People! I’ve been sewing! And I FINISHED something! Woo!

This dress is Laurel, from Colette Patterns and I have a feeling that I am going to be making a million of these. It’s such an easy pattern and comes together so quickly that it’s really satisfying to sew. I wasn’t sure about this fabric and the FLOWER pattern…and I’m still not sure about it. It’s a little loud for my taste, but my coworkers loved it, so what do I know?

Action Shot! My heel got caught it a gopher hole as I was running to beat the camera timer.  I am on my way to fashion blogger greatness, you guys. Plus…see how this is non-constricting when I am on the way to falling on my ass? SO COMFY.

Here’s where the learning happens: I was so focused on making sure the flowers were not placed over my boobs that I forgot about the back of the dress. Wrinkly butt flowers! (It’s linen.)

For my next performance, I’m going to copy Veronica Darlings beautiful white version. I love it so much! SO perfect for summer. In fact, check out the Colette Pattern’s flickr group to see all the different ways you can customize this dress. It’s so inspiring!

Melted chocolate and peanut butter.

Mixed with potato chips.

Spread in a thin layer and chilled until set.

Circles are cut.

Macaron shells are made, some are sprinkled with potato chips.

Peanut butter glue,

holds the chocolate circle.

Peanut butter ganache is piped.

Et voilà !

Verdict: These were SO frickin’ fun to make. The flavor was good, but I was expecting a salty BLAST from the potato chips and unfortunately I felt like I couldn’t taste them at all. Next time I will use a saltier chip, like a Ruffle instead of the fancy kettle chips I used, and I’ll use a milk chocolate instead of a dark chocolate for the punched circles. Dark chocolate is good, but it totally overpowered everything else.

Next flavor will be something with rhubarb, since it’s Spring and rhubarb is in season. What else? Any other spring flavors you guys can think of that I should try?

The Blogcademy is a two day blogging workshop, taught by three smart, charming, magical women who run very successful blogs and businesses. The one I attended was in Portland. I’ve been reading Gala and Shauna’s blogs for years and am already humongous fans, and while I knew about Kat and her blog Rock ‘n Roll Bride, I had never taken the time to check her blog out…cause…I’m, uh… married and don’t really care about weddings. HOWEVER. That being said…I was SO, SO, SO impressed by Kat’s business acumen- and just her overall BEING, that Damn…she has gone and won herself a slobbering Super Fan.

That’s Shauna and Kat right there.

Gala and the amazing Made U Look ladies, who did the photography and videography.

My GIANT FACE. Have you ever seen my face on this blog? No. I am behind the times and I need to start practicing my Blogger Face. It’s a thing. I learned that. See? Learning is awesome.

I find it funny that even though I have been blogging for almost twelve years, I feel like I don’t really know much about it aside from using it as a form of personal expression. I’ve never really been interested in it being more until recently and The Blogcademy was like a crash course in How To Blog. It’s like I’ve been stumbling along and doing alright, but have somehow missed some important basics. I picked up tips and ideas (that I should have known by now) that left me in a bit of a daze afterward. An excited, floaty daze of Awesomeness. I got great feedback, great ideas and met a bunch of awesome women. I was seriously depressed when I went back to work and sat in my cubicle, which has NO MAGIC WHATSOEVER, and realized that it was all over. I had graduated from The Blogcademy.

Now I’m just trying to take what I have learned and apply it with thought and intention.

It was also my Birthday that weekend, which when I was not at class, could be summed up with this:

I also ate about a million different kinds of pate, that but that stuff does NOT photograph well.

So…you will see some changes round these parts. Nothing crazy. Hopefully just MORE.

Have you heard of SkillShare? This is their tagline:

“Skillshare is a global community centered around creativity, collaboration and learning by doing.”

I am officially in love. You can find an amazing variety of classes and they are really affordable, like anywhere from 15 to 25 bucks!

I’ve taken classes on Making Macarons, Drawing Maps, Designing My Dream Garden, and a Digital Illustration class just to name a few. These classes have been a large part of the reason I’ve been so busy.

The Digital Illustration class was taught by the very talented Brad Woodward. I loved seeing the process of the other artists and especially Brad’s…You can learn so much by watching someone else work. I picked up some fantastic tips that I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and…most importantly…I think this was the first time I have illustrated anything for about a year, maybe more. I just hadn’t felt any desire or inspiration, which was really kind of sad. It made me remember why I liked doing this in the first place, and that was more than worth the price of the class. Like a million times more.

The assignment was to illustrate the words “Quiet” or “Loud.” This is the concept I came up with:

I got great feedback, which made the finished illustration all the more better. The next step was to lay down some color:

And then I added pattern and texture:

It was such a fun little project that was purely for my own enjoyment. Brad was gracious enough to showcase some of his student’s final projects on his blog, (mine included.)  You can see some of the other fantastic illustrations the other students came up with. People never cease to amaze me with their ideas and creativity.

I’ve got a few more classes on my watch list, (hello pattern making) but I might take a break for a while. That little hit of fun learning was just what I needed, I think.

Speaking of fun learning…next time I want to tell you all about my awesomely fabulous Birthday weekend in Portland attending The Blogcademy. My head was exploded and I’m having a hard time putting back together IT WAS THAT GOOD.

