big kid table

Yes, sometimes I put birds on things

2011-08-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

I finally learned how to embroider! Thanks to Katie and lots of super cheap embroidery floss from Knittn' Kitten.

Here's what I like about embroidery: it allows me to feel productive while I spend evenings inside catching up on TV shows that I really should have watched awhile ago. TV and crafts go so well together.

Cherry Pie

2011-08-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went out to my grandpa's ranch in Tygh Valley, Oregon to swim in lakes, ride ATVs, and take advantage of the overwhelming number of cherry trees on his property.

Recipe from here. No, collegecandy.com is not a website that I often consult for recipes. It just happens to have been the first website that popped up when I typed in "vegan cherry pie".

No pictures of the finished product, as it was cut open late in the evening and then finished up over breakfast. Pie and black coffee, Twin Peaks style.

I've been hearing that pie is the new cupcakes. I think I'm OK with that.

Guerrrrrrilla Girls

2011-07-30T23:24:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think I would be happy making greeting cards for the rest of my life. When I'm asked about my dream job, I go back and forth between card maker and erotic baker.

Katie's b-day/going away card. (I MISS YOU, LADY)

The origami dresses were made out of security envelopes after I watched this tutorial a few times.

Hoops

2011-07-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

I'd been meaning to do this for awhile.

I think they're CUTE.

Hair Clips!

2011-04-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

My grandma recently cleaned out her garage and unloaded a bunch of craft boxes onto me, so I've been trying to come up with projects that require felt (she gave me SO MUCH FELT). I am suddenly super addicted to making felt flower pins.

I used this tutorial for the pink flower, and now I'm adapting them to make use of various buttons and fabric scraps hanging out in drawers around the house.

These are perfect to make while taking to long distance friends on the phone. I kind of want to make one each time I talk on the phone and then send them to that person afterwards.

Friday, 6:23pm

2011-04-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

My favorite time of day.

ESPECIALLY when there are tulips on the dining room table.

Cigars

2011-04-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

I found this cigar box on the side of the road and brought it home to store my cards and envelopes inside of. I'm hoping this box, sitting in front of me while I'm at my desk, will remind me to be better at keeping in touch.

Cozy

2011-04-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

Due to a whole bunch of recent stomach aches, I've been using my hot water bottle a lot. And the thing about a hot water bottle without a cozy is that sometimes it burns you if you fall asleep with it on your belly. So I decided to knit what will probably be my last knitting project of the season (cause who wants to knit when it's sunny outside?), a hot water bottle cozy. I found the project here, via domestic affair (which, I must say, is one of my favorite blogs). This was my first time trying the cable stitch, and I was pleasantly surprised by how super easy it is.

I figured out what was causing the belly aches (I'm allergic to cooked tomatoes? What?) but I'll still be using this when the menses come.

If it weren't for Katie, this project might not have happened. It's good to have a crafting buddy again.

bedside tables

2011-02-28T12:51:00.001-08:00

Via the Bitch e-newsletter: Read about what I've been reading!

let there be lamps

2011-02-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

I made a lamp! For Joel. Using this bottle of mead from Honeymoon, this wonderful place in Bellingham that I miss all the time. This project took awhile to assemble, but I learned a lot about the right way to drill a hole into a glass bottle. I also found it immensely satisfying to mess around with lamp hardware for an hour and then plug the cord into the wall to find that it WORKED, there is LIGHT.

Also, adding rickrack to a $1 thrift store shade can work wonders.

Hat!

2011-01-11T15:05:00.001-08:00

I made this hat and gave it to Joel for our 4th anniversary (yes, it's really been that long). I somehow managed to knit the whole thing without him knowing -- which can be tricky when you live with the person you're knitting for.

I knit him a hat using this very same pattern awhile back and it's still on his head a few days a week, so it's obviously worked out well. I dug the pattern out of a bag of yarn that I hadn't touched in over a year and got to work. This pattern is called the Simple Soldier's Hat -- they recommend this pattern for people knitting hats to send to soldiers since it's warm, easily washable, and easy to ship. It's also a really straightforward pattern, so if you're new to knitting you'll have no problem knitting this one.

messy college bedroom

2011-01-11T14:58:00.001-08:00

I miss this room the most.

Holiday Hightlights

2011-01-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

BFFs came for my b-day!

Thanksgiving Rummikub.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes before the frosting.

Homemade envelopes.

Solstice feasting before the puppet show and poetry.

Christmas dog!

Fire! Fire! Fire!

2011-01-10T13:29:00.000-08:00

A couple nights ago, a few of my roommates and friends decided to have a burning party. We burnt the things that we would like to leave in 2010. I'm kind of a pack rat and don't like to burn letters or pictures for fear of missing them down the road, so I opted for writing down things I've struggled with and throwing the pieces of paper into the fire.

It was super fun and rejuvenating and I would totally recommend that everyone does this.

New Years Eve

2010-12-31T17:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight I placed an avocado pit in a glass of water, with hopes that it will sprout in the new year.

I'm going to spend a bit more time reflecting on the year and baking some cookies before I go find some friends and ring in the next decade.

Vagina Thumbprint Cookies

2010-12-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

I'm sure by now you've heard that I like to make vagina cakes.

Well, Abby and I made some vagina cookies.

We have big plans for these erotic sweets. I'll keep you updated.

Snowflake Curtains

2010-12-19T13:34:00.001-08:00

I've said this before: I really, really like taking paper to the sewing machine. Maybe because it feels like something I'm not supposed to be doing? Whatever. It's fun.

I've been making lots of snowflakes lately. I'm kind of addicted to it. They were piling up, so I decided to sew some snowflake garlands.

Some to go in the kitchen:

Some to go in my bedroom (with the curtains that I just finished sewing):

They're pretty festive and cute and make me very happy when I wake up in the morning. And Jill just pointed out this 5-pointed snowflake tutorial. So now I'm going to try and master those.

Cute Things to Make From Soda Cans: Pt. 1

2010-12-19T01:14:00.000-08:00

My sister and I made these for our mom awhile ago. For her birthday, in May. We dug through my neighbor's trash can and ended up with some nice & colorful magnets.

Tutorial is here.

Triple Chocolate Fat Pants Cake

2010-10-31T13:47:00.001-07:00

Abby and I made this delightful cake last Friday night. The recipe was discovered in Babycakes, a bakebook that I actually find to be kind of annoying because it uses celebrities to sell the readers on all of its recipes. And what do I care if Pamela Anderson or Natalie Portman likes the cupcakes I'm about to bake? But Jason Schwartzman was right, the triple chocolate fat pants cake is amazing. Plenty of chocolate, coffee, and coconut oil. And the whole thing is topped with broken chocolate chip cookies. And guess what, kids? Vegan and gluten-free.

Mouthwatering delicious, seriously.

Pumpkins!

2010-10-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to break away from the traditional jack-o'-lantern . Not that silly and scary faces aren't wonderful, but this Halloween weekend I felt like it was time to try something new. So I made a bird (cause birds are one of the only things I can cut out freehand). I think it turned out quite nicely. This weekend I am in love with our front porch.

They finally bloomed.

