arts and crafts and cars

My last few posts have been awfully wordy, so I'm telling the story of Thanksgiving weekend in pictures (mostly).

After stuffing ourselves with turkey, potatoes, salsa and three kinds of pie at the Ybarras, we busted out the arts and crafts. AK and I recently learned how to make our own rubber stamps, which are like the impatient man's linoleum block. AK's sister Lori was a natural (hence the grin), and her mom was a natural at convincing AK to do most of the rubber-carving for her.

This is a stamp of a long-legged bird walking in a winter wonderland, of course.

AK had a Christmas-in-the-desert theme, complete with coyote and rare desert pine.

Tree by Lori, landscape-architect-in-training.

If you get one of these in the mail, forget you saw this. If you don't...well, you'll know I ran out not too far into the alphabet.

Friday night my high school friends and I had our annual-ish reunion. Angie, Jenessa, Amy, Bonnie, Heather and I met at a Cleveland Browns bar (go figure) in Redondo Beach. This year seemed less about poignant reminiscences and more about opening our circle up to Bonnie's guy and his friends and various guys who saw six ladies with drinks and thought, Single! When I informed one wide-eyed 26-year-old from St. Louis that I had a girlfriend at home, he blinked and said, "Oh. Wow. My brother's gay. So, like, did you always know?" It was that kind of bar.

Sunday we took my dad to the Petersen Automotive Museum, which is as much fun for L.A. history geeks as it is for car geeks like my dad. His personal heaven will have a vintage gas station on every corner.

He's not sure about tamal- and ice cream-serving, pipe-smoking bulldogs, however.

AK did her best zebra impression next to the zebra car.

Cathy and I did our impression of pistons in the kids' discovery center.

After a museum full of Don't Touch signs, AK said, "Finally! A car I'm allowed to sit in!"

Comments

I got excited about the stamp photos, but when I saw the car photos I remembered that I have testicles.

That sounds like a lot of fun. I sat home and ate pasta by myself (the ball and chain had to work).
Cheryl said…
You could make a stamp of a car and maintain your macho-ness.
Peter Varvel said…
Beautiful, the hand crafted stamp art!
I just checked, and yes, testicles are still intact.
I'll bet that 26 y.o. is still thinking about how cool you were.
Very creative for making Christmas cards. Aren't they fun? My sons enjoyed making their own Christmas card out of potatoes from Cub Scouts. Enjoy your Christmas :-)

Sounds like a fun place to go out to vintage museums. I ought visit more museums. Probably will over the Winter Break when we are back from North. You all look GOOD!

Cousin Laura
Claire said…
Cool stamps/cards! I've done some rubber & linoleum block carving back in the day. Was not nearly so productive with my family. We have yet to concur on the badly written rules of various domino games.

Also love the wide-eyed 26-year-old from St. Louis's reaction. Perfect.
Cheryl said…
PV: If I had to place money on it, I'd bet that the 26-year-old is thinking more about Jenessa's boobs, actually.

L: I tried making potato stamps once--it was hard. I did a lot of explaining, "No, see, that's a peace sign...."

C: Games with family can be serious stuff. My sister and I reached a Scrabble stand-off in the late eighties and never played again.
amyrottencore said…
I believe Bonnie and I noted that St. Louis lad and you chatting, and giggling about how he was so trying to seal the deal with you. Good fun that night!

And as usual, you described the night way better than I tried to. That's not a competitive comment. It's why YOU'RE the writer of the group. :)
Car stamps would be macho, but if I were going to make a stamp it would definitly have something to do with boobs.

Oddly enough, boobs are masculine to me.

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