We had a lovely Christmas, just the four of us! I can’t believe that it’s been a week since, here are a few snapshots from the day:
I will make them wait at the top of the stairs until THEY have kids, LOL!
Stirling went right for his present basket!!! He gets SO EXCITED by all the unwrapping, he is ALL over the place! Towards the end of the day he was pushing unwrapped boxes with his nose, telling us to open them, it was hilarious!
Here he is intently watching Andrew open one of the presents for HIM! (Dog treats!)
Both boys are big fans of Dr. Who, and they also both have some favorite artists, so I was ecstatic to find these two tees that fit those favorite artists with the Tardis on them.
Liam got LOTS of DVDs, many of them operas. Just what he wanted!
Logan had more conventional wishes for Christmas, the biggest one being for a 3-doodler. Here he is opening it:
Here it is!
Liam was quite excited with this set of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, produced in Bayreuth, the Opera House built for the Ring Cycle!
Hubby’s been enjoying making different preserved meats this year, this book really excited him to try more!
Although photographing in this room is tough, the way the light enters combined with where people sit makes it tough, but I got a couple of lovely shots:
This is what it looks like when a kid, who DIDN’T ask for an iPad for Christmas, opens up a brown box and sees an iPad box inside:
Yep, he was uber surprised and super excited! He’s been using my first generation iPad on trips, we were planning to get him one for graduation/when he heads off to college. But just before the last trip he downloaded a movie to watch on the plane and we had to remove almost all the music, and I was like “no way! He needs his own iPad now!” There are so many apps that are useful for a musician, and I want him to be able to enjoy a little downtime on a plane trip, because he’s got SEVERAL coming up, without having to remove everything else. He spent the rest of the day getting all his music onto the ipad (what an awesome backup system if you ever lose a piece of music, right?) and has been using a recording app to record and play back what he’s practicing. Definately an awesome present!
The complete scores to all the Beatles songs! Our bass guitar playing kid has lots to play now!
After a lovely dinner, the next day saw me attacking the pantry, which was horrendous! A few hours later it looked like this:
And inspired me to bake a couple loaves of bread:
While I was doing that, hubby was working on my installing my new Christmas present, a zippy 4 TB hard drive. All was not smooth sailing with it! We had many things that looked like this:
But eventually (like after 2 days), We had a fresh, clean installation of Windows on the new drive, and all my software was reinstalled! That meant there was a lot of update installing:
But this gave me time to tidy up my studio! One year ago, I did a huge, 3-day purge, clean and re-organize of my studio, and it’s been working awesomely! I did a bit of tidying, and added some new things to the desktop and the studio was back to looking tip top!
I also got some great new speakers that allowed me to get rid of the sub-woofer on the floor:
Hubby made a riser for the left monitor: he cut a plywood circle the same size as the monitor stand at the right thickness so that both my monitors are the same height, then painted it black so it blends in and looks fabulous! (Also we velcroed the chip reader so it doesn’t move around).
I also made a new, custom shaped mouse pad /wrist rest covered with my hand dyed fabric. Oh, I also got my dream car, a Mini Cooper for Christmas – you can see it on the right! 😉
The desk looks GLORIOUS!
All too soon, it was New Year’s Eve! We spent the evening slowly eating dim sum and Peking duck, it was delicious!
And now, it’s back to reality! I hope your holiday had plenty of down time and time for friends, family, and good food!