Lucky Lindy

Years ago my mother gave me a cute woven throw for Christmas that was covered with teddy bears.  These were not just any bears, they were Very Important Bears which was a line of collectible teddies that represented famous people - Abearham Lincoln, Lady Libearty, Bearie Antoinette, etc.  They started selling the bears in 1986 with Amelia Bearhart as the first release.  I was never a collector of the bears when they were being sold but my mother thought the throw was cute AND that I collected teddy bears (I don't) and it did spark my interest in one particular bear.

Unfortunately I never saw any bears for sale in person and the VIBs stopped selling by the early 90s so I figured I would never see Charles Lindbeargh in person...

UNTIL - recently I found the throw again and became fixated on ol' Lindy (I'm going through an aviation phase) and now there's the Internet and EBAY!  With a little research I learned that the bears have gone up in price on the secondary market but Lindy was pretty reasonably priced, (as opposed to Amelia Bearhart who goes for over $1000!) so I could hope that one day I'd find him.  And then it happened, that thing that Ebay-ers dream about - an underpriced collectible with no reserve and no other bidders!

I did a little more research about the outfit because you don't usually see Lindy pictured in a flight suit (at least I hadn't) but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the VIB company had done their homework



Now I've got my sights on Amelia Bearhart



resolutions revisited

By this time of the year most people have forgotten about their January resolutions and I'm no different so I thought it might be a good idea for me to revisit a couple of the lofty goals I set forth just a couple of months ago.

1. sing as much as possible, even if it's only in the car or shower but even better, look for opportunities to let your inner diva come out and play

I'm actually doing this!  Yay me!  I started with a new choir at the end of January.  We meet on Monday nights and will give a small concert in May.  There are approximately 25 members and it's a good mix of all 4 parts so no one group (sopranos) dominates.  There are no diva opportunities yet although my ears did perk up when the director mentioned the need for someone to solo the first verse of Fly Me To The Moon for the singalong at the end of the concert.  I do love my Sinatra. 


Of course, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the whole thing.  I've never been a big fan of this particular director's teaching style so I have to talk myself into attending each rehearsal and then I sit there in frustration while we go over and over little, tiny bits of the songs.  I love singing because it makes me feel happy and free, which is impossible when you only get to sing 2 words before being interrupted.  We've been there for almost 2 months and we have get to sing one single song all the way through.  But when we finally do get to do an entire verse, it's magic so I guess it'll all be worth it in the end.  Of course, you'll need to remind me of this next Monday afternoon when I start trying to come up with excuses to miss rehearsal.
 
3. make more healthy choices than unhealthy but don't regret the unhealthy, if you're going to cheat on your diet then you might as well enjoy every moment



Considering I just had a deep-fried tortilla drizzled with honey and powdered sugar for lunch, I may need to work a little on the healthy choices but I sure loved every bite so I'm keeping up with half the resolution.  Yay me again.
 
6. discard anything (clothes, clutter, situations, people) that takes away from being adorable


This only works if the discardee is within your control so there are roadblocks in the adorable road for sure but I'm working on the stuff that I do control.  It's slow going though, clutter is stubborn.  Tomorrow I tackle the closet.  I had been hoping to wait on that project until I was in a position to buy new clothes because I have a feeling that once I discard anything that isn't working for me, I might end up nekkid.  However, I've decided to go ahead and empty out the closet now just because I'm tired of things that have outlived their usefulness.
 
As for other resolutions - they are all works in progress...hey, I've got a whole year!

Marking Milestones

Recently we passed the 2 month mark with Shifu! It's hard to believe he's only been with us for 2 months, it seems likes he's always been around. Maybe that's because he acts more and more like Jasper every day. It's hard to imagine 2 dogs that could have less in common, size and breed wise, and yet the personalities and actions are eerily similar. But beyond that, he just makes us laugh every day. He doesn't walk through the house, he bounces and flies. He gets these bursts of energy and just runs around like his butt is on fire.

A couple of other milestones to mention - 8 months since Jasper died. It still feels like yesterday.

That also makes it 8 months since our 25th anniversary. I don't expect anybody to understand my feelings on this and in the scope of all that was happening 8 months ago this is a very unimportant thing but it still hurts that life conspired against my anniversary celebration. I had been looking forward to July 2011 for years, I had been planning the perfect celebration for at least 3 years. Of course the definition of "the perfect celebration" changed over the years, partly because of my changing ideas and partly because resources changed. At first I wanted to take a few people on a cruise, then it was just going to be the 2 of us on a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 (we had that one booked and it was going to be fabulous), then we were going to have a party at a favorite inn in California where Jasper would have been able to join us...guess it's good that one didn't work out. Then I thought we were going to be living in Florida so we finally settled on a very small dinner party at a favorite restaurant at Disney World. It was hard to select just a few guests (very small private dining room,) there were so many more I would love to have invited, but we got it done and had a wonderful meeting with the chef and the pastry chef. We got to custom design an amazing cake and I was so excited about it. The pastry chef was inspired by my ideas and promised that it would be a masterpiece.

Since all of our guests were traveling to Florida for the party, the theme was travel and here was one of the inspiration pictures for the cake



I love vintage luggage

Our cake would have been 2 suitcases with a round hatbox on top. I spent hours scanning old travel stickers for the tops and sides. This was my favorite


A great place for afternoon tea or to try a Singapore Sling

I also put all of my (non-existent) crafting skills to work and came up with a couple of favor ideas that I was really proud of.  Here was the monogram I created to go on all the various favors.

And my very favorite part - I had just finished ordering personalized M&Ms with our picture and monogram in my favorite colors of turquoise, pink and lavender when I got the call that I had to come back to California because Jasper was sick (I was already in Florida getting ready for the party) and we would have to cancel everything. Luckily the M&M people were wonderful when I called and they canceled everything with no charge. Wish I could say the same for everyone else. ;-)

The thing I really didn't want was for our 25th anniversary to slip by with no particular celebration because once it's gone, that moment can never be recreated.  Guess you could call that rather ironic, wouldn't you say?

I'm sure there will be other parties so don't be surprised if that suitcase cake makes an appearance.  The favors I created are sitting in a box in Florida in a corner somewhere so they might be used again.  Hey, it's only 4 more years till our 30th.