2010-10-07T01:20:00.000-07:00

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

"Balloon"

2010-08-18T10:48:00.001-07:00

You might remember me saying that I wanted to learn how to make stop motion animation. Well, I did it! Some friends and I spent an afternoon in the front yard constructing a story about ben franklin and some balloons. Surprise guest appearance from a unicorn!

In other news, I have been neglecting this blog for far too long. That's what happens when your camera breaks, I guess. But I'm about to buy a new one, which means I will start documenting my crafty projects once again.

Hope you're all having lovely summers!

Classy Containers

2010-05-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

It took me awhile to track down wine crates to plant in. Turns out most wine comes in cardboard boxes these days, and wine distributors like to hold onto the few crates they do get in, since wine crates work so well as makeshift shelves. Really, there are so many cool things you can do with them.

I finally got a response to my numerous craigslist wanted postings. The woman was super nice and excited to get the old crates out of her garage. I'm pretty happy with what I've done with them.

Springtime zine

2010-05-02T21:17:00.001-07:00

I really love spring. There is so much to be excited about this time of year. I am compiling a zine that speaks to how awesome and exciting spring is. If you also like this season, I would love for you to contribute (and your friends too! tell all of them!)

IDEAS: write about your favorite music to listen to this time of year. your favorite foods to eat. your favorite springtime activities. instructions on how to do said stuff that you like to do in the spring. write about picnics that you've put together or hikes that you've gone on. tell us about the best spring of your life. write about spring fever. draw pictures of you and your friends swimming in lakes. WHATEVER YOU WANT.

I want to put this together quickly, so that it can be distributed while spring is still in full swing. So the deadline is May 9th! Really soon!

Email contributions to:
ashley.mcallister@gmail.com

Ask me for my address if you want to snail mail your contribution.

Alys and the Avocado Plant

2010-04-30T23:46:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed watching this. I can't wait till I eat my next avocado.

Hot Body Scrub

2010-04-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

I feel most awake on the days that I've done a hot body scrub.

Skin is the largest organ in the body and it is responsible for something like one quarter of the body’s detoxification each day. Not to sound too woo-woo (I've been saying that a lot lately) but we're covered in dead skin cells and scrubbing them away makes me feel waaaaaay less clogged up both physically and emotionally.

It's simple: Take a wash cloth and run it under steaming water. Once it's hot, take it to your legs. Rub in circular motions towards your heart and work your way up till you've scrubbed your whole body. Run the washcloth under the faucet every little bit so that the cloth stays hot. Take a shower when you're done. If you don't they say the skin cells will make you itchy, and that's kinda gross.

I want to learn how to do this!

2010-04-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

A group of teenage girls made this AWESOME music video at a Spring Break Music Video Camp. It's super fun to watch and it really makes me want to learn how to do some stop-motion animation...summer project!

MAKE YOUR OWN LAUNDRY DETERGENT

2010-04-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

This is so easy. It will take you ten minutes. It will save you money*. It's better for the earth. And you will feel cool cause you made it yourself.

YOU NEED:
hot water
1 cup washing soda (available at most grocery stores)
1/2 cup borax
1 bar of soap (nothing that's heavily scented)
10 gallon bucket (you can get these from restaurants or dumpsters pretty easily)

Grate the bar soap (it's fun! it'll look like mozzarella cheese!) Add it to a large saucepan with hot water. Stir over medium-low heat until soap melts and dissolves.

Fill a 10 gallon bucket half full of hot water. Add the melted soap, borax, and washing soda. Stir until all of the powder is dissolved.Top the pail off with more hot water.

Use 1 cup per load. The detergent will gel, so make sure to stir it each time you use it.

*The math has been done. This woman figured it out and said she saved something like $65 a year.

Vagina Cakes pt. 2

2010-04-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

When you google image searches "vagina cakes", you will find pictures from my blog and my friend Jill's on the very first page. I'm pretty sure Jill has mentioned that most of the people who find her blog find it through that picture. I recently looked into which pages people come to my blog from. Sure enough, I get about ten hits a day because people want to see vagina cakes!

So, I made another vagina cake! I made it in honor of my friend Mel coming back to the USA (she's the one who made that awesome toothed-vagina cake last year).

I made a vanilla vegan cake with a little lemon extract. The frosting was colored with juice from beets I'd eaten for dinner the night before (again, my favorite food coloring). I added some toasted coconut for the pubic hair and it was ready to go.

It was pretty delicious. Sometimes I think I could go into the vagina cake making business.

Hey, Nettles

2010-04-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

I think I've only had nettles once in my life, but after watching this video all I feel like doing tomorrow is foraging for nettles.

The video might be a little woo-woo, but it's pretty charming, and it is definitely convincing.

My Little Lettuce Babies

2010-04-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

My seeds sprouted a few days ago and I feel like a new mom. At least, how I imagine a new mom might feel.

First of all, I'm pretty darn proud! When I wake up in the morning, I look at the seedlings on the ground beneath my bedroom window and squeal something like, "I can't believe how big you're all getting!!!" I make sure that whoever else is in the room (Mel, Joel) also sees how much they've grown. I admire the tall, well-postured ones and I pay special attention to the little ones who are lagging behind.

I find myself lying on the ground next to them quite often, holding my breath and watching intently. Sometimes I think that if I could just stop myself from blinking, I might catch them growing before my very eyes.

Seed pots!

2010-04-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

The current issues of ReadyMade told me that newspaper could be used to make excellent biodegradable seed pots. So I tried it out.

All you need is some scissors, newspaper, a small glass, soil, and seeds.

I cut the newspaper into strips that were about 3 inches wide and 27 inches long. I took the strip and rolled it around a glass. I then folded the excess paper over the base of the glass, making sure that there were no gaps. I gave the bottom of the glass a little push to secure the base and the pot was good to go!

My cupcake trays are helping out with the vegetable growing. I put plastic wrap over the trays to keep the moisture sealed within the pots.

And now I wait. Anxiously!

And there's not much to say, so I'll tap my foot

2010-03-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

I spent today scratching things off of my to-do list. Things I'd been meaning to do for weeks. Months even. It felt very, very nice.

This is my favorite song right now. It will not leave my head.

Garden Anywhere!

2010-03-29T19:42:00.001-07:00

On Saturday afternoon Joel and I went to Powell's, filled our arms with as many books on vegetable gardening as we could hold, plopped them down on a table in the cafe, and started reading. And guess what? It turns out gardening (or at least getting started as a gardener) is not as difficult as we may have led ourselves to believe.

My favorite of all of the books we found is Garden Anywhere: How to Grow Gorgeous Container Gardens, Herb Gardens, Kitchen Gardens, and More - Without Spending a Fortune. The title says it all. The book includes lots of tips on how to make cool containers for gardening (out of wine crates and milk crates and olive oil tins) and really straightforward information for those of us who are just learning about sowing seeds, building compost bins, etc.

Alys Fowler (the author) is someone I would like to be friends with. In the section on scavenging for containers to grow plants in, she includes step by step instructions on how to get into a dumpster, and includes photos of her dumpster diving in a dress. Just my style.

So, if you're looking to learn how to garden and would like a nice lady to guide you through it, read this book.

