Oh the Cuteness!

Hi everyone! Alexandra and I are very excited to share our new recipe for baked cronuts today! Truth be told, neither of us have had the opportunity to try an actual cronut. They sound amazing but as if a regular fried piece of dough wasn't bad enough, adding a million layers of butter inside sounds like overkill.  But the idea of a tender, flaky piece of baked puff pastry dressed up like a donut sounded just right, especially if it incorporated some seasonal fruit, and so our baked cronuts were born! You can make either of the two flavors, but we found our favorite was stuffing everything into one huge, hard-to-eat monstrosity of awesomeness. There's no photos of that scene, but you get the idea...  First, assemble your ingredients: 1 package Dufour Classic Puff Pastry (one sheet will make about 12 cronuts) 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted 1 roll of marzipan, finely chopped into crumbles A pint of ripe cherries, pitted and cut into eighths...

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...

I adore classic cars. My first car was an all-original 1965 Thunderbird and she was a beauty. It's a shame they're so expensive to keep up and drive, but the moment I can afford one again I'll use it as a weekend car. Paso Robles has an amazing cruise night and classic car show every year on Labor Day weekend, and when I happen to be in town for it I head downtown to the park with my dad. He used to restore classic cars when I was a kid and has an encyclopedic knowledge of them all, and I love hearing all the cool little things he knows about these beauties. I snapped these photos at the last event and they're finally processed so I thought I'd show them. There's a ton more on my flickr, here . And if anyone out there is interested in purchasing prints of these I'd be happy to oblige, just send me a message!

I don't know how I forgot to post about this (derp) but the stitch & bitch group I created over 4 years ago had a booth at the Oakland Fiber Festival  this past summer. Unfortunately the fair is taking a hiatus this year, but will hopefully be back the next. We had about 6 of our members come together to sell their wares and it was a great success, not to mention a great time! We'd like to do another fair this year, so if anyone knows of a good one here in the bay area please let me know! We did a free make & take, teaching people how to crochet a chain and add a button to make it a wrap bracelet. I spent most of the day manning this particular part of the booth and I had a blast!   Carolyn stepped up as the main cashier when I got swamped by people for the make & take.  It was so nice to see everyone's different styles come together to make an eclectic and crowd-pleasing booth. Go Oakland!  Suzanne made these brilliant starched ...

You got to see some of Woodcut Maps' booth here, and now I want to gush about Leafcutter Designs ' booth! I am soooo jealous of her space. She recently redesigned it to make it easier for people to shop since most of her items are super tiny, and the construction and layout is perfect. I forgot my kit lens that day so it was impossible for me to get a shot of the whole thing, but here are my favorite parts: Lea collects tons of awesome vintage and new pieces to showcase and play off of her objects. She found this tiny writing desk that's the perfect size for displaying her tiny mail kit. A little antique metal flatbed truck hauls her tiny packages, and the vintage mailbox bank is too cute! A vintage metal child's fridge holds her recipe dice! Ugh soooo cuuute! Probably my favorite part of the booth was the clever use of  working gumball machines and sewing drawers as structural supports for the wood shelves. Also, not shown, are the lovely table...

During Renegade Craft Fair this summer I was able to work for both Woodcut Maps and Leafcutter Designs simultaneously, with their booths only being a handful of spaces apart. Mostly I worked at WCM though, as we always like to have some maps in various stages of assembly to show people how it's done. I introduced you to my lovely bosses in my post about Maker Faire , and Renegade was just as much fun! We made a giant map with our logo as our signage, and behind it is a customer testing out the website, which we have up on a couple of laptops and a big screen that passers-by can see too. All of the pre-made maps we designed were hung on these crazy graphic screens. The one above right of the bay was one of our top-selling designs, it was so lovely! Cat is such a lovely lady to work for, we are having a work retreat in Tahoe this week and I am so excited! We also made greeting cards and tiny "prints", which were just simple map cutouts mounted ...

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 ...

I have to say I really enjoy when my friends make their way onto my blog. I feel like, while I'm all about crafting and such, a lot of my friends and family read these posts as well and I want to let them know how much they truly inspire me, and I hope that in turn they inspire others too. My friend Alex (above right), who makes it on here fairly consistently because she doesn't have a blog of her own (when she is the one person in my circle who really, really should), recently had an old friend move to the area, and she threw him a welcome party to meet all her friends. His name is Karol (on the left). This was such a charming idea, and we had a lovely time. She's been keeping a couple of chickens that I had never had the chance to meet, and when she let them out they were so friendly! Easier to pet and handle than any chicken I've ever seen. Good job Alex! Even though the party was in July in a typically hot part of the bay area, the weather was mild and w...