Post That Isn't What It Should Be

Today is Friday, and it was supposed to be the next and possibly last post in my series of posts on my work space. Unfortunately I am not feeling so well this evening--not horribly sick like I was earlier this month, but enough that I feel like taking it easy tonight. Really, I just don't feel like cleaning up the rest of my craft room to make it photographable. XD

I will be spending my evening with Sophie (now one month old), and we will be watching Pride and Prejudice--the A&E version from 1995. There's nothing like an evening enjoying Colin Firth. =P My husband and my three boys are off camping--I'll take wagers on how early they come back tomorrow considering how hot it is supposed to be. We have our D&D game for June tomorrow, so they will be back by 1-2 at the latest. I am expecting them well before lunch though personally.

Since I am not feeling so sick that I can do nothing but lay on the couch, I have also brought my laptop downstairs out of my craft room, so I can do some work on the computer while watching Pride and Prejudice and delighting in its witty banter. Maybe I'll actually get my website updated--it desperately needs it. Otherwise, I plan on working on some new artwork and maybe taking a nap. =P

Random thought: right now, I am near the middle to end of the first disc of Pride and Prejudice and Lizzy is visiting Lady Catherine in Kent. Lady Catherine reminds me of a froofy lap dog--not sure why, but it's an impression I've had since the very first time I watched the series. The scenes where Darcy visits Lizzy where it's just the two of them in this part of the movie are some of my favorite scenes in the whole movie. I think the film does an excellent job capturing the awkwardness of their relationship at that point in the story. A lot of books don't translate well to film, and especially not taken word for word from the book. However, I think this is one of the exceptions. I think that might be partially because one of the greatest strengths in Jane Austin's work is the dialogue and character interaction. A&E's rendition of Pride and Prejudice keeps nearly all of the dialogue from the book and allows for time for character and relationship development.

I like stories that are primarily character-driven, which is probably why I like Jane Austin so much. Another character driven story that I've greatly enjoyed is the Rose of the Prophet trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I also happen to really enjoy watching men in 19th century formal clothing. Anyone have any suggestions for good books with character-driven stories? I might be interested in a movie or two as well, although I do prefer books.

Wednesday WIP: Vol. 30

It's been a busy week in my world, although sadly a lot of that busy was working on art projects. Still, there has been some progress since last week. =) There's nothing really new as far as sewing projects go. I helped alter a dress a good friend of mine wanted to wear to a wedding this week, but I don't think that counts. XD I do have a little bit done on my Rarity plushie. I am almost finished building her eyes. =) It may not sound like a lot, but cutting all those little tiny pieces out of felt and making it so they don't disintegrate takes a fair amount of time. Pictured below is what I have finished of her eyes. The final size is about 1"x1" to give you an idea of how small the pieces I am working with are.

The bulk of my progress over the last week was on the Final Fantasy VI noir commission. It is finished. =D

I have also gotten a little work done on new art. Getting back to the Hunger Games bookmark/postcard set I've been working on, I have a sketch for my design for the 3rd outfit Cinna designed for Katniss.

I am hoping that over the next week I will have both the Rarity and Katniss projects finished and maybe even some work done on a few other things.

Brave

Sunday, I went with my and two youngest boys to watch Brave. I had mixed expectations going into the movie. I expected a decent amount of goofiness, similar to How to Train Your Dragon. After reading a review I saw linked on Twitter, I forget by who now (fail), I expected a standard Disney princess movie. The movie was made by Pixar, and although I don't generally love Pixar movies, they are reliably good enough to warrant watching at least once. In the end, I could sum all of this up and say I expected, at the very least, to be entertained.

How did Brave live up to my expectations? Well, there was plenty of humor along the lines of How to Train Your Dragon. I won't give away any spoilers, but the trailers can give you a fair idea of the kind of humor to expect, and unlike a lot of movies, the trailers don't give away all of the best scenes. =) Brave is not a standard Disney princess movie. Although it does have some elements of a princess movie, it misses others. One of the most noticeable elements missing is the prince. I admit to sitting through the entire movie wondering who the prince would be, how he'd be written in (and I saw spots where he could easily have been worked in), etc, but he never appeared. Brave was not a fairy tale search for true love--and face it most princess movies end up being about this even when they say they aren't. In spite of Brave's failure to meet this expectation (although some of my readers may see this as a good thing, the little girl in me who loves to dress up in pretty princess dresses and prance around and be spoiled by my soul mate still enjoys a good princess movie as unrealistic as they are), I still enjoyed the movie. As expected, Brave was good enough to warrant watching at least once. In fact, it will probably rank fairly high among Pixar movies--at least by my standards. In the end, all of this can be summed up to say that I was quite entertained by Brave.