Neckties decorated with asparagus spears

2010-03-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, I ate asparagus for the first time in almost a year. This was a very long time in-between eatings, especially considering my intense love for the delicious pretty green spears. Why did I refrain from eating asparagus all winter long? Well, it all started with reading a section on asparagus in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

Pushing a refrigerated green vegetable from one end of the earth to another is, let's face it, a bizarre use of fuel. But there's a simpler reason to pass up off-season asparagus: it's inferior. Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best. Europeans celebrate the short season of abundant asparagus as a form of holiday. In the Netherlands the first cutting coincides with Father's day, on which restaurants may feature all-asparagus menus and hand out neckties decorated with asparagus spears. The French make a similar party out of the release of each year's Beaujolais, the Italians crawl over their woods like harvester ants in the autumn mushroom seasons, and go gaga over the summer's first tomato.

I thought a lot about waiting to enjoy food after reading Kingsolver's book. I tried to think of a locally grown vegetable that I had ever spent a year of my life waiting for. I couldn't come up with anything. I tried to think of an annual holiday centered around the celebration of a just-harvested crop. Again, nothing. I felt like I was really missing out on something. Last summer I picked strawberries in Ferndale, WA and could NOT get over how much better they tasted that the ones you buy at the store in December. I decided that I would wait for spring to eat a few things in particular: berries, melons, tomatos, and asparagus.

The funny thing about giving up some of my favorite fruits and vegetables during the winter is that it was in no way difficult. I did not spend my winter unable to resist picking up containers of strawberries at the grocery store and then forcing myself to put them back. I am not the least bit tempted to spend money on a tomato that is not heriloom, or flimsy and flavorless asparagus from China. After realizing how much better these fruits and vegetables taste fresh, there was no going back.

Waiting was not frustrating; it was actually quite exciting. Instead of dreaming of spring and summertime foods, I was falling in love with squashes and beets during the cold months. The kind of foods that warmed me up and left me thinking, "of course this is what I'm supposed to be eating in December."

Joel picked me up from work yesterday and we went to the co-op to find food for dinner. When I saw asparagus, my heart seriously lept. I looked at the tag below the basket full of asparagus to find that, yes, this asparagus was from California. Not as fresh as possible, but only a state away! We decided to steam asparagus for dinner. And we did. Not only was the asparagus delicious, but the meal felt symbolic and meaningful. It was a delicious and satisfying way to spend the evening before the first day of spring.

This spring I am going to create some new holidays centered around eating just-harvested fruits and vegetables. In the Netherlands they wear ties with asparagus on them; perhaps in Oregon we will wear paint strawberries onto our faces while eating our first fresh strawberries of the season. Or something like that. I just came up with this idea while writing this entry, so the brainstorming session has only just begun.

Photo taken by my wonderful little sister

I have a terrible cold (I know I just raved about not getting sick all winter, but I've spent the last week working full-time with very young children, and I guess when you're around snotty-nosed kids, there is only so much your immune system can do) but this is not going to stop me from spending the first day of spring sowing my first seeds (!) and spending some time in the sun.

Spicy Eggplant Stew..

2010-03-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

...was as good as it looks. If you like the sound of it, here's the recipe.

*Cilantro is the one of the only foods I've ever felt an aversion towards, but lately I have been giving it a chance. I might only be eating it because I like the way it looks piled on top of soups and guacamole. Or maybe I'm learning to like it. I just can't tell yet.

Security Envelopes

2010-03-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

People are doing all kinds of fabulous things with security envelopes lately. I've started to keep my eye on the security envelopes that show up in the mail, and holy cuss, there are a lot of different patterns. I'm excited to have found another free material to make pretty things out of.

Behold, my first security envelope project!

I cut up some envelopes and construction paper and decorated the front of a sketch pad that I gave to Joel for his birthday. Hearts and bird are way cuter when they come in patterns.

Mmmm, dirt!

2010-03-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I explained the way food grows to a few two and three year olds.

"You know carrots? Well, they grow underground, and when people pick them, they yank them out of the DIRT!"

Of course, they thought that was disgusting. Food and dirt? No way.

Except for one of them, who seemed to like the idea. With a huge smile on her face, she picked up a handful of dirt and shoved it in her mouth.

Picture from http://orcagarden.wordpress.com/2009/10

Is it a good thing?

2010-03-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

Every house that I move into, I always tape this 3x5 note card to my bedroom door.

I picked up the note card from Tender Forever's merch table at a show a couple of years ago. It has become one of my most prized possessions, because it keeps me in line, and acts as a kind of mantra.

Oh, and yes, I did just move into a new house. I'm in Portland now. Subletting before finding a more permanent residence. It's exciting to be in a city. And the cherry trees are very much in blossom.

IWD

2010-03-08T14:13:00.001-08:00

Happy International Women's Day!

Photo from The Guerrilla Girls.

How to Become a Beekeeper: Part 1

2010-03-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

So I wanna be a beekeeper.

I've decided that I'll need to find someone else to partake in this new hobby with me. So I've started with flyers.

Dear Portland, please send me a new friend who has a space in which they would like to invite some honey bees to live.

Ben's B'day Exchange

2010-03-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

Way back in December, Ben gave me one of the coolest b'day presents ever: 2 frames. One of them for me to keep, the other for me to make pretty and then give back to him.

Ben's picture looks like this:

Kind of creepy, also awesome.

I finished mine up and gave it to him in February, and it looks like this:

He used sheet music for "If You're Going to San Francisco" as his backdrop and he gave me a Key to Dicotyledons to make my art on. I added some dried flower petals, to go along with the flower theme. I think it worked out quite nicely.

Thanks Ben! Birthday presents that not only encourage, but FORCE the recipient to make things are the very best.

The magic vitamin

2010-02-25T01:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't been sick AT ALL this winter. Which is quite peculiar. I've spent the last month trying to figure out what lifestyle changes have saved me from the usual once-a-month colds, and I think I've finally cracked the code.

Vitamin D! I started taking it in the fall to see if it would ward off seasonal depression. Along with the St. John's Wort that I've been taking daily for the past year, I think it's done a pretty good job with keeping me out of the dumps while the sun is nonexistent. And now I'm starting to think that maybe it's convinced my skin that it's summer and so my skin has told the rest of my body that it's not the season for the cold and flu. Or something like that.

I was reading a column in People's Food Co-op's newsletter the other day about the role that nutrition, herbs, and homeopathics have played this year in preventing H1N1. Apparently clinics that promoted Vitamin D reported really low H1N1 rates. "Human skin cells produce Vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. Therefore, it would make sense that influenza (flu) takes hold in places when sunlight diminishes, and indeed, epidemiological review supports this correlation."

I was really excited to read this, so I did some more research, and it's true: there is indeed an inverse relationship between Vitamin D levels and not only H1N1, but all colds and flus.

It turns out half of people around this area are Vitamin D deficient. When you can't play in the sun, try Vitamin D supplements. Your body might just think that it is summer and start acting that way.

Hearts

2010-02-23T23:36:00.000-08:00

I really like taking paper to the sewing machine. For Valentine's Day, I cut up all of my mom's Woman's Day magazines and made these heart strings for the nursing home she works at. (The kids I work with also made Valentine's for all of the residents, which was a-dorable.)

