It was decidedly un-summerish yesterday so we fought back by eating strawberries and overexposing photographs. I drove home with these on the dashboard and they made my whole car smell like strawberries.

We don’t plan on having any strawberries left over but if we did I would definitely make this Strawberry Conserve seen over at Orangette.

For our anniversary Scott got me The Badass Perforated (aka Egg) Spoon. It’s made to allow the runny bits of egg white separate so you can make a tidy looking poached egg. It works!

This is the housing for the top of the elevators and stairs on the roof of the parking garage at a Target store nearby. But all I can see is a level in Portal 2.

My mixing bowls, from the outside in:

The big yellow bowl was purchased during the summer I worked in the costume shop of the Santa Fe Opera during college. My roommate and I bought this on a trip to Target when we realized we needed popcorn, booze and warm blankets to make it through the summer. The dry air and cold nights there resulted in me getting strep throat for the first time in my life. We didn’t have a television in our apartment and I couldn’t afford a computer so my roommate bought me one of those black and white flocked posters that come with markers for you to fill in, you can still find them in drug stores. It was a stained glass window, or something. I was so bored I spent hours trying to figure out how to fill it in so that none of the colors would be next to one another. I also read The Mists of Avalon. Twice.

The two largest orange bowls were purchased the second year that Scott and I lived in Seattle, when we rented a house in Ballard. It is a short walk away from where Delancey opened up after we moved away, how I wish we still lived there. It was a three-bowl set from Williams-Sonoma and buying them was one of those “I’m finally a grown up!” moments for me. After only a few weeks I broke the smallest bowl in the set, my favorite one, when I dropped it while doing dishes. It cracked right in half. Which make me feel not so much a grown up. The rubber feet on these bowls are light blue, a detail which I adore.

The medium orange bowl was purchased earlier this year at a Ross that opened in my neighborhood. The Ross was clean but shockingly sparse, more like mostly empty Goodwill. It was incredibly depressing and a bit disorienting. Suddenly there was this shiny orange melamine bowl looking like it was waiting just for me. Then I found a second shiny orange bowl a little further down on the shelf. They are just about the size of the bowl I broke, so I bought both.

The smallest four (orange, green, yellow, blue) were a birthday present from Scott last year and they make for very happy prep. The blue one is so cute and petite, it’s smaller than a teacup, that I find myself just holding it because I find it so pleasing. Scott bought them at the Moma store while he was in New York with Kirby Krackle. He also visited Mood during that trip simply so that he could snap a picture for me. I wasn’t jealous at all.

The other day we bought new bicycle helmets. I chose a Giro Indicator and I like it because it has a little adjustment wheel on the back so it fits snuggly but it’s not headache inducing, and it’s really well ventilated. It was on sale at REI, and the one I picked (White/Silver) is even cheaper on Amazon right now. Yay for bicycling.

When your car’s oil light comes on while you’re out running errands the night before a flight it’s a really lucky thing that the nearest place to pull over is actually the parking lot of a drugstore that happens to sell oil. It’s even luckier if you have a Scott of your own who happens to be on his way home and can do all the dirty work for you.* While you’re waiting for your Scott to arrive it is also very lucky if you happen to have a Car Kit with scissors so you can improvise a funnel out of a water bottle. It’s also pretty cool that the kit also contains individual handi-wipes to clean the hands of your Scott after he’s done saving the car. And then you can pick up dinner from your neighborhood Italian place before you head home. Seriously though, the car kit has saved the day a number of times since I’ve had it. It’s always so cheerful to realize that you do have that flashlight/tire gauge/sunscreen/safety pin/breath mint/pliers that you need.

* (For the record I definitely can put oil in my own car but he really was only minutes away and what the hell, it likely saved my favorite jeans from a nasty oil stain.)

This is what the last ferry at night out from Bremerton looks like. I was on foot and barely made it, I half-jogged the few miles from the house of the friend I was visiting, sprinted up the pedestrian entrance and moments after I got on board the ferry pulled away.

