Ever since I’ve started my student teaching, I just haven’t practiced like I need to. I’ve been way too tired to make myself go to the practice rooms and practice, and it makes me feel awful. I feel as if a part of me has been disconnected.

Of course, there’s a (fairly) simple solution: go practice. Since I only have two days of student teaching left to go, I guess it will be somewhat easier for me to do. The only thing is, I only have a super busy period of time coming up. At least that does entail singing. I just have this burning need to perform. I don’t mean taking center stage with a huge cast and performing a musical or anything. No–I need to do what I love: perform art songs. I think it must seem trivial to those who don’t know me very well or who don’t understand the art form, but I do believe that singing Lieder and mélodie is just simply a part of my essence. The surreal connection between singer and pianist as the two find the twirling emotion of the music cannot be matched. I miss it terribly, and regardless of what I’m doing career-wise, I vow to always find a way to make this type of performing a part of my life. Otherwise, I will always have a part of me missing.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that music has stolen a piece of my life. I can’t say I terribly mind, but I realize that I’ll never be able to be the person I was before I began to discover the joys of a quietly resolving dissonance.

Note: I decided to publish this post, because I do believe that understanding my passion for Classical music is a key to understanding my sense of aesthetics. Music moves me, just as other beautiful wonders of this world captivate me.

I’m suddenly realizing that with a growing collection of straight pins and needles, I’m in need of a pincushion. Through an Etsy browse, I ran across this one:

[image from item’s listing]

This Spring Birdie Pincushion comes from seller createitcottage. The pincushion looks very appropriate for Spring and well-crafted. I would love to get a hold of some felt in that color of green!

Well, I’m back after a much-needed and necessary hiatus. Over the weekend, Sarah and I had fun with Aranzi Aronzo’s The Cute Book. After stocking up on felt and embroidery floss, we crafted away. The first one I made (which has also been the only one I’ve made so far…) is Terry the Terrier.

Maybe I’ll get around to making some more soon. I just need to perfect my Triple French Knots. Argh!

This week is an extremely busy one for me, and I’ve decided it would be best for my sanity to take a blogging break until next week. I should be back with a new post on Monday. As much as I’d love to post my little daily findings for the world to see, I simply don’t have time this week. I’ll look forward to bring you more chortles soon, though!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great week!

In a recent craft attempt, I decided to try crocheting embroidery floss around memory wire to make a bracelet. The result didn’t turn out too badly, even though it looks something equivalent to a hair scrunchie. Not necessarily the look I was going for, but I now have some guidance for what to do next time. I’m also wanting to try crocheting wire to make beaded jewelery. I’m just a little scared, though, because crocheting with wire looks a little tricky.

Let’s hope my next jewelry making attempts look a little less juvenile. (Not that that’s always a bad thing.)

Yesterday, I went to the eye doctor, and I decided to try contact lenses again. I had tried them a couple years ago, but one of my eyes didn’t take too well to the type of lens. Apparently, they don’t make that kind anymore, and the new astigmatism contacts work a lot better for most people. So I’m trying them out. So far, they’re working pretty well.

I realized there would be a dilemma when I return to school on Sunday: my roommate has the same contact lens case. They had given me the standard white and aqua/seafoam/teal capped lens case. It’s the same kind that he has, and I’d hate for us to get our contacts mixed up in the bathroom. I went to Wal*Mart to see if they had any different cases, but they were all expensive and/or ugly. So, I decided to change up the one they gave me. This is the result:

I much prefer the green to the original seafoam aqua. And now, I won’t get my contacts mixed up with my roommates’. In case you’d like to pull this stunt off as well, all I did was mix equal parts decoupage medium and acrylic paint. That way, it gave it a nice plasticy finish, and it bonded pretty well with the plastic. I just put on one thick coat. I realize it won’t last forever, but it’s okay. You’re supposed to switch out cases every 3 months, anyway!

During a recent etsy browse, I came across the following Meadow wall graphic. I thought it had a beautiful shape, and the silhouette could add a nice touch of nature to any room. I like that the graphic (made of Vinyl) can be easily removed, making it nice for rented spaces. If you take a look at ellynelly’s other items, you’ll find a lot of other nice designs as well. They all seem to be reasonably priced, too.

[image from item’s listing]

I think I’m just a huge sucker for plant silhouettes.

