The Fair 2010

If you have read this post, you already know that one thing I look forward to every year is volunteering in the Home Arts building at the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair. This year I was a bit more bold with my picture-taking, so I have a few to share!

First up, a little insight into a day-in-the-life of a Home Arts Registrar. We sit at long tables covered in brown Kraft paper, with our clipboards and supplies at the ready. As each entrant gets their paperwork in order, they come to us to log each of their entries and affix an identifying tag to their piece(s). I love the tags, and we hand-write each one (note my number in the upper right corner here, that is critical for when the chair people of each department (hand knitting, baked goods, quilting, etc.) inevitably come out and fix something entered in err):



So we fill out the little tag, coding it with the (hopefully) right department, division, and class number, then the runners come and carefully transport each piece to the proper destination. There were loads of runners this year, and they are absolutely adorable. So enthusiastic about their jobs. They hover, hoping that the next item might be theirs to carry back.

Of course we get to see the entries as they come through - here are a few that stood out for me this time around:

Knit veggies



Multi-color knit scarf



Other entries of note (not pictured) were this really cool carved-looking coconut pound cake baked by a Marine in his toaster oven (because his oven broke), an 88" cross stitch of a giraffe and her calf that this gentleman worked on from Labor Day 2002-July 2010, a southwest-style armadillo, and a tiny purple marzipan hippo.

These turtles were my favorite entry from last year:



Finally, no trip to the fair is complete without a visit to the Cheese Barn ("Big Cheese") for a grilled cheese sandwich:



I'm already looking forward to next year :)

Wedding Planning

Since Dan and I became engaged April 30, 2009, we have slowly week-by-week, month-by-month been discussing, sketching, clipping, arguing about, and finalizing all sorts of ideas related to our upcoming wedding. Although there have been a few difficult moments (deciding which day of the week we will get married, trying to find a dress (blech), and wrestling with Kinkos and their ever-broken printing and cutting machines to get our RSVP cards printed), on the whole, we have had a really great time planning this special event together.

This is a picture of the bulletin board in our apartment:



And we have exactly 10 weeks left to figure out the rest of the details. Should be a fun time :)

Pussy, Dan's Bike Gear, and Baby Sara

One of our favorite pastimes at our apartment is hanging out with our landlords' cat, Edina, who Dan affectionately calls "Pussy." Here she is enjoying the view from our front step:



Dan really enjoys biking to work, and the other day I coaxed him into a quick picture of him in his bike gear:



Finally, here is a pic of our friends Jenny and Dave's new baby girl Sara, in the arms of her Aunt Jackie: