Category: Blog

I watch a lot of TV. I like having it in the background while I work. Not all of it is good, but not all of it is bad. Have you guys ever seen Catfish the TV show on MTV? Did you see Catfish the movie? If all of this sounds like a mumbojumbo, here’s a quick recap. Catfish the movie came out a few years ago, and was allegedly a documentary about a guy who fell in love with a girl online and decided to go meet her, and his brother went along and filmed the whole thing. But she turned out to not be who she claimed to be… They kind of promoted it as a thriller, which was weird, but maybe genius, I dunno. The team who shot/produced the movie is the same team who does the Paranormal Activity movies, so that sort of makes sense. Anyway, there is a guy who explains at the end of the movie what the whole “catfish” reference is about: “They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin. ” Catfish the TV show is about the guy from the movie, Nev Schulman, and his buddy Max, traveling around the country and helping other people meet their internet bf/gf’s in person for the first time. The big concern is that people are not who they claim to be, and on this show, they usually are not…. What I like about the show is that it doesn’t demonize the people who lied. Nev tries to find the silver lining, to explore why a specific person did what they did, and to even still foster a friendship between the two people. As a super introvert, I have met a lot of people from the internet, starting from good old Teen Chat rooms on AOL. I can’t say that I’ve ever had an exciting catfish experience, but it makes me laugh inside to think about meeting my buddy Alek in 1994 and finding out he was a 40 year old woman named Cheryl. Here is my favorite episode so far, Episode 6, Kya and Alyx. Catfish: The TV Show – Full Episodes    

Oh gosh. Sorry I haven’t blogged for a bit. I have been busy doing a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make for very interesting blogging or photos since it all kinda has to stay under wraps for now. Some secret stuff: – I just submitted fresh new art for Yummy You! 2013-2014 school planners. Stay tuned for that! I’m hoping we can stock them in our online shop! – I just agreed to contribute a new pattern a super top secret book project with a deadline before the end of January. I gotta get crackin’ on that after I… – Finish and submit my TWO new patterns for February for Michaels.com – There are also some super top secret exciting Yummy You! collaborations I have in the works with other fun brands. – I’m taking a quick trip to L.A. next week for a dream meeting. I hope one day I’ll be able to announce something from that. So the only visual I can share right this second is this: Manda and Hairy’s birthdays are a day apart and this week! Manda chose an afternoon of archery for her bday activity, and Hairy chose bowling. Are we so old and nerdy or what!!! Anyway, it was clearly important for me to carefully and thoughtfully create some professional-looking graphics to accompany their Facebook events. I know you didn’t want to miss out on this work of photoshop genius.  

January: I felt really lucky to have my items available for sale at Kat Von D’s Wonderland Gallery. February: Celebrating Cuppy and Moofs wedding at Disneyland and finally meeting Lindsay! March: So honored to be part of Nara and Liz’s engagement, even if from a million miles away! April: Manda and I went to NYC to vend at the Bust Craftacular and had an amazingly fun trip that I still need to edit a video for!!! May: Wow, I only blogged 3 times during the month of May! But that was also the month that I redesigned this blog and website and said goodbye to the animated refrigerator! June: My eyeball exploded and I also wrote one of my my most commented-on blogs about the price of handmade, a “rant” as some might say. July: July was kinda busy! I tried to blog regularly about Craft Wars (and still need to recap a few more episodes….!), I watched the U.S. Olympic Gymnastic Trials in person, I crocheted some Pocky paintings for  one of the shows at Hairy’s art gallery, and I had my epic sleep dep battle to make a crazy booth display with Manda for Renegade Craft Fair. August: My toast scarf pattern was the cover story for Molly Makes magazine, I turned 36 and we had a cute picnic in the park. September: I made banana nut bread. October: I made pieces for Plush You and we went to Seattle for the show, but I have since failed to upload pics/video from that trip, my dad turned 60, I had fun times at the pumpkin patch with Manda and made a fun video, and I actually dressed up for Halloween. November: We launched the Yummy You! online store and were also featured on Fab.com! December: My free pattern for Gummy Bears was published on Lion Brand’s website, I had so much fun building a holiday booth with my mom for Renegade SF Holiday Market, and Hairy got me an ALF PHONE for Christmas!! Now I need to figure out a way to add a desk to my craft room so I can properly use and display said phone. I hope you guys have a fun and safe New Year! My resolution: self care. I worked a LOT in 2012. I will also work a lot in 2013, but I need to learn to make time for more sleep, proper eating, exercise, and personal projects. We’ll see how that goes…..!!! Thanks for following me on my crafty adventures. Your messages and support really mean a lot to me and keep my businesses going through all the frustrating times I want to call it quits and work at a bank. I love you!

