Grey Moggie Press

on the verge of a new year

What do I love about starting a new year? Getting a new moleskin planner, for all the scheming and lists, & important dates for the next 365 days. The mail lady delivered my 2010 planner today – what a treat! She also brought some beautiful, brightly colored wool felt pieces. I’ve got big plans for those bold colors – maybe I’ll write them down in my new planner.

Along with the new planner and the new felt come those pesky resolutions. I’m not usually big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I’m taking the time to come up with a few.

First, the obligatory health resolution. For the most part I’d say I’ve been doing a good job in the nutrition category, but I have a weak, weak spot for Coca Cola. I know that it’s horrible for me so in the new year I’m going to substitute it with more water, tea, even coffee. And for the fourth year in a row I’ll be running the Cherry Blossom 10-miler so I’ll be in shape from January until April, but maybe this year I’ll try to keep up the workouts in the months beyond the race.

Next, I want to read more. I started Cannonball Read with good intentions and I hope I can pick up the pace a bit. I’ve read several books but haven’t quite reviewed them here yet. Keeping track on the blog will keep me accountable so here’s hoping for more literary adventures in 2010.

Finally, I’m taking on The Cult of Done Manifesto. You can find it here. I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew or fall prey to perfectionism. In 2010, I’m going to take on smaller projects so that I can move from one to the next more frequently. So maybe I won’t learn how to knit beautiful sweaters this year, but I can crochet a few granny squares. And maybe the home décor won’t be perfect, but I will frame and hang what we’ve already got.

Off I go to embroider these resolutions onto a piece of felt. No, wait. I’ll just use my favorite pen to write them down in my new planner. Done.

the aftermath

After baking cookies, making caramels, and drinking hot chocolate for 10 days in a row, and after spending the last few days with a house full of family and many visits with friends, today was a little more difficult than planned. At least I got to put it off for a few hours because my parents’ 8am flight was canceled and rescheduled for 3pm. We went on a long family walk with the dog and stopped along the way for pastries and coffee.

Then, on a stroll through Eastern Market, I finally caught up with the mysterious letterpress man. I picked up a few beauties that will be perfect for printing Valentines (thanks, Dad!). Wooden case upon wooden case of type will keep me coming back every once in a while. Or maybe every week.

really? only four days left?

Eric and I had a wonderful Christmas. We had snow, our families came to visit, we were dogsitting the sweetest pup, and we had many, many, many hours together in the kitchen. Also, we may have split a bottle of champagne after everyone else was asleep one night. And then 2009 was almost over. My life this year has been filled with so many amazing people and events and I have lots of reasons to believe 2010 will be just as good, maybe even better.

I’ve been a bit absent here. While all the crafting and letterpress this fall were fun I’m a law school graduate with law school-sized debt. So I’ve been job searching. Imagine: you went to law school, you don’t want to be a lawyer, you want a position of which there are only so many in your city, you don’t want to move, and the economy is bad, particularly for folks with fancy degrees who don't want to use their fancy degrees. Oh, and you try to keep negativity out of your blog. You can see the dilemma, right?

The story has a happy ending. My non-crafty part-time job recently turned into my full-time dream job, or at least the perfect first step to my full-time dream job. I will use my law degree, though not to practice law, my coworkers are beyond fabulous, and I get to travel and work with students. After this post, I probably won’t write much about that job on the blog. You come here for letterpress and mix cds, right? Who am I to bore you with tales of my new nine-to-five life? Come back for more letterpress, crafty, kitty, music posts over the next few days and into the new year. Maybe I’ll even start reviewing some of those books I’ve been reading.

For now, I am beyond thrilled to start a new job in January and to leap into 2010. And also to enjoy the next 7 days of sleeping in; I’ve got a bit of a Christmas hangover.

Weekend weekend weekend weekend

If you’re in DC tonight, please stop by and say hello:

DC Rollergirls Craft Fair & Holiday Bash

December 12, 8pm-11pm

McFaddens (2401 Pennsylvania Ave., NW)

I’m putting finishing touches on stuff for the craft fair tonight. I spent the day printing on Wednesday and came up with these prints. I love what they mean to me. I’m always trying to create something new to show my love to friends and family or make my little world more beautiful. Eric does the same with food. So I thought up these coordinating prints. I can’t wait to frame them!

