Costume Contest

Here is IOM Manhattan's submission for the IOM SD's costume contest:

Velma and Scooby Doo's lesser know cousin, Sadie Doo looking for ghosts

Even the apartment is decked out with the Nightmare Before Christmas village, ghosts on the walls and windows, and the glow in the dark 'batty' banner!

The Best of Monday

There are so many things that make Monday not the best day of the week. Here is my best of list for today:

Best etiquette tip (courtesy of Blueprint Magazine, Nov/Dec 2007 issue):

When sitting at the table do you have trouble remembering which is your water glass and which is your bread plate? This little trick solves that problem. Make and 'OK' signal with each hand. The right hand makes a lower case 'd', this is your side for your drink. The left hand makes a lower case 'b', this is the side for your bread plate.

The illustration below should help -

And best quote (as seen on a chalkboard at Fetch)

Why do kids throw eggs at houses? Don't they know you can make pancakes with them?

Hello Touchdown Jesus

This past weekend Michael and I took a quick trip to South Bend, Indiana to see the USC vs. Notre Dame football game.

We took an 18 hour Amtrak ride to get to South Bend. Between drinks from the Club Car and meals in the dining room, the hours on the train flew by quickly. We met some interesting people, in fact I now have a contact to get wholesale cashmere sweaters in NYC!

We arrived in South Bend about 4 hours before kick-off.







The weather was amazing, it was a warm sunny day with no clouds in the sky. It was so warm I wore my USC flip-flops.



Michael's friend Bill picked us up from the train station, secured us tickets and started us sightseeing the campus.



First stop, the Visitor's Center - it had an awesome display of ND themed carved pumpkins (and a women's restroom with no line!)







From the Visitor's Center we headed to the Main Building, it is topped by a glimmering golden dome. The Dome is covered in 1,250 thin strips of 23 karat gold. The statue at the top of the Dome represents Mary, Mother of God. The Dome has been gilded 5 times in the past 120 years. It was last regilded in 2005 at a cost of $300,000 (which seems pretty reasonable to me - it's a lot of gold up there).



After the Main Building we visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. The football team attends Mass here before every home game.

The inside of the Basilica has amazing murals and stained glass. During the last restoration of the Basilica, every pane of stained glass was removed, hand-cleaned and re-leaded in Wisconsin and then replaced in the church.

From here we walked the grounds and found this great photo spot at the edge of St. Mary's Lake.

Supposedly the geese are trained to attack any one wearing cardinal - I am happy to report we had no unfortunate geese incidents this trip.

The Notre Dame campus is a very large 1,250 acres with two lakes and more than 130 buildings. The parts of campus we toured were absolutely beautiful and the people were so friendly.

On our way to the stadium, we walked right by 'Touchdown Jesus'. The official name of the mural is the 'Word of Life Mosaic'. It is comprised of more than 7,000 individual pieces of stone gathered from 16 countries and several states. As an indication of the mural's proportions, the head of Jesus is 9 feet high.

We could easily see 'Touchdown Jesus' from our seats.

And lucky for Michael, we also had a great view of the USC Song Girl's reunion from our seats- all of these cute girls were sitting right in front of us during the game.

The full USC band travels to the ND game, it was great to see them take the field before the game and during half-time. (They are spelling out 'USC' in the photo below.)

The Notre Dame band put on quite a half-time show. They performed a mustical tribute to the movie 'Top Gun'. At the end of the show they band formation looked like a fighter jet and they marched in unison down the field to make it look like the jet was flying - they even had people blowing smoke out the back.

And for the grand finale, they quickly changed formation and most of the band was in the shape of an aircraft carrier and a small unit formed a smaller fighter jet. The jet moved and 'landed' on the aircraft carrier! Well done ND band, well done. (In the picture below the fighter jet is on the right side and you can make out the windsock on the aircraft carrier in the just about the center of the photo.)

