galentine's day

hello, cherries!

suddenly, it's february, and my least favorite holiday in the world is rapidly approaching. i won't explain why i hate valentine's day, but it's not for the normal reasons, i promise. maybe it is a little, but not primarily.

imagine my excitement, then, when i found this: http://occupyvday.tumblr.com/. i love the variety of people on this site, sharing their messages.

usually on february 14th, i celebrate oregon's birthday instead. indeed, last year we did a whole entry on what we love about oregon. and while i am totally thrilled to celebrate oregon's 153rd birthday this year, i'd like to propose an alternative: galentine's day!

okay, so i wanted to call it "palentine's day" because it should be about all your pals, not just the gals...but apparently "palentine" is not really the right word to use in this situation...

the thing is, i don't really mind the aesthetic of valentine's day - i love pink and red. i love cute things, cards, hearts, crafts, and baked delights. it's just the message behind it all that i really dread.

so now, let's reclaim the things we love about february 14th without all that other stuff. ready? galentine's day, 2012...here we go:

make some beautiful cards, like skinny laminx:

from design sponge

or hand-painted, per the direction of designsponge:

from design sponge

or something like this, done on paint cards (as seen on casa sugar):

from casa sugar

bake some delicious sweets, like these red velvet woopie pies:

annieseats.com

try your hand at COOKIE MOLDS (if these aren't the coolest things i've ever seen, then i don't know what to tell you):

from the bakerella

or throw out the hearts, ditch the pink (blasphemy!) and the baked goods. grab the most wonderful people you know (romantically or platonically), and have a really great adventure.

what are you going to do this galentine's day?

cookie cookie cookie starts with "p"

hi folks! happy new year. i know the holidays are technically "over" (does anyone else think unnecessary scare quotes are hilarious, by the way?), but my craving for holiday goodies is not, so i thought i'd share my favorite cookie recipe. they're called pfeffernusse, they're swedish, they're hard and peppery, and i always have the ingredients for them. win.

important note: this recipe has been (barely) adapted from this cookbook, which i love. 

ingredients
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (i'm making these today, and i'm going to use whole wheat flour, since i ran out of all-purpose. i'll let you know how it goes)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
8 tbs butter (at room temperature)
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar (the recipe calls for light, but i always use medium)
1/4 cup honey
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp finely chopped orange zest (sometime i skip this when i don't have any oranges, but it's definitely better with it)
1/2 cup powdered sugar

directions
1. preheat the oven to 350 degrees. line cookie sheets with parchment paper or a sil-pat.
2. in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and pepper.
3. in a large bowl, combine the butter and brown sugar. beat on medium speed until well blended.
4. add the honey, egg yolk, and zest. mix until well blended. add the flour mixture. mix on low speed until blended.
5. At this point, i would chill the dough in the fridge for half an hour or so. i've found that this recipe works better when the dough is cold.
6. once chilled, place small balls of dough on the cookie sheet (the cookbook calls for a mini ice cream scoop, which would probably work great. i usually use a tablespoon). leave about 2 inches between each one. press gently on each ball to flatten it slightly.
7. bake until the edges are light brown, about 14 minutes. put the cookies on a cooling rack, and sift powdered sugar over the cookies.

these are suuuuuper good dunked in hot chocolate or tea. happy (extended) holidays!

nailed it

hello cherry amours!

so i, like many others in the interweb world, am slightly addicted to pinterest (this is not a cute way of saying i'm obsessed...i really am only slightly addicted). over the break, i decided i would attempt to make some of the cute and fun things i saw on that website. now that the holiday season is over, i would like to share with you all the pinterest adventures i went on. usually, my crafting adventures are more like this:

which is to say that they're awesome.

let's divide these adventures into baking and not baking. tutorials are linked to each project.

first...not baking!

fabric key chains:

anna and i tackled these during our crafy day. i started them with the intention of making one for every person on winter camp staff. i made this one and stopped. it was hard. 

camera strap cover

somehow theirs just looks so much more crisp! how? tell me your secrets, design sponge.