There were very few people with me, one was a very big and ominous bald man with the most amazing and delicate flower tattoo covering his scalp. I wanted to rub his head but thought he might take it the wrong way.

This van was so cheerful, like spotting a bunch of balloons on a dreary day. The owner clearly loves their van.

I was walking through the Georgetown neighborhood and spotted this nice guy painting a sign by hand. I stopped to ask if I could take a photo and mentioned I knew somebody who is making a film about people who paint signs by hand. “Faythe?” He asked. Indeed. The world, it is small.

We found ourselves out near Frost Donuts (a short drive away from Seattle) so we stopped in. I’d read a lot about it but I wasn’t prepared for how amazing the donuts look (take a peek at that Aztec Chocolate, go on), how adorably designed the shop was, and how really, really good the donuts were. I didn’t mean to eat this whole one but I did. We are definitely going to find a reason to swing by again soon.

Kyle sent Scott home with a bottle of the beer which I had the opportunity to watch him make last month. Don’t be fooled by the name, I mostly observed! Thank you, Kyle, it was delicious.

This is my view down into the industrial kitchens from my seat at Serious Pie (as in pizza). Those Hobart mixers mean business.

I love how pipe cleaner chicks always look a bit freaked out.

Today was way better than yesterday, or so I thought. At lunch I dropped off the last document needed for our tax people to do our taxes, I got all the stuff needed to make dinner, I gathered and bagged the recycling for collection tomorrow, I got everything ready to take photographs of the Easter project I have in mind for this year, I did dishes, I washed and chopped kale, I cleaned out the fridge, I cleared the dining room table of miscellaneous mail and I was feeling triumphant and smart (I was listening to The Tobolowsky Files, it makes me feel smart) and nearly I felt like I actually had my stuff together until Scott got home and discovered that all of my keys were still in the lock of the door. Just hanging there, forgotten. In my rush to turn off the alarm when I came home I failed to actually remove my keys from the lock. Way to go, me.

Anyhow, the photograph above is a sneak peek at what I’m doing for Easter. Sort of.

My RSS feed broke, the engine light in my car is on, I was late to meet a friend at the bakery and when I got there I knocked a vase off of a table in a dramatic fashion, the cap of a Sharpie in my bag came off leaving some ugly black spots and when I got home I discovered I have a run in my Spanx. It’s only 1:30 in the afternoon. I sincerely hope your day is going better than mine.

update: I also forgot to put a title on this post, which I’ve just fixed. Hey, if you are looking at this in a feed reader and cannot see the moody photo of the offending Sharpie let me know and I’ll try to figure out why RSS might still be broken. My thanks!

Lunch today was a mushroom and spinach crepe from Tokyo Sweets. I learned that it’s really difficult to unzip your bag and pull out a camera when you cannot put your food down. Also that shortly after taking this photo I was wishing I had a spork.

I couldn’t have hoped for a better car to be stuck behind in traffic. It sure beat the cop car I had been stuck behind earlier in the day.

We went to see Red State at McCaw Hall on it’s stop here in Seattle. It was interesting to see an indie film on a gigantic screen in a huge fancy theater packed with casually dressed fans.

I dropped off my goods for the Seattle Bakesale for Japan and didn’t get many pictures. This label was awfully cute though! There were a surprising amount of macarons at the sale.

Whenever I bake I end up making last minute trips to the grocery store for one ingredient or the other. This time my dough for the Jar of Stars needed to rest over night and in order to get it made I needed to make a late night trip. While there this packaging for something else entirely caught my (tired) eye.

daily photo thing update: Today I’m finally posting a backlog of photos all at once and renaming them “almost daily photo” because I’m no good at keeping up with stuff and, as it turns out, I’m really not good at keeping up with stuff when I’ve put a set of artificial rules on myself. So I’ll try to post a photo a day but if I’m busy or got nothing I won’t. I mean, I don’t want to start resenting my own self, right?

