The End of 2013

Hi Everyone!

I haven't been overly active on my blog but I have been extremely busy offline.

A recap of 2013 month by month:

January: Aren and I rang in the new Year at home with friends. Aren's brother, a DJ stage name Foxhound, and some other local DJ's Beat Reynolds and Sunny Phono put on an amazing show. I performed with local Rapper Stretch-9 and had an amazing start to what would turn out to be an amazing year.

February: My dad's birthday. Aren and I were busy planning our upcoming vacation to Japan. This has been a dream of his for many years. His brother and my sister will be joining us.

March: My parents set off on their holiday to Cuba. All of us kids chipped in to send them on their first all inclusive tropical vacation to celebrate their 30th Anniversary.

I had the opportunity to sing with all of the lovely Sunday School Children at our Easter Service. There are some very talented young kids in this group!

April: My Artwork was displayed in the Tumbler Ridge Art Space.

May: JAPAN! We traveled to Japan for a three week dream vacation. It was one of the best vacations I have ever been on and I hope we will be able to return again someday. The Japanese people are very warm and inviting and made our stay unbelievable. Aren and I celebrated our 7th Anniversary while in Japan.

Life Size GUNDAM!

GUNDAM!

June: I announced my retirement at work. It was a challenging and rewarding experience to work at the Mine but the time had come for me to say goodbye. I will never forget the people or experiences I had while working at Ekati.

Photo by Nahanni Construction NCL

June 22 - Sang at a show with Stretch-9 at The Coal Bin. If you haven't heard his music yet you should check it out. Stretch-9 on Reverbnation

July: My niece Evangeline was born!

In the newspaper on my birthday! I was asked to sing at GrizzFest and our local paper ran an article about each performer/group. I also received a Nexus for my birthday.

 

A new track from Stretch-9, featuring yours truly was released on SoundCloud. Ms. Miss.

Have a listen if you haven`t already.

Listen Now!

August: Sang at Grizz-Fest with my friend local rap artist Stretch-9. It was awesome to get up and perform for people, some friends even came down from the Yukon to see us! Other performers included George Canyon, The Real McKenzie's and Dragonette. It was pretty cool to share the stage with these people.

Backstage at Grizz-Fest

 Aren and I began renovations to our house. Lots of work!

September: Still renovating....!

Aren's sister moved in with us and started school here in town.

Kailee and Kia

October: I won the Best Costume prize at the Hallowe'en party we attended. Aren should have won with his HAND MADE Daft Punk helmet. I don't think people realized that he wired all of the LED's himself and fabricated the helmet out of Fiberglass. He is pretty amazing!

I began working on some Musical collaborations with DJ's around the world.

November: My favorite sports team the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS win the Grey Cup! Amazing! Our family was then featured in our local newspaper!

December: I entered 5 pieces of Artwork into the South Peace Art Societies Member Show at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery. This was my first show as a SPAS Member.

My first collaboration was released on SoundCloud with musical artist nberk. 

Have a listen if you haven`t already.

Listen Now!

 

Community Choir Concert - I was blessed to be able to join this group of talented people and had the opportunity to sing a special number during the concert as a trio with Bob and Michael (last names kept anonymous in case they don't want internet publicity!) I was also able to create a number of original Art pieces which were used as a part of the visual display during the concert.

Church Christmas Pageant - I was asked to play Mary and had a fun time participating in this event. I bet it was the first time Mary had blonde/blue hair! Disclaimer - not my baby but my wonderful friend Jen's bundle of joy Edward.

Christmas with my family and our new niece Evangeline!

Our Christmas Tree

I updated my Art Website with new work so please check it out:

www.lydiahibbing.com

I have prints available for purchase now as well.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Gingerbread House! (and Addicted To Plastic)

So I know that I promised I would tell you all about the movie I was watching (Addicted to Plastic) and I will in just a minute - I just got distracted by these pictures from my Gingerbread house! I love Christmas and I adore Christmas baking. I didn't actually get to bake the house myself since it was made while I was out at camp - I did get to decorate it though! Isn't it the cutest little cabin you ever did see? It is actually the Domco retreat office (I know the close up is blurry - I apologize... I didn't have the new camera yet). I had so much fun working on this and thanks a bunch to Trudy who took the pictures for me!

I made the windows out of melted candy and the trees are ice cream cones covered in icing. I plan on taking some new pictures when I get back out at work this month, then I will be taking the *NEW* camera with me! Hurray! The baker also told me that they will be creating a village with all of the houses that people made and that could be finished when I get back in. Exciting!

These last two pictures are a couple I took off the balcony tonight - the colour was just amazing! Nothing like a sunset to brighten (darken??) the evening.

Now then - about that movie. So I watched Addicted To Plastic (among other documentaries) the other night and I must say - very interesting. Okay that is an understatement.

For those of you who know me, I am already a bit of ... hmm.... how to put this kindly..... an earth loving nut? Okay maybe not quite that extreme, but I do care a lot about the Earth and the way people treat it. I guess you could say that I feel that we were given the Earth as a gift and should be good stewards of what God gave us.

Sooooo on to the movie: it talks about how plastic surrounds us in our daily lives and how we have basically  taken it for granted. Instead of treating it like a valuable commodity we treat it like garbage. The filmmaker brings up a very valid point however: plastic doesn't go away! There was a really crazy scene in the movie where they use this "manta ray" trolling system that skims the ocean for plastic pieces (small pieces). The water they bring up is a veritable soup of plastics in all forms. The craziest part is that they are miles and miles and miles away from shore.

The film also talks about the toxic effects of recycling, manufacturing and disposing of plastics and the effects it has on the developing world. While some of the information was stuff I already knew I found it quite interesting and also thought provoking.

The movie got me thinking about a project concerning garbage production that I had done for the Science Fair when I was a child. People produced a lot of garbage then and I bet it is even more now. I had to sit and think about how much garbage I produce in a year (it's a lot) and what I could do to reduce that amount.

I would recommend the film to others because it will get you thinking. The movie doesn't propose that we get rid of plastic completely but rather that we treat it with more respect. I hope you have a chance to see it! (Family - you can borrow it from me anytime!)

What are your garbage production reducing strategies?

Ciao!

Christmas Presents!!!

Well now that Christmas is over I can actually post all of the pictures I took of the gifts I made for everyone. Hurray!

So for starters here are these really cute square box/bags that I made for my sister and my mother.

The one for my mum has two leather leaves sewn onto one side. The zipper is orange to coordinate with the lining of the tote I made her. All of the fabric, leather and even the zippers came from my stash.

This is the tote I made for my mum. Thread sketching is one of my new favourite things! It isso much fun to do and it is surprisingly easy too. I drew on the fabric first with a disappearing fabric marker and then stitched over the design. Sooo much fun.

The inside is a gorgeous shade of orange. I didn't put any pockets on the inside, I don't know if I had a reason for this... I think I just didn't want any pockets. It looks sleek and smooth and very shiny.

A close up on the little birds. These were so fun to sew. Honestly thread sketching opens up a whole new world of possibilities. I had done this before with random zig zagging or random lines but wow, an actual picture and it turned out so cool too. Can you tell I'm proud of this one?

My sister gave me these crazy pants a while back to be refashioned into somethin new. I hope she will be pleasantly surprised with the drawstring bags I made for her stocking!

This was SUPER easy since the drawstrings were already in the pants. I chopped off the legs, serged and voila! Two new drawstring bags. A great stocking stuffer.

Unfortunately I am unable to post ALL of the Christmas present pictures as my husband went to work today and took the memory card with all my pictures by accident. Hopefully he will be back before I have to go back to work!