Now, what to do with the leftover little pictures I’d cut out? Oh, how hilarious would I look peeking out of the top of my book? I made a bookmark out of myself (again with packing tape being the laminate, and in this case I also used patterned paper that I am attached to.)

There you go-have fun with scissors, pictures, and tape.

Now for a more artistic endeavor. You may recall that for our pottery anniversary I took Paul to a paint your own pottery place and we painted things. Just got them back and they are lovely. I made Paul a pencil cup:

And he made this gorgeous tray. I can’t wait to entertain and put crackers and cheese out on it.

Pie Day has two parts to it: the savory dinner pies, and the sweet dessert pies. On the savory end the pies included a tomato pie (basically pizza with just tomato sauce-Tabby loved this and asked me to make it a home), onion pie (heavenly sweet translucent onions), buffalo chicken pie, spinach pie, beer pie (malt, guinness, hops tea, and a meringue-I did not even go near this one), pizzas with barbecue sauce and chicken on them, pizzas with apples and ginger in the crust, a pepperoni pie, quiche lorraine, and the much anticipated sausage pies (primarily sausage with a little sauce. Tony has been trying to retire these pies, but no one wants him to.)
My favorites were the onion pie, the barbecue chicken pizza, and this spinach pie which had a very heavenly crust (Which I meant to ask how he made it and didn’t get a chance to, but I swear it was almost creamy with a hint of lemon.)

I think next year I might make Cornish pasties-a hand pie with meat and onion in it.
Then it was time for the dessert pies! I think there were 10 in all. Some of them were a key lime pie (delicious!), an apple with a ginger cookie crust (delicious!), lemon meringue, sweet potato, apple-cranberry, blueberry (Or maybe it was a mixed berry?), blackberry-apple with a cheesy crust (a very nice combination), a chocolate-whipped cream concoction that Tabby loved, and something with a cheesecake type filling and lots of cinnamon sugar on top. I think I had a bite of everything. Oh, and the darling pie pops had two kinds of filling-banana/Nutella and apple.

I have to say that I was doing fine not being full with the savory pies, but the dessert pies were so rich and delicious that after about 10 minutes I felt done in.

I had made a Banana Walnut Tart from the cookbook The Modern Baker, which I received a couple years ago, is very beautiful, but I hadn’t yet cooked from. I was very pleased with the results. You begin with a sweet tart crust, lay down slices of banana, cover with a nutty batter, and bake.

This is a super fun party–I love a theme party, and especially one revolving around food. Everyone really made great pies. Thank you, Pie Master, Tony!

Then, on my way to pick up Tabby from preschool I saw an egret (heron? I’m looking around trying to find the definitive difference between heron and egret and it seems to do with plumage. or feet color.)right on the edge of the road. I’ve seen them by the river lots of times, but never one so close. I promptly stopped, tried to back up, and grabbed my camera (and of course suddenly there were many other cars trying to get by, stopping to see if I’m ok, etc.). Here’s what I got:

Then on the way back I drove along slowly hoping to see it again and there it was! This time I got out of the car and was able to walk up pretty close to it and then catch this lovely shot of it flying away (it didn’t fly very far-apparently it was really interested in finding food in the marshy watery runoff.)

Look at that wingspan!

Update! I had more wonderful animal encounters. On my way to bring Tabby to a friend’s house there were a bunch of cows eating. They looked great all lined up with their heads sticking through a fence. They were still there on the way back and I got out.  Unlike the heron they were not frightened of me and I even pet one.  Alas, I really wish I had the good camera with me, but I only had my phone.

Then, closer to home, next to the field where I walked Pippin this morning, I saw a big beautiful hawk on a telephone pole. I really do love where we live.

Then it was off to the Pinewood Derby.

In case you’re not familiar with this Boy Scout event it is held each year and the boys take blocks of wood and make them into cars which are then raced on a downhill track.  There are rules about weight and dimensions but other than that the boys can get very creative with their designs.  Clark had a good time working on his car with Paul and had designed a dragon type thing.  Clark designed, but Paul did the saw work.  He drew some wings and a crazy tail and then glued them on, painted it, and glittered it.

