Master Carver

Hi everyone and Happy Thanksgiving! I’m sure you all have moved on to Christmas by now. They start packing out the stores with Christmas items even before Halloween here, but the Christmas music is blaring through the speakers at Tesco now, as of Dec. 1. It is Christmas time and all the cheesy Santa sing-alongs won’t let us forget for a moment!

Before we move on to Christmas however, let me tell you about our Thanksgiving… I got to have 2 days holiday last week! I took off Thursday and Friday knowing it was Thanksgiving, and… Ian’s graduation!! I got to sit and watch my hubby get tapped on the head with an old dirty hat and receive his official Master’s degree! It was all very exciting.

He got all gussied up in a black suit complete with white bowtie (required, I might add.. and stunning. I’m a fan of the white bowtie)


Here he is looking all GQ getting ready to have the degree conferred…


And here is the tapping.


Oh, and the part where he gets the hood added to his robe :) There are lots of traditions here at St Andrews, which is to be expected from a university this old. Most of the graduation service is conducted in Latin between the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor. The Heads of the departments present their students to the Chancellor, he says a little something in Latin, and the degree is conferred. The student has to come up on stage, present the hood to the helper man (I’m sure there is a more correct term for that guy), kneel before the Chancellor after which the graduate gets tapped on the head with the cap (some believe this cap was made from John Knox’s britches, I don’t remember what the more likely story is, but it’s been used for quite a while in the graduation ceremonies) while the Chancellor says the Latin words and the helper man puts the hood on. The graduate then rises and bows to the Chancellor who returns the formality, then proceeds off stage where he/she is handed their diploma and returns to his/her seat. It’s all very formal and fun to watch. Ian did an excellent job, but as you can see, I couldn’t use the flash so it’s all very blurry. I can’t hold still! I try so hard. I’m using a video camera next time..

If you can bear it, there will be lots more fuzzy pictures in the slideshow to the right when I post it later today :)

And, here he is… Master Ian


There was a big tent party afterwards, but I couldn’t stay (don’t worry, Ian did) because I had to run back to salvage our Thanksgiving turkey! And make stuffed mushrooms, and finish the pumpkin cheesecake and… Anyway, it was my first official turkey and I think it turned out really well. I got very good comments from the eaters :)

Here’s my few-hours-graduated Master Carver hard at work


The oven full of a few things needing to be kept warm until we were ready to eat..



And when we were all set to go, I took a quick snapshot of the group (sans myself, of course). You can see the lovely Thanksgiving decorations donated to the cause by Rebecca and Christian, and lots of food donated by everyone! There were three other big dishes on another table that you can’t see.. we had quite the spread :)


And here is a picture of the whole group all together


Left to right you will find: Sara and Shawn, David and Joy, Ian and Corrie, and Rebecca and Christian. All PhD students and their wives – goooooooooo husbands!!! We had a great time eating and enjoying one another’s company and eating and telling about things we’re thankful for and eating. Oh and we also had THREE desserts! Apple pie, Pecan pie (or crouton pie as we affectionately call it in the Church household), and pumpkin cheesecake. Mmmmmm…

So now that you’re drooling and wishing it was Thanksgiving all over again, I’ll sign off with promises of pictures from our amazing weekend excursion coming soon!

Snowy Onions

I know, random right? Well, I was chopping onions a while back and couldn't resist taking a picture of the little guys...


what do you think? Onion army? Art subject? I'm thinking both.

In other news.. We woke up to this on Saturday


I was so excited that we had some snow! I've been waiting with baited breath to see if we'd get any snow this year after the measly dusting we had last year. Little did I know what was in store..


THIS is what we woke up to on Sunday morning!!! Talk about exciting! It melted by midday but it brought such joy to my heart to see beautiful white snow again! We have high hopes that this means a nice, white winter. Hopefully next time we'll get to go check out the beach as well - a snowy beach! How exciting :)




We did venture to the castle on a roundabout walk to church and got some nice shots of a snowy castle.

We are anticipating some fun events in the next few days which I will be sure to update on next week :) Until then, I leave you with a shot of my studious husband...

The Pelican

‘Australian Pelican’

Oil on Board

2008

About a month ago one of my friends here approached me with the idea of commissioning me to do a painting as a surprise for her husband’s birthday. She was very trusting because she has never seen any of my work! But, her husband has a love for pelicans, and I have a love for birds and painting, so we decided to give it a shot. I wasn’t allowed to tell ANYONE because she’s never successfully surprised him before, so my lips have been sealed :) Until today! Because his birthday was yesterday.

I really enjoyed getting back into oil painting a bit after a long fling with watercolor and acrylic on paper. It was interesting to see the evolution of my approach to oils as I incorporated a lot of my ‘usuals’ that I would normally only do with watercolor or acrylic paint. There is a lot of layering and the use of paper shapes in the background, and then the pelican itself is only nice thick paint. I used to fear thick paint. If I couldn’t see through the layer it made me uncomfortable, but with this little guy I went for it nice and chunky :) Those are a type of Australian fish in the background that this Australian pelican would be very likely to eat. Some of the papery texture you may (or may not) be able to see is the addition of a formation of circles cut from a dress pattern that showed the overlapping nesting areas of pelicans. All in all, I think it was pretty successful and I am definitely excited to start the next one!

Pumpkin Carving! (I know, I know, Halloween is over..)

A little over a week ago we joined our good friends, the Tallons, for some chili and and some pumpkin carving (not to mention the post-carving party in which we had our first exposure to the X-Factor!). The chili was delicious and warm and the pumpkins were nice and goopy. It was Isaiah’s first time carving a pumpkin so he was very excited…


And, well.. So was Ian..


I was too – I LOVE carving pumpkins! I’m no good at it, but I love the fall season and everything that comes with it (except Halloween.. I don’t like Halloween). And, Holly even roasted the seeds for us to enjoy the next day!

Here is Isaiah with all of the pumpkins.. this was after the bath :).


And this is my attempt at getting all of us in a photo..


Apparently I think I’m enormous. I tried setting up the shot two different times and still had a ton of room on my side. Fortunately, Luke has a much better grip on the physical world than I do, and he was able to take a great shot that you can find here.

I also got some fun shots of them with their candles in the dark.



Here you will find Mr. and Mrs. Church.. I bet you can’t guess whose is whose! :)



You’ll notice that one of us went to great lengths to carve fleshy teeth into his (oops! did I say his?? :) pumpkin’s face and they came out quite nicely.

We didn’t have quite the Reformation Day celebration that we had last year because one of us (I’ll let you guess again) had a boat-load of work to do this week and tried really hard to get it all done before Friday night so that we could have a big get-together, but to no avail. BUT, I was able to finish enough work that we were able to have Sara and Shawn over last minute, and Shawn and Ian drank German beer and we enjoyed Luther once again.

Stay tuned for my most recent completed painting!