october birthdays.

I made a couple of cards this weekend.

One for my friend Sam:


And one for my sister-in-law:


I was building on a technique that I had tried on this wedding card from late last month, that I created after being inspired by this other wedding card.

And I think they turned out pretty well!

I was also kind of excited about the process by which I made the cards:


I tried to explain what I did on the above photo's description, but I think if people are particularly interested, I could do a better step-by-step post with more pictures.

I have at least 2 more birthdays this month to make cards for. Maybe I will try to extend this technique further, or maybe I will try something completely different! We'll just have to see.

outdoor sophie.

For the second time ever, we let Sophie explore the front yard.



She did this for a while.



And this.



And then climbed on top of my shed to get on top of the fence, and then tried to jump into the neighbor's yard. I... made her go back inside at that point. After also climbing on top of the shed to retrieve her from the top of the fence.

photo sets.

This summer has been a lot of camping trips and spending time outside. So much time, that I've neglected to update here!

A recap:
Camping with the Crawfords


Miles' Birthday Trip to Squamish


We also went climbing outside in Leavenworth with our friends Kevin and Laura (where I took my camera and took exactly ZERO photos, but maybe they will post some photos soon).

There has also been a bunch of biking, cooking, baking and card making, but my ability to take photos has been lacking. Maybe the upcoming change of season will push me back into photo-taking.

backpacking lake caroline.

On Monday, I went on my first ever (I've been saying "first ever" a lot lately :) backpacking trip, out in the Leavenworth Eightmile area, up to Lake Caroline.

There were animals (mostly chipmunks and marmots):


And snowy lakes:


And a really awesome view from our tent:


I think my favorite part of the trip was our campsite; the lake was gorgeous, the view from the tent was amazing, and we were the only ones there. The ramen we had for brunch on Tuesday was also incredible (who knew that warm food, even ramen, could taste so good?). My least favorite part was the mosquitoes. I hates them. But I think I only got five bites.

You can see the rest of the photos in the set, including one after I fell in a creek.

And, for comparison, here's what the lake looked like just about a week before we got there, vs when we went, although we came back a day early because the hike up to Windy Pass was still pretty snowy and it was kind of unpleasant to hike upward in the driving snow. Still though, it was a nice, albeit short, backpacking trip. (And I'm still sore, regardless.)

alleycat bike race.

On June 23rd, I participated in my first ever bike race, the Girls of Summer second annual all-girl alleycat hosted by Menstrual Monday.

An alleycat style race is one where there are checkpoints on a manifest and the riders get to choose their own routes to those places, in whatever order they choose. Usually you have to do something silly at the checkpoints before heading off to the next one. Since this was an all-girl alleycat, the proof that you went to each checkpoint was a painted fingernail, different colors for each checkpoint, resulting in a really punk-looking manicure.



I am not the fastest cyclist, but one of the things that is nice about an alleycat is that good route-planning gives you a reasonable advantage. I was lucky that most of the checkpoints were locations that I had a pretty good idea how to get to and what order to do them in, and ended up placing 15th out of 50. I won a helmet!

Here's a map of my route and a list of the 6 checkpoints. It was a little over 20 miles of cycling, with 3 major hill climbs, and took me just over 2.5 hours. I should also mention that I almost didn't ride because it was POURING out the 2 hours before the race, and I got soaked on the way to the start. But it got nicer as the day went on, to almost no clouds in the sky by the end.

Miles has a set of photos from the ride, there's a flickr pool with a bunch of photos from the various checkpoints, and the official write-up is here. Even though it was like three weeks ago, I'm still super excited that I rode in it; serious thanks to the organizers, that was awesome.

father's day tart and card.

Tart:


And card:


There are short stories on each of the photos, if you are so inclined.

bike camping on whidbey island.

I survived.



And so did my bike. See the set here.

Also on the set are links to our approximate route. Fifty miles each day, whew.

Highlights of the ride: taking a route past my brother's house and finding the whole family there (including my parents!) to show off my mad bike touring style to, bombing down the huge hill into Mukilteo, taking my bike on a ferry, not hitting a rabbit that made a suicide dash in front of my bike as I was going down a hill at about 25mph, little brown goats, "hi horse!", watching the sunset from the beach at South Whidbey State Park, the hot air hand dryer in the camp site restroom (hands so cold!), finding that the campground host sold firewood, this little beach, making it up that giant hill in Mukilteo (seriously.), celebratory pineapple fried rice for dinner.