I just spent such a wonderful weekend in Vermont – complete with a snow storm that forced me to stay inside and bake Christmas cookies all day long. I’m so fortunate to have to amazing grandmothers that constantly seem to be teaching me new things. Whether it’s how to properly frost a santa cookie or how to eat a proper breakfast (monkey bread is not an option) – they never fail me. Here are some pictures of my Grammy (left) and Nana (right). They’re just the best.

Just finished wrapping the last of the Christmas presents. Having family out of stave means I have to wrap my presents but also ship them to make sure they arrive on time. It seems a little frantic sometimes but not having any holiday stress the week before Christmas is really pretty nice. I get to walk right by the busy stores and spend my time celebrating rather than wrapping and doing last minute shopping.

I love wrapping presents and always look forward to picking out all of the paper that I’m going to use. I try and get two or three varieties that look nice together. This year I found the plaid papers and fell in love. They’re not traditional but that’s what I loved about them. I knew with some red and green ribbon they would look the part. When I found the gold polkadot paper I knew it would make everything more festive.

When Nick asked me if I would pose for a series he was working on I was a little hesitant. Not because I didn’t trust him but because I’m not a big fan of being in front of a camera. Vicky convinced me there would be wine involved and it would be fun so I agreed. After taking about 150 pictures (mostly ridiculous ones of me laughing at myself) this one popped up. Nick had the final say in which picture was chosen and I kind of forgot about the whole thing until a few weeks ago when he asked me if I wanted to see what he’d made. I was completely astonished. I am so lucky to have such amazing friends. I’m not sure how it happened but I really do respect all of the incredible talents they seem to possess. Check out the rest of the portraits Nick created here.

As I’ve continued to add large items (like a hydraulic paper cutter) to my print studio I’ve had to get creative in order to keep everything in my relatively small space. This weekend I built new pallets that were smaller but still allowed for the pallet jack to move things around. It was a fairly simple upgrade that really helped improved the flow in the space.

When my Aunt Suzy called and asked if Ryan and I wanted to go to the Celtics game with her I of course blurted out YES! Only to find out that Ryan had to work late that night. Vicky is my go-to sports friend so I immediately thought to ask her to come along. We had a great time and great seats. Thanks for thinking of us Aunt Suzy!

Happy Halloween from the bat-pup!

After we finished restoring the press it was time to get into the details of calibrating it. I wanted to make sure that I took my time so that I would only have to do it once and could make small adjustments based on what I was printing in the future. I used wood type that I’d collected over the years as well as some lead type that I got from the museum in Andover. And finally, I asked Ryan to make me something on the laser cutter so that I could try printing one more type of material. He asked me what I wanted and I decided a little blue hippo would be adorable so that’s what I got!

Just a couple of my favorite pictures of Huckleberry from this fall. We had amazing weather here in Boston and it was so nice to have a little pal to adventure around with. The first photo was taken in the park next to our house during a quick game of fetch. The second two were taken in the Arnold Arboretum on a particularly nice sunny weekend afternoon.

In an effort to come and see Huckleberry while he was still a puppy, my mom made a somewhat impromptu trip to Boston this weekend. It was a lovely low key weekend full of baking, crafting and of course puppy snuggles. My mom knit me a great neck warmer (in Green and White so I could wear it during football games) and also helped me make a cover for my printing press. As always, I wish she could have stayed longer but it was nice to get to have here here for a few days.

I’m an animal lover. The extreme kind that sees a dog on the street and has to stop to pet it. The one that wants to adopt every animal that doesn’t have a home. I’m also a realist and have known for a lot of years that my busy work schedule just wouldn’t be fair to a pet. My schedule has recently gotten a little more stable and Ryan and I agreed that we should start looking for a puppy.

The search for a puppy was horrible for me. I thought it would be cute and I could go sit in a room filled with puppies and pick the cutest one. What I did not know what that there really aren’t very many puppies on the East Coast. A lot of organizations here work with shelters in the south because there are so many more unwanted dogs. I came across a litter of pointer/hound pups on petfinder.com and Ryan and I decided to drive to New Hampshire to see them. Live and Let Live Farms is an animal rescue that adopts pregnant dogs from the south to save them and their puppies.

There were five puppies in the litter we went to see and I (shockingly) instantly fell in love. I wanted them all, but we spent about an hour playing with all of them and eventually picked out our puppy. Two weeks later we got to go pick up our sweet little guy.

Introducing Huckleberry the hound dog. The sweetest snuggliest pup there ever was. These floppy ears melt my heart.