Mondays

I've got some good news, and some bad news. First the bad news, so that I get it out of my system and can dwell on the good stuff.

I recently reconnected with an "old" friend from when I lived in London, who is now living in Paris. Since I work with Paris, speak French, and am basically obsessed with all things french (despite disapproving of their social policies), it wasn't hard for her to convince me to visit. I'm trying to plan a trip over Thanksgiving but I hit a slight snag with $1400 dollar airfare... so I need to do some serious searching to find something more affordable. I need to start planning these things further in advance next time!

Okay! On the good stuff:
My new blogging friend Beatrice mentioned me on her blog, and linked over here. Plus she posted an update on this enormous dragon piece she's stitching... since I couldn't possibly stitch something so large myself, it's very fun to see how others are progressing on them. It's very inspiring. Thanks Beatrice!

My not-as-new friend JS is getting married in June, and she IMed me this morning to tell me about her upcoming engagement party. We started chatting about her shower (I've already got the perfect project picked out as a gift), and asked me to be a bridesmaid! I really like JS & her fiance, and it's my first time as a bridesmaid, so I'm totally psyched. I really can't post more about this yet, but you'll hear updates in future posts. Also, any advice on bridesmaiding would be much appreciated! JS is usually the one I ask about wedding etiquette.

Moving away from the good news/bad news thing...
A couple of years ago my mom used her best friend's son's upcoming marriage as an excuse to get in shape, gave herself 8 months to do it and accomplished her goals for fitness and weight in about 4 months. I'm thinking of using JS's wedding (and the fact that I'm in it) as the same kind of push towards dieting and getting more in shape. My mom hit the gym for like 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week, and I definitely wouldn't be able to do that! I figured out that I have 34 weeks, so if I set up a plan with more-reasonable weekly goals, it's totally doable. I'll have to get back to you all on what exactly those goals will be, but they involve yoga once a week, more bicycling, and less chocolate :(

This getting-in-better-shape plan is NOT shaping up the be one of the fun adventures. Moving away from such depressing thoughts as less chocolate!

I've given up on finding a nice, non-cliche'd Jewish-themed wedding sampler pattern for my cousin who got married a couple of weeks ago. So I think I'm designing my own. Going for the non-cliche thing, I'm going to use a line from the last and most *famous* of the 7 blessings from the Sheva Brachot (for a decent translation of the actual blessings try here) . It's going to be in Hebrew since that's clearly what they'd prefer (and we all speak/read Hebrew well), and then I'll stitch their names and the English & Hebrew dates of the wedding on it somewhere.

I'm still trying to come up with some good graphics to go along with the text. It's really hard since a lot of the *traditional* wedding iconography is innappropriate (crosses, churches, church bells) or doesn't apply. What is up with doves? And she's allergic to wheat, so there was no wedding cake. What am I supposed to do, stitch a broken plate, broken glass, and bottle of wine? I might just go with flowers. Or a chupah. I could do their chupah! It was really tastefully decorated with just the right amount of flowers, and we took more than enough photos (from the front row) for me to put something together. And then it's have flowers. Hmmm

Blog-therapy seems to be working for me today, so I'll leave you with this for now. Here's hoping we all accomplish some of our goals today!