It's been a while since I posted anything here. I left off about a month before the wedding as our lives were getting busier and busier with the last minute projects. The wedding came and went (and it was awesome), the California reception came and went (it was also awesome albeit it was different). We started settling into the "life after the wedding" filled with post-wedding projects (like making and then writing Thank You notes - still need to finish the last batch of these and picking up pictures for a professional wedding album from our amazing photographers).

I transferred to a Usability department at work and am now settling into a new role in a completely new to me field. I don't have any background in Usability but I have a passion for it and am trying to learn as much as possible on the job. It's been going well so far.

I started exchanging postcards with random people from all over the world via Postcrossing.

We celebrated a bunch of holidays for the first time as a married couple. We still have a few more this year. We celebrated Thanksgiving at a wonderful house of friends that are like family to us. We spent a cozy Christmas at Erik's parents. We hosted a New Year's party. Russian Christmas on January 7th we spent in the company of friends. We tried a new fondue pot (wedding gift) on Valentine's day. This Passover and Russian Easter Erik's parents were visiting. It was great to have them in town and celebrate with them. We hosted a first-night Seder for which we made lots of yummy food. Some of the yummy brisket Erik made is now in the freezer for us to devour later. True to tradition, I spent the day before Easter cooking, making traditional paskha andkulichs. There were also hard boiled eggs dyed with onion skins and other non-Easter food. I was happy I was able to accommodate vegetarians and vegans this time. :) I'll have to document the food I've made separately as a reference for next year. Erik made me a traditional mold for paskha. Paskha is the word for "Easter" in Russian and is also the name of the traditional sweet dish you cook for Easter made of, mostly, curd and/or cream. After the mixture is ready, it is molded into a shape of a pyramid with symbols on the sides - usually, "ХВ" for "Христос Воскресе!" or "Christ Has Risen!" is on one side a the pyramid and a Orthodox cross is on the other. Erik made the mold out of wood planks and was able to carve the designs into the sides. It came out beautifully. I'm still amazed at how talented my husband is! :).

I've done a couple of crafty projects of my own - I finished the cross-stitch for Erik that took almost 3 years to make.

I've completed another cross-stitch for my friend Sejal's baby - it features characters from Finding Nemo, the name of the baby and his birthday. I bought the pattern after the baby was born and it can't be considered the "name announcement" since I finished it when the baby was 1.5 years old :). But they say it's the thought that counts. I couldn't go past that pattern knowing how in love with fishes Sejal is :). I haven't taken any pictures of it yet, we'll have to do it when we go visit Sejal next time.

My latest project has been Easter eggs. I'm going to make another post about them since they deserve it.

I'm looking forward to posting here more. I still have lots of wedding stuff I'd like to document :).