Yesterday was my birthday, and Sarah and I had decided to make my birthday dinner for my family while we were at my house. After searching the internet for a recipe I wanted to try, I stumbled upon a super-looking chicken curry recipe at Rachael Ray’s magazine website. To go along with it, I cooked some basmati rice and chapati bread. For my birthday cake, we tried a recipe from Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown for Individual Molten Chocolate Coconut Cakes that had intrigued me. Sarah even made me some quick almond syrup to mix into Sprite to make Almond Sodas. (I have this weird obsession with imitation almond flavor.) Here are the pictures [and recipe links] to document the results of our two-hour long kitchen adventure:

The curry turned out spectacular–the taste was very similar to Chicken Korma, my favorite dish to order at Indian restaurants. I for sure will be making Chandran’s Chicken Curry once again! The Indian Chapati Bread recipe is one I discovered this past summer; it’s a quick fix and works well as a side-bread.

We already had some simple syrup in the fridge, so Sarah just added a bit of almond extract to taste and stirred it into the glass of Sprite. (So, umm…no real recipe to share.)

The cakes turned out delicious! They were really rich, but I highly recommend them. Check out the recipe from the Food Network website here.

The meal ended up taking a lot longer to prepare than we had anticipated, but we had a lot of things going on at once. At any rate, it ended up being really fun. It helped to make for a really nice birthday!

This past Saturday, Sarah and I took a day trip to Cincinnati, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post. We went so we could go to the Cincinnati Art Museum and the new IKEA which had just opened a couple weeks ago. I almost got lost on the way to the museum, but the driving was okay other than that. It was a bit stressful, but mostly because I hate city driving. But I digress…

Before we went into the museum, we had a picnic lunch in the park surrounding the museum. My mom had surprised us that morning with a cooler and bag filled with a delicious lunch. It ended up being really cold for a picnic, but we persevered and enjoyed it anyway. The Museum was really great, partly because it was free. Admission there is always free, except for certain exhibits. There was a Rembrandt exhibit at the time, but we decided not to go to it, mostly because we didn’t want to be at the museum all day. There happened to be a really neat quilt exhibit up, so it was neat to see such great handicrafts on display as art.

After a couple hours at the museum, we decided to take a trek a bit north of Cincinnati to the new IKEA store. Neither one of us had been to an IKEA before, and we were both really excited. I had been wanting to go to one for a couple of years, ever since I heard about the stores. But the nearest ones had been too far away. With the new store opening up within a couple of hours from us, it seemed too good to be true. So we decided to make the trip. I don’t think we could have been prepared for the rest of the afternoon that was about to ensue! I feel like there needed to be a first-time-at-an-IKEA manual for newbies. This is the store we saw as we approached:

I don’t think this picture even quite captures the massiveness of the store. We even saw a sign for alternative parking which utilized a shuttle van to transport customers to and from the store. Mercy.

As we got nearer to the store, we realized the parking lot seemed more like an amusement park parking lot than a home furnishing store parking lot.

And that’s only one little piece of the entire lot.

After we parked, we took a deep breath and went into the store. I won’t go into detail as far as how the store is set up, because I don’t think I could describe it adequately. It will suffice to say that the entire time I felt like I was a cow being herded through an enormous showroom and warehouse. Many beautiful things, but we both went out empty-handed. I don’t know how that was even possible. Well, I think neither one of us were in the immediate market for any substantial furnishings, and it would feel ridiculous to wait in line for one small decorative item. Besides, I saw really cheap mugs I wanted to buy, but I decided to walk through the rest of the store and come back to them if I didn’t see anything else. If you have been to an IKEA, you know that was a mistake. It seems impossible to turn around in that store! It’s a maze of beautiful things, really.

I’m glad we went, but oh my goodness. It took me until today, I think, to really recover from my first IKEA experience. At least next time I go, I’ll know what to expect!

I do like green eggs and ham, Luke I am. Except I don’t really like ham very much, so I enjoyed replacing it with cheese. My girlfriend, Sarah, recently made them with a group of kids. She jokingly suggested making them for breakfast on Saturday, but she knew better to say the word green and have me not participate. So, green eggs and cheese for breakfast it was.

This picture simultaneously looks delicious and disgusting, in a way only Dr. Seuss could inspire.

We made them by beating 4 eggs with about 2 Tablespoons of half & half. Then, we added 3 drops of green food coloring and mixed it in. We transferred the oddly colored egg mixture to a lightly-greased skillet preheated at low-medium. After stirring occasionally for a while, we added some shredded cheddar cheese when they were about done. After they cooked a couple minutes more, they were deemed a little sickly looking. But they were good, and I do like the shade of green. They definitely provided nourishment for our day-trip to Cincinnati, which as I will explain tomorrow, demanded a ton of energy. (Hint: first time at an IKEA…need I say more? Well, I will tomorrow!)