Compliments to watching this movie... I have also decided that my husband and I are going to retire to Scotland in the next 20-25 years. I had made it clear to him the next time we move, it was going to have to be somewhere with cooler weather (nothing over 70 please) with mountains (the more rugged the better). We'd been bouncing around ideas for places to look at--no rush since, you know, 20-25 years is a good ways away. While watching the opening minutes of Brave it occurred to me that I could get exactly what I wanted in Scotland, and why hadn't I thought of looking outside of the United States in the first place? My decision was made about as quickly (and probably as rashly) as Flynn deciding he would have to have a castle in his first scene in the movie Tangled--love that movie by the way. For now, my husband is humoring me. Will this happen? I guess we'll see in about 20 years from now. XD

My Work Space III

It's time for the third installment in the post series on my new craft room. Today, I'm going to show you the two places where I spend most of my work time.

If you stand near the window in my craft room and look back toward the door heading out to the hallway, you will see two desks. Right now there's a lot of open wall space in this part of the room. I plan on putting up at least one bulletin board for posting ideas, reference pictures, and things like that. I also plan on putting up some art and decorations--like the really awesome panda bamboo wall scroll that my Mom got me for my birthday last week. =)

Let's start with the smaller one on the left. This is my sewing table. It is a place where I can leave my sewing machine out (permanently). On the left part of the desk, I have my thread rack. I would like to eventually have this actually hanging on the wall instead of just propped up next to it. Then, of course, is my sewing machine. Maybe one of these days I'll get a really nice machine that can do embroidery or something cool like that, but in the mean time, I'll take my el-cheapo machine from Walmart. It's lasted about 4 years now, so I can't complain too much. Just for reference, this is my third sewing machine since I started sewing--well saying all 3 were "mine" is stretching it a little. Technically the first machine belonged to my Mom. I broke that one making my oldest son's Artemis (Sailor Moon) costume. It didn't really like the faux fur. XD Anyways... next to the sewing machine is my Sailor Venus plushie that my best friend brought me back from the Japan area in San Fransisco. Sailor Venus is one of my favorite scouts--surprisingly it's because I have a thing for orange (not that you could tell or anything, but really orange doesn't sound like it'd go so well with Gothic Panda, so that's why there's purple all over everything, which is fine because I like purple too--yay for run-on ramblings). The drawers on the right end of the desk hold sewing supplies like cloth measuring tapes, extra needles for the sewing machine, various presser feet, scissors, and extra bobbins. Right now, I have references for the Soul Eater costume set taped up on the wall since I don't have the bulletin board to put up there yet.

