February 22nd, 2021

I cannot believe how fast February is going by. For what it's worth, I may be complaining about the winter, but this one is going by super fast....and I'm fine with it. I'm currently on my last stretch of days off before the puppy comes. Life is about to get super crazy after this so I'm reminding myself to take the restful days when I can get them. I've tried to be productive this week though since I have quite the to-do list. 

So we already talked about my finishing the blanket project. The next project I tackled was building a Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron. This thing was a total impulse buy that I made back in December out of grief. It was one of those things where my husband wanted to go to the Lego store, I said yes, and then my female brain kicked in and said that it was not leaving the store without a set to build. I'm not smart enough to be able to build my own from scratch, so we stick to the sets because they come with instructions. Personally, when I'm in the mood, I find it soothing. It comes with instructions so you literally just spend an afternoon putting the thing together and voila, all the bricks just go together in a way that makes sense. I wasn't a huge Lego person as a child, but I bought Matt a set for his birthday one year and things kind of took off from there. Took off to the point where we're going to need a bigger house soon for all of our Lego. It's so bad that we've had to take sets apart so we can make room for more. It's also rather of an expensive addiction....

Here's the other thing with me......I don't like the small Lego sets. They have to be the big sets that I can spend a lot of time sinking my teeth into. I'm the same way with books. I don't judge books by their covers, I judge them by their page count. I just really like projects that will last, ok?! So, instead of buying Dom's charger, which would be the more obvious choice since I love Fast and Furious, I went with the Bugatti which had triple the number of pieces. AND I told Matt that I was going to tackle it all on my own. Oh yeah, I was deep in grief for this one, so deep that I fired the guy that helps me find my pieces despite the fact that I was about to tackle the most challenging Lego set I've ever done. 

The technic series is really awesome. Instead of plates and bricks, it's a lot of interconnecting rods and gears so you can make a realistic looking vehicle. However, that's what makes it challenging because one rod out of place throws everything off and when it does happen, you pretty much have to take the whole thing apart to fix it. But I finally finished it and I'm super proud of it. I'm also now adding Lego to the list of things I'm taking a break from temporarily because I'm now exhausted. Not until I share the experience with the world though, of course. I was so psyched for this project and took pictures as I went along. 

Despite it being an impulse buy, I was still very excited for this. I really loved the box. It was so pretty and the inside was beautifully organized. The instruction booklet was also really fun. In the first section they had an insert on the history of Bugatti, how Bugatti's are built in the factory and how Lego planned to mimic this process with their build. 

Bag 1 started off with the rear axle. Wasn't too bad, took me hours to get it together, but I got used to the pieces after awhile. Bag 2 was a real SOB. Basically it involved building a convoluted gear box that became the transmission. I really hated this one but it gave me an appreciation for why getting your transmission fixed is such an awful process. This was the bag I literally had to take apart and rebuild twice. 

Bag 3 was the engine block itself. Not incredibly horrible, just a lot of small pieces. This one really made me admire just how much thought went into creating this set. They really got down to the nitty gritty details of the inner workings of a car and clearly had to make a lot of unique pieces just for these sets. 

I started bag 4 the day that I mentioned day drinking and building Lego. This bag actually started the front axle. I guess Bugatti's are built with their front and rear separate and then they're connected later on, so Lego wanted to mimic this process. Bag 5 added on to the front a little bit more, now with some components of the rest of the frame that will later become the actual cabin itself.

Bag 6 was a real monster. It started off with building more of the frame for the cabin, and then putting the front and back halves together. I wish I had a picture of just how many rods I had to try to line up perfectly, but I'll just simply say it took 30 minutes of fighting with this thing to make everything line up happily. 

Bag 7 we're starting to look like a real car! Got a little bit of the outside detailing done along the roofline and rear tires. We've got our spoiler in there and some of the components for the rear bumper. Bag 8 pretty much finished the rear of the car. The later bags would add a few details here and there but, this part of the car was basically done. 

Bags 9 and 10 added the interior work with seats and a dashboard. Also a little bit of work done to get a frame ready for the front tires and doors.

I think I forgot to get a picture after Bag 11, but this one is after Bag 12 where the front bumper, hood and detailing are completely done, as well as the doors. 

And at last, after some tires, sideview mirrors and some minor last minute detailing, my beautiful blue Bugatti Chiron is done. There were some real infuriating moments, but it was so worth it. I also forgot to mention that halfway through this project, Matt got jealous and bought the Lamborghini Sian so now we have two large sport cars to find homes for. 

So that was my big adventure for this week off. I've also cleaned and organized the crap out of my house, which is such a huge relief. It's been a productive week! But after all that productivity there's always the crash where you wonder what's next on the to do list and realize that answer is "nothing." Guess I'll just read some puppy books or something! 

Speaking of puppy, we received official word on Sunday that we will be getting a yellow boy! Our breeder video called me from outside with him and said "this little guy is your puppy!" and my heart pretty much exploded. Outright exploded. My ghost is writing this blog post. I just cannot wait to bring him home. I realized today I've never waited this long for a pet before. All of our animals have been adopted that day and brought home within 48 hours so waiting 8 weeks has been so nuts for me. Almost there though - 9 more days! I just have to survive work first <_<

Anyway, that's all I got for today. No photography because it's been so bitterly cold, plus I thought the car was more interesting anyway. But soon I'll have some new subject matter to flood the internet with!

February 14th, 2021

 Happy Valentine's Day! 