I also knit a bunch of dishcloths. Pattern found here.

I'm thinking about sticking with the heart theme and possibly partaking in some knit graffiti, inspired by this.

Source Code

2010-02-21T01:02:00.000-08:00

"Knitting gives me a lot of respect for my ancestors as hackers. Knitting is source code - you look at a knitting pattern - that's the code for a sweater. As we industrialize, more and more of the world we experience comes in a black box. We know how to use things but we don't know how they work. I've been de-black boxing my wardrobe." -Lisa Williams

Turning ugly news into pretty stuff

2010-02-07T15:28:00.001-08:00

I'm poor. I also have a lot of free time. So when I can craft things for free, I get pretty excited. The other thing about free crafts is that they almost always involve reusing materials that otherwise would have gone to waste. When I was working at a grocery store, I got really into crocheting and knitting with plastic bags. It was fun, but even more than that it was therapeutic. There were so many evenings where I would ride my bike home from work so frustrated with how many plastic bags I had seen leave the store that day. There was always some middle aged man barking "OF COURSE I NEED A BAG! ARE YOU CRAZY?" (usually he "needed" this bag for something like, oh, a single can of pop). Crafting with plastic bags became a kind of activism for me, as well as a release. My nerves were calmed. I could pick a bag up off the street on my way home and turn it into something pretty. I didn't feel as upset about over consumption when I could do a little something to offset waste.

Newspaper is my new thing. I remember reading in a zine once that mulching can be a really cool thing because you take really crappy news and do something really fabulous with it. Mulching becomes a therapeutic act in that you can take pictures of soldiers and the president and stalk brokers and turn them all into this thing that will prevent weeds from growing in your garden! (I for the life of me cannot remember what zine this one. If someone knows, please tell me.)

I was feeling pretty bummed out by every newspaper I saw back in December, so I decided to make newspaper baskets for Christmas. And it felt really nice; turning ugly news into pretty crafts.

A pretty good tutorial for magazine baskets can be found here.

Happiness will be my revenge

2010-02-06T13:31:00.001-08:00

I am listening to this song for what is probably the 28th time this week. It's the perfect song to play while getting ready for the day.

"The Sweptaways are thirty women who sing choir-arranged versions of pop tunes. Thirty women in color-coordinated or thematic costumes." And Jens Lekman is still my favorite.

Banners are hip, right?

2010-02-04T18:19:00.001-08:00

My banner phase started in November, while I was falling in love with Learning to Love You More. We all kept talking about assignment #63: Make an Encouraging Banner.

This first one is hard to see, but when Joel, Mel, and I all moved away from Bellingham, we made a banner for ourselves that said ADIOS. We also hosted a Talent Show which I think was enormously successful. It included hula hooping, a couple magic shows, ukulele playing, a burping of the ABC's, Brooke reading Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA as spoken word, and lots of songs. Joel, Ben, Mel, and I sang and danced to Hold on by Wilson Phillips. And I think this picture was taken while Josh stuffed two whole doughnuts in his mouth...

Ben gave this "Be Your Higher Self" banner to Joel and I when we moved. He'd been working on it for weeks, ever since we started talking about making encouraging banners. I feel honored to have it in my possession after knowing how carefully he cut out each of the letters. Also, it is a nice banner to wake up to every morning.

My mom made this one for my birthday! (I forgot to take a photo while it was still hanging up in the living room)

Miniature banners are cute, so I made this diorama for my sister for Christmas. I thought it turned out nicely. (Natz is her nickname)

Now I'm going to make one and hang it in a public space. Any ideas for what the banner should say?

A sunset so vivid and warm

2010-02-04T15:57:00.000-08:00

Forrest recently developed photos from our early fall country road trip (the one we baked all the cupcakes to fund raise for). They're absolutely stunning.

My favorites are of The Arches, in Utah. They remind me that that day was one of the best days.

We arrived at the National Park in the early evening. We'd been driving for almost 24 hours and wanted to sleep, but we'd read enough about Delicate Arch to know that we needed to see it before it got dark.

We drove along the windy roads towards the arch, racing to catch up with the sun before it set. We grabbed the last parking spot near the arch and with cameras, water, and some snacks, we made our way a mile and a half up the rugged sandstone.

The weather was incredible that day. Sunny with spurts of intense rain, and a tremendous rainbow spread out across the sky. We made it to the top just in time for the sunset. We ate a mango while we sat in it. It was magical.

That really was the trip of a lifetime.

Pinz

2010-01-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

I used leftover fabric from Christmas presents to make these hairpins for my sister. I think they're pretty cute. The tutorial, from Kayte Terry, is available here. I stuck pretty closely to the tutorial, except I didn't cut the top circle like she suggests.

Lazy Samoas

2010-01-29T17:26:00.000-08:00

I keep telling myself I'm going to take a break from baking cookies. But then my mom went and bought me coconut oil...

The Lazy Samoas, like all of the cookies I've been making lately, come from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.

Cookies from scratch always taste better. No offense, Girl Scouts.

ATTN: Portlanders

2010-01-28T23:41:00.000-08:00

I'm still not sure what i'm going to bake for the Vegan Bakesale for Haiti this weekend, but I'm pretty excited. According to Isa Chandra Moskowitz, $10,000 has been raised for Haiti through vegan bake sales worldwide. I think that's cool.

RIP Howard Zinn

2010-01-28T16:06:00.000-08:00

The death of an author can be, in my opinion, a really beautiful thing. Death can be such a reminder of life; when we hear that someone like Howard Zinn has died, what do we do? Well, bookstores order more of his books. Many of us who never got around to reading A People's History pick it up. His words and ideas take over newspapers, the internet. Howard Zinn is dead, but the rest of us are provided with an opportunity to take his ideas and run with them.

It's amazing that he was still working so hard for a just world at his age. Just a few short weeks before his death he very effectively called out Obama on being not that different from the other guys. I was planning to see him speak in Olympia in a couple weeks. Instead, I am honoring his death and feeling inspired once again from reading a recent essay of his, The Optimism of Uncertainty.

"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t 'win', there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile....The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." -Howard Zinn

Drip drip drop.

2010-01-25T01:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a mess of materials can be just as pretty as the finished project, don't you think?

I am sleepy after an evening of drawing and writing letters. I think I will probably fall asleep while watching my new favorite TV show, Glee.

My second hat!

2010-01-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

Annie was knitting this hat when she came to visit me over New Years weekend, and she made it look like a cinch. My first time knitting cables. So easy! I guess a lot of these things are once you just try them out.

I knit this hat for my sister, who isn't allowed to wear it to school because apparently if you wear a hat at Camas High School you might be in a gang... But she did say she'd wear it to the bus stop and over the weekends.

The pattern is available for free on ravelry.

I can.

2010-01-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

I saw this t-shirt at Powell's the other day and I kind of love it. 1...because double entrendres are awesome. 2...because I was reminded of the delicious canned fruits and vegetables stored away in the garage. I took them out today and in the dead of winter I am reminded of early mornings at the Bellingham Farmer's Market, and sunny days spent preserving food in the kitchen before going to Lake Padden for an early evening swim.
This week I am eating pickled cucumbers, pickled roasted peppers, pickled beets, and applesauce. Here's to food, especially the kind that grows around here.

