A Very Cold Camping Weekend

We took a few days to drag the Airstream out of it's lonely existence at the storage facility and tow it up to Taos. I feel like our lives are becoming pretty banal these past few months in the apartment. I get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch a movie and go to bed. Billy paints and paints and paints... which is great but he is kinda trapped under a two ton paint brush of commitment. Blah. Unacceptable! But unfortunately necessary until we recover more fully from the economic meltdown of the past year and a half. We are at an equivalent moment to the part in the story in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea when he has not caught a fish in 84 days. We are now just waiting for our big fish to arrive. Any time now fishy.... annnnny time.

Back to the current cold camping conditions. Taos! Beautiful! I freaking LOVE Taos. We came up on Saturday and set up in a campground just south of town. We came ready to watch the local hot air balloon festival, go hiking and explore a few new areas we have not been to previously. We ended up doing a load of standing around in the cold predawn air waiting for balloons to take off that never did (poor conditions), driving through a foggy sleet storm and getting whapped in the face by winter at every turn. Not. Ready. For. That. I mean... don't get me wrong, we still had a great weekend it was just not quite as we pictured heading into it. We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow on everything outside. EEK!

The one thing I can solidly report is that I miss living in the Airstream. If we could hitch up and peel outta here for a good three or four months of travelin' I would go in a split second. I don't even care where. Well, I guess I DO care where.... anywhere as long as it stays above 45 degrees and cold places are DENIED! Death Valley? Sure. Let's go.

On to the parade of photos. I have lots. We did get to see 4 or 5 balloons take off Sunday morning. They did not go far, maybe a mile or so away from the field they started out of. I think there were a few pilots who just wanted to please the crowd and so they did a gratuitous flight for Ooooooing and Ahhhhhing's sake. Here are my best shots from the morning...








That was the first balloon of the morning and here are a few others that I was able to get pretty shots of....

This next shot is the inside top of the balloon shot from the basket looking up while it's being inflated.

Those dark gray clouds are exactly the reason why we did not get to see a full on mass ascension. It started to rain soon after. It was still a cool thing to see up close. And the crowd was perfectly crazy New Mexican.....

Balloon McGyver.... rigging stuff up while wearing 80's tribal themed bandannas.

And my favorite fashion statement of the day.... the Eagle Versus Cobra hoodie guy. I die a little bit every time I revisit this photo. I want that hoodie. In electric blue.

Here he is again. Patiently waiting for the action to unfold... when all the while he was probably the most exciting thing flyin' that morning...




We are packing up to head back to Santa Fe so I will post the rest of the photos when I get back. We grabbed some amazing shots at dusk last night so be sure to check back!

Appreciate the Little Things....

and the big, messy, chaotic things....

There's beauty in both.

Have a beauty of a weekend!

Rubber Eyeballs, Wrestling and Uhhh, Cake?

Howdy all. Well, the fall days are just a rollin' on by aren't they? Some folks have already been snowed on and I have a feeling we are not too far down on that waiting list here in Santa Fe. Yeeeeeeesh. It makes my toes curl up just thinking about it. I am trying to keep my pinkie finger firmly pressed on the slow motion button these last few weeks of October. After Halloween comes and goes all bets are off as far as the weather goes. We have experienced winters here in NM where we could sit outside in short sleeves in January...aaannnd we have experienced winters where your eyeball cracks in two and falls out of your head upon meeting with the frigid outside air. Time will tell what Ma Nature is dishing out for us this year... but oh man are we hoping for the sunny warm option. And by warm I mean like 50 degrees. I don't want to fake anyone out into thinking we can kick it with 70 degree days in teh winter here because we can't. We don't. Unfortunately.

Weekend report... I worked on Saturday. Plllllbbbbbbth. That's all I will say about that. Sunday Michelle came over with her pregnant little self and we sat around in the living room chewing the fat (conversational fat not baby fat... yuck!) and crocheting like a couple-a old hens. Billy was an old hen right along with us while painting. Later that night we cruised over to friends Chris and Jana's house for dinner. They had worked all day prepping oodles of pizza making ingredients including killer sauce. We set up an assembly line of sorts in the kitchen and just made pizza after pizza. Rudy came with us and he ran amok with his buddy Chico while us humans carried on with mushrooms and mozzarella. Chris and Jana had bought 15 pounds of tomatoes at the farmer's market on Saturday so we ate a load of toms.






I brought a fudge cake with fresh raspberries for dessert. Along with the fact that Billy had requested to borrow a cast of a human skull from Chris it made for an interesting visual on the table. It's very "cake or death?" a la Eddie Izzard don't you think?



The night carried on with rubber eyeballs and dog wrestling until we were all pretty much falling asleep at the table and so we decided to head home.




In other news.... we are towing the Airstream up to Taos this coming weekend. We are going to hang out in town a bit and then do the loop through Eagle Nest and Red River. I. Can't. Wait. It will be a really quick trip but still.... it's been too long since we had the peanut out on an adventure. I am apprehensive about our campground choices in and around Taos. I will let you know how it turns out. They all look pretty heavy on the crappy scale to me from what I am gleaning off campground review sites. We shall seeeeeee!

I am off to work to churn the chocolate and dip the caramels. Have a lovely Monday peeps! Cheers!

