Kitchen

Our current kitchen has been a nice update from the itty bitty galley kitchen on Commonwealth. As I've mentioned several times, there is a window over the sink, plus a dishwasher, increased counter space, and...a washer and dryer. People always comment on the washer and dryer being in the kitchen and ask if it's weird, but I kind of like it. Our kitchen is a hub of productivity.

A couple weeks ago I decided to use some of my free time to rethink our meal plans once again. I think I have an ideal in my head that involves superb organization that will allow for maximum nutrition at minimal costs and without an extreme amount of time invested (at least, once the organization part has been accomplished). This time I took the approach of streamlining our most frequently used recipes, which allowed me to streamline our grocery lists, dividing them into bulk shopping and weekly shopping, and printing them out for fridge. We are going to try buying things like pizza dough, black beans, shredded cheese, tortillas, etc., in bulk since I tend to use them a lot. I also printed out calendars for each month to list out meal ideas. It was kind of fun, so even if it doesn't work out perfectly, at least I am learning as I go...and at least looking at the side of my fridge makes me feel organized and happy.

semester one

so tomorrow is the day to head back to school. it has been a wonderful month(!) off, where i have had plenty of time to

1. sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep
2. clean and rearrange our house, including a little kitchen update (to be seen in an upcoming post)
3. sleep?
4. cook meals. and granola. and marmalade.
5. spend time with family and friends
6. watch tv?
7. read books. including the hunger games series (definitely recommend), Dietrich Bonhoeffer's biography, Hipster Christianity, A visit from the Goon Squad, and half of Earthen Vessels, a book on why the body matters to our faith...written by Matt Anderson.

I am looking forward to getting back to a schedule starting tomorrow, although Corcoran classes meet once a week for 4 and a half hour long segments, so the schedule doesn't have much pattern to it. In honor of going back to school tomorrow, I thought I would do a quick post of five things i learned in the first semester of school:

1. To keep with current...themes in this post -- sleep while you can. For whatever reason (and I don't think this will have been the worst semester), it is much harder to estimate the amount of time that art projects will take verses english essays. I only pulled one all nighter in all of college...because really, I don't do my best work at night and I get sad when I can't go to bed. However, art work doesn't always require the same level of coherent thought as essay writing did, and other than the fact that impaired motor functions may cause you injure yourself when using an exacto blade at 4 in the morning, art projects and late nights get along quite well. This last semester, there were several weeks where I got an hour less sleep every wednesday night before my thursday morning studio classes. I have several friends who pulled numerous all nighters, and I remember hearing (to my dismay) one senior who noted (around november 1): "this is that part of the semester where you start pulling all nighters!" There were 6 weeks left.
It doesn't mean I like staying up until 3:30 any better, and I definitely will continue to schedule my work to achieve the opposite, but I have to reconcile myself to the fact that mid and late semester will probably always mean less and less sleep. sadly.
Also, what school has classes that go until 10:40 at night??? Apparently, this one. Don't the teachers know that my brain shuts off at 10:00?
2. On that note, it was a very smart move for starbucks to be located across the street from our campus in Georgetown. It was also very nice that I had monies in starbucks card from my birthday this summer, that somehow lasted the entire semester. It is also very nice that the starbucks employees are sympathetic, and sometimes charge us less, or give us pastries at the end of the night.
3. Learning new skills - painting, drawing in perspective, hand-rendering, cad mastery, revit, sketchup, and model-making (chiseling, sanding) - absorbed pretty much all of my energy first semester. Though I had opportunity to be creative, I didn't have much incentive as I was more preoccupied with how I would articulate an idea than with coming up with a good idea, worthy of articulation. This degree seems to be as much about developing industry-specific skills as it is about coming up with new ideas - and, somewhat (sometimes) frustratingly, mastery of the former precedes development of the latter.
4. Towards the end of my art history class, I discovered my enjoyment of some of the early modern architects - mies van der rohe, walter gropius, and corbusier. I am looking forward to continuing to learn about the masters, studying their work as I develop my own ideas.

Mies' Project for a Brick Villa, never built

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, built 20 miles outside of Paris in the 1930s, demonstrating his five points of architecture (ribbon windows, raised first floor, rooftop gardens, asymmetrical exterior, free interior plan)

5. Some of the most interesting (and inspiring) moments of the semester were during our visiting voices lectures, where members of the professional community would come in and tell stories and share pictures of projects from their design firms. Seeing quality and beautiful work reminds me that this degree has application other than the fictitious house I designed for the fictitious family I came up with for my studio class. Though this semester I decided to pull back from studio classes to ground myself in more of the basics, I am excited to move on to other classes - to study commercial, institutional and hospitality design, to brainstorm for my thesis, to hopefully intern and learn more of the ins and outs of the profession...

So far, so good!

Montana

Just a few photos from our time in Montana...

big skies...

working on a very tricky jigsaw puzzle (which we did not complete in our week there...)

alex and hunter and newly acquired toy helicopter

(dogs love snow too)

not pictured: the hours five of us spent reading the Hunger Games, christmas breakfast with cinnamon rolls and stockings, a cozy christmas dinner, the awesome sled run the kids created, which sort of conquered us due to the steep hike back up the hill.

A day in DC

Well, semester number 1 has come to a close. After many stressful days and late nights, plenty of back massages and other kindnesses bestowed by husband (can we say learning to cook because otherwise we might not have eaten? doing laundry for us? making me hot chocolate at the end of my long day? I love this guy.), I turned in my last assignment on December 19th.

Alex and I scurried off to Montana to spend a wonderfully relaxing time with his family (in the snow!), and then came back to Virginia to spend a few days with my parents. Now I have two weeks until classes begin for the spring, and so we decided to spend a day touring the city that has been home for 5 months.

We started off the day at Ted's Bulletin, a hip version of a diner in eastern market. The waitress handed us our menus, which were basically newspapers with the food listed on the inside. They bring an entire carafe of coffee to your table (hallelujah!), and you can sub your toast for a homemade poptart...which I did.

(They salvaged a number of pieces from the Philadelphia Civic Center for their decor).

Following breakfast, we toured around the market at eastern market (and wished we were doing another supper club so we could use some of their fancy ingredients), and then made our way to...

-the Folger Shakespeare Library to see their exhibit on the King James' Bible

-The east wing of the National Gallery of Art to see contemporary art and french impressionist paintings

-Starbucks for some tea and a break to refresh ourselves

-The Phillips Collection in Dupont, where we saw the permanent collection, including works from Rothko, Kandinsky, Monet, Sean Scully and Joseph Marioni (which were some of my favorites).

 We had worked up an appetite, so we went to Founding Farmer's for dinner - a place I have been wanting to try since we moved here. It was super tasty - we each got a cocktail, and then started with bacon wrapped dates, stuffed with blue cheese --- they were so good that once the four were gone, I almost ordered a second plate. 

(me with my cucumber-gin tonic, alex with his manhattan, our plate of partially eaten dates which we could not wait long enough to sample before we snapped this photo)

The dinner was equally tasty, and we ordered chocolate mousse for dessert -- deciding to make it a celebration of the one semester of grad school successfully completed. Great end to a fun day in dc.