Scissor Quirk

And the Sun Peeks Out.

It was a crazy weather day on Friday - crazy!

The sun poked out after class in the morning, and since I didn't have to race off to work like usual I wandered around with my camera until I could put off errands no longer: dropped off some shoes I had to return, left our paperwork off at the tax office, and attempted to get my eyes checked.I have to do all the un-fun stuff in one fell swoop with this crazy schedule of mine...lol. Not fun.

I did walk down my favorite stretch for a little thrifting to balance out the errands on the way home, though (where $15 luckily got me a pair of leather gloves, a cute teal cardigan, a grey skirt, and a blue flower pot!), and when I got out of the last shop the sun disappeared and it rained/hailed, got sunny again, and rained/hailed again all on the walk home! Oh, Spring.

Mister husband reminded me that in Bulgaria this month is 'Grandma March' - like a woman, the weather changes her mind from day to day...on a whim. :) It always makes me giggle.

We took a walk today, too, and sat on some swings and just talked and ignored the massive amount of homework I need to do for a little bit...and admired all the buds peeking out, everywhere. :)

I can't wait until the sun is a more usual thing around here, again! The rain wears on me, by this time of year...although it sure does make for cute blooms.

Hope you've had a little sunshine in your weekend!

Christmas 2011: Cuba, Pt.2

Part One of our vacation photos, right here.

As I blogged about a few weeks ago, mister husband and I spent a week in Cuba over Christmas for our holidays...we decided to top it off with a 'tradition', of sorts: the mister likes to see at least one sunrise on the beach of every tropical destination we head off to. At first, I was skeptical - like, 'you want me to get up when??', but we'd done it before in Mexico and Hawaii, and both were gorgeous, so it was a go!

We had sort of a late night before, packing...we decided the only day to have an alarm (or clock, even) on vacation should be the last day, and our bus to the airplane didn't leave until noon, so we got up at 5:30 am, headed to the bar (which was open - yeah!), got some yummy boozy Spanish Coffee and headed down to the sand. The beach chair guys were already there..and were quite surprised...lol.

So, we settled in and watched the sun come up...it was beautiful!
Obligatory sunrise shots:

Only...there was one hitch.

I'm not sure if all beaches in Cuba have them, but this beach was covered in swarms of invisible painful biting little bugs! Like, a sharp pinching. All over you. At all times. It wasn't noticable during the day, but before the heat gets going, I guess these little dudes were in full swing...

These about sum up our realization of them:

Hah. Oh, man. We were confused, because they were so tiny...we didn't know where the bites were coming from at first, cuz they weren't leaving bite marks like mosquitos do. Anyhoo, the only way to ward them off was to either repeatedly slap every square inch of your exposed skin, or hop in the ocean, so I watched the rest of the surise from there...lol. And at least we didn't have bug bites, right?

Wrong. lol. About 20-some hours later - when we were picking up our luggage at the airport at home - the bites kicked in. Like, my-socks-are-itching-my-entire-itchy-feet, kicked in. For the next week and a half, our legs and arms were covered in little puffy, suuuuper un bearably itchy bug bites! lol. It was horrible.

Good thing they were balanced out by the lovely sunrise, that's for sure. But I highly suggest doing this sunrise-viewing in Hawaii, were they pride themselves on having no sand bugs...lol. :)

Christmas 2011: Cuba, Pt.1

Aah...finally! Vacation pictures!

I had a chance over the weekend to go through the photos we took on our Christmas holidays in Cuba! :) Mister husband and I hopped off to the 'island' of Cayo Coco for a week this year, and had a pretty relaxing time - here's a little peek at our time there:

The whole idea of choosing a place in Cuba that was away from the mainland was to sit on the beach and roast in the sun...I don't feel like we saw much Cuba, persay, but we saw lotsa this:

It was pretty quiet at our resort when we got there - we stayed at the 'Blau Colonial' and it was the oldest hotel there, I heard. At first that was a little weird - like, 'why's it so quiet?' and 'there's only one bar open?'. However, near the end of our stay it got progressively busier and it sucked having to suddenly wait in line for a drink at the one bar...lol. We realized how awesome the un-busy had been!

Annnd, onto more beach-laying:

See? Lotsa beach time.

