Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day full of family, good food, and festivities!

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Isaiah 9:6

My mom only makes her delicious coffee cake on Christmas, so it's always a special treat!

(Shelby's thoughts: I hate my life. Get it off.)

I hope everyone has a blessed, beautiful holiday!

Love,



p.s. IT'S SNOWING!

I'm now old enough to rent a car. Yay.

Woop woop - I'm 25!

(That sounds so old!)

And yep, I was born on Christmas Eve. It's a cool story, but in reality, it kind of stinks.

Here's how it went down:

My mom went into labor sometime in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, but she insisted on my dad wrapping all the Christmas presents before they left.

Dad: Teresa, no one is going to be here to open them tomorrow.

Mom: Just wrap them!!!

Dad: Uh, ok.

(Dad - I don't speak from experience, but I think it's probably a bad idea to argue with someone labor. Just sayin'.)

They arrived at the hospital, and I was born at 11:35 p.m. I'm pretty sure I would have been born on Christmas - but my mom had a c-section - and I have a feeling the doctors were just thinking "let's get this kid out and go home for Christmas." So Christmas Eve it was. The next morning, I was brought to my mom in a stocking. Yes, I fit into a stocking. As far as I know, there is no photographic evidence of this adorable event. But here are some pictures of me throughout the years...

(I love this one of my dad and me and his Model A!)

(I was a ham!)

By the way...the birthday-at-Christmas-time is a family curse. Here's a list of family events at this time of year:

December 22: Mom's birthday

December 24: My birthday

December 25: Christmas

December 29: My sister's birthday

January 1: New Years

Whew. Good times.

Alright. Now what you've all been waiting for...the winner of my $25 shop credit giveaway is:

Gina from Hiya Luv!

Yay! Congrats!

A very Merry Christmas Eve to everyone!

Secret Talents

So apparently Daniel has a secret creative side, which he neglected to tell me about.

(If you're new around here, this is how we met.)

I got four packages in the mail yesterday, including one from Mandy and one from Daniel.

I was super excited about Daniel's package, and I have absolutely no patience when I get fun mail, so I ran upstairs with it and immediately opened it. Inside was a new French press and some delicious freshly roasted coffee beans.

French press coffee is pretty much the way to my heart. That and chocolate.

I'm sporting my new Mandipidy cap, too! Isn't it adorable? I love it!

(I didn't take it off when we got back from dinner last night, and my mom asked if I was going to wear it to bed. No, of course not - that would be weird. Ummm....maybe?)

Anyway, I've been telling (ahem, complaining to) Daniel that Greenville has not yet seen any snow, and he insisted that he was going to send me snow for my birthday. I was skeptical.

But I found this in my package...



Hmmm.....ok.

Inside, I found this:

Sweet, right?

Also impressive. I was never good at making paper snowflakes when I was a kid, and I haven't figured out how he made this one. I've told him he's gonna have to teach me.

The snowflake is now hanging over my bed just in case the current predictions for a white Christmas in Greenville fall through. And because I like it.

:)

p.s. Don't forget that today is the last day to enter my giveaway!

Dear Brahms, I Love You.

If I'm curiously absent for the next few days, it's because I'm in Charlotte rehearsing with my piano trio.

(Ok, we'll be doing a little shopping, too. And eating. And hangin' out. But also some serious rehearsing.)

We're rehearsing for our graduate chamber music recital in February.

And we're playing this - Brahms' Piano Trio No. 1:

Sigh...Oh Brahms, how I love you.

I know it's long, so just listen to the first couple of minutes. The opening is just...perfection.

(This recording is fantastic, too. The performers are all legends in the classical music world. And Isaac Stern has long been one of my favorite violinists.)

I'm so incredibly excited about playing this piece!!!

Maybe I'll put up a video of us playing later... ;)

And speaking of Brahms - if you've never seen the Raisin Brahms commercial, you must. It's hilarious. If only Brahms would come crashing through my wall...

(Ok, maybe it's only hilarious to music majors who have spent way too much time in a practice room. But still cute.)

There's a video for Van Goghgurt too.

(After my last recital...)

I'm off to rehearse! And shop!

:)

A Beautiful Hello

Since Daniel now has his Christmas package I can share pictures...

But first I want to share with you an Etsy shop I found called Beautiful Hello.

Aren't her cards gorgeous?!?

They all have fun song title names!

(Her name is Emily, too. And she lives in Greenville. How fun.)

She's new to Etsy, so please go check out her shop!

Since I didn't have time to order one to put in Daniel's package, I decided to make my own.

(Emily's are far more beautiful than mine, but I tried.)

So I pulled out my big girl watercolors (not the ones you use when you're little...the kind you squeeze out of a tube), and mixed up some pretty green colors so my tree would look like a Christmas tree. Instead of Emily's intricate, hand-stitched tree trunk (I don't know how to do that!), I drew in the tree's trunk with a metallic copper colored pencil.

So, here it is:

*crappy phone camera picture alert*

I think it turned out fairly well. And I think Daniel liked it. ;)

I'd also like to say that I'm pretty proud Daniel is learning how to do this:

This one is a mocha...my drink of choice. Mmmmm.

(Sorry, Daniel. I stole these again.)

Go on. Admit it. You're jealous.

:)

p.s. Don't forget to enter my giveaway!

25 + 25 + 25 {and a giveaway}

...equals 75. But that's not really the point of this post.

Thanks to the lovely Mandy of Mandipidy and her birthday bash giveaways, I gained quite a few new followers in the past week. I passed 25, and I now have 39!

Thanks Mandy!

Since my 25th birthday is also coming up next week, I thought those two things were reason enough for a giveaway. Don't you think so?

