Have a sweet New Year!

From our family.... to yours!

In case you were wondering, our family now includes this cute little stuffed dog, who I got at Build a Bear for my birthday. Her name is Clarissa Doggie, and she's basically an estrogen explosion.

Note the close-up:
Hee!

We tried the same dress on a stuffed woolly mammoth, but it just didn't suit. Too much hair.


See what I mean?

But I digress. In other news, tonight is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. A few things on my mind this time of year:

1. Sweet things. Challah with cinnamon sugar, cranberry crunch and rhubarb crumble, apples and honey tarts and madelbrot (an old Yiddish version of biscotti that other people sometimes find boring and I find awesome), oatmeal cookies and brownies and more.

2. New things. It's a custom to try a new food on rosh Hashana. Unfortunately, I just remembered this custom, which means that my poor husband will probably spend 2 hours tomorrow trying to find a pomegranate and/or starfruit and miss his shower. Oy.

3. Growth. The Jewish new year is like tax day for the soul--how have I been doing? Am I in the red or the black? Am I better person than I was last year? How can I be better next year? I am humbled by realizing all the areas where I need to grow, but gratified that I HAVE changed certain aspects of myself for the better.

4. Change. Every year at this time, I marvel at everything that's changed since I last stood before G-d listening to the shofar. In 2007, I prayed for clarity, as I held onto a dying relationship like a raft. And in 2008, I prayed for my upcoming marriage to a different man, who gave me all the things I had been missing.

Since I don't use the computer on the holiday (which goes from Wednesday at sundown to Saturday night), I'm going to fall off the face of the earth for a while, but I hope you all have a wonderful week!

In the Midst of the Pre-Shabbos Crazies...

I know most of you reading this blog aren't familiar with Orthodox Judaism, but I'll give you a little crash course on the Jewish Sabbath here.


On the Sabbath, we don't cook, use electricity, rip paper towels, watch TV, check email, etc. We do pray, eat, sing, read books, have long conversations (because no one has anywhere they need to run to), look at photo albums, sit out in the sun, and more.


But for all of this good stuff to happen, you have to hustle on Fridays. On an average Friday I study for the bar, cook a three course meal, clean a good chunk of the apartment, call everyone in my family, blog, and set the lights/rip paper towels/tidy up. And get myself dressed, too:).


It's always a little insane, and there's the special-for-Orthodox-Jews Murphy's Law that says that if something has to go wrong, it will be a half hour before sundown on Friday. But I love it. So I decided to pop in and mention that:)

On a totally different topic, I made this page for my first challenge at the Who's That Girl blog. You can check out the other great pages and my journaling at this link!

And, continuing with the Jewish theme, I was excited to design for Crafting Jewish Style this month! My projects are up on their blog!

What are your plans this weekend for the Fourth??

Why I Disappeared from the Internet for Two Random Days

Lately, I begin a lot of posts with some variation of "why I haven't been around." Not a good sign! But my terrible-horrible-no good-very bad semester is coming to a close, so I should be able to post on this guy more often.



But my excuse for this week is a good one! From Tuesday night to Thursday night we were celebrating Shavuos, a Jewish holiday. It's a holiday celebrating the Jews receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai a long time ago.


It's also a holiday celebrating cheese--although I can't remember why (if you do, inform me, please!)

We eat a lot of cheesecake on Shavuos. S and I bought a 14-slice cheesecake sampler with all different flavors just for the two of us. It was sick.

It was taunting me from the fridge, so if you live in my apartment building, you will find a cheesecake sampler with a sign saying "free" on the table in the lobby.


So that's Shavuos in a nutshell--Torah and cheesecake.

And finally....I have something exciting to show you next week!

Can anyone guess what it is?

Scrapbook Pages and a Very Clean Fridge

THIS is what my refrigerator looks like after all my hard work:


Scrubbed squeaky clean and all ready to be filled with my favorite Passover treats: chocolate covered matzah, jelly citrus shaped candy, matzah with cream cheese and honey, salad ingredients....mmmm.

However, I will mourn the loss of the Barton's kosher for Passover candy company. It just went out of business last year and now I will never have another almond kiss! (If you've ever not eaten normal food for 8 days I'm sure you can relate to the importance of a decent wrapped to-go candy.)


And now, for an actual scrapbook page:

This one documents our trip to--guess where? You got it! Cancun. We went for the weekend to celebrate S's cousins' wedding in February. I'm planning to use this page as an opener for more detailed pages about the trip--hence, the lack of journaling.

I used the Honeycomb add-on from Studio Calico's March kit, with the alpha and sun wood veneer coming from the main. I sprayed the veneer with sunflower mist. I had such fun making this page!

And finally, since the sun fled after I took the above photo, a sneaky of things to come:

Thanks for visiting! Hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Masks, Candy and a Scrapbook Page

This past weekend was a Jewish holiday called Purim. One of my favorite holidays EVER. Although I think it will be way more fun with kids one day!

Costumes are a big part of Purim! While S and I were lame-o in the costume department, we did decorate some animal masks at a synagogue dinner, as seen above. Not bad, eh?


Another Purim tradition--which I LOVE--is sending out gifts of food and treats to friends. It's awesome because (a) each package comes wrapped really cute, often with a theme--our neighbors did a numbers theme, we did a school one, complete with brown paper bags and juice boxes and (b) You feel loved.

Oh, and (c), you end up with your dining room table covered with candy. I probably should have mentioned that first.

Finally, on Purim we eat these three-cornered cookies called hamentashen which connect to the story behind the holiday. S and I had so much fun making these and filling them with every possible filling I could find in the pantry: a few kinds of jam, chocolate spread, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, and numerous combinations of the above.

And the finished product (some exploded in the oven, but you get the idea):

And now that you're wondering what sort of blog you happened upon, here's a scrapbook page!

This one, about my grandmother, has been mulling around in my head for a while. I love Studio Calico's new Anthology line and used it below, plus some little tidbits from the January and February kits.

Whew. And that's all folks!

I want to get to know my readers more! What's your favorite holiday?

A Little Recent. Scrappiness

Made the two pages above this week.

The top page is about our first apartment in Philadelphia, where we lived from our marriage in December of '08 until May. In this little box of an apartment (really a little box--you had to walk through the bathroom to get from living room to bedroom) we had our first taste of married life, hosted our first Shabbos meals, and learned about each other and ourselves. We lived in West Philly across from a 7-11, and used the curtains in the photo to hide the neon signs! I was glad to move to a bigger place, but nostalgic about leaving our first home together.

The next page is about hair covering. For those of you who don't know, Orthodox Jewish women cover their hair when married. I wear scarves, wigs, bandanna-thingies, you name it. This page describes my feelings as I adjusted to this new routine.