Minted Giveaway—Feeling Generous (closed)

Okay readers: I have a giveaway at the end of this (short) post, because I’m feeling generous and kind towards you all.

First you must look at some pictures I took this week.

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I love polka dots.

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What it looks like in the pit where I spent much of my week. Or at least it felt like it. Tonight and Sunday afternoon, performances with Winter Opera St Louis.

Okay now that I’ve bored you (and seriously, did I only take two pictures this week? I’ve been crazy busy, evidently…)…(…)

Remember my post the other day about minted.com? Well, in exchange for that I got a code for a $75 credit to the site. However, this year I’m not planning to sending photo cards, so I thought, HEY let’s do a little giveaway. I’ll email the code to the winner and you can have $75 of cards to send for Christmas, or to use for anything you want on Minted.com.

How to enter: (giveaway closed! winner announced soon!)

1. Leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite type of Christmas cookie.  (If you can’t figure out how to leave a comment, make sure you click on the title of the post so you are looking at this post on it’s own, not as part of the main page.)

2. Email me at hannahviolin@gmail.com with a picture of your cat to be included in a Caturday post in the upcoming months. I would love more kitty pictures! Please leave a comment saying that you have done so. (If you’ve already sent pictures you can send more OR leave a comment saying that you did so in the past.)

So that’s two chances to enter—and be sure to leave TWO comments if you want to have both chances. The contest runs from now until next Friday, November 15 at noon CST, and I will randomly choose a winner at that time. Winner will be notified by email. Good luck!

Weekend and such

My usual (ha) weekend recap post is late. Yesterday was a very busy day for me, and although today is too (this is all due to Winter Opera St Louis rehearsals and practicing!) I’m going to write a quick blog post while I digest a delicious lunch.

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I had a bunch of weddings over the weekend. This was taken while I was stopped in traffic on my way to the one Friday evening. It’s the Old Courthouse in St Louis and on my right hand side was the Arch but I was way too close for a good photo of that.

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Saturday’s first wedding was at St Anthony of Padua church, which I had never played at before. I was amazed when I walked in the door—the church was SO beautiful! It’s kind of sad to me that I’ll go to an old church in what is often a pretty lousy run down (possibly crime-ridden) neighborhood and then there is just a gorgeous church, beautifully decorated and that probably cost tons of money and man hours when it was built. We just don’t make buildings the way we used to.

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My second Saturday wedding was at the Sheraton City Center in the fifth floor Atrium. I thought it was very cute, and I tried to get a picture to give you an idea of the scope, but I found that challenging to do surreptiously!

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If I were staying in the hotel in one of those rooms overlooking the Atrium during a wedding I’d be tempted to do something really weird, like watch in my pajamas or something.

You’re probably saying, well that’s great, but what did you EAT?

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Dinner at Meskerem Ethiopian restaurant. I’d only had ethiopian food once before. It was great!

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Breakfast one day. Eggs and waffles on my favorite snowman plate. Well, only snowman plate. I needed to run the dishwasher. It did make breakfast feel more festive.

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Cookies at a good friend’s house. I did not eat all of them, nor did I eat as many as I wanted to. They were getting stale this morning so I figured two of them made a pretty good breakfast—they’ve got eggs in them, right?

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I’ve been quite sad because my good friend Melissa no longer lives here (well she lived here part time, but it was enough!) so I am thrilled that she is in town this week playing for the opera. We met for lunch at Stellina and it was great. I ordered the Il Capo sandwich, which had roast beef, prosciutto, something else, and an olive tapenade. The olive was a really unique part of the sandwich and I liked it, though it was perhaps a little heavy handed. The side of mushroom soup was really good too.

When I wasn’t playing a wedding or rehearsing over the weekend I was watching various TV shows on Netflix. A friend and I are currently obsessed with True Blood, and are well into the third season. It seems to be going downhill, but I still want to see what happens to Sookie (as annoying as she is well…most of the time.) I’ll tell you, I’m glad I don’t live in the south with all those vampires! I also spent an evening watching a mini marathon of Chuck at my friend Sarah’s house (where we ate the cookies and loads of popcorn)…I think we managed five episodes that night? Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.

I tried to include a picture of me and the fatness, but it keeps being upside down and when I turn it it gets shorter and shorter. I’m still not loving Windows 8 but I’m learning to live with it, as it’s my only option.

And now I’m off to practice. I have a “big” solo in the opera so I’m a little stressed about it. If you are local, come see the performances of Faust this weekend with Winter Opera St Louis! I’m in the pit, of course, as I’m a violinist, not a singer, but you’ll know I’m there.

(Unrelated: I was going to run this morning but it was raining and my bed just seemed more appealing. Tomorrow, I promise!)

Holiday Cards and a Quick Caturday

If you are a long time reader of my blog, you know I love this time of year. Thankgiving and Christmas are my favorite holidays. Now that doesn’t really make me special, in fact, I imagine that you probably also love this time of year. Vacation days, parties, baking, delicious food, gifts, time with friends and family—what’s not to love?

I recently was contacted by Minted.com which is a website that sells holiday cards (other cards too, but hey, it’s Christmas card time, isn’t it?). I’m no stranger to photo Christmas cards as it’s my favorite card to send and receive, and this site has a great selection!

