I hope everyone got to see the moon, Venus and Jupiter on Monday night. Very cool. I couldn't resist stopping on my drive home to snap this picture of the 3 planets over the Potomac. I absolutely love my drive to my day job since we moved (from Fredericksburg, VA to Alexandria , VA) about 8 months ago. I used to commute by train a total of 3 hours a day, now it's a quick 10 minute trip down the GW Parkway past Mount Vernon and along the river to work. A few weeks ago, I saw 2 bald eagles wrangling over a fish in the morning fog. It was pretty amazing, and the sunsets are always spectacular. As you can see, this one was a brilliant orange line under the deep blue clouds. Anyway, I'm off to fulfill one of my husband's Christmas presents, seeing the Dan Band at the 9:30 Club. It should be a good time, we're meeting a few of his friends there and I'm sure will be shouting the words to cheesy girl power ballads sprinkled with obscenities along with the rest of the crowd after a beer or two!

Yay, the Christmas card is done!

One less thing is off my plate for the holidays! Maybe now I can get to some shopping. I've been picking up small things here and there, mostly from Etsy. I got my husband a few prints from John Golden's shop- the "Belongs to You" and "Beats for You". We have a brown bedroom (from the previous owners, Dev likes it so I agreed to keep it brown for awhile but really I am just dying to paint it blue like nearly every other wall in my house), so I thought the red hearts would pop nicely. I also got my sister a bracelet (and myself a turquoise bead necklace which I LOVE) from dorelabear. I know Dev got me a bunch of stuff from Etsy as well, but I don't know what yet (despite my best efforts). I do love these squirrel vases from Pretty Random Objects, which I think are very fitting for a DC girl such as myself, since we have so many squirrels here!


I'm also working on my next few prints: Baltimore, Boston, and another DC. I'm still in the sketching phase of all 3, which I use to help me decide what view I want to use, perspective, etc. They're not much to look at right now, but I thought I'd upload them to show a bit of my process, since I do spend a lot of time coming up with the final designs. It doesn't always come as easy as I'd like to get a view that people (both tourists and locals of a particular city) will recognize and enjoy, to get a feel for the city as best I can, and to get a view tall and thin enough to accomodate the size constraints of gocco that will also make the people in the view a relatively similar size in all of the prints. And to make it pretty and all. So, here are my (very preliminary) sketches for B-more, Boston and DC:

So, I'm pretty excited to make the more detailed drawings and get them in the shop soon (I hope). Also, here are some gift tags I made today to go with my gift wrap, inspired by, of course, Rory.
Now it's time to go home and set up my new drying rack and drafting table!