Today is my friend Melanie's birthday, and I'm a big believer that Christmas season babies get the short end of the birthday stick, so this year she's getting her own blog entry. Well, her and the ornament that we made for her at the RKG knitting party.
See, the group craft was wrapping shower curtain rings in yarn to make them look like wreaths. Melanie failed at it, so she was asking people to make one for her. I knew I would fail at it, so I tied a bow at the top and gave it back to her. That's when it started making the rounds. I think everyone there put something on it. For the record, my piece was the purple and pink yarn. My favorite piece is the straw that's been tied in a knot.
I've blogged a lot about gifts this week, and I have to say that gifts are fun, but this birthday was the best ever not because of gifts, but because of my wonderful friends and family. I'm continually amazed at how lucky I am to be surrounded by people who are so thoughtful. From Groupons for my favorite yogurt ever to handmade birthday cards to candy corn, my life is fun and my heart is full.
So after my birthday dinner at Bella Monia (where I had the MOST amazing meal I've had in months), I spent the evening laughing with good friends and relaxing. What more could I want? ...a breakfast the next morning with more friends! SO much fun! I learned two things about my knitting friends: 1) they are serious gift-givers 2) they are super creative and amazing. I mean, I knew the second part, I guess now I have more illustrations of that.
Like, the "yarn ball surprise". I'm not sure if that's the technical name, but that's what I'm calling it. What is it? It's a giant ball of yarn, with a small-medium gift in the middle and many smaller gifts wrapped into the yarn. You have to unravel it to get to your gifts. How fun is that? Here's a pic of Deb's yarn ball, gifted by Melanie:
Any gift that's as much fun for spectators to see unraveled, as it is to receive (and probably to prepare), is a super-fantastic gift!
I've blogged about the disaster that IS our yard. Front and back. Disaster. My slogan is "one thing at a time" but man, that's tough! One of the hardest parts is deciding on which project is the next one up. For my birthday, I got two great gifts that make this a little easier - beautiful bulbs and a gift card to Logan Trading Company. Are my friends the best or WHAT?!
So I have my project materials in hand, I'm back to the original problem - which area gets the makeover??
I am convinced that if you are a crafter, you should only give handmade gifts to other crafters. I mean, sometimes you'll get an appropriate amount of excitement from a non-crafter, but to really appreciate some projects, I think you have to have an idea how much work goes into them. I know that I've had some lackluster responses to things in the past, and it's disappointing.
When I get something that's handmade, I'm COMPLETELY jazzed. To be fair, I get pretty jazzed anytime someone thinks enough of me to give me a gift, so if they took the time to make it...then..yeah.
For my birthday, my friend Meg crocheted a STEELERS trivet for me! This is exciting on three different levels: Steelers, handmade, crochet flower. Love, love, and LOVE! In fact, it's now considered art, not a kitchen accessory.
By the way, this is really, REALLY driving my desire to learn crochet.
I really enjoyed everything about the New College reunion. I caught up with some of my former classmates, heard about the wonderful and fascinating things they're doing...I got to see the new NC space in Lloyd Hall...I got to meet some of the current students and recent graduates and feed off of their excitement...so much good stuff!
As my friend Corley said, New College taught us that you don't have to choose. The path you choose for your career doesn't have to dictate your interests and hobbies. Corley is an urban planner who lives on a farm and plays in a band. Pretty diverse, and pretty amazing. Once upon a time, I liked to paint. I was never any good at it, but New College taught me that I didn't have to be good at something to try it out. It was really nice to see that no matter how archaic/simplistic, some of my projects were still on display. Please, no laughing.
A welcome gift for Dr. Hall, circa 2002?
One weekend, Margaret let some of the sweet peas into Carmichael and we rolled out some canvas and had a paint-fest. My contribution? A masked snake:
The more artistic sweet peas painted this:
And I had nothing to do with this, but I do love it. We should all think about what goes into the footprint we leave on this earth:
See? I'm a librarian who likes to knit, occasionally paints, grows vegetables, and cares about the environment. You can be whoever you want to be. Thanks, New College.
Last year some friends of ours traveled to Australia, crazy awesome, right? I know, I was totally jealous too. It just so happens that they stumbled upon a market with hand-knitted things, and also some pretty fantastic yarn. The result was a super cute hat for their super cute kid, and a skein of yarn for me - hip, hip hooray!
Whenever yarn is a gift or souvenir, or sentimental in any way, I have the hardest time deciding what to knit with it. And in this case, in addition to being a souvenir and a gift, it was also really unique. Why? Because it's a local yarn, spun from POSSUM fur, and un-dyed. You can actually see some individual hairs in the yarn (wow) AND the smell sends Berger into a frenzy. Berger Lopez: possum hunter. Rii-i-i-ight.
Anyway, the point is that I wasn't sure what to make...then I finally saw the Tweed Scarflet in KnitScene Easy 2010. Bingo. It was completely perfect. I knit it up in about an hour and a half, easy peasy. If I had it to do all over again, I think I would have chosen some more colorful buttons...but hey, buttons can quite easily be replaced.
And for those who were curious, here's the really sassy hand-knit hat that the baby got...
A few months ago I blogged about OPERATION: MAKE PURSES OUT OF BOOKS, a collaborative project with my friends Tina and Christy. Christy donated three of her Nancy Drew books, I picked out fabric and handles, and Tina assembled all the parts.
