*swoon*

Liz Phair at the Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan

So I didn't really expect to feel all sorts of emotion while seeing Liz Phair tonight, but hearing Exile in Guyville played in it's entirety brought me straight down memory lane back to college. If I was to pick a defining album for that part of my life, especially the last two years of college, this would be it. Hard to believe this album came out 15 years ago, and it was a really happy moment tonight to realize how well it held up over time and how I still utterly adore it. Liz was great! Very, very happy and carefree and genuinely just rocking out. The crowd also adored her, which I was very glad to see, as she hasn't had the kindest reviews after her last couple of albums and live shows. I feel like I can check this off my "things to do/see in life" list. Hopefully she doesn't fade out of the spotlight again! I left Hiro feeling all sorts of smiley and happy. And now I'm going to listen to the album over and over. :)

I might go to Prospect park tomorrow night to see Cold War Kids and Elvis Perkins. It will be Me vs. Rain on whether I go or not.

Endless berries and other yummers

Kittee's strawberry pie!! SOOOOO good and really easy to make. I added some Rhubarb in with the strawberry jam part. mmm.

My mom made a blueberry bunny pie! She knows the way to my heart: blueberries, bunnies, and hearts. <3 <3 <3 She even gave me the bunny cookie cutter she used, after seeing how much I flipped out over how cute it was! score!




Strawberry buns!! I made the roll part using this recipe, but just used some mushed strawberries (and rhubarb!) with a bit of sugar, as the filling. And, I don't have a spice grinder, so my flax seeds never get ground and they look like bugs. But they're super-yummy, i swear!

Strawberry salad:

Taco Salad! Can you tell I have had a lot of lettuce in my CSA?? Salads galore. I loosely based it off of this recipe (just for the Catalina Dressing idea. Layers go like this: bed of lettuce, pea shoots (!), carrots, and radish, topped with crunched up blue corn chips, topped with homemade catalina dressing, topped with TVP, black beans, lots of spices, topped with GUAC and a chip.


Family BBQ!

Some scenery from home...

Spuddy!!

Sitting on the dock by the lake...the clouds were rolling in really fast and it downpoured about 20 minutes later.


Pansies are the cutest flowers ever! They're totally smiley.

My mom's rosemary:

basil:

random flowers:

Tuesday, Wednesday, break my heart

I'm back from a well-rested and happy weekend with my family. I got to see a lot of my extended family as well, with a big mega-bbq picnic on sunday. I had to leave early to go to the airport at 6, but should have stayed. I didn't even board my plane until 10:30pm! Super-delayed, I didn't get home to my apartment until almost 1am. I was mostly grumbly yesterday and if I did say or anything, it was probably in the form of "!#$!!#@%!." Ha. Much better (and rested) today. I'm going to work late tonight and then make a strawberry pie (!!!) when I get home.

Here are some doodles from this past weekend:

big tall man with big tall shoes


sitting on the dock of the lake


blooming flowers on my parent's deck

peaceful weekend

This is what i see when squirrels come near me. Oh, they scare me so. They don't know how to keep their distance, especially NYC squirrels. Forget ever trying to eat in a park. It's depressing how much they terrify me, really.

I'm going home to visit my family this weekend (leaving tonight actually!) and I cannot wait for some peace and quiet. This week has been crazy-hectic at work and it's been making me feel all googley-eyed and zombie-like. It will be nice to be out in the countryside. Plus, I haven't seen my family since xmas!!

No computer access there, so the shop is kinda closed up for the weekend and I won't have internet access (which is a good thing every once in awhile...)

adios!

Sigur Ros

Picture by Brooklynvegan

I am feeling some serious afterglow today, after seeing Sigur Ros last night, at the Grand Ballroom in Manhattan. Really, really fantastic seats too; 4th row! I had listened to the new album once, before last night, and wasn't too keen on it, and was pretty thankful that they didn't play that many off of it. I found it really hard to wrap my head around Sigur Ros playing pop songs with confetti flying all around them. Mind-bending, I tell ya. I wouldn't say I disliked the new songs, they just totally weirded me out, coming from them. I really enjoyed how happy they seemed to be playing them though. Quite contagious. But yes, I've been super-smiley all day today, with Takk and () on repeat. I also was quite smitten by the opener, Helgi Hrafn Jónsson, Sigur Ros' trombonist. I even bought his EP, Aska; he was that sweet. Speaking of sweet, that encore was beyond sweet. More like insane and amazing sugar rush.