We ended up on the Atlantic side of Cuba (who knew? we plan last-minute, sans research!), so when we got there the waves were crazy and I had visions of swimming in tumultuous Hawaiian seas, again (not my favorite, that undercurrent) - it turns out it was just super-windy for days, and near the end of the week the wind calmed down and it got hotter = calm, lovely water!

Here's a bit of the hotel:

(More on that there vodoo doll at the end of the post).

My favorite weird pink castle building! You can climb to the top. :)

Annnd...you guessed it! Drinks. And more beach:

And that about sums it up!

I think I got through 3 full books, we sat there for so long...lol.

The Highlights of Our Trip:

- Our hotel had a fabulous piano bar with the sweetest old Cuban singers
- We fast became addicted to Spanish coffees (earliest = 6:30 am)
- We went horse back riding (yay!) - which sounds cool, right?

The Lowlights of Our Trip:

- Horseback riding! lol.

Let me explain: the horses were unbearably skinny, which made me sad before we even got going on the trail. With no water to drink, no less, standing outside the hotel in the beating sun. I was in the middle of the three, which means the Cuban horse guy (on his cell phone) insistently whipped my horse the whole time, making it go faster over many precarious lava rocks and sand. Then mister husband thinks its a good idea to make them gallop on this precarious ground, to which my bare ankles rubbing the foot thing's metal and my apparently horrible bra were not too happy with - pretty much so painful I could cry. And I'm an optomistic person! Oh, and then I twisted my ankle on the way down when cell-phone guy made sure my foot landed on a rolling round stick. Ouch!

- That time mister husband found a cool but creepy old voodoo doll! 

He picked it up on a beach walk and brought it back to the hotel - within a few hours we ended up having a huge fight, and then our hotel room flooded. Yes, flooded - the entire big bathroom ceiling pretty much became a waterfall. After nearly the whole week with no hitches, it seemed like too big a coincidence and we got the heck out of there and didn't touch it again - definitely not wanting that kind of luck on the plane trip home, no siree! lol.

Anyhoo, overall - Cuba was rad!

Those 'Lowlights' were really just pretty small hitches, and everything was otherwise lovely through my rosy Cuba-filled glasses - and we came home feeling well-rested and happy! Aah.

Oh...until the sand bug bites from our sunrise viewing kicked in. 
But that's another post.

On My Mind...

With all this nature-studying I've been doing for school, it's no wonder it's on my mind a lot these days (I'm just finishing up a presentation I have to give on a nature-inspired project tomorrow morning, so it's right there in the forefront).

In class last week, we had to make a reusable item from those paper coffee cup sleeves - you know the ones, they come around every cup you buy. I used to keep them in a pile and reuse them when I could if I'd forgotten my fabric one or my reusable cup...

Anyhoo - we came up with - in an hour - the idea that they should be foldable, and when folded create a little starter seed pot. Here are our tests:

You can kind of see a few of our tests, here - we made a bunch of different variations to get 1-2 final designs and then 'planted' some little plants for our presentation of them...he he. I'm totally hoping to make these, myself, next time I get a paper sleeve: I kind of wish they came perforated to make this easily possible with every one!

Actually: I'm wishing that coffee houses everywhere world-wide would ban those darn horrible paper cups in the first place and force everybody to have/use a reusable cup. Did you know those paper cups aren't recyclable because they have plastic lining in them? Yep. Just think of how many everyday are thrown away. It's gross! It could be solved so simply, too. (sigh).

A Closer Look...

Here are a few more shots from my nature walk, the other day - from a closer perspective (these shots are always my favorites to do & see!)... :)























I could take photos like this all day...he he. :)

I love that there are still bright flowers here, and that everything's at that stage when things are dying for the winter, but still have a bit of the bright - like those rose-ish flowers, up there...such a lovely stage! Fall hasn't quite taken over everything and the sun still peeks out, so I'm still dreaming of camping - even though I know it's way too cold...lol.

What's your favorite part about this season?

I'm really loving getting more familiar with my camera outside, too...I now know what shot I want to get, and I can get it without taking 10 million shots before it - woo-hoo! lol. It' super nice to be getting to know my camera more and more. :) Yay!

Welp - off I go: homework for the night - study these natural beauties with my pencils and watercolours!