Check out how cute Stef's Thanksgiving table was! Jeffery and I ate on TV trays..ha ha ha. We have a running joke that we will have truly arrived once we get a dining room table. I forgot to mention our meal. It was good...not GREAT, in my opinion. I have to learn that ham never comes out as good as I think it will. We did this recipe from Emeril, which..YUM, sounds fantastic, but it was just okay. Plus, the ham was really expensive. I also tried to make this pear tart and it didn't quite come out perfect, but it was edible with enough whipped cream. We are going to do duck for Christmas, which I have never done before, so that should be fun. I think we are going to try a recipe from The Barefoot Contessa which I have spent the past 30 MINTUES trying to find on the food network site. I know it's there...I saw the episode. Anyway, you BOIL the duck before you roast it. I am not sure if I have a pot large enough for the massive duck we bought, so I may have to alter course.
I got a wonderful email over the Holiday from Lizette Greco. You have to check out her products, they are great. This is one of my favorites. So is this. Her kids draw the designs...they are so charming! If you are in the Los Angeles are you should check out her stuff and buy some!
Did you have a happy holiday? I had the whole of last week off and it was SO nice. I tried to give myself a little vacation from the TV and the computer as well. Now it's back to business and back to the gym, which I really don't want to do. Grumble, grumble.
I tried to have a week of creation, got a brand spanking new sketchbook, went to the library, all that stuff, but somehow I never really got around to doing anything until yesterday! Oh well..it's the thought that counts, right?
Yesterday we went and got our Christmas tree. It was this fabulous place called Clyde and Dales. You cut it yourself, and they have Clydesdale horses and a really cute gift shop and hot apple cider. It is currently in our living room looking like the most beautiful tree ever. We just have lights and a garland on it, since I forgot to get ornament hangers. Last year my mom and family went shopping after Christmas and I stocked up on some great glass ornaments. I am also going to make some paper cone ornaments and some paper cranes (inspired by Heidi) as well. The search for origami paper finally lead me all the way across town to the Michaels. It was a long trek into unknown lands, but I am happy to report I made it out alive. It has given me the courage to perhaps maybe check out a groovy paper store I have seen on my travels.
Yesterday was Oprah's Favorite Things episode, which I always love watching. My favorite part is when the audience realizes they are on THAT show and completely lose it. It was even better this time because the whole audience was full of teachers. Beside the amazingly gorgeous LCD tv, I think my favorite thing was the pair of stemless champagne flutes. I would probably end up breaking them eventually. They remind me of the fancy new stemless Reidels that are all over the place these days. Those are so hip, I just love them. We used to have a pair of regular Reidels, but yes... I broke them. It hurt. Those glasses are not cheap, and I am too clumsy. Our current glasses are Spiegelau, which I highly recommend. You can't really tell from the site, but each glass is about 8 bucks or so. Me likey.
Since I am on the topic of alcohol consumption, check out this chess set from Red Envelope. I can already feel the headache.
I love red envelope. J and I have often talked about when we have our "dream home/farm" we would grow shitake mushrooms on oak logs. Okay, maybe I talk about it, but J gave me the idea and it's stuck in my brain now. You never really think about growing mushrooms like you would grow carrots or radishes, but you certainly can. You can buy the plug or kits from various places or you can buy this very cute wee little log (again from Red Envelope) and have a running supply all year. It's so cute, I can't get over it.
I am loving the results for this week's Illustration Friday! I didn't get around to doing one, hopefully next week. It's funny, part of me want's to say that I didn't have time, but that's a total lie. One day this week, my horoscope suggested I track my time for the day. It was interesting. My time was spent doing three major things: surfing the internet, cleaning, and watching the Dog Whisperer. I did not do anything creative all day long. No doodling, no sketching, no nothin'.
So last night I turned off the T.V. (okay, another lie ...it was on mute) and lost myself in one of the tasks in Living Out Loud. I cut one inch stacks of squares out of magazines and made little collages with the results. It was so much fun, and totally addictive. I have never dabbled in the art of collage, and this was a fun, easy introduction. I highly recommend it.
I recently became aware of two artists that I have subsequently fallen in love with:
Saturday was J's birthday and I decided that I was going to make him a cake. It was pretty much chaos. It took me three attempts to get it right. The whole thing was a little humbling. I have made cakes before, I consider myself a good, capable cook and I thought that I was just going to whip that cake out and it would be the most beautiful cake in the whole wide world. Ha.
1. This is the Control cake. The recipe I used was from Donna Hay's Flavours book. This is my interpretation of what the cake in the book looked like. You bake two layers, cut them in half, and frost between all four layers then you revel in the glory.
2. This is my interpretation of my first attempt. I am not sure what happened. The recipe didn't call for anything like baking soda, or baking powder so there was nothing in it to make the cake rise. It did call for eight eggs that were supposed to be whipped until fluffy and tripled in bulk. I could tell when I poured the batter into the pans that I was going to have a problem. The end result consisted of two really thin slightly brownish rubbery chocolate omelettes. They were pretty gross.