The desk to the right of the door is my art space. Starting on the left, the drawer unit holds some paint, all my markers and colored pencils, as well as basic supplies like pencils, inking pens and erasers. My old flatbed scanner currently sits on top of those drawers. Moving on is a lamp that I don't think is even plugged in yet. Theoretically it's there for extra light in case I want to be up late at night drawing. It's entirely likely that I will put it to use at some point since most of my free time for art does come late at night--right now my schedule is a little wonky because of having a one-month old, but that will change (that's the thing with kids... they grow... fast). The area on the table in front of the lamp is supposed to be clear so that I have a clean flat surface to draw on since I still do all of my art with a pencil, at least initially. I still haven't gotten the hang of drawing on the computer from scratch. Maybe one of these days... In the mean time... I have a space to draw. In any case, I am planning to actually branch out and do a little bit more traditional art--mostly marker and colored pencil, but I'd like to play with some of my watercolors some more. =) Next to the lamp are the two chocobos my husband got me for my birthday last year. <3 Then, there's my laptop, which I currently have a love-hate relationship with. It's almost brand new, and it was supposed to replace my old laptop since the old one was having processor issues and was prone to crash, and even when it worked it would take a while to do anything (imagine having to wait 10+ minutes for an art file to simply open). The problem is that it has Windows 7 operating system, which is not compatible with most of the software I use. Fail. >_< We have a temporary fix for Photoshop that sort of works--my husband rigged the program to pretend I had Windows XP when I open that program. The tablet behaves with it now, and it doesn't crash quite as often as it was before. Still... it's annoying. I guess half the real problem is that I never update with the times. I'm content to stick with what I've been using, especially if it works; my version of Photoshop is about 8 years old, and it's done what I've wanted to up until now. Anyways... moving on. In front of my laptop is my Wacom tablet--probably the most awesome piece of technology I've invested in... well maybe 2nd most awesome. The most awesome would be the Wacom tablet I had before this one, but the wires in the cable for that one became frayed, which posed a problem since I work at a laptop and I tend to move it around the house based on where munchkins are--I could get the tablet to work, but it took a lot of delicate playing with the wire to do so. I ended up giving it to a friend who uses a desktop; she was able to finagle the cord to a position where it worked, and then she taped it down to her desk. =P (She does awesome stuff btw; you should check out her DeviantArt.) You know, I should probably not be writing right now; I'm sleepy, which means my writing is going to be incoherent and rambling. Ah well, at least this post will come out on the day it's supposed to this way, even if it would be a little more concise if I'd waited until tomorrow morning. =P Anyways, finally, on the right end of the desk, next to my laptop, is my new printer. Originally my flatbed scanner lived there. In theory, this particular printer can scan as well, although I haven't tried it yet. This was a purchase I'd been wanting to make for a little while now; being that I live in the middle of nowhere, it's about a 30 minute drive to get to the nearest office supply store where I can get my art printed at. That's a lot of time, gas, and wear and tear on my car every time I need to print something. Now I can print from home. This also I haven't actually made much use of beyond testing yet. XD I blame life circumstances that have prevented me from doing much of anything art related over the last month or so. =P I'd kind of like to put another bulletin board up above this desk as well to pin ideas and sketches for new art so I don't lose them. Also, underneath the printer are some drawers. Here I store paper, old sketchbooks, and other odd art-related, mostly paper-sized things.

Like the storage units I wrote about last week both of these desks came from Ikea. I think it was awesome how they were just the right sizes to fit one on each side of the door. So far, they've made great work spaces. These two spaces were two things I really wanted for this craft room since sewing and drawing are the two things I spend the most time doing. This way I have places where I can leave my sewing machine and computer, tablet and scanner/printer set up and still have space to work on other odd projects. I still have my big work table in the middle of the room, which I can use to cut out fabric for costumes (since I don't have to keep the sewing machine and stuff spread out there) or scrapbook or lay out quilts or whatever I want. I think the only thing that would make all this  more awesome (I am really excited to have this space) would be if I had more geeky crafty girl friends who lived near enough to me so we could have craft parties and share this space with--it's always more fun working with other people. I did have a mini-craft-party during our last D&D game. Three of us came upstairs with a laptop, which we connected via Skype (or some other similar program) to another laptop downstairs at the kitchen table where the rest of the group was playing, so we still participated in the game while working on cosplays and plushies. XD

Wednesday WIP: Vol. 29

This is going to be a light week on updates. I have spent pretty much all of my art time over the last week working on trying to finish up that commission. Really, I just didn't get a lot of art time this past week, and so all of it went to the commission, since that has the highest priority on my to-do list.

Right now, the picture is pretty much finished. I need to fill in the details on the cards on the table Locke, Terra, and Setzer are at, and I need to fill in the details for the menu Gogo is holding. After that, I want to go through and clean up things a little bit, but once that's done, the whole thing will be finished (finally--not that it's a project I don't like, but it's taken a lot longer than I would have liked to finish).

Soul Eater

While spending much of May feeling ill, one of the things I did was watch through Code Geass and Soul Eater. While dealing with being sick this month, I watched Blue Exorcist. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting my opinions on these series, starting with Soul Eater.

Soul Eater follows Maka, Black Star, and Death the Kid, three student technicians--the licensed version of Soul Eater may use a different term; our copy is a fansub that we purchased before the series was picked up by Funimation. Each of the three main characters is paired up with a weapon, an entity that can switch between human form and the form of a weapon of some sort. Maka is paired with Soul, a scythe, and the character who the series is named after; even after watching the whole series, I'm not 100% sure why it follows him. Black Star is paired with Tsubaki, the one weapon in the series who can take on multiple forms. Death the Kidd is paired with Liz and Patty, a pair of guns. At the start of the series, we learn that a weapon is supposed to hunt down 99 Kishin--best translation I can guess at is corrupted--souls and eat them; then they are to hunt down a witch, kill her, then eat her soul. This process qualifies them to be a Death Scythe, which contrary to what the name would suggest does not have to be a scythe. This is the premise the series starts with, but it quickly diverges from this potentially formulaic plot line.