It’s been very gloomy the last few days. So gloomy even the willow branches somebody lovingly put in a planter outside the post office manage to look nothing but wet and cold. Willow branches should not look foreboding.

This is my favorite inexpensive tea. It’s hard to find in your (or at least my) average grocery store and I live in fear that it will be discontinued. The last time I found it in a grocery store on sale I bought a dozen boxes and the person ringing me up must have thought I was nuts. Then again, it is high time I embrace my role as The Crazy Lady. Does that mean I can start wearing sequins at unexpected times of day? Right on.

Nothing happened today so instead I’ll show you the lollipops made by This Charming Candy which I got yesterday. They have amazing flavors.

Today we stopped by the Bake It In A Cake sale at the Cakespy shop and managed to get some of the last cupcakes. Megan is a genius, see how lovely her cupcakes are? We got one chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting and a cherry pie baked inside, and a vanilla cupcake with maple frosting with a banana cream pie baked inside. We also ran into Mary from Shelterrific, hi Mary!

I got a mini brewing lesson from Kyle Stevens today. This stuff is a lot of work, but very well worth it. His nanobrewery is forthcoming, watch out.

Today I got to meet up with a great bunch of women, it was great to see Cakespy, Stephmodo, Jenny Cookies, Cathys Wraps, Mia Cupcakes, Love Big Bake Often, and Not Just A Mommmy, who did an excellent job organizing the event. And extra thanks go to Jessie for letting us gather in the Cakespy shop.

Today I learned that my little-er camera needs to manually be set to macro (I knew this but was in denial) and that even when in macro it still won’t focus on the point you’d like if that point is very bright. Good to know.

These are some Christmas lights that currently sit where a low cocktail table will live, just as soon as I find the absolute perfect one.

I may have purchased too many things with stripes today.

Playing with macro focus and aperture priority on my little-er camera.

Malt balls, an impulse purchase because they were so pretty. They taste horrible.

After a long time of not knitting I’ve restarted a red hat. I’ve knit this one before but have been meaning to make another and keep notes to create a pattern, and to not make quite as many glaring mistakes this time. The original red hat has become my favorite, my earlobes stay warm and somehow it manages to be cute, or at least Scott insists it’s cute and you cannot trust him since insisting I’m cute is sort of his job.

I completely forgot to put up a daily photo on Thursday. Blame St. Patrick’s Day. Or rather, blame the O’Margaritas we drank that night. I went to grab my camera to take a photo, discovered that I had completely filled up the memory card and decided I’d rather drink it than make space on the card to photograph it. And then I drank it and let’s just say it was a potent green drink. Hope your evening was equally as fun.

Semi related: I recently got to the point where my memory card rolled over, if you will, back to numbering photos 0001. Yay for ten thousand photos.

This is the vanilla which I completely forgot to add to the frosting for the Leprechaun Trap Cake.

I’m up to something.

Today my Here At Hogwarts comic arrived, it was drawn by Lucy Knisley and the cover was hand printed by Nora Renick-Rinehart. It was a small Christmas present to myself that I ordered early through their Horribly Heartbroken at Hogwarts project on Kickstarter, but now you can get one for yourself any time you’d like right here.

p.s. Whether or not you fell down the hole of reading the Twilight books the series of comics by Lucy Knisley titled My Lost Weekend In the Meyer is hilarious. Go read.

We went to Uneeda Burger here in Seattle to try to see if we could tell the difference between the regular patty and the grass-fed patty. We couldn’t. But Lindy West could and her hilarious review is worth reading even if you don’t live close enough to try this place: “This cow ate only sweet grasses and sunshine. This cow was massaged daily by sexy cow concubines. This cow slept each night on a feather bed, spooning with the emperor of Whidbey Island himself. This cow moos rainbows.”