I’ve also been working on some new birthday cards. Mostly, I’ve just loved printing with my two wood type alphabets lately and wanted to make beautiful words with them.

a splash of color

 
I wanted to print a variety of gift tags for the craft fair on Saturday. These bright orange literal “gift” tags make me smile and will brighten my table on Saturday night. Now to dream and scheme other ways to make my table pretty pretty.

music to take you home

As party favors for Sunday’s birthday brunch I made a few mix cds for friends to take home. I’ve loved the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ song Home for the last couple months. And since we moved to a new home recently, I decided to make a whole mix based on the theme of home. I used this sweet new font I found and then handwrote some of the lyrics from the edward sharpe song. Then I copied the whole thing onto kraft paper and attached to a cd sleeve. So easy and fun! If you want your own copy, click on the song titles to connect to the song on iTunes. Enjoy!

home | edward sharpe & the magnetic zeros

via chicago | wilco

when they fight, they fight | the generationals

wasp nest | the national

come on home | honeyhoney

i feel like going home | yo la tengo

i’ll take us home | matt & kim

oklahoma | bishop allen

let me go home | camera obscura

to wild homes | the new pornographers

where is home? | bloc party

yankee bayonet (i will be home then) | the decemberists

eviction party | darlings

basic space | the xx

to go home | m. ward

new letterpress cards

I’m doing my first craft fair this weekend in DC. If you’re in the area, please stop by the DC Rollergirls Holiday Bash at McFadden’s on Saturday night and say hello. In preparation I’ve been printing lots of new cards. Here’s a peek at what I’ll have on my table. I love the way mixing these two wood types looks on the beautiful Arturo paper. I've put a few of each of these cards in the shop if you want to grab one before the craft show!

birthday brunch and other goodness

I hope you all had a nice weekend. We got to celebrate Eric’s birthday. So fun! Eric spent all day on Saturday building a bench - for real. He's never done anything like that before, and it was perfect! I stayed up super late on Saturday night (Sunday morning, actually) baking his requested brownie cake with mocha ganache. And got up way early on Sunday to prepare our home for almost 20 guests. Four of whom were held up by Eric's fabulous bench. That’s the biggest party we’ve hosted in our home in a long time. And it was so great to be able to do that again. We served biscuits and gravy and apple muffins, all from scratch, with the aforementioned time-intensive cake for dessert (also from scratch).  Friends and neighbors and classmates joined us.

Today, Eric took the day off to come to my swearing in ceremony. We got dressed up, went to the courthouse, and followed up the ceremony with a stop at one of our favorite coffee shops before a long walk home. I started packaging things for this weekend’s craft fair and then we went out for mussels (for the second day in a row). Now I’m back at craft fair prep, probably until the wee hours of the morning.

More holiday music

I'll post fun photos later but for now while I'm printing, here are a few more holiday songs worth a listen according to San Francisco Music Blog. Thanks for sharing, Kendra!
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2009/12/eight_christmas_songs_worth_sa.php

recycling

Have no fear, environmentally conscious readers. Of course I reused those pink prints from the last post. They made for lovely garland to hang on my new inspiration board. Yay!

 

If you click on the notes in the flickr version, you’ll see a description of most everything in the photo.  

dining room wall gets makeover

When I was single I shared an apartment with my friend, Jeff, for a while. It was one of the most fun living situations. We lived in a fabulous location, smack dab in the middle of our respective favorite bars. We hosted parties and dinners and had lots of guests stop by. I had my own bathroom and I decorated in outrageous shades of pink. A hot pink bath mat, a pink and purple shower curtain with a black cat on it, and these prints from Ikea on the wall.

 I took out the pink prints and filled the frames with some of our food photos from France. Now they’re hanging on the wall in our dining room. And we’re finally able to use the table. We thrifted a few chairs a couple weeks ago, and I’m on the lookout for some cool red fabric to reupholster them. Eric has plans to build a bench this weekend. We’ve had this table sitting, unused, for three years. We love that we can use it for every meal and for entertaining now!