gingerbread feeling. literally.

note the gingerbread ninja.  christina's cookie cutters.

our little chalkboard

feeling that gingerbread feeling

more pictures from my house in ohio at christmas.  just because I can.  And because, like in the words of songs from home alone, I want you to 'feel that gingerbread feeling'.

we normally put up two trees. this picture is the slightly more ghetto tree.  the village is a pop-up book, it has the macaroni ornaments and the ones made out of colored paper that my mom doesn't like putting on the extra nice tree.

a fun thing about my dad is that he makes a point to decorate the back yard as well.  His thinking is that you can't see your front yard in most of the house, so he decorates the back so when you're washing the dishes, or sitting at the kitchen table, you can look out at lights.  The lit up deer were considered too cheesy for the front yard, but perfect for the back.  He put in a little pond this year and in the pictures I've seen of this years backyard, the little fake deer are drinking out of the pond.  good stuff.  

SIDE NOTE:  everyone.  download the home alone movie medley.  holy cow, that's some heartwarming stuff. Thankfully I've also included it on this blog so you can listen to it RIGHT HERE. 

SIDE NOTE 2:  Have you watched the video of Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber singing 'All I Want for Christmas is You?'  Mariah is pretty sketch in it...like, really innappropriate considering Justin is 17, but at the same time, I personally find it really hard to dislike Mariah Carey.  

it's christmas which means......

...i can  post excessive amounts of christmas imagery.   
look out. 

not the greatest photo of mi casa

ahhhh....home.

-soooooooo pretty!!!!!

banksey's christmas.

I live in australia where thankfully Black Friday does not exist. I don't miss it.  In all the news sites I follow, Black Friday was all over the headlines and I can't explain exactly what it is, it just all seemed a lot more sinister this year.  I read about stores opening at 9pm on Thanksgiving day and being open all night and I thought, wait...9pm?  Isn't that the time you're supposed to be spending with your family?  What in the world could be so important to purchase that people would need to shorten one of the best family holidays there is?  As someone who grieves missing those unique family times, it blows me away that you would have the option to be there, and choose going to...WalMart instead, with all it's terrible lighting...

I absolutely love Christmas. To me, it really is the most wonderful time of the year!  My Christmas's were literally out of a movie.  Beautiful decorated homes, huge family gatherings with lots of good food, and gifts and more gifts and more gifts.  I'm so thankful I grew up with that. I'm in no way against the giving of gifts, or spending money to get something special for someone you care about. It's a very real way of expressing love, one that my family is so good at. I actually want to be more like that. I want to be more generous with my money. I want to value my relationships so much that at times I'm willing to spend extra money to show that.  I see that displayed around me by people who don't stress about how much a meal costs because the return of having spent 2 hours with people they care about was more than worth it. My dad is a lot like that.

As a lot of Americans are realizing though, the pursuit of more stuff as a main reason for existance is just becoming sad.  There's no relationship attached to the spending. It's stuff for the sake of stuff.  This Christmas season has that feel.  Everything you read talks about how retailers are worried about their books balancing, so they're encouraging people to buy more. In our times where family isn't coming through as much as it has in the past, I doubt most of that spending is happening to better a relationship, strengthen a father/daughter bond, or bless a home.  

Banksey is a famous graffitti artist from England and I found this picture of Jesus by him.

 

movember.

In Australia, the month of november is fondly known as 'movember'.  In the states some people do 'no-shave november', but it's kind of informal.  In Australia, it's something very, very official.  The whole nation participates in 'Movember' where the guys grow out their 'mo's' and raise money for prostate cancer research.  You can upload your photo to the official website and people can sponsor your mustache.  If you don't believe me, you can check out the website:  Movember Australia.  

The guys in the house we live in always get on board.  I didn't get the best photos of the mustaches and some of the guys hadn't trimmed up the rest of their facial hair recently...but you'll definitely get the idea. 

Take a moment to admire some mo's.