On the plus side, this made the plot more interesting and less predictable. On the down side, it moved away from that so quickly that it lost relevancy. That goal quickly takes a back seat to the main plot which involves a pair of witch sisters. It is worth adding here that the 99 corrupted souls need to be consumed before the single witch's soul, and doing it out of order resets the count, as does consuming anything other than a Kishin soul or a witch's soul. This further removes relevancy from the initial premise for Soul Eater. I won't go into a lot of detail on the actual plot to avoid spoilers, but I will give my opinion of it. I think it was decently interesting, but at times it was hard to follow, left a lot of unanswered questions, and seemed to have a lot of parts that didn't fit well with the overall story. I still enjoyed the series, even if I felt the plot had problems. The characters were fun, and although it has some dark moments, the series overall has a light-hearted feel to it; at times, it even crosses into the realm of completely ridiculous. I won't say it was my favorite series, but it was worth watching. I might try rewatching it if I can get my hands on a licensed copy because it's entirely possible that some of my confusion of the plot was from a bad translation.

My Work Space II

When I attempted to restart my blog last May, I started posting about my new craft room. I meant to spend the Fridays in May posting about this. Obviously that didn't happen, but picking up where I left off, I will be writing on my work space today, since it's Friday. =)

I love my work space, and here is one big reason why. When you walk in to my craft room and look to the wall on the right, I have two large storage units. There are three drawers at the bottom of each unit. The left unit drawers contains all of my scrap fabric neatly folded and relatively accessible, especially when compared to previous methods of storing scrap fabric. Those methods have ranged from large garbage bags to gigantic plastic bins. The older systems were cumbersome and finding a specific piece of fabric was a challenge, not to mention both systems were messy--fabric wouldn't usually stay folded. With the drawers, folded pieces of fabric are at most 2 layers deep, so I don't have to do a lot of digging to find things. On the right unit, the drawers contain all my yarn; the bottom drawer is a little messy because one of my cats has discovered how to open it, and at night, he likes to select a "kill" and deposit the dead yarn ball at the door to my bedroom, usually along with 1-2 socks (singles, not matches) and an odd pair of underwear pilfered from one of the kids' laundry baskets. My goal over the next year is to use enough of that yarn to reduce it to 1 drawer, and then I'd like to use the other 2 drawers for more scrap fabric--I still have 2 buckets of scrap fabric that needs to be sorted, folded and put away.

Above the drawers, in both units, are four shelves. These shelves contain my in-progress project buckets and odd costume accessories. The project buckets were an idea I started about 10 years ago, although it's only been in the last 2 years that I've actually started using it effectively. Each bucket contains all the materials for one project, whether it's a costume, a quilt, an afghan or whatever. This way, when I want to work on something, all I need to do is pull out the bucket for a project, work on it, and then when I'm finished working, I put all materials and progress back in the bucket and return it to the shelf. When the system works, it means I spend less time looking for things or trying to remember where I left patterns (or zippers, or any other small thing that I could easily misplace). There are a few projects sitting loose on the shelves, mainly because I ran out of my project buckets--maybe it's a sign I need to go back and finish a few things--although there is one project that would not fit in one of the smaller buckets.

In between the shelves, I installed a closet bar. Here I have hung up all of my finished, or mostly finished, costumes that I plan on wearing in the near future. I would need considerably more space to store all of my completed costumes from the last 12 years. I've also hung up some of my favorites from my collection of kids cosplays--like Logan's Edward Elric costume that he wore when he was 3 and Ty's Vash the Stampede costume which he wore at 3 as well. In the collection of cosplays that I have kept out are both of my Ragnarok Online costumes (priestess and high priestess), my husband's Ragnarok Online high wizard costume, my husband's Link my Zelda, my White Mage robe, my Fluttershy and our Mai and Zuko A:tLA costumes. There are a few others hanging up there, but that's most of them. Believe it or not, I have two enormous buckets of costumes packed up in the garage. XD I should probably get rid of some of them, but I have a hard time letting go of things like that.