I hadn’t heard of the Patchwork fair until they asked if I could vend. I don’t know if I could commit to two holiday craft shows, so I sadly declined but definitely wanted to check it out as a shopper. Patchwork had 3 shows already in Culver City, Long Beach and Oakland. If you’re in Santa Ana, the last holiday show is TOMORROW, Sunday the 25th, so go check it out! I get shy sometimes about asking people if I can take photos of their booths, so there aren’t very many photos… sorry! We picked up two succulent plants from Branch of Life.  I loved the little vintage-looking food cans! Here’s my girl Polly of PollyAnnaCowgirl. Her booth is like a retro kitsch fantasy! Colorful gumball necklaces, tiny walnut-shell Christmas tree ornaments (which I’m holding below but you can’t really see). I bought two ornaments and a ring! The farmers market was also out that day, and we picked up some veggies. Hairy saw some little peppers and said, “I CAN PICKLE THAT.” A honey stand was selling the tiniest honey bears I’ve ever seen. I had to get one! When we got back to San Francisco, we stopped at Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar, which we ha never visited before and apparently was a winner of Cupcake Wars. I got something chocolatey and something lemon-y. These are my baseline cupcakes to compare cupcakeries. The chocolatey one was super good, but the lemony- one….less good. I also ate the lemon-y one the next day, so that probably didn’t help. My #1 favorite lemony cupcake is still from Kara’s Cupcakes. They definitely don’t skimp on squirting the lemon goo in there! That same day we also bought pumpkin pie and muffins : /. It was a shameful but delightful outing.

We are gonna check out the Patchwork Art & Craft Festival today. It is at the Jack London Square Pavilion from 11-5. If you are in the area, you should come check it out, too! (p.s. We are hoping to launch the Yummy You! online store on Monday….. so far it looks like it will really really happen! Eep!)

Ok, so I watch a lot of TV. A LOT OF TV. I watch it when I crochet at night, for hours on end. I watch a lot of crap TV because I usually don’t want to pay full attention to the screen.  But I think there are sometimes some gems on TV that are worth mentioning. I only really felt compelled to share this anecdote because it came up in a conversation I had with Manda this weekend. These lines are from the most recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy. If you haven’t watched it yet, I’ll try not to spoiler anything important. If you don’t watch the show, I’ll just set it up by saying that Dr. Cristina Yang has befriended and sort of been mentored by Dr. Thomas (aka Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World). Dr. Thomas is super old, and his hospital doesn’t really respect him anymore and is waiting for the chance to give him the boot. But Dr. Yang really likes him and feels he has a lot to teach her still, even though he is all ancient and curmudgeon-y. During a surgery, he has a bunch of super nice stuff to randomly say to her. I’m kind of paraphrasing. If you want to watch the scene, here’s a link, but here are my favorite parts: Dr. Thomas, “You will be the surgeon of your generation. People will try to diminish you, as they did me, and they will fail. Mediocre surgeons will see you and feel themselves wilting in your shadow. Do not shrink to console them.” While he phrases his thoughts in almost a negative way, I felt very uplifted by them! Basically, ignore the haters, and just be awesome. Manda and I were talking about someone she knows, and how he said he was kind of afraid to succeed because his friends might look at him differently or feel bad about themselves or feel jealous or something like that. I told her to tell him to watch this episode of Grey’s and to take Dr. Thomas’ advice. If you have the will and the capacity to be excellent, why would you rob yourself of being excellent? Manda also made a good point. By being excellent, you can uplift and motivate others around you. They can make that choice, in their head, whether seeing your success will inspire their own negativity or positivity. So, like, go be excellent and stuff! No shrinking! Happy Monday!

