wil and kris (and gracie and ava)

now that thanksgiving has come and gone i can’t help but start humming charlie brown’s “christmas time is here…”

i know it seems like the christmas season started a long time ago for retail (and our neighbor across the way who totally jumped the gun and had her tree up before thanksgiving!), but i can’t get myself to think about that until the turkey leftovers are gone. wil and i had another nice thanksgiving together, expanding from just spending the day by ourselves to actually going out and seeing some friends and family…a little bit at wil’s uncle bernie’s and a little bit at our good friend mike’s house, with some turkey in between.

but come sunday, i was itching for christmas. since i am currently in the crunch of my project, i had to give myself something to work towards (besides the impending deadline, i guess!) because sitting at the dining room table for hours upon hours, glueing together toothpick size pieces of basswood, can make you kind of psycho if there is no end.

i reached a stopping point and told wil i wanted a tree. i’ve been set on getting a tree all season, but honestly, i can’t get myself to accept the idea of buying a tied up real 6′ tree for $60, when i’ve grown up cutting down 14 footers ourselves for 5 bucks. so i decided that we would compromise this year…buy a small fake tree (arg…fake!) for less money and have it forever, until we’re in a place that actually has room for a tree. with that we headed to walmart and threw a little 4 foot guy in the cart, piling all the necessary bargains to make it complete.

not soon after getting back home, we had ourselves a perfect little christmas house! it is the most festive i’ve ever seen the place…our 3 little nutcrackers hidden around the house in previous years didn’t usually have quite the same effect.
so, now that i have some holiday spirit, i hope i can pass some along to you with a few pictures. maybe it will inspire you to get in the mood!

i am finally legal…yup, 21 here and gone. and what better way to celebrate than in vegas?

wil and i were the first to land in vegas (after enjoying a flight with a singing flight attendant), so we waited in the baggage claim for the rest of the groups to arrive, about a half an hour later. not even outside of the airport and we were bombarded with lights, billboards and ads for the excitement that was about to present itself to us once we walked out of those doors. to say the least, i was not bored while waiting…i was torn between watching the ever changing movie screen or the addicted get an early start on the airport slot machines.

as it always is, seeing everyone as they arrived at the house (rented for all of us instead of being spread across multiple hotel rooms) was great. we settled into our rooms (wil and i stayed in the “sinatra” suite while others stayed in rooms like “presley”, “cash”, and “dion”) and later got ready for our girls night out to bodyenglish, a nightclub in the hard rock hotel. treated like vips, we walked past the line, dropped a name (thanks to danielle!) and walked right in without having to pay for the cover charge or champagne. what a way to be treated on a girl’s 21st! the rest of the group explored the city and got busy gambling.

with an SC game against CAL on the schedule, saturday was spent lounging around the house, playing pool, darts and watching the game into the late afternoon (while a few took a drive to hoover dam, where my great grandfather was a doctor on site during construction). a quick dinner and we were off again for another night on the strip, sipping drinks and singing along to dueling pianos at the “bar in times square” in the hotel new york new york. i tried to enjoy my first actual drink ordered from a bar, but couldn’t enjoy it in its entirety since as of friday i woke up with a sore throat/cold, which overall did not make me feel so hot all weekend. the rest of the night was filled with more gambling and perusing the hotels as the group split to differing casinos…with some not coming home till 4:30 in the morning! (who ever said new york was the city that never slept?)

with a late, lazy morning, our last full day started around 1, splitting up again, and doing what else, gambling! wil and i and a few others headed to the hotel mandalay bay, where i watched wil play texas hold’em and never get dealt a good hand while brett scored 600 bucks at nearby table. i tried my luck with $5 in a nickel slot…not winning, but not leaving empty handed. but as vegas would have it, i then lost it all a few minutes later on roulette. (i’m a big spender!) losing all track of time, we realized the dinner hour was upon us and we had our birthday dinner at the house and readied ourselves for the last hurrah. around 10 or so, a group of us went to the newest hotel on the block, the wynn. inside we had ourselves a heck of a time in the coolest nightclub i have ever seen- tryst. while others hung out at the house, or gambled at other casinos, we danced the night away, sipping expensive drinks and taking in the entire scene.

after a couple hours of dancing we had yet another exciting moment…while josh took a break off the dance floor he watched britney spears and paris hilton brush past him into a nearby booth. we “took a break” as well, gawking at the fact that we were within 6 ft of the two biggest names in pop culture (who cares if you like them?). keeping one eye on them for the rest of the night we danced and observed them partying just like they do on tv and in the photos. click here if you don’t believe me!

with the night young, we split from the club and joined others at a cheaper hotel, the sahara for some late night blackjack. my first time sitting and playing at a real table, i played and won 40 bucks! (i’d say that’s pretty good since i only started with 50). too anxious to continue playing for fear of losing everything i quickly cashed out while the rest of the boys at the table continued to have a lucky night and called it a night.

after saying goodbyes throughout the morning and one last stop to the fountain at the bellagio, we made our way to the airport and hopped on our flights to our far away homes. now that i am home, i am happy to be back, as vegas is just a different lifestyle i could not keep up. i tend to like me, my husband and our dog in our quiet little house… most of the time…

last tuesday i had a “design development” presentation. to give an idea of what that means, in the industry there are specific titled phases of a project: programming (gathering info), schematic design (rough conceptual ideas), design development (the meat of the project- developing the beginning ideas into a real applicable design for the client), contract documents (once the developed design is accepted- the production of drawings for it to be built), and contract administration (installation, overview, payment, etc).

since none of our school projects would actually be built, our semesters end with the design development presentation of our ideas. this senior studio is a bit different- we had an interim presentation to our teachers with the same level of work done as we would at the end. it actually was nice because it pushed us to finish things earlier than we would have- allowing us time to correct the design, produce more drawings/models and make a more thorough presentation for the end with the jury.

anyways, with all that said (you have just complete design 101!), here are two photos of boards of my senior project at that point (just the fluffy stuff since the architectural drawings wouldn’t photo well). my final presentation will be a second design development pres. of the same stuff- even with some of the same materials and drawings but just more elaborate.

background info on my project: i am designing a church- a young, nondenominational church- using an existing building in nashville. although hard to see in just this without poring through all my drawings and architectural features, my concept is based on the human figure and it’s proportions (organic and mathematical at the same time). you can click on the thumbnails to see the photos.