Mr. Jesse Lee (USA)

Mr. Sam Street (Australia)

Mr. Andreas from Sweden

Mr. Josh Irwin (Australia) and Mr. Stevie Lujan (Hawaii/Australia)

Mr. Jeff...something (Hawaii)

Mr. Jack Narvel (USA)

'Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

 '-Mark Twain

thai.

doesn't look like much.  the food was gooood.

cooking it in front of you

Thai food is a variety of food I did not experience until I lived in Australia.  Side note: along with thailand, there are a whole bunch of countries I was not very aware of until I lived in Australia, such as almost all of south east Asia, and almost all of the Pacific Islands.  Anyways.  There are lots of Thai people due to Australia's close proximity to South East Asia.  And. let me tell you.  As someone who grew up on Chinese as our Asian food of choice, Thai is way better.  I spent the night at my friends sisters house and she treated us to thai for dinner. 

hanging with the gaffneys

eating breakfast

mrs gaffney

walk on the beach

daniel and his sister alyssa

 

 

 

 

 

on Sunday morning, i got to hang out with a really great family.  Back in 2006, I staffed Daniels DTS and we went to Fiji for our outreach.  He had a great school with this particularly great group of guys.  Daniel lives in Canberra, Australia and even though it's been 5 years, we still get to hang out every now and then!  This time it included almost his entire family which was even better.  They took me to breakfast at a great cafe and then we walked to the beach.  The whole time I got encouraged by what Daniel's doing with his life.  He's an at risk youth worker in his city, as well as a leader at a youth group and he is going for it!  These are a few snapshots of our morning!

stories from the side of the road (#1)

So.  There's something Christina and I, and a few others secretly really love. Twice a year, every suberb around us has their designated large item trash pick up from the city council.  You can put out items like televisions, old fridges, couches, tables, lamps, etc. Being the economical, thrifty, not wanting to consume more than what we need people we are, we've found these weekends are great for getting furniture items we need for our houses and rooms.  

It looks like this:  Around 10pm on a Sunday night, we head out to the designated area, drive around and look at the tree lawns.  Items I'm specifically looking for right now are:  a t.v. stand, a set of drawers for the end of my bed, and more chairs for our kitchen table.  Items we've found in the past are:  my kitchen table, a really cool bedside cabinet, tents, a christmas tree, and more.

Anyways, we drive around, check things out and bring home what works.  We look crazy (example:  Jesse was sitting on the hood of Christina's car wearing a head lamp), but we find some great stuff!  

Here are a few photos of our recent finds.

vintage suitcases!  Anyone getting married soon?  these would be great in your engagement photos.  why the wombat?  i was looking for practical furniture items.  Christina was looking for anything animal themed. You'll see...

 

along with the animals, there were pots EVERYWHERE.  we settled on one that wasn't giant and that looked a little bit Mexican.

 

like i said, more animals.  This is for Christina's door. 

 
This butterfly....what can i say about this butterfly.  It lights up and sings an asian techno song.  Score. And another animal for Christina.

an illustrated dictionary (it only goes A-K...that's a bit of a problem) and there was a box FULL of cassette tapes!  I started to love Cat Stevens because someone gave me a cassette tape of him and then I spent a lot of time in a car with no c.d. or MP3 player.  So this time we grabbed the Beatles 1's and Cole Porter. 

 

cleaning a set of drawers that I found that are pretty useful.  Everyone walked by and said 'it looks like...' and then said things like 'siding', 'window shades', 'bee hive'.  side note:  holy heck our building looks ghetto. 

a sampling of our stuff!

ok. let's be honest. we picked up a lot of crap. but we had a lot of fun doing it and so far everything we've picked up is being used.  The dinosaur and wombat and vintage suitcases decorate Christina's room.  I use the set of drawers.  We listen to the cassettes while driving. The butterfly...ok. i don't know how that is being used. It's just weird.  but it's made a lot of people smile so it's been useful that way.

look out for next weeks treasures!

 

pete bjorn and john

while home, i won tickets on the radio to see this band (thanks 88.3 the sting!). I hadn't listened to them much aside from the song most people know that intros gossip girl (guy whistling: 'do do do do do do do do do do').  I grabbed a friend, we stopped at a great little bar called 'La Cave', and then saw this fun band play.  They're swedish, have been together for awhile, and it was really good show! I was just going through my blog photos and I saw that I'd saved a picture of the concert poster, so I thought I'd write a little blurb.

mary.

This is mary.  She is a student on one of the schools we run called a'Discipleship Training School'.  Hers in particular is called a Compassion DTS. 

Mary has a pretty great collection of tattoos and we figured she had some stories for them, so me and Christina took a few photos and asked some questions.
 

Mary is from Michigan and is 20 years old.

The first tattoo we'll talk about is this one behind her ear.  It's the first two letters of the word 'Christ' in latin.  At one point, it was used by Catholics to identify their faith.