I got both of these storage units from the closet section at Ikea. The biggest challenge to installing these units was the fact that I left the back off of them; I wanted the purple on my walls to show through where the back would show. This made the units slightly unstable. After trying several things to stabalize them we ended up just nailing them into the wall, and even that took several tries because of how the units were built and where the wall studs were. In the end though, it worked out, and I am exceptionally happy with how they came out.

Wednesday WIP: June Part I

It's been a crazy month since I last posted a real WIP post, and sad to say, I don't have a whole lot new to actually post here, especially considering how much time has gone by since the last post.

Anyways, let's go with some updates to what I've been working on--much the same as what I was working on last time. Let's start with the plushies. Last month I started working on a set of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic plushies for Animazement's Art Show. We did not make it to Animazement, mostly because of little Sophie, but also because I spent so much of May sick that I wasn't able to finish either the plushies or planned costumes for the convention. The weekend before the convention we decided to cut our losses, canceled the hotel room, and stayed home Memorial Day weekend for the first time in 13 years (this will probably be a post topic for another day). I am still going to finish this set of plushies. They are still going to be one-of-a-kind. I will probably put them in Anime Weekend Atlanta's auction or maybe I'll do something online. In any case, here is a photo of the progress on that project: Twilight Sparkle is finished, although I may go back and redo parts of her mane; the other six planned ponies have most of their parts made--I still need to make their eyes and cutie marks, assemble the pieces, and add their manes and tails.

 
Along with the My Little Pony plushies, I was also working on a set of Soul Eater costumes for my family for Animazement. Once it became clear we weren't going to make it to the convention, I slowed down work on these. Generally speaking, most of these costumes are still piles of fabric. I have started Soul, although so far, about all I have is a little bit of progress on his jacket. I might have these done by the end of summer.... Maybe. XD

Then, I was working on that epic noir-themed Final Fantasy VI poster. That's still not finished. >_< It's really close though. My biggest problem right now is Photoshop. For every minute of decent work I get, I have to spend 5 minutes waiting for Photoshop to reload the file because it crashed and then I have to redo that one minute of work, or I'm waiting 3-6 minutes for the file to save before I can move onto the next minute of work. You'd think this was exaggeration, but sadly it's not. We thought we'd fixed the problem, but for whatever reason it reverted back after one session of good behavior. It's been incredibly frustrating. On the plus side, this project is almost finished. I need to add the rest of the color behind the picture and then do some minor touching up.

I have plans for a few other odd things. I am working on a set of My Little Pony human-form badges. I started this back at Anime USA last year, and I added two more character sketches at Magfest. These aren't necessarily new WIPs, but it's a project I'm going to be trying to finish up this summer. I'm also going to be working on finishing the Hunger Games bookmark and postcard set I started before we moved (for the last time). I've finished the designs for Katniss on the chariot debuting as the Girl on Fire and Katniss at her first Interview. the next one I am going to work on will be Katniss at her interview after she one the games in the first book. I've got a really cute design in mind, and I can't wait to get it down on paper. On top of those fanart projects, I am also working on a new original art set for Anime Weekend Atlanta--all I have for this set now though is scribbles and ideas, so no pictures to go with it yet, but I'm hoping that will change by next week. =) These are the main projects I'm working on (well more like my main secondary projects). There are also a myriad of smaller side projects that I'm kind of playing around with--as if I don't have enough to work on, but this kind of thing really suits my short attention span. This means though, now that I'm mostly settled, mostly well (and hopefully that stays that way), no longer pregnant and exhausted (believe it or not, even with reduced amounts of sleep being up with Sophie, I still have more energy), and done with distractions like travel and family events, which although fun, don't make ideal times to get work done, the Wednesday WIP posts for this summer should be filled with all kinds of fun and exciting things. =)

WIP: Special Edition

Back on May 7, I wrote that I was going to be back to posting regularly on my blog. Given that the last post was May 14, that clearly failed. =P

So, what happened? Well I spent a lot of time sick. I spent some time traveling--we went to Florida for a family reunion and a side trip to Disney thanks to my parents and to Oak Island, NC for my brother-in-law's wedding. I also had a baby somewhere in that mix.

