Oh the Cuteness!

I think I've mentioned in the past what a peanut butter fiend I am.  Peanut butter and chocolate ,  or bananas ,  or a combination thereof , etc. always gets me swooning. But sometimes you just want a really great peanut butter cookie and that's all you need. I've tried many a peanut butter cookie in my day - if they're on the menu I usually go for it - and all have fallen a little short of what, in my mind anyhow, constitutes the  perfect  cookie. I don't like super crispy cookies, so the classic ones with the fork hash marks in the center are usually out. And I don't like them with chunky peanut butter, or too soft, or too big/thick, or too sweet, or too greasy. Picky, picky, picky.  So the other day when Johnny asked if I would make some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for him I decided to play around with the recipe. I whipped up the dough, and I made a sheet with no chocolate chips for myself and added chips to what was left for him. When tho...

I had a barbecue to go to recently and wanted to bring something home made but didn't have a lot of time or money and it had to be vegan-friendly. On hand I had infinite canned goods, tomatoes from the garden, and some frozen peas. I had also seen a tip somewhere online that said if you have a small mustard jar with only a couple tablespoons left you can fill the jar up with vinegar and olive oil, add some spices, and shake it up to make a good mustard vinaigrette. So my game plan was to make a bean salad with mustard vinaigrette, but it turned out so delicious I had to share the recipe! Here you go: Easy Summer Bean Salad *It's very important that you empty your canned goods into a strainer and rinse them thoroughly!* 1 can of each of the following, or feel free to mix it up with what you have on hand, fresh or canned: Corn Garbanzo Beans (Chickpeas) Kidney Beans 1/2 can of Black Olives, Sliced 2-3 Roma Tomatoes 1/2 a Small Package of Frozen Peas 1. P...

Karol hosted a backyard BBQ at his house some time back and I just wanted to share some of my favorite snap shots. I love gatherings like this; a little potluck in a big back yard full of fruit trees, some tandem bike rides, and then a toasty fire pit started up as the night came down. I've been bad about forgetting to bring my camera with me to things lately and I'm making a Spring resolution to get better about it haha. I wonder if there's a market for people who don't have photographer friends to hire me to come shoot their really small gatherings for a tiny fee and some noms... Hmm. As always, there's more photos on my flickr (you need to scroll down a little on the page).  Karol manning the BBQ.  My two favorite guys!  Love this pic of Karol & his roommate Alaxka.  Karol, keeping warm.  Megan warming her toes by the fire.  Megan and Miles taking the tandem for a spin... And then me and Karol. Someday whe...

The Cottage Law class went swimmingly! Someday in the future I will hopefully be able to put what I learned to good use, which opens up so many exciting possibilities. A few weeks earlier, for our six month anniversary (Yikes, how time flies!), Johnny also signed us up for the foraging class taught by Forage SF. More specifically it was taught by a guy named Kevin, and you can check out his website, Feral Kevin , for more info on the classes he teaches. That's Kevin, talking about sorrel. When Johnny and I arrived and I saw the other people we were taking the class with, I knew I was going to be that annoying kid at the front of the class that new all the answers. Turns out I was right, as I was the only one in the crowd responding when he asked, "Does anyone know what this is?". Luckily the teacher was excited about this rather than annoyed lol.  Wild radish flowers. They also come in pink and purple.  One of my fellow classmates sampling the wild radish ...

A little while ago I spent some time with my parents while they were on vacation, and we ended up going to Petaluma. It's such a wonderful little beach town and if you've never been I highly recommend it. We arrived in the late afternoon, so instead of dinner we headed straight to the Petaluma Pie Company and had the best little pies with the biggest scoops of homemade ice cream ever! Then, as we wandered around the little downtown admiring all the shops and antiques, this yarn bombing out front of the bookstore caught my eye: And finally, we went to a very popular place, the Seed Bank . I didn't have the right kind of camera lens with me to capture this business in all its grandeur, but basically it's a specialty seed and garden shop that is in a big, beautiful old building that used to be a bank. So clever and so wonderfully fun to shop in! That same weekend I went to the last-ever Underground Market in San Francisco, and ate my heart out with s...

There's a new baby quilt in the works in my studio! This will be the first hand-pieced quilt I've completely finished. My other "first" quilt top, seen here , was supposed to be a twin-size throw with a double layer of batting and I'm not sure my machine is big enough to quilt it, so I'm doing this one first. The photo above is the back - a glorious vintage cotton print (which I also used to make some loop scarves from for my shop ) with a little pieced row of scraps from the front. I pieced it together ages ago in a bricklayer pattern and was afraid to start quilting it without a walking foot, but my new machine has one so I spent the day with a good friend teaching her to quilt and simultaneously working on it! The front fabrics are all shirting weight cotton voile, i.e. incredibly soft, and 100% recycled to boot! My dear friend Ivy, who I've mentioned before, is a fabric sales rep and gives me lots of old samples which I love using for quilts...

Over the summer some of my  Stitch & Bitch  girls and I decided to have a jam making get-together. Laura, the hostess, and my friend  Carolyn  had never made jam before, but Erin, Heideh, and I were old pros and wanted to teach them. So we all got together and drove out to Brentwood to go to a farm to pick strawberries which was a total blast. Then we headed back to Laura's house to get our jam on (sorry haha). We hulled the massive piles of berries, zested and juiced lemons, and picked lavender from the garden while a cute little chocolate lab named Charlie distracted us. Massive pots of boiling water, bubbling batches of jam and preserves, and trays of sterile jars were everywhere. Luckily it wasn't too hot that day but the house still got steamy. Carolyn and Laura had a great time learning a new skill, and ended up with almost a dozen jars each of some truly delicious strawberry jam. I had enough jam at home so ...

This is a little flash-back to the summer, but I really wanted to post it and spread the word about my favorite food festival, the Eat Real Fest in Oakland. It's in Jack London Square every summer and has never failed to impress me. Johnny and I went and were able to try nearly everything that sounded good, and we managed to photograph each thing too. So presented here, for your foodie pleasure, is a microsampling of the best food festival around. Pickles from Forage SF. Fermented goodness!  Chow Fun Spring Rolls from Rice Paper Scissors. Spicy and amazing! Steamed buns from Chairman Bao. Coca-Cola pork and Spicy Chicken.  Egg and bacon grilled cheese from S+S Gastropub. Nom. Beef empenadas from El Porteno. Best pastry. Yerba Mate' infused colas from Taylor's Tonics. Amazing flavors!  Gelatin flowers from Sweets Collection. That is made from Jello?! Whole roast pig from Chop Bar. Dear God yes. Grilled cheese from The Grille...

Well, the holidays kicked my butt yet again this year but they were, as always, completely amazing. I had tons of work to do between  WSPS  and  WCM  this year, as well as getting ready for the  RAC's  holiday fair (which went REALLY well, photos to come), hence the posting drought. But, as part of my new year's resolution I'm going to focus more on my own business and crafting, as well as a huge project I've had in the works since last year, and as part of that I'm continuing to play catchup on here. Anywho, on to the holiday at hand: Thanksgiving! As some of you may know I host a Thanksgiving dinner every year and invite all my friends who can't make it home to visit their families. I started it 3 years ago when my parents decided they didn't feel like celebrating it anymore.  The original had 7 people ,  then there were 12 , and this year there were 18 in all! It was so big I couldn't host it at my place anymore, but my best frien...