This tattoo is the one that caught our eye the most.  It's colorful and the artwork is bright and fun.  The story of this one starts with a boy.  A little while ago, Mary was dating someone. This someone turned out to not be the right guy for her.  When they broke up, God spoke to her about how she was made for a life of adventure, and the guy she just broke up with was not adventurous.  She got this tattoo as a symbol of the adventurous life she's going to live with God.  Considering she's living in Australia right now, headed to Latvia and Russia to do prostitute ministry, and is passionate about reaching the hard core music scene, I'd say she's living a pretty interesting, adventurous life. 

This is a close up of her adventure tattoo.

She has a storm cloud on the back of one ankle and a sun on the back of her other. This is to signify praising God through the good times and the bad.  

 

This tattoo commemerates her love of her home state, Michigan.  She says many people in her church have this one.  She loves her state a lot.  I've noticed a lot of people from Michigan do.

You can also the anchor that is behind her other ear.  It's a symbol of hope, which pairs with the symbol for Christ behind her other ear.  So hope in Christ.

This tattoo is her favorite.  She loves what is says, the script, how simple it is, and how you can usually see it. 

This one is a work in progress.  She started out with the outline of a heart, and then later filled in the color.  It was supposed to say 'We only have one heart' but before she went to get the color filled in, she had a dream that it was meant to say 'This is only the beginning'. So that's what she got.  Again, considering the adventure that is starting in her life, this is pretty true.  

She has a few other tattoos planned, but she's not sure when she'll get them done.  She has a friend who tattoos, and she wants to get them done by her. 


Thanks so much Mary for letting us take a look at your artwork and for telling us your stories!

the other f word

I just came across this trailer for a documentary. it's about guys from some welll known bands who are now dads (members from NOFX, Blink 182, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc), and the questions parenthood raises about anarchy and submission and rules, all while they're just trying to be good parents. It looks pretty great. 

LEGEND.

To counteract Christina's numerous posts about dogs smiling. and wearing clothes. and running in slow motion- here's a commercial from New Zealand about drunk driving. We don't know much about the Kiwi accent in the states, so if you're American, you should definitely watch it. This ad is classic and maybe you'll find yourself quoting 'you know I can't have any of your ghost chups bru'. I don't know if it will make your day more than dogs smiling, but it's worth a shot.




shown to me by brooke robinson:)

bring it back.

crochet ties. 

Actually, i don't think they were ever in, but a few years ago, I crocheted a tie for one of my friends. After seeing this picture recently on a blog, I thought, why have I only made one of these? 

driving.

drivng through b.c. eating b.c. cherries.  From this summer, hanging out with my DTS roommate, driving back from Tessa and Live's wedding.

thinking about...

feather tattoos.  I might add this to the list of tattoos i would get if they were guaranteed to erase roughly around the age of 30 (making the total 2).  I think a I'd want a feather to be around a little while longer than the swallow though. Maybe till 37.  

i almost didn't post this because this isn't the healthiest image---she's a bit thin, but maybe it's just how she's built.

I still wouldn't actually get a tattoo.

if you're going to have children...

 

you should make them look this cool.  i took this from the sartorialist. 

side note: it's weird that i'm posting this because in general I do not like blond haired children.

life in a day

This is killing me.  Both of the recent trailers I've posted recently are playing in Cleveland, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in the month of November.  You can see this 'Life in a Day' on I think November 4th, and the Elmo documentary on November 18-20.  It's killing me because i was following both of these at home before they got near me and now I'm in Australiaaaaaaaaaaah!  Someone in Cleveland---please go see these. 


now, onto this trailer.  A little while ago, YouTube put out the request for people to film a day of their life and then submit the footage.  They got a ridiculous amount of footage that they edited into a full length movie.  I think i will cry when I get to watch this.  This and the Elmo one.  

elmo is voiced by someone who wanted to be a puppeteer his whole life.

I'm so excited.  The library near me is really small but it has a pretty big shelf of biographies.  Before I racked up a $40 fee in late fines, I was reading a lot of books out of that section. A few years ago i read elmos biography, written by the man who voices him. I was pretty surprised to find out that elmo is voiced by a 40 something year-old black man who dreamed of being a puppeteer his whole life.  He sees elmos as a platform to teach kids life lessons, and through sesame street, has done that all over the world.  well, someone just made a movie out of it!  watch the preview---it's so heartwarming.  

buckleys

our good friends evan and zoe got married a few weeks ago. I was still in the United States when it happened, but I came back to one of my most favorite wedding invitations I've seen in my mailbox. Zoe drew it and I love it because it's so personal.

side 1

side 2

the lovely couple on their wedding day