There are some professional crafters out there who make these bags and sell them, but the amount of work that goes into them makes for quite the price tag. I have to say that I am completely thrilled with the final product and I'm really grateful to my friends for making it all possible!
side view:
inside the purse:
I can't be sure, but I think that I got the Whispering Statue because of the librarian-esque "shhhhing" statue :)
I found out about my gluten allergy just days before leaving home for some time in Philadelphia. I was worried about finding gluten-free options, what those options would taste like, and whether my normal friends would be able to find something appetizing on the menu as well.
M and I read up on some of the local gluten-free fare (Gluten Free Philly is a great site!) and we decided on an Asian-fusion place called Sampan. Their GF menu looked just as good to me (well, maybe if it had dumplings) as the regular menu did to M. It's a small plates style restaurant, so I had the kobe beef satay, veggie fried rice and pad thai. The portions were so plentiful that I had the leftovers for lunch the next day.
Not to be outdone, M took photos (which she refers to as 'food porn') of her own (non-GF) dishes: Korean bbq satay, soup dumplings, and pork buns. I think the photos live up to the name.
So, "what's the point?" you ask? The point is that we had super-crazy delicious food and you did not. BUT if you're in the Philly area or plan to be, Sampan is a must-try!
So I gave the breakdown of the quiches I made for Jose's party, but there was so much more going on that night. All of our friends are wonderful cooks, and their dishes included: cheese grits, tofu-potato scramble, poached eggs with a steak-salsa garnish, chocolate chocolate chip muffins, barbecued sausage, and amazing fruit.
And did I mention the mimosa contest? Our friends have been kicking around the idea of a brunch with a mimosa throw-down, so I roped that into our celebration. I had an idea for scoring the drinks in an orderly fashion, but the drinks started flowing early in the evening and I didn't get good pics of all the concoctions (or the 8 empty champagne bottles at the end of the evening). I did manage a few good pics here and there...
the evening's first pour
Miranda looooves Puggie!
a sampling of the homemade juice blends for the contest (all delicious)
it's been a long time since we've had a girls pic, but this was a must since we have a new girl - Puggie!
Jose's cake - a stack of cinnamon crumb slices from the neighborhood deli - yummmm!
I have kinda always hated quiche. I mean, I'm not a big egg fan anyway and quiche is always mushy and weird and yuck. But to be polite at a brunch my fabulous friend Karen hosted a few weeks ago, I tried a slice of caramelized onion quiche that she made. And...wow...SO delicious! The other quiche she made was mushroom and I took a slice of that home to Jose and he raved about it! Then and there I decided to make Jose's birthday party a breakfast potluck and try my hand at duplicating these dishes.
[i can't believe i missed a shot of the finished caramelized onions]
Karen's quiches looked much fancier and were much tastier than mine, but since no one at Jose's party had the opportunity to see or sample hers, mine were a hit! One friend said she was going to dream of the quiche and another friend who is super particular about eggs went back for a second slice! Great success!
You can find the caramelized onion quiche recipe on the SimplyRecipes site. As Karen had done, I used the cheese and liquid portion from that recipe for both quiches.
Ingredients for the mushroom quiche filling: 3/4 lb cremini mushrooms 1/2 lb basic white mushrooms 3 shallots, diced 3 green onions, diced 2 cloves garlic salt, pepper to taste pinch of nutmeg pinch of thyme pinch of oregano
I hate mushrooms, but since they are Jose's fav, I took on this challenge. I'd like to also add that I was coming off of a migraine, so the smells were kind of overwhelming to me. I told him that after dicing and cooking 2.5lbs of red onions and 1.5lbs of mushrooms he should never, ever doubt my love for him.
So as Karen suggested, I sliced all of the mushrooms VERY thin. I chopped the shallots very finely, kept the green onion a little on the chunky side, and minced the garlic.
I did use frozen pie crusts this time. I *might* consider making them from scratch next time, but for a quiche...eh, probably not. I followed all the directions in the onion quiche recipe regarding the pre-baking of the pie crusts and it was completely tasty.
And as for the third quiche in the photo, that's my combo quiche. I had intended to make two onion quiches, but my double batch of onions wasn't enough for two (in the future, I'll probably cook 1.5 - 2lbs of onion for each). Maybe the issue is that I was using deep dish crusts, although I'm pretty sure that is the depth discussed in the recipe. But I overbought on the mushrooms just a bit in case something went awry, so that third quiche became a combination of the two. Recipes really are just suggestions.
My friend Hadley's birthday festivities were last night and I happily accepted the assignment of baking her birthday cake. My target was a white cake with butter cream icing, so I went to my local baking foodie friend, Karin. She has an amazing blog all about her culinary masterpieces, and her parents own a bakery...so yeah, she has some pretty great recipes. Never one to let me down, she provided a mouthwatering set of recipes! I made two small modifications: I added green food coloring to the icing and I shaved white chocolate chunks all over the cake.
The verdict: super delicious, but my cake icing/decorating skillz need work. Oh no - I guess I'll have to make some more cakes for practice...
IKEA finally had all the pieces and covers for our Kivik sofa in stock and they were delivered on Saturday. We had our IKEA expert friends over for a furniture assembly party and that was definitely the right decision. The assembly of each piece was no big deal, but the connecting of the pieces took some thought and definitely required additional sets of hands. I took this opportunity to put up our new curtains - the room looks 150% better!
out with the old...
and in with the new...
thank you thank you thank you to our friends for all the help!
