December Round Up

My December

So December has been insane, which is why there haven't been many posts, and why this one is posted late. I had so much vacation time that I had to use so I took a trip to New Mexico to visit my cousin, which was awesome. We went on lots of hikes and I found some really cool pottery and worked stone (top and bottom respectively in the right picture) as well as dinosaur fossils and petrified wood (the fossil is in my hand in the left picture).

The scenary in New Mexico was amazing, I've never been to that part of the country before, I've really only done the coasts and Chicago.  Note the snow on the ground, it was colder there than it was in Connecticut!

Then I got back to work and was slammed with extra stuff to do, and to top it all of the renovations on the house are still going on and so my life is a hectic disarray.

I went into the city to see Allegiance, sadly my only Broadway show this fall, which was amazing!  Lea Salonga and Telly Leung were brilliant and George Takei was awesome.  I'm so happy I got to see it with the original cast!  I hope it can beat out Hamilton for some Tony's...

When I was in Time Square I saw this billboard and it made me smile.

Unfortunately when I went in it was Santa Con, so it was crazy, but I did get some good laughs at what people where wearing.  I even saw some Whos from Whooville (not pictured).

I got my December OwlCrate right before I left work for the year.  I'm excited to read Da Vinci's Tiger it sounds really cool!  I also got a really cute to-do list, a scented candle, a super adorable Le Petit Prince magnet and a journal to list the books I've read - it's pretty much obsolete because of GoodReads, it's what people would have done 15+ years ago to keep track of their books, and the way it's set up you can't even really re-purpose it.  Oh well.

December's Artsy Stuff

I didn't do too terribly much this month.  When I was in New Mexico I made some pottery on my cousin's wheel.  It was the first time I'd ever used one.

I also learned how to turn a wooden bowl from my cousin's husband.  The bowl on the top had a crack in the wood so it shattered when I was hollowing it out, so I have a pendant that I can make a cool necklace out of as well as a shallow bowl.  The bowl on the bottom was my first attempt at it and I love it!  The wood I used is awesome too!

I made this guy for my friend for Christmas, I absolutely love it!  I almost wanted to keep him for myself!  I think he's my favorite mouse I've made (narrowly beating out my Link mouse I made a few years ago for another friend).  It's the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) from Doctor Who if you couldn't tell.  I even made him a sonic screwdriver!

I did some of my typical over-the-top baking as well - my annual Bûche de Noël aka Yule Log, aka Yule Bûche (according to my brother).

Also, I did my nails twice this month (well, aside from plain colors)

This is Miss Jen Fabulous's design (if you like nail art, check her out, she's amazing!), the polar bear is super cute!  I did this one for Christmas.

This was my New Years Eve design, I found a similar one on Pinterest.  I absolutely loved this one, it took forever to do and sadly didn't last long.

December Blog News

Since I've been so busy I haven't had much time to read, let alone write/post.  I'm going to try my hardest to get back on track for January, but stupidly I grabbed two insanely long books to read, a biography on Alexander Hamilton (I'm a little bit obsessed with the musical right now - I blame my friend 100% for that) and The Way of Kings.  I'm going to try to break up the reading with shorter books so I can get some reviews done, but it may be difficult to get away from Hamilton, he's so interesting!  Don't give a history nerd an amazing historical figure to read about when they don't have time to devote to it.  Seriously, I'm itching to write a thesis on the revolution and I can't stop reading about all the players in it!