This morning we made The Pioneer Woman’s French Breakfast Puffs, so very very yummy.

Today I made stew and it took half an hour before I noticed I’d forgotten to plug the crock pot in.

I left the house and didn’t bring a coat with me today, it was gloriously sunny and warmish. People in Seattle talk about the weather too damn much, and this time of year I find myself doing it as well. We have mild winters without much snow and while I appreciate the lack of icy roads the downside is seemingly endless stretches of gloomy overcast skies. Generally I like the excuse to stay all cozy indoors and do repetitive things (knitting, video games, drinking, obsessing) but the mood stealthily swings into desperation sometime in late February. Its around this time of year that I get nostalgic for Cleveland’s snowy winters because at least they broke up the winter into an array of difficult weather that brought new and exciting things to have to deal with. In contrast we here in Seattle tend to be very enthusiastic when the sun is out, like today. Especially when you check Twitter to find that a friend like A Chow Life reports: “I just looked at the 10 day forecast. Rain– every single day.” Then you hastily take a photo of the all too soon setting sun bouncing against a wall so you can remember what it felt like when Friday of next week rolls around and you start to suspect you’re actually stuck in some creepy sunshine-less experiment.

In less Need To Snap Out Of It news, today I bought a giant plastic egg for what I hope will become a neat-o Easter thing. We’ll see.

Ok, so this photo is from yesterday when we were at the Emerald City Comicon, but today didn’t have much going on and I wanted to take a moment to say how I enjoyed wandering around ECCC, and to give a shoutout to the organizers for taking the time to give me a visitors badge (my husband Scott plays bass for the awesome nerd rock band Kirby Krackle, and one half of the songwriters for Kirby Krackle is Jim Demonakos, who founded ECCC and does an awesome job of making it better each year, thus the badge). I mostly wanted to note something that The Stranger also noticed: there were a lot of girls there. I saw women of all ages, some with their daughters, all there because they love comic books. Yay!

Today we went to the Emerald City Comicon and R2D2 came over to say hi. This robot was very impressive, it chirped and whistled at us and even appeared to have Tatooine dust on it. The guy controlling it was sitting very nonchalantly off to one side and hid the controller behind a newspaper. It was really fun to watch the kids who came through go a little crazy with joy.

I’m deciding which vacuum to buy (ours is, well, sad) and I ended up making myself a chart to help me sort out which one I wanted. Shown here are three of my favorite tools for chart making: an Apex mechanical pencil which is nice and sturdy, has clicky action that lets the lead out bit by bit and a nice eraser that you can twist up and down; a pencil shaped eraser from Muji, I adore these; and MAC Lipglass, a new favorite discovery. The vacuum choice is coming down to which color I like best, even I am rolling my eyes at myself over this one.

Here in Seattle we have a grocery delivery service called Amazon Fresh. Yup, from Amazon. Grocery delivery is pretty normal but the only other one we used was Peapod in San Francisco which closed down a few weeks after we started using it. We never get our grocery delivery choices quite right, this time we accidentally ordered a giant box of baking soda and an itty bitty tube of toothpaste. Our own faults, the weight of what we ordered was clearly listed, but we had gotten a little click happy. We live in a neighborhood that is outside the delivery areas for any pizza places so I’m just thrilled we can at least get groceries.

Around this time last year I started recapping our trip to Paris. These sets of wooden building play sets of both London and Paris which we bought at Muji still sit on the ledge of our dining room mirror. At some point I arranged the buildings by height and mixed up which city each belongs in. It’s time we started planning where to escape to next year.

Taken during a brief window of sunshine today. This is our third string of pearls plant. I cannot keep plants alive and killed our first two. This one Scott takes care of and I try to not even look at it too closely for fear it will deflate and shrivel under my very gaze. I love how the pods are a little translucent along the seam.

