Practically Super Models!

Yesterday, MOTU (Nick) and I had our engagement shoot with our photographer (well, the first of two shoots anyway...Helen wasnt ready for her closeup, so we did half this weekend and will do half in August).  They turned out incredibly well!  We took Kini with us for this shoot, and she was the best puppy ever.  There are some great shots with her smiling face in them!  All images copyright Margaret Michaels Photography. Enjoy: 

 Man, even just looking through them again, Im just floored by how well they turned out!  I cant believe thats us!  Margaret is just phenomenal (and she does baby/belly/family/senior pics too!) and super easy to work with.  By far, shes my favorite vendor.  

The location is where we.ll be having our reception, at Snow Farm Vineyard, in South Hero on Lake Champlain.  I highly recommend stopping by for a tour or a tasting if youre ever in the area.  Harrison (the owner) is a hoot and kept telling us to ..quit necking!..  (Sorry, my apostrophe key is DOA right now.) 

We hammered out some of the timing details for the big day, and that actually  took a LOT of weight off my shoulders.  As Im typing this, Im taking a break from (you ready for this?) organizing MY NEW SEWING ROOM!!!!  It has been a fabulous weekend.  I might even have a design wall again soon!! 

Anyway, enjoy the pics and enjoy the weather...its been great up here! 

http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=231545&id=102318335878&ref=mf

Check it out, I'm famous!

Ok, sort of.  :-P  Cindy, of Cindy's Fabrics was nice enough to post a picture of my I Spy quilt on her website!

Also, here are the links to my photo albums from New Zealand, roughly divided up by the city I slept in that night. Videos don't really work, but I'm working on that. Go here for pix:

http://carbio.org/kat/

And if you want proof that I had absolutely no adult supervision while I
was there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WQ4U7tUf4g

Enjoy!

almost there!

I'm in Chicago right now, waiting for the last flight of the day. the FIFTH flight of the day. 37 hours, 7 time zones, 2 hemispheres and 2 continents later, I'll be home on the same day I left. time travel blows my mind. :)

thanks to everyone who's been blogging away while I was gone...I have a blog reader on my phone that downloads posts and pix so I can read them without internet...which made my flight from san fran to here much more pleasant. :)

while reading through posts and challenges, I've found a lot of inspiration...obviously. :) however, I'm happy to say that I've also started finding the limits of what inspires me and started finding things that just make me go "meh. maybe in a few years but not high priority." wool anything, for example. blech, that just makes me itch...and I know there's merino out there (I know this now!) but that's expensive. and possum wool just makes me think of roadkill, sorry. :)

there's a star pattern...starts with an H, has 8 points, can't remember the name of it but I flagged someone's post about it...that REALLY got me going. I think that might be the pattern I used for Mai's quilt. we'll see.

they're calling my flight...more later!

Quick Update While I'm Waiting for a Towel...

I'm still in NZ, but didn't bring a towel with me...there's no point in buying one since I'll only need one (maybe two) more showers until I go home, so I need to borrow one...but the front desk doesn't open til 9.  It's still 830.  Quel fromage.  For now, here's what's been going on:

Queenstown was fun.  I went bungee jumping for the first time ever, off of NZ's highest jump (440 ft!).  It was incredible.  Feel free to watch me do stupid things here.  :-)  Dad's response was "You need a Mommy down there very VERY badly!!" 
After that, I went on a tour of the LOTR sites in the area...there are a lot around there, so it was a long tour.  We even got to dress up and play with swords (pix to follow, they charge by the MB for internet here). 

I found a store with local fabrics, which was cool.  I managed to stub my toe on the way up to the store, and took off a dime-sized chunk of skin from the bottom of it...not a good thing when you're about to embark on 8 days of cycling...the store owner laughed and gave me tissues and bandaids and antiseptic.  It healed nicely and didn't really hurt at all, just bled a lot.  I digress.  The fabrics I got are pretty...in total (including the 3 I got in Dunedin), I have 8 fat quarters of NZ fabric.  I'm happy with that.  I also found some awesome Paddington fabric yesterday, but I'll get to that.

I met up with my coworker, Amanda, and headed off onto this 8-day trek.  I think I ran the numbers right, and I ended up doing about 190 miles across 5 days of actual cycling.  One of the days I did a metric century (102 km actually), which meant I made it the whole way...I was quite happy with myself, even if my bum was not. 

We went from mountains to fjords to lakes to farms to forest to ocean to farms to more farms (there are a LOT of farms here) and finally to ocean again.  We got stopped for a while because some farmers were trying to bring some lambs down to a new paddock, and they took up the whole road to do it.  I have video, I'll post it later. 

We stayed on a farm one night (a working sheep and cattle (NOT dairy) farm), which was fun...the food was incredible.  All the veggies were fresh from their garden...yummmm.  I could live with veggies that fresh always. 

Night before last, we stayed at Larnach Castle.  Basically, a guy with an ego and a lot of money built the only castle in NZ.  The food was meh, but the views were spectacular. 

Yesterday, I doinked around Dunedin and went to the Cadbury factory in town for a tour.  Best tour ever...they give free samples all along the way. I couldn't eat all of it, that's how much they give you!  The Speight's brewery is just up the street from my hostel as well, so I went and quality-checked some of their beers last night.  The summer ale seemed a little suspect though, so I might have to go inspect that one again tonight.  We'll see.  :-) 

In any case, it's 9 am and I need a shower like you wouldn't believe.  So I'm gonna go find myself a towel and update this more when I'm back stateside.  Cheers!