3.While my omelettes were baking I decided to look for another recipe as back-up. I found one on Martha Stewart. Dark Chocolate Cake. Yum. Everything started out fine. Melt a stick and a half of butter in the microwave, brew coffee to add later, measure ingredients, mix, pour into pans, bake, cool, revel in the glory. But there would be no reveling. Something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The cakes looked a hell of a lot better that the first attempt, but they still were so thin that I couldn't imagine trying to cut them in half. No problem. Scrap that idea and use just the two layers. Who needs a four layer cake anyway? Later that night as I was falling asleep I had a vision. Maybe it was a dream. In this dream, I could clearly see the stick and a half of butter waiting patiently to be taken out of the microwave. Waiting, waiting ...patiently waiting ...I flew out of bed, sprinted into the kitchen and popped open the door to the microwave and there it was: the butter. Shit.
4. The third attempt went very smoothly until it came time to frost. I take full responsibility for this mishap. Due to my epic impatience I didn't let the cakes cool enough so they were still soft and fragile. When you try to take a soft and fragile cake in its pan and flip it upside down onto your hand it will act as if it had been karate chopped and break in half, defeated. No problem. I cobbled the pieces back together and frosted the whole thing to hide the evidence. It came out a little lopsided, but WHO CARES. It tasted fabulous and J loved it. I decided that from now on I am going to bake Jeffery a chocolate cake for his birthday. I know how to do it now, dammit.
My mailman wears the snazziest pith helmet when he delivers my mail. I doubt he knows how much I admire is choice of head gear. I love getting the mail....actually J and I BOTH love getting mail. We become a couple of crazy loons when we hear the "Cu-Clunk!" of the mailbox as it bounces against the house, heavy with tidings of joy, requests for money and deals on produce. It's a race to the front door to see who will get to the mail first. I always get more and better mail than J, simply because I subscribe to 3 times the amount of magazines than he does. But it never fails to amuse me when he yells "DAMMIT!" when my arms are heavy with new mags and all he gets is the cell phone bill.
Some recent items of lust delivered to my front door:
From the Sundance Catalog: This carpet bag with handles made from old belts. Old belts! SO clever!
Also from Sundance: This aquamarine nugget ring. I love this ring. I am not really a jewelry wearer, but I fell in love with this ring as soon as I saw it in the catalog, even before I read that it was an aquamarine, which is my birthstone!
Seen in Organic Style: The ever popular Tord Boontje Until Dawn curtain. I love you curtain. I love you so much.
Also from Organic Style: The kick-ASS wall tiles from Mioculture. (click on Mioculture/Products/V2) These are soooo coool. I am already fantasizing about putting these on a wall in my (hopefully) soon-to-be new home. This was the October isssue, by the way. They had them painted in the magazine, but I think I would leave them natural.
As mentioned on Craftlog, the current issue of Mary Engelbreigt's Home Companion has a feature on Jennifer Murphy. Her creations are ever so charming, I just love them! I would definitely recommend getting this issue if you are a fan.
I also really, really, really love the Living Out Loud book I received on Friday afternoon after I posted about it. What a great way to start the weekend! Also, the perspective book, ...hmm, well...I am trying to decide if I want to keep it. I need to look at it a little more closely but it seems awfully boring and hard. I ordered this perspective book on Eric's suggestion and I am thinking it will be more what I am looking for.
J and I have decided to dip our toes into the house buying market! Oh my God! It's exciting and scary at the same time. I have been reading about other people's foray into home buying with fascination and jealousy for the past few years, and I am thrilled to think that FINALLY,....finally I will be able to write about it too. I will definitely keep you posted.
Question: Does anyone know an on-line source for plain kraft brown boxes that I could use for packaging Christmas cookies? I am not going to be mailing them, just hand delivering. Martha Stewart has this packaging kit, but I don't want lids with windows.
I just recently found out about a program called Adobe Streamline. It converts scanned images into vector drawings! I was extremely anxious to try it out, but it didn't quite work the way I thought it would. I am trying to decide whether or not to purchase it. I am having home office/networking issues which is making me grumpy. My Mac is dying. *sigh* I have been doing most everything on my PC laptop these days. I don't want to buy a new computer when I have one that works, but my scanner will not work with my PC, and now that I am wireless, my Mac is not hooked up to the internet. So to use streamline I will need to buy a new scanner maybe, so that is more $$ for something I am not even sure I want. Add to that the extremely disappointing and utterly incomprehensible election results. I am in a bit of a funk.
I bought a couple of books hoping to break out of the creative slump I am feeling. I finally got Keri Smith's Living Out Loud, as well as a book on perspective drawing. I took a Perspective drawing class in college and I wish I would have kept my course book. I am also considering buying one of those hand mannequins or perhaps a book on drawing hands. I HATE drawing hands. You know what I really want? I want a book that will give me fun tasks while also teaching me how to do a certain thing I have problems with - like drawing hands, foreshortening, overhead point of view...all of that hard stuff that makes art more interesting.
