During a recent visit to the Hockey Hall of Fame last September, I was mesmerized by the beautiful engravings on some of the hockey trophies. It was kind of hard to get a good pic of them since they were all behind glass and far away hah, but this one gives a good idea of what you'll find there. So beautiful!

Oops! I made a garden

Despite my WORST efforts toward nurturing a garden this year, I have managed to harvest a few vegetable plants. I really do love gardening, but this year has been brutal. We have been away on vacation just about every other weekend, and I've been a little bit of a diva when it comes to working in 100+ degree heat. That being said, (and with the help of my husband and mother in law) I have grown a cucumber plant, 3 tomato plants, and a bunch of basil! woo!!! Oh, there are some hot pepper plants that survived too, but I dont have pictures. Everytime I tried to take a pic of that, a yellow jacket would buzz around my face! Jerk! I am also waging a war on the yellow jackets by my house, but that is a whole other story.

Lilianna's first birthday!

Wow, a whole year, come and gone. I can't believe it! Lily's party was so much fun, nice and relaxing...just her style! So I will probably be updating my blog more, now that Lily's monthly newsletter wont be coming every month. This will be the best way to peek into our life to see what we are up to. :)

Hello!!!!!!

Hi blog, I miss you!

It is my favorite time of year for blogging. Every year, I snap pictures of the flowers and plants around the yard to see how much they have grown. Last year, the results were incredible. It's so exciting to see how far the plants and trees have come. Especially our weeping cherry tree, I already see some cherries on it. When Darin bought it, it was sick, but I'm so happy to see it looking so healthy now. Last year, I combined ALL the tulips into one spot, and some smaller tulips bloomed already, but then these giant huge ones came and look amazing.



I am so impressed this year with the bee balm and lupine. I planted these as tiny baby plants last year, and they are about 10 times bigger this year (no joke!) I hope they attract TONS of butterflies this year

Baby plants, 2010


Just one year later!

Inspiration

I searched the internet this morning for good advice and inspiration for life. And just to make sure I write these down somewhere...

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.

Charles R. Swindoll



I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou



Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you. Amazing things will happen.

Conan O'Brien

Bongos!

Its about time I post some video for the out of town friends :) Lily loves hitting the table so much, we decided to get her some bongos :) She loves them! oh! The password is BongosFEB2011

Bongos! from Angela Ficorelli on Vimeo.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Lily was an absolute doll this morning. Every month I send out an enewsletter featuring the growing-ups of Lily. At the end of each month, I go through and collect a bunch of Lily pictures and realize that I dont have ANY pictures of me and Lily!! So then I try to do a quick photoshoot with the little doll, and its not always easy.

This month, I'm starting early. One of my favorite things is to hold Lily and look in the mirror and sing, Baby and Mama, Baby and Mama! Cheesy, I know :) but you find yourself doing these things when you're a mother, but very few of us decide to blog about it. Anyway, I decided to snap some shots of this little moment so it would last longer.

Lunch time post

Well, its lunch time, and as the junk mail rolls into my email box, I will sit and write a post. The time has come where Lily does not need to nurse at lunch time anymore, and Darin will be working more, so I thought...why not write a lunch time blog post while I'm stuck here at work?

So let's get to the life updates. Darin's sister got married last weekend and it was the best wedding we have ever attended! She looked BEAUTIFUL! It was so much fun, I think I might have spent the entire time on the dance floor, wait...did I just say that?! It must have been a good wedding :) I was so teary eyed to see them so happy together. They are a perfect match, and I feel lucky to call them family.

My parents and sister watched Lily over the weekend and they said she was great. She stayed on her schedule, and was happy and easy going. yay! What a champ :) I found this picture of Lily on my work computer, and thought I would share it. It feels like this could have been taken yesterday <3



oh how I miss her tiny-ness! She is still a little peanut :) hehe Okay, now its time to actually eat lunch. Until next time!

oh yeah, I used to make videos!

I was digging through the ol' archives, and found this video I made. Sorry for the low quality, but you get the idea :)

AIGA Wish You Were Here postcards

I'm so excited to share the my postcard is in the running to become a top 25 winner for the AIGA Wish you were here post card competition. yay! If you want to vote for my postcard, click here

Where did the time go?

So, I meant to finish and cross off items 34–40 done on my To Do list...however, none of that happened due to internet. Ugh, my computer is like a time warp. And it doesn't help that after looking at the internet, it makes me want to tweak every single website I have out there. So now, I'm back at item 34 and its so late, my computer says its Sunday. At least I folded the laundry, but it looks like 'take a shower' will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Is it too late to start drinking wine??

