invited to dinner

When you have a family of eight all (mostly) obsessed with Downton Abbey, how do you celebrate the beginning of the new season?

With a dinner, of course.

My mom texted me while I was still at college--before finals had officially started, even, to tell me that we should have a Downton dinner. Fine china, real crystal, fancy food. Heck yeah, count me in--with the small edit that it be a dress-up affair.

My mom and I came up with the menu after studying a couple of Titanic books--one was The Titanic Pocketbook  and the other my siblings' picture book --with reproduction menus inside. Then we looked up how exactly to make the mystery dishes that the menus contained. In other words, we became Mrs. Patmore and Daisy.

So this, my friends is what happens to that family when creativity struck.

Menu

Hors d'Oeuvres Variés

Beef Consommé

Salade Verte

Baked Salmon with Dill Sauce

Creamed Carrots

Boiled Rice

Green Peas

Cucumbers

French (Vanilla) Ice Cream

My older sister and I decided to dress period--me in my 1910s prom dress and she in a nineties-goes-twenties kind of remix dress. And then everyone followed us in getting all gussied up for the affair, except for my parents. Well, you gotta try. The fact that my younger brothers wore tucked in shirts and that my brother Joseph wore a tie just goes to show what a fantastic (and slightly odd) family I have. 

All in all, it was a wonderful night. Excellent food, fine dining, and getting to play pretend, which doesn't happen often enough anymore that I'm eighteen and expected to be this mysterious "adult" thing. (Lies!)

I won't pass judgement on the season as a whole until I've seen more, but so far it's at the very least interesting. I've been enjoying myself as I watch them, curled up in a chair in my dorm room as everyone else does sensible things like homework. But that's overrated! Who needs to do homework? 

Oh yeah. College students. Well, I guess that leaves me to go back to writing my paper.

thoughts on a finished semester and year

I started writing this post in the comfort of my dorm room, the first day that people started leaving for winter break. Now, I'm at home as well, wondering where the past few months had gone. It seems simultaneously that college is home and that just yesterday I was excited for graduation and my senior ballet and had barely finished college applications, let alone picked out where I was going.

Blue tape hallway giraffe says hi.

Now, 2012 is completely and irrevocably finished, and an exciting blank slate of a new year is just beginning. So much happened in the past twelve months and even just the past four that I've been at school, living on my own. I've learned so much and been so blessed--I couldn't be more grateful for the past year. 

My highlights: being a senior soloist in my studio's ballet...making my own Titanic-style prom dress...writing a knitting pattern book...getting into what may not have started out as my dream school, but sure as sunshine has proven to be all that and more...graduating...going to said amazing college...making the most wonderful friends there who I love immensely...seeing a live Broadway play (Les Miserables!)...being in my first college dance performance...and finishing my first semester of college living over 1,000 miles away from my family (that part was hard, but also taught me a lot about how to be a confident young adult--even if that makes me sound like an ad for college)

seeing fall leaves for the first
time--definitely a highlight!

I can't help but look forward to what this new year brings because it's already promised so much. The classes I'm taking this semester sound interesting, and I'm excited for spending another semester with the people who have become my second family (or possibly third or fourth; I have my ballet family of course!) and of course the blue tape giraffe that hangs out in the hallway of my floor. 

While I may not be much of a resolution person, I do have some goals:

• have 15 knitting FOs
• finish the sewing projects I have planned (a skirt I've been working on for ages and a blue satin semi-formal dress)
• sew a long-sleeve shirt for winter next year
• design one knitting pattern, even if it's just for me
• become a better recorder of my life, whether through pictures or writing or blogging. I don't want to let these moments fall into the crevices of time to be forgotten!