He loved his design and was sure he would win for “most original.”  [In addition to the winners of the most races there are awards for the different kinds of designs.]  There were lots of really awesome cars and it was interesting to see that the littler boys went for wild or funny designs whereas the older boys were all about streamlined cars weighted for speed.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and at the end of the night, just like he hoped, Clark won for Most Original!! (oh, the voting was done by ballot by the scouts.)  He is so so proud, which of course makes us proud and happy too.  He is just thrilled that he has a plaque and Tabby was so excited for him that it was just adorable.

Well, this would have been a little bit more relevant had I posted this on the actual day, which was Tuesday. But you know how things go.  Anyway, here we are a blushing bride and groom on a beautiful wintry January afternoon 8 years ago.

We have a tradition of celebrating our anniversary with the “traditional” gifts for each year. This year is “pottery”.  Last Saturday I surprised Paul by taking him to Art Attack, our favorite local paint your own pottery place. We’ve been a number of times with the kids, but I thought it would be fun for us to have time to ourselves so Paul could really enjoying painting.  I can’t wait to get back the things we made. Here we are having a nice time:

And then went out for dinner at the Melting Pot and had a wonderful time remembering having fondue together in Brussels.  Happy 8th anniversary, Paul!

A couple of other notes.  I am going set crazy in Flickr! In addition to “Skies“, I added new colors, so now I have red,orange, yellow, blue, green, pink, purple, and white.  I’m envisioning a set of mugs, each with a different color theme (but who needs a whole new set of mugs? Not me.) Aside from just liking looking at the pictures grouped by color, I find it interesting to look and see how many different types of things are a certain color, i.e. they are not all flowers, or all clothes-pretty much each color includes man made objects, people, and things in the natural world.  Clark asked me to make him a mug of his own (because he admire the orange one I did for Paul) with pictures of his choosing. Sure!

Finally, when I did my Project 365 Year 2 look back I had a picture in mind which somehow I didn’t see when looking back, so assumed it was from 2010.  In fact, it was in 2011 and I loved it so much that I’ll add it in right here as one of my very favorites of the year:

Almost the whole time we were walking around searching they continued to honk and fly through the air, like airplanes circling an airport waiting to land.

The weather was simply beautiful and of course there were lovely things to photograph in the woods.

We tried another destination in a nearby park and couldn’t find the treasure there either, but the kids were excited to play on the playground.

Today we headed down to the aquarium and had one of our best times ever. There is a new crocodile there, Mighty Mike, and they are remodeling and putting in a new exhibit, so next time we go there will be even more new stuff. Our favorites are the jellyfish, petting the stingrays, the big shark tank, the hippos, and the hammerhead sharks. The giant lobsters were more active than we’d ever seen before and all in all everything was beautiful and interesting. Do I have awesome underwater photographs? No, I do not because it’s near impossible to get a decent picture inside the aquarium. However, I did manage to get a nice picture of the biggest group of seashorses I’ve ever seen.

The good picture fun comes at the end when we go outside and take pictures outside with the lovely Philadelphia skyline behind us.

A second year of a picture every day!  Time to take a look back at my favorites.  Before I get into some narrative I’ll start us right off with my all around favorite picture of the year (shown above.)  Not only does it have happy memories of a day at Ocean Grove, but the whole framing and motion and joy of the scene is an all around pleasure to me.

Last year’s look back post was pretty massive as I analzyed my photos and also reflected on my year.  I’m afraid this year’s is going to be quite a bit shorter, even though I certainly took as my photos.[Update: I'm halfway through and I'm thinking that sentence might not be true-I intended not to include lots of links to pics, but I am!]  This year I got a bit lax about getting the picture posted on the actual day and often posted the next morning.  I’m not sure I challenged myself often enough, though during a slump I created a challenge for myself (Household Object Challenge!).
I did not complete SMERSH, the photo scavenger hunt of 101 items that my friends started.  I hoped to go back and pick photos to match the categories, but I didn’t. But who says SMERSH can’t keep going into 2012? I vow to complete it! In the meantime, this is what I had.
This year I also started using Flickr.  It made choosing which picture to post easier because I knew that my other runner up photos would be seen and commented on in Flickr. Librarian me loves the tagging/sets/collections way of organizing and accessing your photos (I initially didn’t like the photostream, but the other organizing aspects won me over.)  Other photos news-things I did with my photos.  Both Paul and my mom received mugs that I made at snapfish.  I did a collage and because you could import from your Flickr account it was super easy to grab a set.  Some of my sets are color themes and I love looking at the photos organized like that-Paul’s mug has all orange photos, mom’s is all pink.  I also made various calendars for people-a wall calendar with family pictures for Paul to keep at work, and chic vertical calendars for mom and a friend that featured botanical closeups.  I was so thrilled with them-I thought they looked like something you might buy in a shop! I definitely would like to have more stationary products made this year with favorite prints.  The other awesome thing I bought with my pictures was stickers made at Moo.  They are a beautiful quality and completely reasonably priced-I got a book of 90 stickers (with up to 90 different images-I grabbed 40 from a Flickr set) for something like $6. I’d include a photo of it, but I seem to have misplaced it.
Now, on to the photos!