Setlist (taken from Sigur Ros messageboard)
01. Svefn-g-englar
02. Glósóli
03. Sé lest
04. Ny Batterí
05. Við spilum endalaust
06. Hoppipola/með blóðnasir
07. Heysatan
08. Viðrar vel til loftárása
09. Sæglópur
10. Olsen Olsen
11. Inní mér syngur vitleysingur
12. Hafsól
13. Gobbledigook

Encore:

14. Popplagið

100 posts!

Hello! This is my 100th blog post and I have felt like it had to be an extraordinary post, thus is why I haven't posted in a couple days. Silly, I know, but I felt like i had to "celebrate" it or something. I was always one of those little girls that tried real hard to keep a diary, but always forgot about it after five entries. So for me to reach 100 entries as a grown-up michelle, is quite exciting.

Also, my craft fair was on saturday and I now have absolute free time to do anything I want! Such relief! I slept in real, real late today, made a yummy brunch, and then sauntered around Renegade Craft Fair (I can't get away from crafts, right???). I spent the rest of the night updating my Etsy shop with new and exciting things (and still more to come in the next few days!).

here are the fun new recipe boxes added to my shop:








and the new planters! The first picture cracks me right up. so, so sad!










Some doodles I did during downtime at the craft fair:



I love senor cinnabun. He WILL eat your pants!

I picked up my first CSA of the season this past saturday and it was pretty exciting. So much lettuce and strawberries! I received: 2 heads of green and red lettuce, one bag of mixed greens, one bag of arugula, 2 leeks, 5 garlic scapes (!!) 18 Asparagus, 2 stalks of Rhubarb, and 2 QUARTS of strawberries!! There will be many variations of salads this week. The strawberries were most definitely the best part; I made an amazing and simple strawberry sauce to go over this morning's pancakes. Nik and I both devoured them. CHOMP. Now I must decide what to do with the rest of them or, you know, just eat them all raw. Pretty easy to do...





oof, sleep-time. i seriously just spent 4 hours editing pictures and updating my shop and making this blog entry. I can't believe it's monday already!

Bun-Bun Flower for you

It was nice so I doodled in the park on my lunch break and colored it up real quick, digitally, when I got back. Bun-bun flowers!



This feels like the longest week ever.

I made a pretty treasury today! First time grabbing a "big" one, and not just a Treasury West. Visit while its hot!:


Nik bought a Wii last week and all I want to do is play, but alas, there is work to do. But next week...

I'm alive!

I am, I swear. I went away for a lovely weekend in PA with Nik, and I played a lot of "catch-up" tonight as a result. Cut a whole slew of recipe cards up and did some laundry, dishes, etc. Tomorrow will be a long, long work day, followed by seeing The Breeders in the evening! Excited, but kinda wish it was next week when I'm not so busy. I bought my ticket a long time ago though, so it's a must-go situation.

I think that I might have discovered my new favorite soy ice cream! soy delicious came out with a new flavor, snickerdoodle! Quite possibly my favorite kind of cookie ever, so you can imagine my excitement that it now exists in ice cream form.



I'll stop being MIA and post more already. Doodles ahoy.

Tres

First off, my view of all of tonight's speeches:



and a big wtf to Hillary's "no decision" yet speech. Adios already!

Second off, I made a treasury yesterday (link will expire tomorrow) and it only has one more day to sit and be pretty, but look! it's pretty and cute! Maybe I'll try again to get a big Treasury, and not just Treasury West. Not so many people venture over there and this cuteness needs to be SEEN! :) Look, you can even see my alternates, which are just as fabulous.



Third off, I had a lovely farm-fresh strawberry mojito at my CSA open house tonight. Yum! I can't wait for it to start! Hello awesome and fresh veggies and fruit and knowing where they exactly came from! Walking back, I stopped at the bookstore and bought The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, by the Grimm brothers and Underground, by Murakami. Such great finds! Illustrating some of the 'ol Grimm bros stories has been added to my ever-growing project list. Something different; illustrating from a story. And I adore everything that Murakami puts down to paper and this is one I haven't read yet. Hooray on all accounts! I love walking home through McCarren Park at night, when all the flood lights are on and people are still playing baseball. Beautiful night out also.

cutiepants paintings!

So here are those mini-paintings I was yapping about a few weeks ago. I am pretty happy with how they came out. There were ten originally, but Mister Banana got cut. Maybe he'll make the team in the future, but not right now. I think that my favorite is Señor Cinnabun. He will eat your (cutie)pants! These are 4"x4" and 4"x6" and prints are up in my shop!