Goodnight

Whew! I just finished making goodies for a craft show tomorrow at the Crofoot in Pontiac. I hope there is a good turn out, I'm excited to see the bands and to check out the stand up comedians. I'm going to be making custom valentines while I'm there, which means an entire night of lettering! Woo!

I feel exhausted after working, playing with Lily, and crafting, but its so hard to sleep when there are new episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. haha, I am so addicted to this show. I should follow the lead of my little pups and get some sleep...

calm cupboard

here is a nice calm picture to even out the mood from my last post :)

starting to...lose......steam.....

Today has been quite a day! This morning I was featured on a great blog called Many Hats Mommy. I worked from home today because of the snowstorm, however, I am so sick :( so it wasn't all that fun. Darin is sick too! Is that even normal for both parents to be sick while baby is just as happy as a clam? I'm just waiting for Lily to get sick, any day now, maybe? It's been 7 months and she hasn't gotten anything! (is it really necessary to knock on wood at this point?).

I just hope, if she does get sick, its after I start feeling better. I'd hate to have to take care of her while sneezing all over her. :/ poor baybo!

Anyway, after work, I was motivated to put a newsletter together for Moving Beauty. If you would like to get that newsletter, you can sign up for it here. I really enjoy putting newsletters together, so this was fun work :)

I'm also very excited because I sold a wine journal today! It was in my etsy store for about 5 hours or so before it sold. yay! The wine journals are my first project with my screen printer, and they turned out great, I'm really proud of them. Man, I felt supercharged doing all of this stuff today, but now I'm just tired. whew! Time to lay down and fall asleep to TV. Goodnight.

Picture of my bathroom...don't worry, its not what you think

I really would like to get better at photography, especially now that I have to take pictures of Lily growing up so fast! I'm not sure what kind of photography you would call this shot, but I enjoyed shooting it

A new year!

It's been a happy new year so far. Just wanted to make a post and say hello to my online world. Do people still make new years resolutions? I haven't really made any resolutions, but I have been taking on new projects that have been keeping me busy. I realized how many awesome tools I have laying around in my basement. For Christmas, I got a screen printer (YES!) This is the most awesome gift ever!! I really really wanted my first print to be some red wings logos on stuff for Lily haha, but my printer is being weird, so I might just end up drawing something on the transparency to screen print it on EVERYTHING. muh haha I'm kind of leaning towards screening this little drawing of lincoln I made a while back.


I started a project for my sister in law, cutting some numbers out of MDF board with my scroll saw. I forgot how much I love building and making things!! I'm really happy with how the numbers turned out, this could be the beginning of a beautiful obsession of cutting things out of MDF.

Another fun thing I'm working on is a postcard for AIGA Detroit. I made these two with some photochrome images from the LOC archives. I'm working on a final (more personal) one that I will submit to the AIGA Detroit Wish You Were Here design competition. Lots of exciting projects!!

Getting the Blog Back Together

okay, its been a while since I've posted. Even longer since I have written about Lily! Last post was back in August, a couple days before I went back to work (ugh). I also was a little lazy about the blog since I made a monthly newsletter for Lily updates. If you are not on the email list and want to be, let me know! I will add you :)

Anyway, Lily is your classic 5 month old. Laughing, babbling, eating solid foods, etc. So, it's true, having a baby changes your life. It's challenged me to think about the way I feel about free time, working, friendship, marriage, love, and life in general. There were some personal struggles along the way, probably due to all these changing hormones, but I have never felt better. (sorry to get so cheesy, but sometimes the blog is the only place to do it!)

And if taking care of a baby wasn't time consuming enough, I picked now to start a side job. More about that later! Feels good to start blogging again.

ahh the day Lily found her feet...

More memory lane!

This is so cool! Here is a picture of the house my dad grew up in AND a picture of what it looks like now! A new garage and a white picket fence. Its so nice to see that the neighborhood has been kept up.

Memory Lane

A couple years ago, my aunt gave my dad a TON of family pictures that she almost threw out by accident! I am so glad that she didn't because I love going through old family photos. I found my flickr set and decided to look at them again. There are pictures of the cottage that I used to go to when I was little. I remember filling pie pans full of mud and setting them out by the back porch to cool. I also love the picture of my parents with their DIY paper cut out Christmas tree that they hung since they didn't have a real tree. Baby pictures of my dad! And a picture of him with the dog he won (his parents said he couldn't have a dog, but he had to keep this one since he won it, right?!)

Astro Wheels!

Sorry twitter friends, but I found a twitter account that I think is amazing and beats all the rest! Quick, everyone follow @Astro_Wheels. He is a real astronaut (no offense) that tweets from space!! The pictures are amazing, I suggest you follow him now.

Check out this amazing view of The Isles of Greece


Hurricane Earl


Italy