and now...baking things!

hot cocoa cookies

i made these with dear friends jeff and emily. i'm convinced ours would have looked just as good if i had split one in half and let you see all the gooey delicious-ness inside. you'll just have to trust me, though. they were amazing.

candy cane cookies

(i don't have a link for this...let me know if you want the recipe!)

these were delicious, but a little more crumbly than i would have liked. another recipe i found calls for brownie mix instead of cocoa powder, and that sounds way better. if anyone tries that before i get to it, let me know how it goes.

and lastly...

orange (and lemon) slice jello shots!

we tried these beauties for new years. as you can see, colleen, illustrious author of running and then blogging about it, approves. there was a little bit of adventure involved - using champagne instead of vodka, putting ice cubes in the jello to set it faster, setting the jello outside because it was colder than a refrigerator. but in the end, with a keen eye and a sharp knife (really important, it worked out very well! we did orange champagne jello in the orange slices and raspberry champagne jello in the lemon slices. let's take a closer look...

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. and no disposable cups, so they're eco-friendly too!

kristen was instrumental to the slice-cutting process. without her steady hand, the project might not have been so successful. we had more jello than oranges, so we put the rest in cupcake tins for fun little jello mounds.

if you ask me, these projects were highly fantastic. i pronounce myself (and all of my friends who helped with these projects)...pinterest master! now that school has started i doubt i'll have time for many crafty adventures like this...but if i do, i'll send them along.

bisoux!

quick pretty things

i love shopping for christmas presents, i really do. but while i was out shopping for other people, i happened to find a lot of things that i really liked. don't worry - with the exception of the owl wallet, i was able to restrain myself. but i still thought i'd quickly post some of my favorite things i saw while out and about...

and now, a few quick pretty things that caught my eye today:

chrysanthemum vase. i love the color combination of aqua and orange, and the pop-art feel of the flower.

anthropologie.com

penguin books postcards. i would love these for decorating, and for sending!

anthropologie.com

this is kind of a must-have for me, since puffins are my favorite bird. love it. covet.

anthropologie.com

 these plates seem like the perfect intermediary between adult plates and fun plates.

anthropologie.com

 a pop-up book of the little prince!!! can you believe it?? almost as good as my illustrated copy of the life of pi.

all over the internet

 coeur de pirate's second cd (blonde) came out november and i completely missed it. check it out and listen to some tracks..

while we're talking about french things, i also found out today that they made a movie of one of my favorite books. i am a little worried that the movie poster says "freely inspired by the elegance of the hedgehog," however, i still want to see it. watch the trailer!

reusable produce bags! these i really need and want for my farmers market trips. and let's face it, i probably won't make them on my own. 

papersource.com

paper source's annual calendar is always beautiful.

papersource.com

 and finally, the one non-gift thing i did let myself purchase: a new wallet with a lyric from one of my favorite songs! heaven.

papersource.com

the end. merry merry!

tis the season for sequins

ah yes. here we are. there's a chill in the air, peppermint chocolate things everywhere, and love actually is appropriate to watch again. it's beginning to feel a lot like christmas...

one of my favorite things about the holiday season is the plethora of really sparkly styles that magically rebloom every year. let's take a few minutes to embrace the sparkle, and love the sequin.

i want this dress for new years. real bad. it's my number one scout-out for after-christmas shopping.

bananarepublic.com

 glitter ballet flats from j.crew. a little on the spendy side - i got a pair from gap last year for $10. but i also found a really great DIY for adding glitter to shoes here. don't forget a coat of spray-on acrylic to lock it in!

jcrew.com

i have no idea where this skirt came from, but it's been on pinterest and i'm obsessed with it. i love the spread of the sequins.

pinterest.com

glitter and sparkle doesn't have to just be for clothes, as we know. i tried this at lush the other day and loved it. it's got a subtle level of sparkle, and it smells delicious - like an appletini!