I wanted to take a photo of a hand holding something for the Yummy You shop, so I figured I better get rid of my chipped crack-ho nail polish and do something cute. They remind me of cupcakes without getting too literal. Here are the polishes I used. Not pictured is the Seche Vite top coat I used to smooth out the glitter and to speed up the drying time since I decided to do this at 5am. When you work with your hands, your nail polish tends to chip off easily, I think. Especially if you do anything glue-related. That glue will pull your mani right off your finger. However, while crocheting, I think having cute nails really enhances the experience! There you are, crocheting a cute thing, seeing your cute mani flash by. I dunno. It’s the dumb little things!

I was going to keep it kinda secret, but then I thought it would be funny to share my HORRIBLE sketches/plans for my Renegade Holiday Market SF booth in December. I am not sure yet how everything will shake down, and what all will be included, but, I am definitely going for a theme. Cross your fingers. I am in full-on Renegade mode now. Well, okay, that’s a lie. I’m also working on this other big project that will launch in January. Okay, and also still working on launching the Yummy You store. I guess I’m never really full-on-anything-mode. There’s always a few things bubbling on the burner!

I did not plan to do anything for Halloween this year, but when I got a Facebook invite last Saturday to check out Bad Dads – an art show tribute to the films of Wes Anderson, which was also a costume party with prizes, I told Hairy we were going to do this, and dress up. He is not big on the dressing up, especially in SHORTS, but, I told him, IT WAS HAPPENING. Oddly enough, he didn’t put up much of a fight, and he actually helped make his own costume, and was also oddly in good spirits while wearing it. Win! (Sorry you can also see my horrible iPhone typing skills.)          

Some of you may recall that I used to maintain my side blog I Eat Yucky Stuff. I was never able to keep it up very regularly, but I reeeally neglected it for a long time. It was funny to get rung up at Whole Foods and have the cashier person say, “Hey, don’t you write about eating yucky food?” I never thought I would get recognized for that first before crocheting cute accessories. When I started the blog, I hosted it on Uber.com, which no longer exists. Uber was very nice and often highlighted my sillyness on the homepage.  I was bummed when they folded. Tumblr had just started existing, but I was kind of confounded by it and opted to start Yucky Stuff up on Blogspot. I never really spent the time importing all the old Uber entries, so I’m missing some old gems like that one time we…….. tried eating dog food to compare a high quality kibble to a low quality kibble when we first got Bibi….. we’re the best doggie parents ever! And yes, there was a gigantic flavor difference! Lame kibble tastes bland like crackers. Good kibble tastes REALLY REALLY BAD!!!!! Anyway, my dad turned 60 this month, and he threw a big Chinese banquet to celebrate. He hinted big time that I should blog about it on Yucky Stuff. So I did. This one is definitely NSFV: Not Safe For Vegans/Vegetarians. So don’t even think about it. In other Yucky Stuff news, I was a guest on Hairy’s radio show on Breakthru Radio a little while back. Listen to it and find out which song I request! I haven’t listened to to the show yet because I’m afraid of what I ended up saying….Okay, I’m listening to a little bit right now.  Anyway, “DJ Hanabi” on Breakthru Radio is one name for two people, Hairy and his buddy. If it’s confusing, ask them! Yucky Chan – out!

After shooting photos for the soon-to-be Yummy You online store, I wanted to jump in and take a photo with Vivs and Elysse. At first I thought I would also model some of the product, but the idea of trying to take a break from that for once was kind of appealing.  I got to hold a big panel of cardboard and strangle people with scarves instead! We didn’t really have a big enough space for the backdrop indoors, so we went into the backyard. It had been a perfectly overcast day, but of course, as soon as everything was set up, the sun started coming out and burning everyone’s faces off!! Thus, my cardboard-holding duties to shield all from the sun. We were kind of under a tight time-constraint for scheduling and wanted a more straightf0rward and streamlined look for the online store, but I hope to have more fun shoots later at fun locations! Thanks to Oliver for being our trusty photog. I told him to jump in the photo, too, but he refused! What a diva.