We've never been big into celebrating so Matt is at work and I'm chilling in the house. I'm fine with it, had a pretty rough day yesterday, to the point where after posting this I may start day drinking and building Lego. 

I'm super excited this week because I've FINALLY finished my Christmas presents. Yes I know it's February. I decided this year to make crocheted blankets for my mom, sister and brother. I literally started this project in July and that clearly wasn't enough time. But with my work schedule being awesome and giving me 7 days off at a time, I sat my ass on the couch and finally finished my brother's blanket. You'd think I would love a project that involves sitting on the couch, watching Netflix and being able to call it getting work done, but after awhile you just get sick of it. Plus I have a really long to do list at this point. I will say, I'm proud of what I accomplished. The blankets turned out better than I ever could have expected and I love them. 

I used a moss stitch pattern from Daisy Farm Crafts. I loved the pattern itself - it was very easy and quick to do. For the yarn I used Caron One Pound yarn. I really like using it, plus the one pound skeins get you pretty far AND it's machine washable, which is a great feature. The other nice thing about this pattern is you can play around with the color schemes really easily, which I took full advantage of. Problem is, I way overestimated how much yarn I would need and now I have crap tons of yarn. Thank God for friends having babies this year! Really the worst part of all this was the border. I'm still a novice and hadn't yet tackled doing a border but with the pattern you really need one to hide where the colors switch over. I finally just did a row of shells around the edge and it came out well! It's so funny seeing the size differences now between the blankets. I'm really bad at judging size and I'm someone that enjoys oversized blankets so I don't 100% follow how many stitches/rows to do, but of course it ends in a lot of variation.  

My mom's I wanted to make more nautical themed because she lives in Florida. Her colors ended up being navy blue, sky blue, yellow and white. The white was the accent row and I made the border in yellow. 

This one was my sister's. She tends to steer towards blues and grays so she got teal blue, sky blue, white and gray. Gray was her accent color and border color. 

I was kind of nervous about my brother's because he tends to enjoy darker colors as far as clothing, but I don't see his house enough to know much about his decor. So I just went with some darker "manly" colors. He got navy blue, dark gray and teal blue for the main colors with a sage green as the accent and border. I loved how his turned out and fell in love with the sage green in the process. 

All in all, this was a very satisfying project to take on. It felt good to actually make my presents this year and I do enjoy crocheting. With that said, I'm taking a break for now for the puppy.

Speaking of the puppy! We got to meet them last weekend! Honestly, if my version of heaven is puppies crawling all over me, I would be so content. They were 5 weeks old and so incredibly adorable. Once the excitement of a new person wore off they all crawled between my legs and fell asleep. It was magical. And if I had an endless income I'd be taking all of them. We're still not exactly sure which one we're getting though which is making me so antsy. But whichever one we get, it will be so worth it. They're literally perfect and I'm already in love. Those shark teeth though! I forgot how sharp they are! Phew! We spent the rest of the day getting toys and supplies at the pet store. Sometimes it's so awesome to just go to the pet store and peruse the aisles for cool pet stuff. Usually when I go it's with a specific purpose in mind so the occasional browsing trips are fun. I know, I'm weird. Seems like we're pretty close to having everything we need though. Don't get me wrong, I'm still nervous as hell, but we're excited and I think Mara and Lilo will like having another friend in the house.....at least I hope they do. Until then, I'm going to keep counting down the days until March 4th!

We've finally started seeing some sun around here lately and it has been so nice.......except for the part where now it's literally too cold to even exist outside. I just can't win haha. We've had some really gorgeous sunsets - some of which I was lucky enough to get outside to capture, but the others I just couldn't bring myself to go out there. We obviously haven't been going far, just to Black Creek Park. Have even taken Mara on a few adventures. The last time we went to the park she lost her bananas in the car. As soon as we turned in she started crying and howling and carrying on like a basket case. I'm guessing by the fact that she then started dragging us around everywhere means she was excited. 

I'm trying to toy around a little bit with trying to get good sunset photos. I feel like the color of the sky could be a little more crisp and vivid, but I need to work on this a little bit more. And unfortunately I need it to be a little bit warmer so I can tolerate being out there to learn these skills. Regardless, I've started messing around with the aperture and shutter speed to try and allow in as much light as possible and it seems to be improving. I've also tried adjusting the ambient light setting. This is definitely a project I'm going to be revisiting more now that I don't have a bunch of crocheting to do. I really want to go up to the lake and some of the other parks just to look at the landscapes, but again, cold. Anyway, here's some photos from my recent adventures. 

It's nights like these that have taught me it's just as important to look behind you because honestly the view from the east on this night was more beautiful than the sunset itself. This one was kind of tough just because it was colorful but not super colorful once the clouds floated away. Still worth the trip though.

These pictures are pretty much the perfect example of the issues I've been having. If I leave my exposure setting alone, the colors of the sky get washed out. If I make my exposure a little darker, I can get those colors, but it darkens the whole picture. So this is definitely what I need to work on.

This sunset was really pretty. Had a lot more clouds to help add some color in there. And I actually think I did decently well! I wish the photos with the sun peeking between the trees was just a little more crisp but overall can't complain about this trip. I really do love photographing in the snow. It really adds some beauty in there. 

Well this one ended up being longer than anticipated, but it had been awhile and we've done a lot in the past couple weeks so it was overdue. NOW it's time to day drink and build Lego.