fiesta noodle soup

Well it's almost new years eve (it's new years eve day so we are already in the home stretch of 2014) and I am just about to take off from work and get my festive on, but I did want t share this soup I made last week which turned out to be the most happy accident. I had intended it to be chicken noodle but it turned out superbly bland, so I though to myself, what would my mom do? and I dumped in a jar of salsa, a can of coconut milk, and some chorizo, then topped it with cilantro. I even had an avocado that slipped into my basket at the store which was perfect on toast. Anyway, I think I will be recreating this particular dish again soon because I ate it for lunch for over a week and it never got boring! Also perfect for the insanely cold weather that's arrived this week.Alright, happy new year and see you in 2015!!!

holiday vacation

It was a beautiful long weekend in Mendocino and I was of course loath to come back to the city and the noise and work and all of that. I was having such a good time relaxing and hanging with family I actually took hardly any photos while I was there but here are a few from trip. My parents cats were particularly photogenic, everything was spectacularly green due to all the recent rain, and I came up with a delicious new cocktail recipe. And now I guess it's on to New Years Eve and then a whole new year! cheers

Happiest Christmas

Merry merry merry to all from out in the woods at my parents house. We had ricotta filled berry blitzes for breakfast and it looks like that's just the start of festivities here. I hope everyone is having a delicious day full of people you love ( I know I'm making sure to get a bunch of extra hugs while I'm here❤️)

almost there...

I am so ready to be through with work and free to dig fully into holiday eating, libations and family festivity, but until then I will look at these photos of the rainbow pancakes that I made last week for a friend while I plan out all the board games we are going to play, walks along the ocean and probably some naps as well. Counting down the hours...

{snapshot}

I revived my favorite shoes which I thought had to be trashed, by covering the heels with glitter of course! A very festive (and sparkly) fix!

last minute diy gifting

I found out on Monday that I had to bring a white elephant gift to a holiday party I was attending two days later. This is not a lot of time to find a good gift, especially as this wasn't the fun kind of white elephant where odd/weird/funny/novelty gifts were encouraged. After wandering frantically through several stores at lunch and finding nothing I thought would work, I decided to make something instead. Inspired by animal planters I'd seen on pinterest, and odd shaped vessels for airplants, I decided to sacrifice one of my beloved extra large dinosaurs to the cause.

After holding the air plant up to a couple of them I decided it would look best with the stegosaurus, so I set to work cutting a hold in his back.

It looked pretty rough in there after all the cutting was done, and my desk area was a total mess of hot plastic dust, but I cleaned it all up quick and rummaged around in the cupboard with all the spray until I found some I thought would look good with some greenery. Several coats later (which I applied precariously outside under the back stairs as it was raining but I didn't want to set up all the plastic sheeting required for indoor spray painting) and I had this guy!

And of course for the final touch I wrapped him up like a train ran over him with a mess of ribbon and stickers and it's a total mess so hopefully it will not be obvious which one is mine, because that takes all the fun out of it!
(also I think I'm going to need make one for myself)

non-holiday holiday cards

One of the projects that I worked on this fall was coming up with some options for a corporate holiday card. However, to make things challenging, they had to have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, which meant no presents, no Santa's, no trees or snow or snowflake motifs, no deer, and nothing red and green (among many other specific and random 'no's). 

These are a few designs that I came up with that didn't end up being selected, though. It was a fun challenge regardless of their choice, and I'm thinking I might just have to send out the fruity one myself because it's crazy cute and also I haven't gotten a Christmas/holiday card out myself yet!