On Friday night, I decided to go all out and go crazy on my nails. I have no skills and no tools, so anything I attempt right now will look awful, but I at least like the colors and the randomness. On Instagram, I mentioned that this looks like a preschooler drew on me. I actually started out wanting to do pandas, but I did a practice panda with my toothpick, and it looked really bad/scary, so then, I just defaulted to THIS! This weekend I got to see lots of friends. On Saturday, I had lunch and hung out at the mall with Mars, Josh, Miss P, and Manda.  On Sunday, I got to see Elysse, Vivs, and Oliver for a Yummy You! photoshoot. We’re trying to get the online store up ASAP! Woohoo!

Stephen Chbosky’s novel “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” first came out in 1999.  I was a year out of college, working at the literary agency as an assistant, trying to work my way up to being a literary agent. I remember hanging out with someone in Berkeley after I had just read the book, and we walked into a bookstore where the book was displayed on the front table. “I’m going to read you the best line in this book,” I said. A teen girl tells a teen boy before she kisses him, “‘I want to make sure that the first person you kiss loves you. Okay?‘” Okay. I know that’s really sappy, but I remember thinking that was like the sweetest most lovely thing I had read in a long time. I remember thinking that this book was such a gem, just little and wonderful. It is written in  a sort of confessional diary style, in the form of letters, by the 15 year old narrator Charlie to a “Friend.” Publishers Weekly gave it a pretty harsh review, calling it “a trite coming-of-age novel,” which I totally get, especially now that I’m older. But you know, whatever. I loved this book in that moment I consumed it, and I’ll remember it for that.   This was also an exciting time for me in publishing, because I was kind of just finding my way in the industry, and publishers were just starting to create imprints specifically marketed toward young adults/the MTV audience, and this was totally my jam. Young agents selling books to young editors to bring cool books to young people. My publishing career didn’t end up being that cool or anything, but there was this potential then in the early years that got me really pumped to be there. Last Saturday night, I had a long overdue girl-date with Manda. We had mexican food and margaritas and went to see this movie together. There’s a certain part of the plot which has always really bothered me since reading the book (for being an easy way out, so to speak), but otherwise, I think the movie does a good job in capturing the spirit of the book, which is logical since the author also wrote the screenplay, produced, and directed the movie. Part of me was like, “Kids are never this sweet to each other!” And another part of me was like, “Stop having crabby old-person thoughts!” So, if you are a crabby old-person, you might want to skip this movie. But if you are young at heart and want to watch something sweet with kind of a dark ripple running through it, you should check it out. As I told Manda before we saw the movie, “It’s a teen movie, but it’s not, like, ‘She’s All That’ or ‘Bring It On.’ It’s serious. But the book was good.”

A little while ago, Kathryn Vercillo of Crochet Concupiscence emailed me about her new book “Crochet Saved My Life: The Mental and Physical Health Benefits of Crochet.” I asked if she would like to offer a free copy to one of my blog readers, and she said yes! To be perfectly honest, I haven’t had time yet to read the whole book, but I have gotten about half way. I didn’t want to wait too much longer to set up this giveaway for you! Kathryn shares her journey of how crocheting helped her overcome life-threatening depression. In reaching out to the crochet community, she also met others who experienced the healing and therapeutic power of yarn and a hook. You will follow Kathryn’s personal story, her scientific research, and the stories of 24 other women from all walks of life. Her writing is thoughtful, never saccharine, and her book is an uplifting and educational thank-you to a craft that most people see as just a hobby. On Amazon.com, the book is available as a paperback as well as a Kindle download. If you are an Amazon Prime member, the book is free in the lending library! Kathryn is kindly offering one of my blog readers a free copy: a paperback version for U.S. readers, and an electronic version for non-U.S. readers. To enter the giveaway, follow the handy Rafflecopter widget! a Rafflecopter giveaway

When Mollie Makes asked if I would send some extra photos of my work for Issue 18 along with a photo of myself for the contributors page, I decided to throw together an impromptu secret garden party in my back yard. It was so secret, that I was the only one there! I also always wanted to see if I could make one of these composite collage thingies. I have no idea how you are supposed to make them. I basically just shot a bunch of photos of myself around the table and then cut/pasted them together. It’s not perfect, and you can see some seams if you look closely, but it was just for fun, and I thought it turned out pretty cool!

