Continuing our adventures from our 2nd Anniversary Cruise...

Our one and only port, St. John, New Brunswick!

They like them moose

Fakey lighthouse

City Market!

It was a neat indoor market place.   But we only walked through it.

King's Square

Someone put soap in the beaver fountain.  Bwahah.

There wasn't much to take pictures of so I took this picture of the firemen driving by.  The one in the back window probably thinks I'm really weird.  But it's okay.  I will NEVER see them again.  :oP

Trinity Church 

St. Andrew and St. David Church. I guess they couldn't pick just one :oP

ARRET!

Our ship!

Bye bye St. John!

                          

2nd Anniversary Cruise! Part 1

At least it's not our third anniversary before I got around to posting this right?  :)

So for our anniversary this year, we went on a cruise!  It was a short cruise on Carnival Cruises up to Canada!  We picked this one since it departed and returned to Boston so we didn't need to take any flights!

It was a great break from work and everyday life, though it was, of course, too short.  :)  It was also too bad there was only one port/stop and it wasn't the most interesting little town.  :oP

Our little windowless cabin

We did this a lot.  Read.  :)

Ice carving!

There were towel animals!  We named him Philbert.

Cocktails were to be had

Lobster tail!

The theater with nightly shows

Our favorite little reading spot

This was Tweedums

24-Hour Pizza bar!  (Sorry blurry pic)

Next up, we get to St. John, New Brunswich, Canada!

                   

FFF4

I have this for breakfast sometimes.  This is breakfast of champions!!  (For those who don't know what it is, it's a kind of fried dough wrapped in steamed rice noodle!  Delish!)

How's that for a view of Boston Commons?

Sunburst!

Ducky gettin' his Coke on

We were sitting on a bench.  Somewhere.

FFF3

What a deep teabag...  :oP

Ice crea at Christina's!

Doodling on the meal place card at the Asian American Comission Unity dinner.  Here are some photos... that I just found.  I have no idea who this person is... but they were obviously there.  :oP

Just down the street... a rose so dusty pink

                       

FFF2

I kinda forgot about my five foto fun segments.  Oops.  :oP  But here goes the next installment!

He's an eraser.  I got him in LA.

Fluffers.

Tyrone Wells concert, w/ Joe Brooks

The Massachusetts State House

Our last time babysitting Miss Jade!  She has moved out West since then.  :(

                                  

Ribbon Lei!

My brother graduated from college two weeks ago!  I, sadly, missed it because we went on our anniversary cruise!  (Another post about that later!)

Since I knew I'd be missing his graduation, I wanted to send something that would let my brother know I loved him, but not enough to miss our cruise.  (Bwahah.)  :oP  At my college graduation, he forked out $40 (or was it $20...) for this pretty lei!

My college graduation

I knew real leis would be expensive, plus possibly hard to buy beforehand (cause of course if you buy it day of, they can super rip you off).  Also, he's a boy so maybe he wouldn't appreciate it as much.  :oP  (He'd probably appreciate a lei made out of dollar bills = $40.) 

When I was pondering this issue, Penga was posting about DIY ribbon leis, which was a PERFECT idea!  She has a couple versions but the two-colored puffy ribbon lei was my favorite.  She first posted about it here, then here.

So I set off to Michael's to buy yards of ribbons!  Though Penga suggested 50-60 yards of ribbon, it took me 100 yards and like... 10 hours.  :oP  Perhaps I am not so talented with the DIY-ing and such.  It definitely got faster as I got the hang of it.

Blue and yellow for UC!

See Penga's post for the tutorial!  Thoughts and tips I would add are:

1) Use embroidery floss/thread!  I started with regular thread and I was pretty much scared it would break the whole time.  I imagined it breaking on the day of my brother's graduation, especially  under the strain of other leis and neck ornaments.  I ended up transferring two whole spools I did on the regular thread to the embroidery floss.

2) It helped to anchor the starting bead to something to work with in the beginning.  Catch it on something... tape it down... whatever.  It helped a lot.  (I was so confused in the beginning when the bead was moving around and flopping all abouts!)

3) Penga seems to alternate each color like every two loops.  I did 8 per color and I don't think I can tell the difference.  Working with one color for 8 loops/passes kept my sanity a little better then every other.  Do whatever works for you, but in the pictures above --- 8 loops/passes per color still looks pretty intermingled (in terms of color).

I am super proud of it!  :D  And wanted to keep it.  haha.

Here's a "make-up" grad picture since my grandparents couldn't make it to his graduation at Santa Cruz.  And I thought my grandpa looked hilarious with the cap.  :D  My mom made the yellow/gold ribbon lei my grandpa is sporting (courtesy of another Penga tutorial) and you can see my handiwork on my grandma!  :)

Congrats Alvin!!  :D