It's about Time!

I am probably the slowest blogger ever! I just realized it is almost October and I have forgotten to post the rest of Celeste's birthday party pictures. In typical Kristine fashion, I forgot to take pictures most of the party, and only have one very blurry picture of the cake! Oh well, it was very fun, and it was Celeste's first slumber party, so she had a blast.

Our guess how many game, and we also played  a guess the snack food (Celeste's idea) where we blind folded the girls and fed them goldfish crackers, oreos and twinkies. No, these are not our typical snacks, but I wanted to make sure they were foods little kids could easily recognize by taste!

Party bags filled with goodies like candy dots, lemon heads, lemon suckers, pink rock candy and pencils and erasers. (pink and yellow of course!)

For food we had a "make your own sub sandwich" bar, but I forgot to take a picture! I also made zucchini muffins, lemon iced sugar cookies, raspberry lemon tartlets and my grandmas awesome lemon berry jello mold (not pictured).

The only shot of the cake. It was pink batter inside...

Present time!

This is the fabulous fluffy bed we made for the girls...

but this is how we found them! Apparently they thought they saw a spider.

Purple Sweater Dress

While I wait to hear back from my instructor on my second critique, I thought I'd take a moment to share an outfit post from first critique. For awhile now I have been trying to dress up the jeans, and when I can avoid them all together. But I most definitely make it a point on critique days. I believe how you represent yourself carries over into how you represent your artwork. Even if this is just college, it is a good practice for the real deal.
So I have this lovely sweater dress I picked up while thrifting with my BFF in Seattle this summer. Honestly, I just liked it. I had no idea about the whole "Missoni" thing until the Target hoopla. It just happens to be ultra convenient that this is hip right now. More than one girl at work was like *gasp* is that a Missoni? And I can grin and say, "nope, six bucks and thrifted". I have been waiting for it to be cooler so I could wear it, and luckily last week it was. This week we're in the 90's. Lovely Fall!

Happy Labor Day!

Since I've been a lazy poster all summer long, or at least it seems to me, I think it's abut time I play a little catch up on some of the things I've done. So today I wanted to share some photos I took on a hike I did earlier this summer.
We initially set out on the trail with our destination being Dardanelles Lake, but when we reached the trails fork, there was another group of hikers, and we got a bit lost in conversation. You see, my dog Penny, and their dog, were both German Shephard and Chow Chow mixes. They could have been sisters (maybe they were?), and they just had to have a picture of the two together. Ever try to get two dogs who've never met each other to stand close and hold still for a picture? Yeah...
After all that hoopla we went to head toward Dardanelles, but first asked the other group which way they recommended. They said they had been both ways (far more motivated than us, that would equal about 9 miles I think), but the direction we were about to head, through the meadows, had a lot of bugs. So we went the other way, which we thought, they made it sound like both paths ultimately had the same destination. They did not. The trail we took brought us to Scott's Lake.
So this is our Scott's Lake Hike:

It was the beginning of July in Tahoe, and there was still a number of snow patches along the trail, although we were perfectly content in our tanks and shorts. Penny did really well, a lot better than she does on walks. She actually kept a good steady pace and stayed on the trail. She was good when we passed other dogs too. She is not that good when we pass other dogs on neighborhood walks! This was her first hike, and we didn't have our new dog, Lycan, yet.
When we reached the lake we rested and let Penny off her leash. She splashed around in the water a bit and ran around smelling stuff. I thought I heard a waterfall, so we walked towards it and found it. It was a very pretty fall, cascading over rocks along the side of the mountain and down into Scott's Lake. We were able to walk up pretty far next to it, and even across it in some spots. This scared me half to death since I almost fell in the Mill Creek Falls in Montana a couple years ago.
But I didn't fall in, and we made it back safe and sound. It was approximately a 7 mile trip, round trip. That's about all I can handle so far. I am so tuckered out, I couldn't imagine hiking another 100 feet!
Happy Labor Day!
-XO

We have a Winner....

Announcing the winner of our first ever giveaway.....

Yay! It's McKim!

McKim, please send me an email accepting your prize. Everyone else, thank you so much for playing along. I really appreciate everyone's participation. This was my first giveaway, and I was so incredibly nervous about it. Thank you to everyone again!
And don't forget,  if you'd like to purchase My Memories Suite v2, use this coupon code. Simply enter

STMMMS7861

at check out to receive $10 off the My Memories Suite V2 software and $10 off additional products. Please feel free to share the code with friends and family!

Have a fabulous rest of your Labor day weekend!
-XO