Favorite Nature:  This year I had pictures of deer, pheasants, turtles, frogs, and various birds (backyard or otherwise.)  This darling fawn was a favorite:

Favorite Chicken:  I couldn’t choose between two.  This lovely springtime one, which features our dear departed Blackie, and this vibrant garden one featuring our handsome black and white rooster:

Favorite Miscellaneous Category: This was a favorite photo of the year and it’s part Tabby-part action-part family-part black & white. Whatever it is, I love it!

Favorite Motion: With kids it seems like an awful lot of our pictures are action shots, running, leaping, splashing, and so on.  I liked this picture an awful lot only in part for the motion-mostly for the composition, bright kite, and sunshine.

Favorite of Clark: I think this is my favorite picture of Clark this year

, but somehow it was not chosen as the picture of the day(from the same activity, I picked this one. I wonder why?)! Clark had many great faces and actions photographed this year, as well as ones showing significant milestones, like Cub Scouts and bike riding.  Choosing from just Fairview pictures, I would choose this one, which I called “Carnivorous Clark.” We were having a nice hot summer day barbecue, which I think is captured nicely here-you can see the sauce on his face, his summer haircut, and his scrunched up face as he gnaws on a bone.

Favorite of Tabby: I confess it is harder to choose Tabby’s best picture of the year.  There were so many great ones and she indulged me in many photo shoots while Clark was at school.  She looked precious in her Christmas program outfit, intense in this action shot,  sweet as a kitty, and nifty in the air.  I’ll go with this as the favorite:

Favorite Flower and Garden:  You can see all my garden shots in a handy dandy garden set on Flickr (I just love looking at the sets en masse) When I compared this set to my project 365 pics, I was surprised to see that some of my favorites hadn’t made it to the picture of the day (specifically, this.) I usually take pictures of just a single bloom, but I really loved this one this year-the filling of the frame with the buds, the clear focus in front, and the dots of bright yellow:

Favorite Garden: We didn’t have any success with our corn this year, so I guess it’s ok that this naughty scamp was in there gobbling up what he could.

Favorite Weather/Natural Phenomenon: I saw my first beautiful full rainbow this year, but was stuck taking pictures with my phone. Plenty of snow, ice, rain, and floods provided opportunities for many pictures of Mother Nature.  Early in the year I took this shot of frozen droplets on the clothesline and it remained a favorite all year:

Little Droplets of precipitation are definitely a favorite thing to capture-I just love their delicate, and often fleeting, beauty.

Favorite Food: This was probably my favorite food picture, but it did not make it into Project 365.  Of the photos that did, I love the seasonal appeal of this one

Favorite Object: The Household Objects challenge helped me find some very interesting shots inside the house, including this broken lightbulb.  For novelty’s sake, though, I just loved this picture of tiny things:

I also loved these flapping flags in the Asia section of Disneyworld’s Animal Kingdom:

Finally, a favorite picture of myself.

And with today I begin year 3 of Project 365! Fellow photographers, a happy snapping New Year to you! And to everyone who follows The Fairview, thank you so much for checking out my photos and all of your comments.  It means so much to me to share these photos with you.

–Sarah

Did I succeed? Hmmm….yes and no. I think I am still way too cross with the kids and should slow down and be nicer to them and promote more harmony in the household (something that would be easier to do if a certain 6 year old could just get along with his sister.)  I did not get my etsy shop going the way I thought I would, and we only canoed once. Booo!