A side effect of all my macaron making is that I end up with a bunch of egg yolks.  I’ve been freezing them because I hate to waste perfectly good food and after a while I end up with a giant bag of yolks. What do you do with egg yolks? Make lemon curd!  I decided to experiment a little tried a variety of citrus fruits like key lime, grapefruit and blood orange. They all worked beautifully, with the blood orange being my favorite. I had a batch of (successful!) macaron shells just waiting to be filled with something so this seemed like a perfect fit.

I’ve made lemon curd before, from an Ina Garten recipe and while the flavor was delicious, I wasn’t too keen on the texture. It seemed like it was too loose, (for macarons at least) and her recipe calls for a whole egg, which defeats the purpose of the whole yolk-using thing I had going. I finally found a yolk only recipe from CHOW which I used and it worked great.

Aside from experimenting with the different citrus juices, I also added a little more butter to some of them to make a thicker spread for toast, which was crazy delicious. I substituted honey for the sugar with the grapefruit curd and…let’s just say that I won’t be doing that again. Honey can be a very strong flavor and it was too overpowering in this application, for my taste at least.

I was in the store the other day and saw some beautiful pomelos, which look like giant grapefruits and immediately wondered what they would taste like in a curd. I’ve got some more egg yolks in the freezer…so…guess what I’ll be doing this weekend?

I had a MAJOR macaron fail recently.

I usually have maybe one or two shells that crack, but in this batch almost every single one cracked. I am not sure why because I didn’t really do anything different than I normally do.*

It seems like it can be caused by any number of issues including: the batter being too wet, whipping the egg whites too long, too much humidity and too high heat, or generally the oven was too hot. I always cook my macarons at the same temp…so…was it the humidity? Did I mess up my ingredients? Did I over-mix the batter?

I DON’T KNOW. That’s the mystery of these finicky dang things.

So…it just goes to show you. Even after lots of successful batches, you can still have major failures. I’m going to pop them into the freezer and repurpose them in a trifle or something for a last minute dessert.

*I lied. I got to thinking about it and remembered that I added some vanilla extract, which I don’t normally do. Half of me doesn’t believe that something small like that could make a difference, and the other half of me thinks it probably does since I sort just dumped it in there and didn’t really measure. In researching the causes for cracked shells, I found “using liquid coloring” to be a potential culprit, so perhaps the extract was to blame as well. Crazy.

However, all is not lost. I picked up this beauty:

It’s a piano stool! I love the little round knobs. It will make the perfect side table for the chair I am still trying to make cushions for. It was a whopping $25 bucks! The paint looks like a darker teal in regular light, but when I take it upstairs to the guest bedroom, where it will live for real, the paint looks almost black – which is perfect. I might try to work on the top (seat) a bit to get the stains out, but aside from a good cleaning that’s all I’m going to do to it. I love it!

Wanna go thrifting this weekend? I saw two new stores in Olympia that I haven’t been in yet. We’ll do lunch!

EDIT: Damn, I should not write blog posts first thing in the morning. Remind me not to do that.

We spent time this past weekend with wonderful friends eating wonderful food. That blobby looking roll is my contribution.

I didn’t get pictures of the delicious little appetizers we had. They were mini-scrambled-eggy glorious bites of yum in a filo cup. Also missing is the salad course! Alas!

I did learn that I like smoked salmon and am pretty darn excited about it. Our host made the AWESOME blinis with smoked salmon and crème fraîche. I could not believe how great it was! And I was eating it!

Salmon is so good for you and I live in Salmon Country, which means we have access to great salmon (or so I hear)…but I can’t stomach the stuff. I can’t even swallow it. I am thinking that the “smoked” is the key. I was afraid that smoked salmon would have an even stronger salmon taste, but the folks I’ve talked to about it say just the opposite. I’ve been hearing that Costco has great smoke salmon, and I’m thinking about trying the stuff that comes from our local fish monger.

You guys have any idea what I can do with it? What to eat it with?

Here’s my 2013 Resolution and/or Goal List:

• Be better about taking a daily vitamin
• Build drawers for the pantry
• Print/silkscreen fabric
• Blog more – and more consistently
• Create art from personal family stories
• Work on the house – quit being lazy
• Take better photos
• Sew more of my clothes
• Organize my crap
• Keep working out consistently, especially with the weight training
• Eat better – less bacon
• Make cheese
• Make pasta
• Master the art of Hypertufa
• Build a coldframe and a potting bench
• Front porch – get some damn pots already!

My goals are not super grand…I don’t want to run a marathon or anything like that. I’m not even sure that they can be considered “resolutions” but I take comfort in setting goals for the year ahead. I feel like it gives me structure and a sort of roadmap for the year. The most important thing is that I don’t beat myself up if I don’t accomplish what I want to do. I think the “front porch” goal has been on this list for the past five years and I haven’t slit my wrists over that one yet. Yet.

Do you make resolutions?

So…remember the lazy wheels I was crocheting? I had a grand vision of what they would eventually look like once I had them attached to each other, and it actually wasn’t too far off from what I had imagined. However, when I sauntered out into the living room to show my husband he said to me:

“You look like a Klingon.”

Hu’tegh! Now I cannot get that out of my head. Back to the drawing board!