Autumn Magic

Well... I just had to pop back on here and post a few more pics of Santa Fe in full fall color. It is so pretty right now and the weather is just amazing. It has been in the 70's during the day and then hitting the mid 40's at night. Heck yeah people! I can live with that!

We live about a block off of the Santa Fe River.... it is dry as a bone now but that just converts it into a great walking path to get in and out of town on for us. Right now the whole thing is lined with aspens and other bright yellow foliage. It's gorgeous.






We walked downtown this afternoon to hit the plaza for some people watching, grabbed a hot chocolate and then meandered back home. Rudy loves going downtown. He also loves people watching. He's a pro.




It's late as I write this but I just took an apple spice cake out of the oven. It's a recipe out of an old Food and Wine magazine. HERE is the recipe for anyone interested. It's a mean good cake. I would post a picture except for the fact that about a third of my cake stayed stuck to the inside of my bundt pan when I tried to flip it out. Bastard! I hate when that happens. So yeah... we are about to pig out on cake with almost a full pound of butter in it at 10:30 at night. It's always nice to go to bed feeling like you have a lead brick in your stomach.

Hope y'all are enjoying the fall weather wherever you are. Winter will be here all too soon so get out there are soak it up while you still can!

Nothing Much

Well... I just came from having three days in a row off and what do I have to show for it? Nuthin'. I still have a messy house and the inside of the fridge is like something out of a Tim Burton movie. We have been doing that thing that you do when you get lazy about cooking and you go to the store and buy three stupid things... only enough to make one half assed meal and then the next time you are hungry it's like "We were JUST at the store why don't we have any food?" And then you eat a pickle and mayonaise sandwich on questionably stale bread. I am almost tempted to take a photo inventory of some of the refrdgerated oddities we are housing right now. ALMOST tempted. But I will save you the horror.

So October is almost have gone and we have yet to take the Airstream out on a fall adventure. In a few more weeks it will be too late. Or maybe it already is too late? I dunno. I still want to do it. I want to go north to a lake and take the kayak out in freezing cold water under the electric blue NM sky for the day.

I did finally get a few new vintage listings up in my Etsy shop. The star of the show is a 1950's era Alfred Shaheen Hawaiian shirt. It's legit. Totally a collector's piece. It's a fabulous pattern in dark chocolate browns and terra cotta pinks.




The other favorite is a really sweet homemade cotton dress sewn out of the coolest woodland print fabric. It features lions, foxes, rabbits, quail and peacocks on a silver and black backdrop of leaves and foliage. Vibrant red flowers are peppered throughout for contrast. SO cute!




Today was my day at home alone while Billy went to cook up a few batches of toffee and caramel for the shop. I tried to get some more vintage photographed but instead I ended up just experimenting with the camera and photoshop... mostly because the lighting was awful and the pics were just not coming out the way I needed them to for my shop listings.

Here are a few random results.










What? Doesn't everybody spend a Monday doing this all alone in their apartment every so often? Rudy was here with me. He took the photos. He is an excellent photographer.

About the New Header

The alternate foot note on the new header was "Takin' it to the streets." It was a hard choice but I went with takin' care of business instead. It felt right.

So pretty much all there is to say about this is that Billy and I have a habit of bringing home chairs... office chairs to be exact, that other people have left out on the curb as garbage. Why? Because we like them. Again... Why? I can't say. It's free? It's a free office chair? There is no good reason for this behavior. All I can tell you is that finding free office chairs is somehow exhilarating for both of us. And if it's wrong to feel that way I don't want to be right.

We found this one a block or so down the road from our house and Woo Hoo! We brought it home. Billy is sitting in it now to paint. The last chair we took from a curb was in this very same neighborhood a few years back and it was lovingly referred to as "the captain's chair." We sadly parted ways with it at a garage sale when we left to travel in the Airstream.

Anyway I think you can see the genuine excitement on Billy's face here about his new seat. We now have a random assortment of chairs in our living room that is really quite ridiculous. And now you know one of our dirty little secrets. We take garbage chairs. We can't help ourselves.




And if you never hear from me again it's because Billy killed me when he discovered this post.

Also...I'd like to say thanks to the good folks in the east side neighborhood for throwing out perfectly good office furniture.

Aspen Vista

I have been in a panic the past week or so to get up in to the mountains so as not to miss the aspens in full color. It does not last long once it gets rolling... it's just a short window of time for peak color. It is one of my absolute favorite landscape visuals anywhere in America. I love it. Let me show you why...





Sigghhhhhhh. Purty ain't it? Yesterday we packed Rudy into the truck and drove his most dreaded car ride up into the ski basin area of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that back Santa Fe. It's a twisty turny road and as most of you may know... he gets wicked car sick. We made it up there puke free to the Big Tesuque trailhead that meets up with the Aspen Vista trail. We spent a few hours wandering through the woods along the edge of the creek and let the gorgeous trees and electric blue sky sooth our souls.







It was a gorgeous day. Rudy had a blast and since I have been cooped up indoors 4 or 5 days a week at the chocolate shop for the past three months (still not used to that) I felt like I was dreaming.

I found a perfectly shaped aspen to take a little break in the sun on ....

Until Rudy jumped right up on my gut and stuck his wet nose in my ear.

There are already so many leaves on the ground... the color will be gone in another week or two. Hopefully we will get back out to see it one more time before winter in the higher elevations starts to settle in.