Here's my Illustration Friday submission for unbalanced. I should have drawn him or her a net...
Have a great weekend, everyone! I'm off to clean my house and prepare snacks for my birthday party tomorrow. Any ideas for go-to easy appetizers?
At my work, we all doodle toward the end of our meetings while we're chatting. As Mike stated when I showed him this, "That's one hell of a work doodle." It's like knitting while talking, I was definitely paying attention, just moving my hand around. Can you tell that subconciously I must want a headress and Viking type helmut with horns. The funny thing is that I've drawn headresses before, and didn't realize that I went home and braided my hair to match the drawing (minus the horns) until Mike pointed it out.
My Swedish "brother" is coming to visit next summer for our wedding. I may get my hands on one of these helmets after all!
We've finally gotten some colors picked as inspiration for our nuptuals next year. It's a jumping off point, we'll see how it pans out. I hate matchy matchy, but love a broad spectrum of colors. My limited selection is half a rainbow. I know this says something about myself...
'
I'll have to get some type of sweet treat tonight. After all, it is my birthday! However I have my first committee meeting tonight for something I'm looking forward to, and didn't want to miss it. Believe it or not, volunteer work in my field has been hard to find! Cake with three types of sprinkles to follow on Saturday.
I always seem to meet such cool people through my pal Aimee. MB is no exception. I've only hung out with her a few times, but she's so down to earth, charismatic and full of life, you can't help but totally dig her at first meeting. Oh yeah, and she's travelled the world doing what she loves...producing television. It would be hard to like this lady if she didn't work her tuchus off and wasn't so darn nice! (wink)
Since we're both knitters, she let me know that her company, Junkdrawer Media, recently produced some Two Minute Inspiration videos for Lion Brand Yarn. I think these would be perfect for beginning knitters who may need a little extra encouragement or to help find ways to connect the dots between knitting a square and turning it into a gift.
Here's one of them below. Of course I had to link the one on pom-poms and embellishments.
They also have other videos on knitting and crochet that I didn't know about. I'm definitely interested in their crochet videos, since no matter how many times a friend shows me, I still cannot master a granny square. Videos can't get annoyed with me for needing to repeat the steps over and over!
In the video above, there is an actual rug made out of pom-poms. I think that my living room needs one of those pronto.
Congrats on a nice job, MB! I'm so glad that I scored one of your pairs of jeans at that clothing swap, so that some of your awesome mojo will rub off on me. (Insert scheming fake-evil laughter)
Patience. Required for growing succulents and cacti and for learning to become better at drawing and painting from life.
I love using my watercolors for filling in and painting, but usually with pen and ink. It's entirely different when trying to actually draw, site measure and make it look like the object. Luckily, I have a university level drawing instructor and fine artist as a significant other. My ellipses are improving than from when we started dating seven years ago. (However, my other ellipses and propensity for tangent run on sentences will probably never improve!)
This drawing shows the beginnings of my still life. 
I took a second pass this weekend, while watching the end of Dirty Dancing on television and crying at the end. Is it just me, or do you all do that as well?
This is the second pass. I may go over it a final time to get the spikes and improve some of the details. It's all about a path, not the end result. Alas, the patience part.
I hope at least one of you is humming Patience by Guns N' Roses at this point... I'm sure I'll probably do the Axl dance here in a few.
Vegetarian friends may want to cast away their eyes. This meal was all about the meat!
Beef Bourguignon was one of those dishes I had heard about, but figured I'd never make it. My good friend Olivia though, being the excellent cook that she is, had been talking of making it for some time now. Then the book came out. You know which one, Julie and Julia. Shortly after, the movie with the phenomenal Streep and Adams. (Though I didn't like how Julie was portrayed as much in the movie, in her book, she's way less whiny, more charming and writes so hysterically, it will bust your gut). Needless to say, my interest was piqued.