I got an email from DailyCandy the other day, which I honestly kind of usually ignore and delete, but I’m glad I paid attention this time, because it was all about Sugarfina, a fancy candy shop! There was just something about those dainty little spoons of colorful yummies that compelled me to go completely insane and want to order one of everything! My package arrived today, and I couldn’t wait to open it! Hand-written note! I am always impressed when owners can include a hand-written note in their orders. I feel like I’m usually too much in a rush to make it to the post office to do this, but I think it’s super awesome when others can manage it! If you click around on the site a bit, you’ll see that their goodies come in various sizes, so you can get a little taster cube for about $5, a medium one for about $9, and a large one for about $16. I ordered mostly smalls, and the gummy bears are mediums.  $5 for a gorgeous sample of artisan candy is pretty cool, and you could make a really beautiful present for someone buy getting little taster boxes of your person’s favorite candies. These are for Manda. I already txtd her a photo! Her mom used to call malt balls “health food.” Hairy and I broke into some of the gummy bears. They are REALLY juicy. My favorites so far are the green apple and strawberry. To be completely honest, this is not my full order…… some of the German gummy candies were waitlisted, so the snacking has only just begun!

After the MAGIC tradeshow in Las Vegas last month, I knew that Yummy You! would slowly start appearing in stores again, and this morning, my crochet elf Liliah emailed me to let me know she saw Yummy You! scarves on ThinkGeek.com! YAYZ! They are carrying the Bacon n Eggs scarf as well as the Sushi scarf! Now that we have product again (and never-seen-before new stuff!), we are going to work really hard on getting the Yummy You! website all updated, including, THE ONLINE STORE! SUPER YAYZ! Here are some product shots from ThinkGeek: I know they kinda look the same as the ones from 2010/11, but we found a new factory to work with, and I had lots more time to work with them and make the product better. Plus, miraculously, we got the pricing down as well! Yay for all! I also really liked ThinkGeek’s model photos! They did a great job and had a lot of fun! This is only the beginning. Can’t wait to show you more and more!

  Hairy dug up a few more glittery heart Crafty Tote Bags in natural color, so I put them in my shop. The first round of pink totes sold out super quickly, so I ordered a bunch more blanks in both pink and natural, and now I’m just waiting for Hairy to print them again. Tell him to hurry up! 😛 I’m waiting for a few more fun supplies to come in before being able to make my Halloween shop update, so sit tight!

Many of us in internetsland/girlworld/fashionblogvoyeurville are already familiar with Tavi Gevinson. I never felt really connected to her as a teenage fashion blogger, but after she started Rookie, a website for teenage girls, I kinda had my eureka moment about her and just bought my copy of her/their book, Rookie: Yearbook One. I haven’t had time to really sit down with it yet, as it just arrived today, but just flipping through the pages already fills me with that special girl-magic. Like I mentioned on Instagram, this book just feels like a secret treasure, and even comes with a paper crown, a little floppy record with music on it, and stickers! The Rookie girls went on a summer cross-country road trip and had meet-ups with all their readers. Here are a few neat slide shows from their trip: Summer of Love, Part One And There Were Stars in Our Eyes Strange Magic There is also a funny recurring video segment called, “Ask a Grown Man,” where they ask a celeb, like Paul Rudd , a question about the Boy Mind, Guy Stuff, or bits of DudeWisdom. AgentLover writes for the site as well. If you’ve never checked out her blog before, it is a MUST! She is hilarious and is also the goddess of pop culture. I can’t decide yet if it’s sad or awesome that I connect so much with all of this teen business, considering I am 36. I have always loved the aesthetics of nostalgia, and that uncomfortable but neat feeling of things being new and weird. In her TED talk, Tavi talks about how she’s still figuring it out. I think I still am, too.  One the one hand, there’s the hope that your world settles down at some point, so you can finally feel comfortable in your own shoes. On the other hand, I like the idea that I’m always evolving, wondering, and growing.