lush.com

 apologies for the less-than-pro picture, but i didn't feel like getting my real camera out. this is my own sequin DIY - and a prime candidate for Take Back the Tack! i had this old sweatshirt from urban outfitters with this fun bow printed on it, but i wanted to rev it up a little for the holidays. i found a bunch of black, silver, green, and red sequins and sewed them on by hand. it took me approximately three episodes of grimm to finish the whole thing. gluing could work too, but i think sewing would probably last longer.

i recently discovered lauren conrad's beauty blog, the beauty department. i love this idea for sparkly nails! a little unconventional, a little glitzy, a little perfect.

thebeautydepartment.com

also love this eye makeup tutorial.

thebeautydepartment.com

 and while we're on the subject of eye makeup, this glitter eyeliner from sephora seems like a must-have for me. it's like ke$ha meets the holidays.

i could go on and on - there are so many fun glittery things out there! but i'll leave you with these and encourage you to go explore your own sequiny sparkly style. have fun!

four holiday albums i need right now

 

 she and him. fact: i liked this band before "new girl." 

(more potentially embarrassing fact: i also like "new girl"). 

world christmas. apparently, this cd is fantastic. i believe it.  

the muppets may be the single greatest thing they've ever done, and the muppet christmas carol is my favorite christmas movie (anybody see the new film yet?). i would listen to this all the time. 

pink martini's joy to the world album. actually, i already own this. and it's awesome. 

what's your favorite christmas/holiday cd? (true story: i'm pretty intrigued by this hanukkah album). 

also, do you listen to holiday music before thanksgiving, or do you wait? cheers, loves! 

make your own crayon explosion

Hello!

It's high time for another DIY post around here. This time, I'm going to talk about my experience making this:

I found the original tutorial here, but made some amendments to make it my own. Here we go!

1) First I bought a really cheap canvas, and a $1 box of crayons. Crayola has prettier colors, but their crayons cost approximately six times as much as Craft Store Brand crayons, and I don't think the colors are six times prettier. 

2) This was - no joke - the hardest part. It's possible that non-discount crayons come out of the box already all lined up by color, but that's something that's included in the other $5 that I didn't spend. So all the crayons in the box were mixed up in no logical order. I took out all the blacks and browns because those are downer colors, and proceeded to line all the rest of them up in some sort of color order. This took me about a day. I would line them up on the ground and walk away. And come back and think, "what kind of blind person put that color next to that one, when it clearly goes over here?" And then my dad would come by and kindly inform me that I was obviously colorblind and this was a shade of indigo, not blue. Etc. 

3) Once they were lined up to the best of my abilities, I took a hot glue gun and made a little strip of glue on the canvas. And stuck down the crayon. And strip of glue. And crayon. Approximately 50 times. 

4) This is where I start to deviate from the original directions...they suggest using a hair dryer to heat the crayons, but I disagree. My brief attempt at using a hair dryer caused a momentary severe panic attack when pink crayon wax started to fly everywhere. Which leads me to the next step...

4b) Put down a dropcloth/plastic bag/anything. You'll need it, trust me.

5) Once that crisis was averted, my brother bought me a tool akin to an embossing wand (I'm fairly confident an actual embossing wand would work too). This was great because it blew really hot air at a very low speed. This gave me a lot more control over where the wax was going. This step actually goes really quickly - the crayon wax doesn't melt...doesn't melt...doesn't...then suddenly gets shiny and melts really fast. It was kind of like a game - some of the drips started going down the canvas too far and I would zap them with my wand and stop them in their tracks. Super fun. I played around with trying to influence the direction of the wax trails, etc. This step is a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure, so you can play with this as much or as little as you want.

Now it looks like this: 

6) At this point, you can pretty much do anything. You can leave it. You can buy another pack of crayons, flip it around, and do the other thing from the other side. I chose to use some left-over fabric paint and stencils from a different project to paint a quote over the whole thing. 

So anyway - that's it! There are a million different approaches you can take - I'm keen to try some smaller single-color ones over winter break. But this is the basic approach! Good luck!!