Hey Buddies

2010-01-18T23:46:00.000-08:00

I've become a big fan of sewing these days. I have found two quite lovely jobs in the Portland area that still leave me with lots of time to do things I enjoy, such as sewing (also: knitting, friending, eating $1 vegan corndogs, trying to find the perfect house, seeing authors I like speak at Powells). Perhaps I will show you what I've been doing someday soon. Meanwhile, I will keep posting cute pictures.

"Cookies Need No Introduction"

2010-01-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar has kind of invaded my life. Cookie making is nice cause mixing everything in a bowl and baking it for ten minutes is so easy. And vegan cookie making is nice cause my mom keeps saying she can't tell the difference, which is kind of an accomplishment.

I made the Chocolate Peanut Butter Pillows first.

And then last night I made Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles, which Buddy the dog really wanted to try. I don't usually tease my dog like this, I swear. I've kind of had a thing for Spicy Chili Chocolate Bars lately, and these are basically the same thing in cookie form.

Tonight I made the chocolate chip cookies. We ate them while playing speed scrabble.

Everyone was happy. Cause that's what cookies (and scrabble, and dogs) do. They make you happy.

End Petlessness

2010-01-15T21:30:00.000-08:00

Dammit, Oregon Humane Society.

How can I not get a kitten after seeing that commercial?

Chocolate Avocado Cake with Avocado Cream Cheese Frosting

2010-01-02T02:58:00.000-08:00

So, I'm 24!

It happened a few weeks ago. I ate some really good food and received some really nice presents and one of my very best friends came to visit. I felt like turning fourteen instead of twenty-four, so we made avocado face masks and later fell asleep watching Clueless on the rec room floor.

In addition to the avocado face masks, I decided to put some in my birthday cake. I know this sounds weird, but it's kind of amazing. Recipe inspired by one found here.

The Cake:

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup soft avocado, extremely mashed (about 1 medium avocado)
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 8-inch rounds and set aside. Sift together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl except the sugar. In a separate bowl, mix the oil, avocado, water, white vinegar and vanilla. Add sugar to the wet mix and stir. Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth. Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick passes the test. Let the cakes cool in pans for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting with the avocado cream cheese frosting.

The Avocado Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine, softened
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese, softened
2 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
3 tablespoons very ripe mashed avocado
2 teaspoons lemon juice (to prevent the avocado from turning brown)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together margarine and cream cheese until just combined. Use a handheld mixer to whip, add the confectioners' sugar in 1/2 cup batches. Mix until smooth, then blend in the avocado, lemon juice, and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Cover the cake in frosting and see if anyone can guess what it's made out of.

Important Occassions

2010-01-01T22:56:00.000-08:00

The last month has been busy. December always is. My birthday, Christmas, New Years. This Sunday marks my three year anniversary with Joel, and I have a job interview that I'm very unprepared for scheduled on the same day.

It's been hard to find time to sit down, but I've been jotting down ideas and goals in a notebook that I keep in my purse. A few weeks ago, I challenged myself to think of twenty-four things that I want to do before I turn twenty-five. My sister, who also just had a birthday, wrote down fifteen things she's going to do before she turns sixteen. I was a bit jealous of her young age at first, thinking there was no way I'd come up with twenty-four things to do. Turns out...WAY easier than I expected.

My list:

1. start a vegetable garden
2. make a cookzine
3. sell something that i make
4. learn a new card game
5. take spanish lessons
6. ride my bike a long distance
7. make my own soy jerky
8. help someone else accomplish a life goal
9. take a photo every day for a year
10. send more letters and packages
11. knit socks
12. get good at remembering birthdays
13. write a song with my sister
14. paint on a canvas
15. make a fancy cake
16. become a bee keeper
17. sew a dress
18. make a short film
19. make another zine
20. follow a complicated tutorial from ReadyMade
21. have a cookie party
22. make an elaborate costume for procession of the species
23. sew my own underwear
24. barter

I like this list. Individual projects feel realistic and attainable, as opposed to the somewhat ambiguous "loose weight/get organized/be happy" resolutions I've gone with in the past.

Peanut Butter Pie

2009-12-26T15:11:00.000-08:00

I love tofu, but I didn't think it belonged in dessert until I made this pie. I have never made anything so delicious. And it's surprisingly easy to put together, so I've already made it three times this month. Even my tofu-weary father likes it.

I struck pretty closely to the recipe I found here.

Ingredients

- 12 oz. Extra-Firm or Firm Silken Tofu
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup + 2 tablespoons agave nectar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup non-dairy milk
- 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 graham cracker crust (recipe here, or get a pre-made crust)
- peanuts, for garnish

Drain and rinse the tofu and squish out any excess water. Combine the tofu, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and 1/3 cup of the agave nectar in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. Pour into pie crust and refrigerate. There will still be quite a bit of room in the pan; that's for the ganache.

Now comes the chocolate. Bring your vegan milk of choice to a gentle boil in a small saucepan. As soon as it boils, remove it from the heat and mix in the chocolate and 2 tablespoons of agave syrup until everything is fully melted and evenly combined. Let sit for 10 minutes at room temp until it solidifies. Take the pie out of the fridge and pour or drizzle the ganache on top. Add garnish if you'd like. Put in the refrigerator for two hours before you eat it. An hour in the freezer will also do.

See, it's eaaaasy. And delicious.

Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies

2009-12-06T16:40:00.000-08:00

Molasses, fresh ginger, and just a little bit of cocoa powder. These cookies are DELICIOUS. This recipe was adapted from one that I found here.

Ingredients:

• 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup vegan margarine
• 2 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup unsulfured blackstrap molasses
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons boiling water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup organic granulated sugar

Directions:

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and cocoa powder.

In a large bowl, blend vegan margarine and grated ginger with an electric mixer until fluffy. Blend in the brown sugar and molasses.

Dissolve the baking soda in 1-1/2 teaspoons of boiling water in a small bowl and add to the wet mix. Beat in half of the dry mixture until combined and then beat in the other half until everything is combined.

Pat this all down flat on wax paper and refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Heat oven to 325° F. Hand roll dough into 1-inch balls and roll in granulated sugar to coat. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake 10 to 12 minutes or until the surface cracks. Make sure they cool for five minutes.

Eat them with spiked apple cider when it's way too cold to go outside.

The Multnomah County Library

2009-12-06T11:25:00.001-08:00

Turns out The Multnomah County Library has quite the zine library. I've been quite impressed. It's exciting to see a public library encourage and celebrate alternative lifestyles to the extent that this one does:

"An effort is made to purchase zines on subjects that are not well covered by materials in other parts of the library's collection, for example: vegan cooking, dumpstering, raw foods, anarchism, bicycle culture, animal rights activism, grassroots and community activism and organizing, and the culture of underground music." -from the library's Collection Policy

Photo taken from DIY Alert

A couple zines that I've really enjoyed recently have been The Frugal Vegan's Harvest and Holiday Survival Guide because it includes lots of cheap ideas for holiday gifts as well as cheap ways to stay happy when its cold outside. Also, Coffeeshop Crushes because everyone likes good crush stories.

