Beach Fail. Bonus pizza and doughnuts!

Hey friends. I'm gonna be slow blogging in the next few weeks, as my 'lil sis is still here and I kinda forget about these things when I have visitors. We're having so much fun! We tried to go to the beach this past saturday, but that was kind of a major fail. In fact, it was so bad, it was downright comical. Original plans were to venture to Long Beach, in Long Island, but after reading up on the temperature of the ocean (48F!!!), we decided to keep it cheap and just stay on Brooklyn sand. Off we trekked to Coney Island, with the sun shining on us, only to arrive to clouds galore and really really harsh winds and coldness. Brr! We brought a lovely picnic and everything, but it was pretty frustrating to try to eat a sammich with sand flying at your face. Gross! Coney Island sand! There were a bunch of crazies swimming in the water, but we only cautiously dipped our feet in and ran shrieking away (wusses, I know). We did manage to bury Jenna up to her neck, and it was pretty funny watching her try to wiggle out of the piles of sand we heaped on her. Our train ride there was longer than the time we stayed there, ha! All three of us had a layer of sand covering us when we left, and I'm still finding it around the apartment. Should have went to the park!




I made some Isa Pizza, from Vegan with a Vengeance, last week, topped with the cashew ricotto, pesto, tomato sauce, zucchini, and fire-roasted red peppers. Um, yum!! I love this pizza and it is worth all the time it takes to make all the different toppings.


The other night, my sis and I made DOUGHNUTS. Heavenly, I tell ya. I used this recipe, which I have used once before, with great results. We rolled them in a powdered sugar/cinnamon mix and I even piped in some raspberry jam in a few (we just used a regular heart-shaped cookie cutter for the filled ones). I stuck a chopstick in and moved it around a bit, to create a little space and just piped it on in. Easy-peasy! Total sugar-coma!




There has been lots of healthy smoothies and salads also, but pizza and doughnuts are way funner to photograph!

I have been tidying up my Etsy shop, unlisting older things that I don't feel fit well anymore, and working on adding new listings. I took a bunch of photos this weekend of art cards, so I'm mostly listing those in the next few days. I want to re-photograph some of my originals also, but that will most likely have to wait until next weekend (please sun, cooperate). A recent new addition to my shop are these blank notecards, from my Love and Peace series. I had them at Renegade and they did really well, and I finally got my butt in gear to put together a listing online for them. Yay!


More to come soon!

Hearts and cheesecake

Nik and I had a fab day yesterday. We went to the Museum of Natural History to play with the dinos, and then did some shopping for some things we needed around the apartment later on. Also, I bought a Wii Fit! So much fun! I decided to quit the gym and buy a Wii Fit and some running shoes ( I still need a good pair of these...anyone have a good vegan pair that they would recommend?). It will pay for itself after a few months, with what I would have spent on my monthly gym membership, and I think that I will be more apt to use it. I have a hard time going to the gym after work and during the summer, so this will be good for me to do later at night, when I feel more active anyways, but don't feel like leaving my apartment. I spent all morning playing with it and I'm feeling pretty good right now.

We were pretty wiped out by the time we got home last night, walking around all day. I had prepped everything for dinner beforehand, so we just had to roll out some pizza dough and put some toppings on and stick it in the oven. Isa Pizza it was! I love this pizza so much (from Vegan with a Vengeance). I also made a totally kick-ass cheesecake the night before, so that it would have time to set overnight. It was the Chocolate Marbled Cheesecake from the Delicious Choices PDF cookbook (I had found a download of it a long time ago and printed it out...i'm not sure where you can find it now, but google probably can. I found it from some link on the PPK, so if you search there, you can find it). I put in some red food coloring, so I had some pretty awesome hot pink and chocolate swirls. It turned out really creamy and yummy.



Also, thank you for the nice comments and encouragement with my new paintings! I'm feeling good about them and listed in them my shop early today. Woo! Now onto my next series...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Today was a great day for the new year. Nik and I went out to dinner last night and stayed local at a bar nearby to ring in the new year. So much fun! I slept in superrrrr late today and made a fabulous brunch of chocolate chip pancakes and a tasty smoothie (1 frozen banana + 9 frozen strawberries + 1 orange + 2 tbs. of pineapple juice concentrate + a couple tsp. of flax seed + enough soy milk and cold water to fill 3/4 of the mixture in the blender=the PERFECT amount for two people. mmm). I spent most of the day making Isa Pizza, from VWAV. I made my own dough, pesto, cashew ricotta, and pizza sauce ALL in the new vita-mix. Fantastic! I like how it keeps dishes to a minimum too. And I've never had a good enough blender to make pizza before! So exciting! And it makes it in like 2 seconds! Okay, I'll stop talking about it now. I'm sure the novelty of it will wear off soon (no it won't.) I used the new pizza stone and it made some to-die for pizza. Nik proclaimed this "the best pizza ever." nom nom.





I've been painting most of the night, so I shall have some new goodies to scan in and share with everyone tomorrow! Happy night!