From the company: 

MINTED; the world’s premiere marketplace for crowd-sourced independent design and art. Artists and aspiring designers from around the world have their work featured on Minted. We believe in providing the best service to our customers and uphold that ideal by using only the finest materials and products. Minted is dedicated to the celebration of life’s most important events – whether birthdays, weddings, or reunions – we’re there every step of your life’s journey.

Though the cards are more expensive than some, I think the designs are generally really beautiful and artistic! If you have had a new baby or a special event this year and want to showcase your photos to share with your friends and family, I’d definitely take a look around the site—they have so many varieties of cards in various shapes, sizes, and paper options that you are sure to find something you love. Visit the website to take a look around.

(I was offered a merchandise credit in return for sharing Minted.com with you guys, but I do think they look like a great site to get quality cards.)

Minted.com currently has a discount code for a short time. If you use the code BACKERFS (only until Nov. 4 so act fast!) you can get free card backers and free shipping on your order. I’m betting after that expires there might be another code too…

Oh, let’s see, I promised you some Caturday too…remember, send me your pictures to be featured! I have a few that I’ll save for next time, but my sister Leslie sent me this awesome one of her cats that REALLY makes me want to get a kitten for Fatty to play with…or murder…

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I presume that Catalunya (black cat) survived the attack.

Faust

You’ll be relieved to hear that I got a new computer. After about a week without one, it is a relief to have a real computer to type on. I do have a lovely iPhone, but typing important emails and blogging on it is just a real pain, so I had a lot of catch up to do (and more still, as much of yesterday was spent trying to figure out how to use this newfangled piece of machinery.)

The new computer runs Windows 8. I spent a bit of time yesterday moving things around so that my computer makes sense for my needs—I’m not a huge fan of the initial start screen for Windows 8 as I don’t have a touch screen—I think it seems to be geared towards those who do, and with a regular old timey laptop it just doesn’t make as much sense to me, but hey, I’m old, I know. I finally have everything set up pretty much the way I like it, and I’m starting to learn my way around.

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It’s not as easy to copy and paste pictures into Windows Live Writer but I’ll figure it out, I hope. That took way longer than it should have, but I suppose there’s always a learning curve, huh?

It’s a busy weekend ahead: three weddings and six hours of rehearsal for Winter Opera St Louis. We are performing Gounod’s Faust next weekend (Friday night and Sunday afternoon) and tickets are still available. It’s a fun show–

“Based on Goethe’s “Faust”, Mephistopheles promises Faust his every desire on Earth in exchange for his servitude in Hell. What would you sell your soul for? “

I’m not falling for that. I wouldn’t sell my soul for anything. How about you?

Totally unrelated, but it’s November now and that means time to think about Thanksgiving. I found this article on Buzzfeed about “Thanksgivukkah” fun!

Rainy day

It’s raining today. Which is weird because I made grilled cheese and tomato soup last night, which would be perfect rainy day food for today. Is that ironic?

I have a new laptop on order. I’m very excited. I got a great deal on it and it should be an improvement over what I had, not even meaning that the computer will start up, which is an automatic improvement.

I did a short run in the rain. I’m almost smiling!

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I’m still doing walk/run intervals but the running is getting longer and with this cooler weather, it doesn’t feel too awful. If I lose some weight it will feel even better and yeah, I’m working on that. I find that eating more vegetables helps.

I had a discussion with a friend yesterday about avoiding things for fear of failure. I could write a long post about fear of failure and how it can hold us back, but I won’t. I will say that generally I don’t worry too much about it, but I know many who do. For me failure is a big part of life, but I generally find that the upside of trying your best trumps any fear of failure. At least career wise, though I’m still riding high on a successful audition…that I really didn’t want to take because I was tired of failing. I’m glad I did. Now I’m trying to incorporate that idea into my diet and exercise routine: tired of feeling like a loser so I just need to get back to it and I know I will succeed.

Typing on my phone is harder. That paragraph didn’t really make cohesive sense but perhaps you get my drift. If not I’m sorry. Perhaps a picture of a cat will help.

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I never said it would be a good picture of a cat.

It got cold

When did winter arrive? Ok I’m being overly dramatic but MAN we went from nice warm weather to cold temperatures really quickly. Luckily my apartment has central heating! Also cold temperatures mean my cat does a bit more snuggling which is an added bonus.

I’m typing this from my phone. My laptop is having some issues and I need to figure out my best course of action. I was sent home from a place today to make sure my files were backed up (evidently I have lots of music though I’m pretty sure that’s all backed up) and was given a few more small tasks to do before returning. I will have to see if the problem is worth repairing or if I’ll be shelling out for a new laptop. This is only a nightmare because I went cable free recently and so all my entertainment is computer based! I started re watching Alias though since I have that on DVD and do have an old TV and DVD player. My life is incredibly hard.

If it weren’t for my fancy smart phone I would be far more upset but I find that I can do most of what I need on it and honestly, being somewhat computer-less for two days has shown me how much time I was wasting. I will need to get something to replace it but I need to consider spending my time more wisely in the future. If nothing else I could be sleeping more!

Then again. I enjoy my internet time. Why take away life’s small pleasures? And I get plenty of sleep anyway.

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thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.