Oh the Cuteness!

Dennis helped me make pickles earlier this month! This was actually a bit of an experiment since I used Splenda instead of sugar because of the whole low-carb diet thing for him. I wanted to see if it would muddy the color or clarity or taste. The amount I used in the carrots, beets, and fennel is so small I'm sure it won't matter, but we've been wanting to make sweet pickled red onions ever since we had them on some tiny Moroccan spiced lamb burgers at one of our favorite local restaurants, The Hob Nob in Alameda. And now that we've perfected the recipe and method for making flax bread buns, it's lamb burger time baby! Pickles with washi tape labels? Yes please! The beets are spiced with clove, cardamom, star anise, allspice, and cinnamon. The fennel is just my plain picking spice blend, the recipe for which can be found here . The carrots have some of the pickling spice blend with extra whole cumin, coriander, mustard seed, and bay. And the sw...

I've been thinking a lot about my business situation lately, and I think I need some advice... Being semi-self employed and freelancing instead of having a usual 9-5 job has a lot of rewards, a bit of peril, and a definite learning curve. Even though I've kept this blog up for 6 years, and my etsy shop for 5, I feel like I still have a lot to learn. This has always just been a fun little side job, an outlet for my creativity really, but now it needs to be something more substantial. Having more time to focus on it now, I have seen it grow so quickly in a short period of time that I know I can make it into exactly what I need if I get over a couple key personal hurdles. My biggest "blind spot", if you will, is in the realm of advertising. I'm a pretty shy person by nature really, and I've always just left it to etsy to advertise my shop, and blogger to get people to my blog. I've never been the kind of person to try very hard to stand out, and I need to c...

Okay, I know this is just a gratuitous kitty post, but can you blame me? Look at how effing adorable these two are: At times, I kind of hate living with cats, what with the puke, the claws, the hair. But this is not one of those times. I kind of want to re-create these pictures with me and Dennis doing the same poses, which could be kind of hilarious. Buddy (the white cat) is Precious' (the back cat's) son. They usually keep away from eachother or little squabbles break out. But they snuggled on the couch together with me literally all day, and magically did not bolt when I picked up the camera as most cats will do when you try to capture the cuteness. Mission accomplished. Please feel free to leave gratuitous squees and d'aawwws in the comments. You're welcome.

My friends Alex and Patrick have their birthdays a week apart, so we celebrated by going to my friend Vanessa's house to celebrate. Alex wanted an art party so she brought over watercolor paper and gouache, and we noshed on vegan pizza and root beer floats and proceeded to paint portraits of eachother. None of us had ever done watercolors before. Hilarity ensued. The birthday girl, how I love her. She's one of my most fabulous and fashionable friends. She wanted us to do a timer portrait because, and I quote, "Our parents used to do sh*t like this." Such a handsome group of people. We had so much fun. I got to paint a portrait of Vanessa's dog, Carlton haha. I think that Alex's portrait of Vanessa was the hands-down winner and I'm thinking of commissioning a portrait from her. Vanessa's portrait of me is super sweet, and I love that I wore my glasses that night. The ones in the bottom corners were made later, one is Alex's pro-life pos...

Hmm, I wonder who did this lovely piece of yarn bombing? It had to be more than one person, all the strips are so different... Isn't it just the cutest thing ever? If you're local you can go check it out on the corner of Piedmont and Linda, across from the movie theater. ^_~

One of the things I truly love about Dennis is his willingness to share in my hobbies. We used to craft together a lot more before he got so into Magic the Gathering , which I personally think is an awesome hobby and I'm glad he's doing so well at it. I've chronicled some of our crafty exploits here , here , here , here , and here . Yup, that's a lot of cutesy-pootsy crafting together. But all those posts are a little old, and when I mentioned to him how much I missed doing art with him he told me I should bust out the Hama Beads (also known as Perler Beads and fuse beads), so we could work on something together. Oh Dennis, you are awesome! For those of you who didn't have the pleasure of playing with these beautiful little choking hazards as children, they're basically little plastic beads that you arrange on a pegboard and then melt them together with an iron. My generation seems to have a penchant for taking these nostalgic goodies and crafting great...

Hey everyone, I need your help with something! So, Dennis got laid off a couple weeks ago. Don't worry, we're fine. In fact, we're doing great. Having him home more is a pleasure and he's using this time to do some soul searching, plus he's been helping me with my business stuff more often. Anywho, we are designing a new little notebook to sell in the shop and we need your opinions on a couple things... It'll have this graphic he designed on the front: Inside it'll have a grid printed on the 20 or so pages with columns for "When", "What", "Where", "How Much", and "Notes", and it will be a stitched binding like the mini notebooks already up in the shop, with this design hand-stamped on the cover. I'm envisioning light-colored recycled kraft paper for the cover, and maybe white ink, or a deep red or blue, for the graphic. What do you think? Our main question is about size. I was thinking of making it...

I think I may have mentioned on here before that Dennis has been on the low-carb diet for a while now. He's doing very well and has lost a ton of weight already. I tried the diet for a bit but it didn't do much for me, but whenever I cook for us at home the meals are always low-carb. He was on it for a couple years before I met him, but he was doing it the wrong way (as bachelors will do), eating nothing but chicken wings and broccoli with Velveeta cheese. Yuck. Since we've been together, I've introduced him to the wonderful world of organic veggies cooked to perfection, and lean meats cooked the right way. But I've also introduced him to the world of gourmet foods, and he's become quite the foodie, which is hard with a restricted diet. You saw a sampling of one of my low-carb yet slightly indulgent recipes in my last post, and ever since I got my new camera lens I can't seem to stop taking photos in the kitchen, so I though I may as well share a few more...

I've been on some kind of mission lately... I suppose the main objective is to make my house as colorful and cozy as possible. I keep looking around and just wishing there was more visual interest. I think I'm most at home in a place that is riotous with color, and luckily Dennis is pretty obliging in the matter. The pillows and photo wall in the bedroom are just the start of a much larger plan. Recently I started working on the kitchen ; hanging more art that had been stashed under the sink before the housewarming party, preparing some garlands that I want to string about the ceiling (more on those later), and this: I picked this up for 12 bucks at MaiDo (a Japanese stationary store in San Francisco). It's a chalkboard wall decal, and it was actually just a big black square with the frame in the center but I decided to cut the border off. It's hung in the pass-through between the kitchen and living room. We've been wanting to hand something there, but were...

 As Valentine's Day approaches I've been getting a hankering to bake cute sweets and make nice things. I know a lot of people out there aren't really into V-Day, but I think it's a sweet holiday. The historical background is very romantic, and in modern times I see it as a nice way to spoil the person you love for no reason. Dennis and I usually keep it low-key and as of right now we don't even have any concrete plans but I know it will be a nice day all the same. I've been feeling kind of nostalgic lately, as I usually do during the first few months of a new year - I go through old stuff and get rid of things without sentimental value, and rediscover those items that do hold meaning in the process. I've been starting to post old pictures of me and my friends from high school on my Facebook account and everyone is loving it! That inspired me to pick up my scrapbooking endeavors: I have two other two-page layouts of stuff Dennis and I have done that I...