chron·i·cles: Sally Forth!

Hello all!

It has been the most eventful week and I have so much to fill you in on. So let's just jump right in:

KALEE IS ENGAGED!!!!

Everyone's favorite cousin and best friend, Kalee, was greeted at the front door of her house not just by her boyfriend Tim but by Baby Marlow as well, who was holding in her little hand a ring box for Mummy!

I'm freaking out!!

It doesn't hurt that I have wedding on the brain these days all on my own, but I am now insanely excited to see how her nuptials are going to piece together. I already love all her ideas... 1950's inspired dress, intimate group, a delicious dinner. Maybe if we beg and plea, she'll do a guess post for us. What do you say, Kay??

It was so perfectly timed too, as far as I'm concerned, because I was already heading home for my brother Kenny's going away party and didn't have to wait to check out the new shimmer on her finger.

Kenny's Going Away Party -he's moving to DC for a big boy job- was a great success too thanks to Kalee who organized the whole thing. We had it at a members' civic hall called Brown Square and a good 50 - 60 people turned up. That boy is going to leave a big void in Worcester, MA when he moves away. He has the kind of personality that fills up an entire house and more so than anyone else I've ever known can make an event feel somehow sucky just because he's not there. 

For my part, I pulled together a video montage. A Tribute! And I am so proud of how well it was received. Our mum cried of course, but we knew that was going to happen. 

This montage is the first fruit produced of this year's major Nostalgia Project. -The Nostalgia Projects are creative endeavors taken on for both creativity and posterity sake. IE: Two years ago, I scanned and uploaded all my photo albums. Last year, I put them in chronological order and posted them to this blog for my family and friends to see whenever they'd like. Next year, I plan to attack everyone else's albums. :) :) :)-  
For this video project, I got a VHS/DVD converter and transferred all of our old home videos to DVD. And not a moment too soon, some of those VHS were beginning to crumble! 

 The unit I got in the end -thanks to Matt for all his research!- is a Toshiba and is super simple to use. You literally put one VHS cassette in and one blank DVD. Hit PLAY on one side and DUBBING on the other side and boom you're good to go. You can set the DVD to "finalize" automatically or do so manually for the freedom of recording from another cassette before you're done with it if you'd like.

From there, I chose Ulead Video Studio for my editing software. You'll need some intermediate computer skills to use this program with ease right out the gate, but honestly it is incredibly easy to use. All you have to do is put in your newly burned DVD, tell the program to load it's content and then use the Multi Trim option to pick out moments that you like and want to use. 

This is really not intended to be a tutorial. The results are just so amazing that it would be a disservice for me not to tell you how easily it all came together. Check out Kenny's Tribute, and let me know what you think!!

Beyond all all this, Matt and I managed to go on VACATION! Yaaaaaaaaaayyyy!!!

Taking time off from work, let alone going some place tropical, is so rarely in the cards for us. We've got all these goals at work and blah, blah, blah. But not last week!!

Last week, we hit up Puerto Rico!! The most amazing place I've been in a long time!

I'm going to mostly let the photos speak for themselves, but we did have a couple of -Huh?- moments that I have to say out loud.

1. The fact that there are Spanglish versions of signs is hilarious.  

2. Sorry people who don't like generalizations, but Puerto Ricans really have no idea how to function in a street. Those who drive, do so terribly. We saw multiple people signal one way and turn the other, cutting someone off... naturally. And there were three individual times that I should have legitimately run someone over. One girl ran full speed across three lanes of traffic without any warning. My bumper could have kissed her had she slowed down even a millisecond.

2. Puerto Rican food is delicious! but somehow tricky to find any in Puerto Rico. Well, at least, Matt couldn't find pork butt to save his life and I'm saddened to admit that I left without a single arrepa. 

But I digress. On to the photos!