I've also been looking at a lot of cookzines. One of my goals for 2010 is to make my own cookzine, so I've been doing a lot of research at the library. And in the kitchen, of course.

Transitions

2009-12-03T19:01:00.000-08:00

I made a kind of big decision a few weeks ago.

I wasn't getting enough hours at the women's shelter and the cupcake sales were dwindling as the rainy season began. Instead of finding a new job in Bellingham, I somewhat impulsively decided to move (Joel came too). We're living at my mom's house in Vancouver for awhile, until we make enough money to move to Portland. Later this month I'll be starting a part-time job as a sexual assault educator.

For now, I'm spending a lot of time being domestic in suburbia. Taking my dog on walks and playing ping pong while the cats try to interfere. Making dinner for my mom and sister when they get home from work/school. Reading through elementary school journals. Trying to convince my family that brewing kombucha isn't gross.

My blogs for the next few months will probably consist of detailed descriptions of the food I'm making with all my free time, and maybe a few rants about the absurdities of suburbia.

Vegetable Broth

2009-12-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I didn't start this sooner. There is absolutely no excuse for buying veggie broth from the store when I use as many vegetables as I do.

Here's what you do:

1. Collect all of your vegetable scraps for a week (onion peels, garlic ends, broccoli stalks, pepper stems...) Keep them in a covered container in the fridge.

2. At the end of the week, put all the scraps in a covered pot with water. Add a little salt and thyme or oregano.

3. Let the pot simmer for an hour and a half (it makes the kitchen smell so nice).

4. Strain the broth.

Voilà! I'm going to use the broth for a soup, but you can also freeze it and use it later.

win/lose

2009-11-25T00:28:00.000-08:00

My sister turned 15 last week. She asked me to make cupcakes for her birthday party, but with a few conditions: they were not allowed to be vegan and they needed to be topped with Twilight Sweetheart Conversation Hearts. I complied.

BUT only under the condition that I was allowed to use juice from beets to dye the frosting. I promised her that her friends would never suspect it. And I was right.

Thanks, Moby.

2009-10-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger cut ALL of the state funding for California's Domestic Violence Shelters?

I work at a DV shelter, and 100% of the money I make comes from the state, so when I heard about what Schwarzenegger did I really started to worry about the future for women experiencing DV in California.

Well, Moby recently made a fool out of Schwarzenegger by deciding to donate 100% of the profits from his upcoming California shows to California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.

He told the L.A. Times, "It was such an insignificant amount of money, it felt like somebody was going out of their way to be mean-spirited. The people that use their services are the most disenfranchised of the disenfranchised. If these shelters are open, people's lives improve, and if they close, people die. There's nothing abstract about it." (In other words: "You're an asshole, Arnold.")

Since Moby and so many feminist organizations were attracting attention to what Schwarzenegger did, he had no choice but to sign a bill restoring the $16.3 billion in funds to DV shelters.

We need more stories like this.

I've got some celebrities to call in favors from.

Cooking for 7

2009-10-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Monday nights are my dinner night. I cook for the other six people who I live with, and in exchange I am served dinner for the rest of the week. It's a nice arrangement. Cooking dinner for seven isn't easy, though. And while my roommates stick to the stuff that makes sense for feeding a huge house, I tend to make kind of complicated dishes. Given the fact that I've only been cooking from scratch for a year, this can be difficult. I've been making these dinners since January, when I moved in, and last night was the first time I felt like "shit, I've got this." I made a vegan cheese sauce in five minutes. I tended to the stuff in the oven as well as the three pots on the stove. And dinner was only fifteen minutes late.

My favorite feeling is the one you get when you're finally starting to get the hang of something you always thought to be difficult. It's super exciting when this feeling comes sooner than expected (like, whoa, brewing kombucha is incredibly easy, and so is playing the ukulele), but it's also pretty exciting to see hard research and practice finally pay off after months and months or years and years of working on it. I've learned enough about food to cook without recipes sometimes, and I know that if I'm out of baking powder, all I need is baking soda and cream of tartar. Making dinner for seven? Sure. No big deal.

The highlight of last night's dinner: Sweet Roasted Vegetables. They're covered in cinnamon, ginger, and maple syrup. So they're kind of like french toast vegetables.

Sweet Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients:

2 lbs. Root vegetables (I used carrots, parsnip, celeriac, and turnips)
2 lbs. Potatoes
10 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil
Maple Syrup
Cinnamon
Fresh Ginger

Directions:

Set your oven to 400° F.

Cut the ends off of a bunch of root vegetables. Dice the roots so that the wedges are about 3/4 of an inch. Peel as much garlic as you think you can handle. Leave these whole. Cut potatoes into one inch wedges.

Oil a pan with olive oil and then drop in all of your vegetables. Cover them in olive oil; make sure they're drenched. Grate some fresh ginger and place it in the pan. Drizzle maple syrup over the whole thing, and sprinkle some cinnamon on top.

The vegetables need 35-45 minutes in the oven, and they should be turned over after twenty minutes. They're done when you can stick a fork through them.

I'm feeling awfully domestic, so I think I'm going to go balance myself out with some basketball.

I'll love you in the country way.

2009-10-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a day and a half on Willowood Farm, a farm on Whidbey Island where my friend Willow has been an intern this season.

I grew up spending each summer on my grandpa's ranch in Oregon, so hanging out on this farm made me feel like a kid again. Especially the riding in the bed of a pickup truck part.

Here's Willow:

They have SO many birds on the farm. I love noisy birds. I don't care what anyone says, they are the best alarm clock. Here are the turkeys..

Joel figured out how to get one of them to hug him.

We cleaned a bunch of beans before packaging them. Much harder than it sounds...

We also delivered vegetables for their CSA.

And ate a lot of delicious farm fresh food, accompanied by PBR.

I'm back home, extremely positive that I am going to sign up for a CSA this coming year, and trying to figure out what I want to be for Halloween this week.

Sm'apples

2009-10-19T22:11:00.001-07:00

So my friends and I got really excited about fall and decide to go apple picking. We filled up a wheelbarrow, which is apparently 130 pounds of apples...

At the time, I didn't realize that I would be dedicating the next week of my life to those apples. Two days spent making applesauce...My roommates dumpstered some pie crusts, so I spent an afternoon making pie. Then we made some juice...and half of the apples are still sitting in my kitchen. I have moments where I think I'm sick of them, but there really is nothing better than the smell of apples cooking on the stove, or making apple juice in the kitchen with your best friends while singing along to "I Can't Make You Love Me" at the top of our lungs (yes, I am talking about Bonnie Rait).

Along with the apple endeavor, I pickled beets and roasted red peppers with my friend Kathryn earlier this week. I am finally getting the hang of food preservation and it feels really satisfying and exciting.

I am actively working to fight off seasonal depression this year, and I'd like to think I'm as persistent as my grandmother is about fighting off colds. I am constantly reminding myself that it wouldn't be green here without the rain, and I am pushing myself to embrace and appreciate seasonal foods and activities so as to keep in mind that sometimes the bad weather helps balance me out. The rain pushes me indoors, which encourages me to spend time with people I love, drink more cider, take out the knitting needles, listen to music in my room, write letters, make more bread, and finally learn how to play the ukulele.