This is how I found myself at the farmers market with Olivia to pick up a few ingredients to create this dish yesterday. We used the recipe that can be found here. I believe it's slightly altered, but pretty much the same as in Julia Child's book.
There were a lot of steps, but it was much more manageable with a friend, two sets of hands, and a brewsky each. We followed the recipe step by step, dried the meat off before browning (which really does help), and washed a ton of dishes. Olivia's husband walked in the door and said he could smell it cooking from two blocks away! I kept going on and on when the adorable pearl onions were sauteeing in butter with an herb bouquet. I had to cut myself off from exclaiming, "have you ever smelled anything so wonderful?"
We started at 4 P.M. We cut the cooking time to 2-1/2 hours so that we could eat around 7 P.M. instead of 8 or 9. In between, we made an apple crisp, roasted fingerling potatoes, a light salad with a medly of pink radishes, did a little bit of knitting (me) and piano playing (definitely not me).
The Beef Bourguignon was divine. We felt so accomplished sitting in our aprons after all the cooking, dramatically fake sighing and asking the guys to fawn us with compliments on the meal. We watched a tad bit of football while drinking a beer (in our aprons), which made us feel like quite the well rounded modern day women. Will I make it again? Certainly. Will I be willing to try out a more simplified recipe? Absolutely!
However, I'm more convinced than ever that I will add a Le Creuset 5 quart French Oven (in red) on my wedding registry.
P.S. Susan, this recipe is for you. Have at it, lady.
P.P.S. I forgot to draw the stewing beef. How inappropriate!
People either love them or hate them, but I really like the matchstick jean styles that have been popular in the past couple of years. With a pair of ballet flats, you can't help but feel sassy like Ms. Hepburn, or feel like doing an impromptu grande jete in the corridor at work.
The shoulder pads trend however, needs to stay six feet under. I already look like a linebacker as it is (in a good way, thanks to waterpolo and diving), and do not need any extra in that area.
My love of baking probably stemmed from my immense love of baked goods. Or rather, I needed to bake in order to create a layer of cake-like substance from which to eat large quantities of frosting. I love frosting. Or icing. But not the gourmet type. I like the generic Dunkin Hines, Funfetti, and fudgy chocolate from plastic canisters. I'm sure many of you don't approve, but I'm just being honest.
Sometime around third grade, my mom taught me to use the oven myself (with supervision of course). I'd spend an entire Saturday baking and decorating sugar cookies. The recipe was actually from an old Sesame Street book, called Cookie Monster's Cookie Dough. They were delicious, and I can't believe it took me until just this minute to look for it on the internet. Oy!
My brother would help me decorate, we'd roll the dough out with our grubby hands, working the dough into worms, hat cookies (so I could decorate with flowers and rainbows of color), monsters, airplanes, alien starships...you name it, we made it. We'd take over the entire kitchen table and cover it with flour, would get dough smeared everywhere, and frosting in the remote places that the dough hadn't contaminated.
I don't know how that got all cleaned up. I'm sure we did a bit, but I'm sure my mom did a lot more than I remember. Another reason to love that woman...
I'm not a girl who needs a lot, kitchen appliance wise. I use my immersion blender (from Aunt Marty) for everything. So much that I got rid of my hand mixer, blender and a waffle iron for good measure. But the KitchenAid Stand Mixer. I lust after it. When I first started learning to cook, it stood out as an archetype for being a real baker or just knowing my way around the kitchen. Plus I saw one online with flames painted on the side, and you don't forget that too easily. 
My mom bought a white one off of a friend, that she says I can have next time I go home to Florida with my car. I may just have to take her up on this! But I wanted to draw the turquoise one that is part of the Martha Stewart collection at Macy's because you know how I love pretty colors.
How about you guys? What's the one material thing that you thought would make you feel like a grown up, or that you want even though you may not need it? Uh, this and the Franklin Covey planner in 2002 are obviously mine!
Posts
All Comments