And the best part of the day - the final game score: USC 38, Notre Dame 0!

*All campus facts pulled from the University of Notre Dame Visitor's Guide.
**Photo credits shared by KO and MW (and if you're wondering, he took all of the good shots).

Snuggle cat

Fall is here and the temperature is cooling down. That means the cats tend to snuggle more. The other night Beckham decided he wanted to snuggle up with Roxy. She tolerated him for a while, but then left him for the comfort of her ottoman.

Jenny's Christmas Present - shhh, don't tell!

I finished Jenny's Christmas present the other night. I took a pair of jeans, white button down top, and pink sweatshirt and princess-ized them! They are now covered with flowers, sparkles and Disney princesses. I think they still need some glitter - just to make the princess parts pop.

Shirt front:



Shirt back:

Sweatshirt: (I only added the two patches, I wanted it to stay a little plain to offset the other pieces in the ensemble)

Shirt and jeans back: (I left the back of the jeans plais as well - enough happening with the shirt)

Shirt and jeans front:

What I Did Last Weekend

Michael was in Sacramento for a wedding, so I was left to my own devices in the big city.



Of course I had grand plans for getting all kinds of projects done, and cleaning, and running errands, and doing some fun stuff too.



I made my list and checked it twice - I had each day planned for maximum efficiency.



Well my list pretty much went out the window but I did finish some projects, a few errands, and a little bit of cleaning.



Saturday morning I got sucked in to the Project Runway Season 2 marathon on Bravo. Darn those Bravo programming directors, they get me every time!



I did make it out of the apartment on Saturday, the highlight of my day was going to 'Bodies the Exhibition'. This exhibit is showing around the country, if you get a chance to see it you should go - it is worth the price of admission. What an amazing way to see what is under our skin. My favorite displays were the systems of blood vessels - intricate networks of arteries and veins suspended in liquid filled display cases. Did you know every single drop of blood in our body is pumped through the heart about once each minute?

And the best part of the weekend was the great seat I secured for the musical 'Curtains'.

I was able to get front row mezzanine center, and because it was last minute and David Hyde Pierce was on vacation the price was about 1/2 of the normal ticket price. The show was fun, good costumes and musical numbers and an interesting storyline. Basically it is a murder mystery musical (and I do love a good murder mystery). The star of the show is murdered on opening night and the rest of the play is spent trying to solve the case. As they say, the show must go on, so the cast is forced to rehearse with a new star as the mystery is being solved. Because some of the big musical numbers are from the show that is being rehearsed they seem out of place. But is does allow for some good old Broadway show tunes to wow the audience. My favorite part, the conductor actually has a singing part and he nailed it! Oh and even though David Hyde Pierce was on vacation, one of the leading actresses played George's mom on Grey's Anatomy!

Two More Craft Projects Done!

I finally finished this Thanksgiving table runner.



I made one a couple of years ago and had enough fabric to make one more. I had cut and pinned it together, but never did the sewing. I finished with time to spare before Thanksgiving this year. It actually turned out nicer than the first one I made - a little practice never hurts!

It's backed in this fall color calico - for when you don't feel like a turkey.

And I finished some embroidered bibs. They are part of Levi's Chrismukkah present. I added some Hawaiian fabric to the back to cover up all of the not so pretty stitch marks.

Recognize this from the movies?

Yes, the space ships from Men In Black. Another piece of history left over from the 1964 World's Fair.

Tiffany Collection at the Queens Museum

Well once again I am a little behind in my posts.

We are back to the first weekend of October in the Queens Museum. Not only is it home to the City of New York Panorama - but it had an amazing display of Tiffany glass.

While Michael was looking down at the Panorama I was marveling at the beautiful lamps and windows created by Tiffany.

They also showed many of the different types of glass Tiffany created and explained how he achieved the different effects.

This window contained several of the different techniques Tiffany created or perfected.


And some of the lamps - the shades are incredible and the bases are works of art as well.