Not that it's all bad weather yet. There's still plenty of time to play in the yard with the chickens.

Left to right: Donna, Molly, Lois

ordinary people completing out-of-the-ordinary assignments — with extraordinary results

2009-10-15T00:33:00.000-07:00

I recently checked out Learning to Love You More from the library, and so I've been feeling really inspired and excited about simple and sweet things.

I am currently working on my first Learning to Love You More Assignment.

#14, Write your life story in less than a day.

Can't stop

2009-10-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

So, we reached our goal of selling enough cupcakes to get to Texas.

Why stop there?

I really enjoy dressing up, feeding drunk people vegan treats, and going home with some grocery money.

her 2010 calendar

2009-10-04T01:47:00.000-07:00

Nikki McClure's 2010 wall calendar looks amazing. I leafed through it while at a little shop in Portland earlier this week and gasped when I saw this print:

Seriously, this is beautiful. I'm adding the calendar to my Christmas list right now.

San Francisco has the most breaktaking street art

2009-10-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

Trinidad, CA

2009-09-27T20:16:00.001-07:00

So we sold $500 dollars worth of vegan cupcakes and drove to Texas. Our first stop? Trinidad, California. We stayed with Carol, a witty school teacher who lives in this amazing town with a population of 300. I found her on couchsurfing (Couchsurfing is the best thing about the internet. I'm not kidding). Carol was on Day 1 of an Eat Local Challenge, so she prepared all of the food in her refrigerator that wasn't local and made us eat it. It was great to feast on pesto potatoes, rice pudding, mozarella stuffed chili peppers, and a green salad after a long day in the car. Carol showed us the virgin Redwoods in her backyard and talked to us about her life as a teacher. We sat around the table for a couple hours and then Carol went to bed. She gave us directions to the beach, a short walk away. We sat on a log and watched the tide come in. Here's a photo of the beach in the morning...

And below is the GREATEST coffee shop that I have ever been to, The Beachcomber Cafe. If you look carefully, you'll see that the words above the counter read: We have no paper cups. The Beachcomber appears to be the only coffee shop in downtown Trinidad, so they can probably get away with this without losing any business. I wish there were more coffee shops following their lead. Everyone who came into the shop had their own mug, and a couple people used the cafe's cups. This place felt like how you would want home to feel. Everyone knew everyone else, and they were extremely friendly to us tourists. We met a woman sitting on a couch in the back of the cafe who was happy to put down her book and chat with us about the best spots to see in The Redwoods. Little kids ran around with pear scones up to their mouths while their moms invited each other to birthday parties and potlucks. On top of the fact that there is no waste coming out of this cafe and everyone there was so nice, they make amazing coffee and delicious vegan goods. We kept going back to the counter for more scones.

And just to illustrate how small (and charming) Trinidad is, here is a photo of their police department...

More highlights of the trip will be coming soon.

street treats

2009-09-20T16:43:00.001-07:00

I just got back from my very first road trip. Three friends and I took two weeks to drive to Austin, TX and back. Where did we find the money for gas? We sold vegan cupcakes outside of bars in downtown Bellingham for the month leading up to our departure!

I wish I had photos of the fabulous outfits we wore while selling cupcakes, or of the Birthday Boys and Girls who were excited to find that we were carrying candles on us. But it's normal to forget to take pictures during some of the best nights of your life, right?

I did do a little bit of documenting, though. Here is Forrest decorating his Marbled Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes using the Professional Frosting Decorating Shot that I picked up at a thrift store recently. I feel like a cupcake doctor every time I use it, and it makes frosting look fabulous.

We carted the cupcakes downtown on our bikes. This proved to be difficult at times, but was really fun and quite a crowd-pleaser.

And here is my favorite of the cupcakes that we sold. Chocolate with Oreo Frosting! I based the recipe off of the one that I found here.

We made about $500 off of cupcakes in Bellingham, and sold some in Austin as well, which brought our grand total to $550.

This kind of success will definitely make one think about going into the cupcake business.

I finally learned how to sew!

2009-08-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

Last month, Jill taught Annie how to make a n apron. Earlier this week, Annie passed the skill on to me. Since Annie is also a beginner, we ran into a few road blocks. It's nice to run into those with friends, because had I been alone I might have given up. I went to sleep at 3am that night, rather exhausted, but I had a new apron by my side!

I had never touched a sewing machine, even though I'd been eying them for years. I was so happy to discover how naturally it came once I'd figured out some of the basics (and gotten past those road blocks). I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about what I want my next sewing project to be...

Here's I am showing off my apron:

I brought the apron to our annual family beach trip this week. My mom really liked it, so I gave it to her. Here she is, excited to have a daughter who can sew:

Smile for awhile

2009-08-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

This summer I have been fortunate enough to see The Olympia Free Choir perform two times. The first time was at What the Heck Fest, and the second time was at The Stretch Pants Summer Party that Kimya Dawson hosted in her backyard earlier this month. The Olympia Free Choir meets on Tuesdays in a gazebo in Olympia. Everyone's welcome and they sing the cutest songs. Here's a video of them practicing one of my new favorite songs:

This song has been the backbone of my summer. It's encouraged me to step out of my skin and reminded me the importance of checking in with myself. It's really been a mantra of sorts. 10 Things was written by Paul Baribeau and I strongly recommend listening to his version in the morning. Especially if you've got a sun-drenched kitchen and a cup of tea.

When you ask someone to make a list of ten things they want to do before you die, you're getting personal. After The Stretch Pants Summer Party, I went to QB with my mom, sister, boyfriend, and one of my close friends. We ate sweet potato fries with cilantro lime aioli and each wrote down our ten things before sharing them with the table. It's definitely my new favorite thing to do with a group of people. You see the nicest part of a person when they talk sincerely about what they want to do with their lives. I learned a lot about all of them and I think we all realized that the things we want to do the most are totally reasonable and attainable. And that's a really good feeling.

My list:
1. write a book of my very own recipes
2. learn how to play an instrument
3. become fluent in spanish
3. go on a cross-county biking trip
4. learn how to decorate a cake
5. sell something that i've made
6. grow the biggest garden on the block
7. brew my own wine
8. make my own marshmallows
9. take a picture every day for a year
10. perfect the art of cutting hair

You should try it too.

summer BBQ parties

2009-08-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

Joel won a free bbq from Trader Joe's earlier this summer (and he's showing it off with Emily in this picture). Since Joel doesn't have a backyard, it's been hanging out in mine all summer. I've never really been one for bbq's. I've thought of them as a steak-eating dad's toy, not a couple of vegan twenty-somethings. Turns out I was missing out. Veggies are delicious when bbq'ed. Which brings me to my new favorite food...

PORTOBELLO MUSHROOM BURGERS. OMG. For some reason I always thought portobellos cost something outrageous, like 5 bucks a shroom. Turns out they're cheap, and all you have to do is brush them in olive oil and minced garlic and then put them on a grill for 15 minutes or so.