Symphony Rosette Headband

Awesome. Me too.

In celebration of all the other 25s going on in my life, one of you will win a $25 shop credit to Emerging Em!

Light Peach Bowtie Necklace

To enter:

Visit Emerging Em and leave a comment with your favorite item!

Extra Entries:

1. Follow my blog.

2. Become a fan of Emerging Em on Facebook.

(I'm also having a giveaway for my Facebook fans. Head on over and comment there, too.)

3. Follow me on twitter.

(Yes. I caved. I got a twitter account.)

4. Blog, tweet, or facebook about this giveaway.

Be sure to leave your email address so that I can contact you!

The giveaway will run through December 23, and I'll announce the winner on my birthday - Christmas Eve!

:)

I Got Mail.

About two months ago, I arrived home from an extraordinarily long day of school, teaching, and a Hendersonville Symphony rehearsal to a large package. :)

I wasn't expecting any packages, but I opened it to find this...

Two summers ago, I spent the summer teaching with a good friend from Florida State, Alex. Her mom, when she found out I had started tatting, sent me this lovely package of all of her mother-in-law's tatting materials! It was such a sweet package full of threads and shuttles.

But she also included some gorgeous pieces that her mother-in-law had made...

Isn't this doily exquisite? I hope I can learn to tat that well eventually!

I think this long one would be a beautiful table runner.

When I opened the card (with one of my favorite Bible verses on it!), this gorgeous tatted cross was inside. It's now in my Bible and marking Jeremiah 29:11.

I'm making Christmas gifts for both Alex and her mom, and I'm thinking about something like this for Mrs. Massey...

(Three Red Apples)

There were some smaller doilies in the package, and I think it will be really special to use one in my gift for Mrs. Massey. I emailed Alex about a motto she thought her mom would like, and she said, "trust your journey." I love it!

What do you guys think?

I'll keep you posted on how it goes...hopefully with pictures.

I hope everyone is having a lovely week!

Story Time.

Ok, it's story time with Emily.

Got a cup of coffee? Or tea? Ok, good.

Remember the guy in the picture from my last post?

Meet Daniel.

(He likes coffee just as much as I do! Probably more...I know!)

Here's how the story goes...

September 22: I left Spartanburg after a long day of teaching to drive to Augusta, Georgia to play with the Symphony Orchestra Augusta for the first time. I arrived in Augusta, checked into my hotel, grabbed dinner, went to rehearsal, trudged back to my hotel, and passed out...

...until 5:30 the next morning - when I woke up in a panic and realized that I hadn't brought black shoes. Why not just buy some, you say? Well, the entire orchestra had to be on a bus at 6:30 that morning to drive to Swainsboro, Georgia for two concerts. Gold sandals it was. Oops. I definitely fell asleep on the way over - in some embarrassing fashion as you can only do on a bus. (I later found out that Daniel was sitting rather near me. I hope I wasn't snoring. I'm not actually sure if I snore at all...) After our morning concert, we had an extremely long time to do absolutely nothing until our evening concert. So I made some new friends, right? Umm, this is where my inherently shy nature comes in, and I read a book...for about seven hours.

October 2: I get a random friend request on Facebook from this guy named Daniel. Um, have we ever met? I see that he's in the orchestra, so I add him. I later get a post on my wall: Hey there! Sorry to not see you in Augusta this week... Um, did we meet? I text my pianist, Julie: This random guy from Augusta added me on Facebook. Response: Ooooh, is he cute?? Response: Uh, yes... :)

So, Daniel and I started exchanging messages and chatting on Facebook, and we discovered that we have a lot in common. We had such long (fun!) conversations that I began to suspect that he was interested, but if you know me at all, you know that I can overanalyze just about anything. To death. What if he just wants to be friends?? And now I'm interested in him. Ahh! Panic.

Fast forward to December 2: I left Spartanburg after an extremely long last day of school to drive to Augusta to play in the December pops concert. Oh man, I was super nervous. As in, terrified. What was I going to say?? (Hi. Nice to finally meet you in person? Lame.) Again, panic.

After I survived my near heart attack on the drive down, the weekend (and I'm sure you could see this coming) ended up being amazing! We went out for coffee (ahem, lots of coffee), took a walk by the Savannah River, and just talked for hours. He admitted that he liked me, asked me if that was weird (um, no!), and we decided to date. (By the way, Daniel, if you actually read this, thank you. Had you left that conversation up to me, it probably would not have happened. I'm a chicken.)

The only downside? He lives in Milwaukee. Wisconsin. (Yes, he flies to Augusta to play in the orchestra.) So, I don't love the distance (who would?), but I definitely think he's worth it! :)

By the way, he's the principal timpanist. Here's a picture:

(Sorry, Daniel. I know I stole this.)

The end.

(Well, for now.)

:)

p.s. I would like to apologize to all my friends who bore the brunt of my freak outs about Daniel. I'm really sorry...I know that I'm crazy.



Oh hello, December.

Whew, I survived to the end of school and got my 2322843 papers written.

Writing papers for me is like pulling teeth. It was not fun times.

Anyhow, they're done, and I'm loving Christmas break and all of my holiday gigs! I just got back from a weekend of playing with the Symphony Orchestra Augusta in Augusta, Georgia. I made some new friends, and we enjoyed playing our holiday pops concert!

My stand partner and I decided to turn bowties into headbands. :)

I'll have to tell you about the guy in the picture above a little later... ;)

Now. In case you haven't heard - Mandy over at Mandipidy is hosting a whole day of giveaway goodness for her birthday! Happy Birthday Mandy!

You can win lovely items from 17 different shops including Emerging Em!

Go check it out!