Here’s my hopes for this year:

• to keep up with running
• to organize my recipes (I thought of this one a few weeks ago and honestly if I can’t succeed at this then there’s really no hope for me)
• to build up a supply of sewn items to sell and hopefully do a craft fair with my mother in November where she will also sell her adorable felt doll animals
• I don’t know if these two are realistic, but—buy a new car and get rid of the horrible family room ceiling and get some lighting in there.
• get up to date on my book blog
• make jam, etc. with in season produce even when I did not grow the produce myself
• to plan a family vacation in advance
• and I’ll add in last year’s again-to get my kids hiking and canoeing

I’m thinking I might need to print out this list so that I can actually try to adhere to it!

Happy New Year!

In 2011 Clark finished kindergarten and started 1st grade, I worked as a blog manager, I quit working as a blog manager, I had the first time in 6 years of overlapping times of the kids being out of the house, I did not use it to sew as much as I thought I would, I sent out my first invoice using PayPal, we lost several chickens, including dear Blackie, Tabby’s eye crossed, she started wearing glasses, and ended up having surgery, we took three trips, our cat got lost and came back, Clark learned to read, Clark learned to ride a bike without training wheels, Tabitha started dance class, Paul left the library and got a new job, Paul built us a treehouse, and I learned how to run and ran three 5ks!

All in all, it was a good year.  I am especially thankful for the fact that we did not suffer severe damage or lose power from either Hurricane Irene or the October snowstorm, as so many of our friends and neighbors did. We were truly quite lucky.  And lest you read through the favorites below and think it’s all sunshine and roses here, rest assured that 2011 included plenty of temper tantrums, yelling, crying, and fighting from both the adults and the children in our house.

Favorite Book:  This year I simultaneously fell behind on my book blog and started using GoodReads. I resolve to get caught up on my book blog this winter. Due to that I had a hard time this year counting exactly how many titles I read, but I believe it was 75–not bad!  That does not count all the audiobooks we listened to-this was the year we enjoyed listening to children’s stories in the car.  I loved the Beverly Clear books narrated by Stockard Channing and also by Neil Patrick Harris.  As for myself? Top reads were All Clear by Connie Willis, I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson, What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, and Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, Cleaning Nabokov’s House by Leslie Daniels, and The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall.

Favorite Sewing Project: This year it’s easy to look back at what I sewed because I cleverly made a “2011 Sewing Projects” set in Flickr! I made aprons, blouses, a dress, jewelry rolls, star hot pads, oven mitts, and more. I have two favorites.  First the red party dress I made for myself (still no good pictures of me in it, though.)  I was really pleased with how it turned out and two years ago couldn’t have imagined making this for myself.  The other favorite is really two-the quilts I made for my friend Megan and then for myself.  I really enjoyed the simple design and having fun with scrap fabrics.

Favorite Vacation/Travel Moment: We started 2011 with our first family trip to Disneyworld and had a wonderful time.  Mid-summer we visited my great aunt in Cape Cod, and we wrapped up the summer with a trip to Williamsburg, VA.  At breakfast this morning I shared one of my favorite memories–riding the LeScoot flume ride in Busch Gardens 4 times in a row and getting drenched.  The kids agreed and Clark added that he also just loved the dining room table where we stayed and could we go back there? Glad a laminate topped table was a highlight for you, Clark! After getting past the initial drama, we also enjoyed the solitude of our power-free resort.  Clark added that he loved the bedtimes and stories by flashlight.

I also loved climbing to the top of the monument in Provincetown on Cape Cod and finding horseshoe crabs.


Favorite Foods: Last year was the year of bacon jam, but this year didn’t seem to have any standouts. Paul got a smoker and we enjoyed smoking some things, but there didn’t seem to be any new recipes I found myself turning to over and over again. My favorite I made was probably Clark’s birthday cake. I was really proud of how it came out and it was a pleasure to make for him.

Favorite Song-Calamity Song by the Decemberists.  I loved this whole album (The King is Dead), but this song especially as it was the song I started running to.  I listen to it almost every time I run and it’s become very motivating for me.  Not familiar with it? Have a listen.

Favorite Craft Project: My favorite crafty project was the bunting I made for Thanksgiving.  I’m looking forward to hanging it up in our kitchen every November.

That about covers it-travel, kids, crafts, food, sewing, and family.  The part 2 of this post will be a look back at the photos, and that should be up in a couple of days.  Thanks for reading and commenting throughout the year.  I truly treasure every comment and appreciate friends and family keeping us with us all by checking in here.  For now, wishing you a very happy New Year’s Eve!

–Sarah