SO, SO, SO GOOD.

Tofu Omelets!

2009-08-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Joel and I made them twice last weekend, and when I woke up this morning I was craving them again. Did you know that black salt has a sulfuric taste that is reminiscent of egg yolks? I am quite excited about the discovery. This recipe is from Vegan Brunch, but you can find it online here.

breakfast for ladyfest

2009-07-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

I've never actually been that into coffee cake, but I decided to make some for the potluck breakfast a group of ladies and I hosted for Ladyfest B'ham last weekend. I've been kind of crazy about Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch ever since getting it in the mail in May. I've always wanted to say that I've tried every recipe out of a particular cook book...I think it might actually happen with this one.

This coffee cake was SO GOOD. I followed Isa's basic coffee cake recipe, and then added some banana and blueberries to the batter. Bananas kind of do wonders for egg-less baking. The cake was extremely soft. And the breakfast was delightful! As was the rest of Ladyfest B'ham, which I plan to cover in this neglected blog very soon.

letters, matte, and s'mores

2009-05-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

This week's highlights:

1. I wrote a letter to Rudy's Pizzeria a few weeks ago asking them why they don't compost. I got a response this Wednesday that read: "That's for the reminder. We will begin immediately." RESULTS! Who ever said that letter writing didn't work?

2. Tried some of my roommate's freshly bottled yerba matte mead, which he calls "hippie sparks". Delicious.

3. Spent a couple of nights surrounded by the ocean, friends, and campfires. I bought three packages of sweet and sara vegan marshmallows for summertime s'more making while I was down in Seattle a few weeks ago. I just finished the second package and summer has hardly started. I might need to make a substantial bulk order soon because they are QUITE a hit.

4. I've been making some important decisions about my future. Healthy decisions! More updates soon.

spring!

2009-05-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

A couple of things that I have been loving lately:

1. Reading zines in the backyard on a sunny day.

2. Hang-drying my clothes. All of my dresses smell like grass.

weekend eats

2009-04-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

This last Sunday tasted really good.

Highlights include banana chocolate chip pancakes.

And a tempeh reuben.

Let me show you the reuben one more time, just in case the picture above didn't accurately portray how delicious this sandwich was.

The recipe came from Vegan With a Vengeance. It reminded me of something they'd serve at Hillside Quickie.

a basket-weave hat and a patricipatory democracy

2009-04-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

This basket-weave hat has spent most of its life post-knitting needles on my head. It's the first hat I've ever made for myself and I'm pretty into it. It took me a couple of weeks to make (it would have taken longer if it weren't for Jill as well as the women at NW Handspun Yarn). It's an easy pattern, but I'm still pretty new to serious knitting. I've known how to kit for about five years, but haven't made much more than drop-knit scarves for Christmas presents. It's too bad that I'm just now getting so excited about knitting, seeing as the sun is just starting to show its face around these parts. Oh well. I guess I can just spend the summer working on gloves and socks.

Or maybe I'll put knitting with yarn on hold for awhile and dive head first into crocheting with plastic bags. (I tried knitting with plastic bags and it stretched the plastic out too much. Crocheting doesn't manipulate the plastic as much, so I'm going with that instead.) I'm really looking forward to finishing my first plastic bag tote! Hopefully I can distribute them and collect donations for this really cool thing my friends and I are doing...What's that, you ask? We're writing a petition to implement a plastic bag fee in Bellingham! It's been really fun and challenging. I think it's going to be really fun once we start collecting signatures...and a whole lot more challenging, but I'm ready for it.

saving the turtles

2009-03-23T10:47:00.001-07:00

Here's some plastic bag yarn that I made this weekend! I am now in the process of using it to knit reusable bags. I found the tutorial for the yarn here, and the plastic bags for the yarn in the plastic bag recycling at Fred Meyer. I've been really stressed out about plastic bag consumption lately (that's what happens when you work at a grocery store), so this feels really therapeutic and constructive. This is also the cheapest crafting I have ever done. It doesn't cost a thing! All it takes is keeping your eyes open for plastic bags in trash cans and recycling bins. As the ladies who wrote Off the Map would say, "take what's free and you find freedom."

the recyclops

2009-03-16T09:57:00.001-07:00

Few things please me more than people who are able to make recycling, reducing, and reusing look really cool. I went to the Bellingham Roller Bettie's first bout of the season this weekend, and was so excited to see this woman wandering around. She wore reusing and recycling extremely well.

BONUS COOL POINTS: she called herself THE RECYCLOPS

Vagina Cake Contest

2009-03-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

In honor of International Women's Day (March 8th), I participated in Bellingham's annual Vagina Cake Contest. I'd been admiring the vagina cakes at IWD for the past couple years, so this year I decided to join in on the fun. And seriously, this is fun. There's nothing like crafting delicious baked goods into vaginas.

I made the best vegan frosting. I found the recipe here. I added color by mixing in a couple teaspoons of beet juice. The color was very vagina-esque, and it did not taste like beets. I'm pretty interested in using juices from real food for food coloring right now. Beats the stuff with Red 40 in it. Speaking of Red 40, did you know that it's been banned in pretty much every country that I would like to live in?

Here are the cunt cakes! I used crasins for the clits, which I think worked pretty well. Although some of the cranclits were half the size of the vulva. Oh well. The nice thing about making vagina cupcakes instead of a vagina cake is that you are able to present the reality that not all vaginas look the same. Some cranclits are bigger than others, and that is OK.

Here's me with the finished product.

The Vagina Cake table. Mel's cake, complete with a toothed-vagina, was my favorite.

i bet my breakfast tasted better than yours.

2009-02-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

I got the recipe for these heart-shaped apple galettes out of Veganomicon (which has become my go-to book for pretty much everything that I make). They're covered with apricot preserves, apples, and cinnamon. They're delicious on their own, but they taste even better with rice dream ice cream on top.

I'll leave you with this video, which I have not been able to get enough of lately.

milestones

2009-02-12T15:32:00.000-08:00

Five things that i have grown to love in the past 30 days:

One. my new haircut. a few weeks ago, after drinking a couple glasses of wine, i got out a pair of scissors and went to town. short hair is everything it's cracked up to be. it's easy to tame and does not demand to be shampooed daily. i could really use some ear muffs, though.

Two. full spectrum lighting. perhaps it's just the placebo effect, but my happy lite mini plus has really helped my mood during this dreary season.

Three. dinnertime. i recently moved into a new house and my roommates and i decided we would each take a night during the week to make dinner for everyone. it's really nice to have someone knock on my door at 7 o'clock a few nights a week to say, "there's food on the table". it's also really fun to think about what i'm going to make for the days leading up to my nights. last week i made potato kale enchiladas with roasted chili sauce. delicious.

Four. the bellingham unitarian church. okay, i've been loving the unitarian church for a lot longer than the past 30 days, but i've recently decided that i want to become a member. this church is everything that i always loved about church, without the weird stuff. we sing really endearing songs and talk about social justice and it's wonderful.

Five. my bedroom's newly painted walls. i've always wanted to live in a yellow bedroom. it's quite fantastic. especially with the full spectrum lighting. i trick myself into thinking that it's spring all the time.