Hey, L.A., Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo is this weekend, Saturday and Sunday at the L.A. Convention Center. The Brands Boutique will be selling some of my items there as well, so check out their booth #1112! They’ll have my new gummy bear hair clips, which I don’t even carry in my own Etsy shop yet (soon!), and also some fun new product displays I made for the pizza brooches and rocket popsicle brooches. My buddies from Chubby Bunny and BubblePunch will also be on a panel on Saturday about how to “Organize Geek Culture” with “events, parties, and online activities to develop community within the Nerd realm!” Go check it out and tell me what it’s like! cute photo by Brands Boutique! I’ll be crocheting the weekend away, working on a reaaaally neat potential collab project for Yummy You! that would hopefully be available before the holidays. Fingers and crochet hooks crossed! Also on Sunday, my studio space will be featured on somebody’s blog. I’ll tell you more then, and you can check out my HQ!

In my search to find a readymade, awesome looking Jawbreaker nail polish, I came across Hard Candy by PrettyPolishnThings.  I know there is also a polish actually called Jawbreaker by Pretty & Polished (these company names are a bit similar eh…?), but from looking at swatches, I wanted my glitter to come out a bit brighter and less milky. If you click on the Etsy listing for Hard Candy, I would say that the first/main photo is a bit misleading and the other photos are more realistic, as far as how milky the glitter goes underneath the white polish. This was about 3 coats. I liked the result, and it reminded me of marshmallow cereal in milk, but it seemed a bit difficult for me catch the bigger glitter on my brush. Perhaps more aggressive shaking is necessary! The blue and pink polishes (also 3 coats) are GLITTER PACKED. They are both by Rainbow Honey from the Equestria collection. Blue = 20% Cooler. Pink = Pinkie Promise.  I was really impressed with the density of glitter in both bottles, plus I really like that Rainbow Honey offers mini bottles if you just want to try a color. I wish the site would show swatches on nails, though. That would be cool! The blue in 20% Cooler isn’t quite as BLUE as I’d hoped from the photo on their site, but I guess that’s what keeps the glitter so … glittery. Next time I might do a base layer of blue or white underneath first. All in all, I am feeling very glitter-tastic, and I do not look forward to having to remove the glitter crust from my nails!

I took some photos the other day for my pal Darling Stewie. Her Etsy shop is Word To Your Unicorn, and she describes it as “Your source for god damned delightful whimsy! At Word to your Unicorn, you’ll find the kawaii, the geeky, and the super adorable.” I’ve been feeling a bit dumpy lately, so it was nice to have an excuse to clean up a little bit! Plus, I found out, I look great with a moustache! Rawr!! Here are a few shots with her stickers: The melty bow is by Sparkle Galaxy, the dress is from Target girls’ section (XL!), and my trusty necklace is Cicely Margo.

Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna get really healthy and eat a bunch of fruit n stuff, so I’ll buy some bananas and eat like ONE. Fast forward a week, and I have two really nasty looking bananas. Instead of throwing them away, I decide to make Renee’s banana nut bread. When I lived with Renee, she would make one loaf with nuts and one with chocolate chips to satisfy the needs of the household. In 2008, I asked her for the recipe. This is the first time I ever tried to use it.  I decide to go crazy and make one with chocolate chips AND NUTS. So I wait until my bananas are REEAAALLLY RIPE. Like fully 100% brown on the outside. And then I get crazybusy with my art show deadline. Then Lisa Fulmer tells me to freeze them nanners, so I do. Then I defrost them in the fridge, and they leak out their BANANA ESSENCE all over the fridge, which looks like maple syrup and which I clean up and don’t tell Hairy about. I wonder if my bananas have begun to ferment, because they are really slimy, like so slimy  it almost makes me want to barf when I free them from their blackened skins. But I still use them. So what if they are fermenting? That will just make banana bread FOR GROWN UPS, and I am one of those! I am not a chef. I am not a baker. I want some banana nut bread, I don’t know what I’m doing, I make some stuff up, and IDGAF. Search your email from 2008 for Renee’s sour cream banana bread recipe. Discover that Renee’s delicious bread is from this recipe at AllRecipes.com. What! SIX BANANAS? WHAT ABOUT TWO!? Renee has made notes for a 2/3 recipe, so all you have to do is 1/2 that one (maths!). Your ingredients look like this: 1/4 cup Earth Balance fake butter stuff (cuz that’s what’s in the fridge) 1 cup white sugar 1 egg 2 crazy ripe banana slime aliens that require no further mashing as they are nearly liquid form a little more than 1/2 of an 8 oz container of sour cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/6 teaspoon salt which means a SMIDGEful 1 teaspoons baking soda – which you don’t have. So you put in 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, which you do have, and seem to recall that baking powder contains baking soda, so it can’t be THAT wrong……right?…. IDGAF 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup chocolate chips 1/2 cup …. wait for it …. HAZELNUTS! AW YEAH! GO CRAZY, HAZELNUTS! YOU LOVE HAZELNUTS! They are your favorite nut. Nobody else is eating this banana nut bread except you, cuz everybody hates banana bread, so you get to pick whatever nuts you want! First things first. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Grease and sprinkle a sugar/cinnamon mixture onto your loaf pans. You’re using mini loaf pans cuz […]

On Friday afternoon I left for L.A., and I was back by Saturday afternoon! I really wanted to go to the opening for Sweet Tooth, but Hairy was out of town, Manda was out of town, and my relatives were visiting my parents’ house, so they could only watch my dogs for one night anyway. It seemed kind of silly to pop in and out like that, but I thought it would be worth it to support the show and also meet the people who were throwing it. I’m glad I went! There were a couple little things that seemed like SIGNS, like BAD OMENS, so I am glad nothing actually really super bad happened! 1) I accidentally booked a smoking room, and when I called to see if they had any more non-smoking, they said  no 🙁 2) I didn’t realize that a cab from LAX to my hotel would be $70.oo. Good to know for next time! 3) When I opened up my suitcase, a can of Pringles had exploded all over the inside. Getting out all the magical Pringles dust was one thing, but…..they had also left PRINGLES OIL STAINS on the suitcase liner. I had borrowed this little suitcase from my mom, so, that wasn’t cool! 4) When I opened up my toiletry bag, my Demeter Coconut Spray had leaked all over EVERYTHING. Luckily, it was not sticky or gooey, and I like the smell of coconuts anyway, but I definitely just left the bottle there to avoid any future worse mishaps. 5) I had somehow forgotten to pack my outfit for the night AND my pj’s! So I just kept on my crinkly airplane outfit and then slept in my shirt for the next day. I know these are not big ordeals, but I just usually don’t experience all these weird little travel blips! Anyway, Nellie and Kevin were nice enough to pick me up, and we all went to Backside together. It was PACKED!! Like super-duper packed! When I got there, the koala piece had already sold, and as I was approaching, someone told me that she had just sold a second piece. YAY! I also saw someone wearing one of my cupcake slouchy hats when I got in there, and as it turned out, she had also purchased the Strawberry Bunny painting. Dramatic lighting! Adrienne! I’m going to adopt her. Hope she doesn’t mind. Benjie, who organized the show. Nicest dude EVER! Quick snap of the crowd. Fun ice creams painting by Bobby Hundreds,  inspired by those cylindrical ice cream scoops from Thrifty’s! I was really excited to see this embroidery art by C. Ann (I think that’s who it was…?) It was getting really hot inside, and my sweat moustache was in full bloom, so we headed outside to get some air. I got to meet Ducky, Benjie’s lady, who I think was the one who told him about my work in the first place! On Instagram, I jokingly called this photo […]