Now, this post is titled "WIP: Special Edition" so this post isn't really about where I disappeared to for the last 4 weeks... at least not directly. The weekend before the baby was born I posted on Facebook that we had decided to cancel our trip to Animazement because baby #4 hadn't arrived yet--I didn't want to have the baby at the convention (if it still hadn't come by that the following weekend) or have a less than 1 week old baby at an anime convention--I think that'd be a bit much for a baby just a couple of days old. That post prompted a response from a long-time convention friend of mine who didn't even know we were expecting another baby. I posted I think once on Facebook sometime back in the Fall shortly after we found out it was on its way. Why didn't I say more? Well, my Facebook page, this blog, and most other places I lurk in the social networking world are devoted to my art and craft projects. I usually try and keep most personal and family stuff separate. I include a little, but I see this more as my art blog as opposed to a blog about my kids. Anyways, my friend's post made me think that maybe I should say a little bit more on that subject. =P So, this blog is a special edition work in progress post devoted to our newest addition to our family.

Shortly after my Facebook post announcing the cancellation of our Animazement trip, on Tuesday, May 22 at 2:47 in the morning, baby #4 was born. I won't go into too much detail on that process--if you really want to know, message me, and I'll be happy to share. The biggest surprise for almost everyone there was that, baby #4 was a girl. In 3 generations of Cashmans, Sophie is only the 3rd girl--my husband's aunt, his little sister, and now Sophie. She is the 6th kid in her generation and the 1st girl. Another thing that also surprised me was how tiny she was. Sophie was born 2 weeks past her due date. My boys were 1-2 weeks early. My boys ranged from 7.5 to 8.5 pounds at birth; Sophie was only 6.5 pounds. I have to say, especially considering how late she was, I had really expected a much larger baby.

This subject does lead into one of the few subjects that can really get me riled up--I know a lot of women's health and women's rights topic category focus on the right to choose whether or not to have a child (i.e., abortion issue), but I think a sorely neglected topic that falls under that category is a woman's right to choose how to have her children. Sophie was born at home with a midwife in attendance. Right now, in my state, that is illegal. Technically, it is not illegal for me--I can have my baby anywhere--but it is illegal for midwives to attend homebirths, which indirectly makes it illegal for me because it would be irresponsible of me to intentionally have my baby at home with no health care professional in attendance. There are several certified midwives who still choose to practice in my state, but they risk jail time if, for instance, an emergency situation arose and I needed to be transferred to a hospital--hospital workers are required to call the police for the midwife to be arrested. Rights have also been restricted for midwives to practice within the hospital system. A lot of this is because of money. Midwives encourage more natural remedies, will support a mother's right to a natural unmedicated birth, and typically only recommend medical intervention when absolutely necessary--mother or baby is in danger. This means hospitals don't make as much money off of births attended by midwives, and of course they don't make anything off of homebirths. I recognize that a homebirth is not for everyone; some people have higher risk pregnancies or are disinclined to attempt a natural birth. I have my personal reasons for why I chose that way. In any case, I think it should be a valid (and legal) option for women; we should not be forced to go to a hospital or have unnecessary interventions pushed on us if we do not want them. Anyways, that's one of my soapbox subjects. XD I promise I'll keep my blog generally less political than this post.

Anyways, I am incredibly excited to have a littler girl. We really expected a boy, so much so that we hadn't even bothered to pick out a girl middle name--we chose not to find out what we were having when we had an ultrasound done back in the spring. We only had the girl's first name picked out because we had chosen it several years ago--the kind of thing where we liked the name and decided if we ever did have a girl, we'd like to name her that. We did eventually pick out a middle name--it's Arianna by the way. I have a billion cosplays planned for her. =D As cute as the boys' cosplays are, I am going to have so much fun making little girl cosplays. Her first costume, which will debut at Anime Weekend Atlanta this year, will be a little panda (technically not a girl costume) to match my panda lolita costume. When she gets a little older, I'll probably make a lolita-style costume for her to wear. Next, she'll be cosplaying as Blair (in cat form) for our family Soul Eater costume set. I'm sure there will be at least one Sailor Scout in there somewhere. =P I'm going to stop here before I start giggling maniacally and wake her up--she sleeping next to me right now. =) I'm going to conclude with the first picture I got of her--later on the morning of the 22nd after I'd gotten a short nap.