We finally installed our FLOR tiles so I used them to learn all about the A-Dep (depth of focus setting) setting on my camera. Last time I wrote about these we had samples and we liked one color, but a different texture that the color wasn’t available for. Happily we dithered long enough and FLOR updated their line to include the combination we really wanted, Feelin’ Groovy in Clementine. Now we need a low table and some lighting. At this pace we will be done sometime in October.

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies from the NY Times recipe that everybody was going crazy over a few years ago, myself included. Despite weighing all the ingredients I appear to have halved the flour or doubled the butter or something because this batch spreads like crazy. Is there a way to add more flour to cookie dough once the chocolate chips are are mixed in? I’m assuming not since the new flour wouldn’t be coated in butter the way it’s supposed to, and there would be a lot of overmixing of the flour. Oh well, these are yummy but not very pretty. Here I’ve scooped them onto a cookie sheet to freeze individually so I can bake one or two at a time.

Today was Cookbook Club, our focus was any recipe from David Lebovitz‘s books or website. We had a perfect mix (short ribs, celery root soup, artichoke tapenade, and a spread of desserts) and everything was superb. I made the Pistachio and Chorizo Cake which was easy and looks really impressive when you cut into it. Turns out the recipe is from another Paris food blogger, Clotilde Dusoulier who does Chocolate & Zucchini, it’s in her book also titled Chocolate & Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen (disclosure: that’s an Amazon Affiliate link). Right, I’m off to watch the Oscars.

This is a bottle inexpensive go to wine for nights like this one where I’m doing nothing much more complicated than baking the Pistachio and Chorizo Cake from David Lebovitz. (It’s cooling now and smells amazing.) But I’m not here to tell you about the cake, I’m here to tell you about this silly situation I find myself in at my local market that involves the buying of said wine. We’re lucky enough to live really close to a happy natural foods grocery that I end up in most every day picking up ingredients for one thing or another. We tend to buy wine one bottle at a time when we know we’ll want it with dinner and happily the market has a small but reliable selection. I don’t buy wine every day, but it seems that when I am buying wine I get the same checkout girl. Every single time. If I’m in for some emergency butter she’s nowhere to be seen, but if I have a cart full of groceries and a bottle of wine it’s hilariously inevitable that I’ll end up in her line. I’ve become hyper aware of this and it’s made my Raised Catholic Shame kick into overdrive. She’s lovely and friendly and I’m sure completely unaware of me, but still I cringe a bit when I find myself once again buying booze in her checkout aisle. I have not seen her in the store in weeks but tonight my haul of no-preservatives chorizo, unsalted pistachios, organic dried tomatoes and sesame seeds from the bulk aisle included some table wine and guess whose checkout line I found myself in?

Also seen in the frame are my iPhone and the trusty Jambox speaker that I’ve come to adore because it lets me hear things over the noise of washing dishes. It’s sturdy and has rubberized top and bottom surfaces, it’s wireless and connects to your music source with Bluetooth, and has a recharegable battery. I carry it around the kitchen with me and couldn’t like it more. We have Gray Hex but I sort of wanted the Red Dot, except our kitchen is filled with orange accents and I fear I’m not the sort that can pull together orange and red.

(disclosure: Just above are some Amazon Affiliate links, which means a small percentage is sent my way if you just happen to buy the speaker after checking it out. The money helps cover hosting costs for this here website. No pressure, you know.)

Seattle got snow last night and though we don’t have cabin fever yet I thought it was a great time to open my latest impulse purchase, itty bitty Lincoln Logs. I found these at the drugstore and they came as a set of four canisters meant as party favors, each one holding the bits needed to make one teensy weensy log cabin. That there is a quarter in the picture for some scale. I was hoping to take one outside and put it on a little mound of snow to grab a picture, but the slightest movements caused the cabin to fall apart. I’m going to open all the canisters and see if I can build a really tall mini Lincoln Log tower to knock down.

I’ve decided it’s time I learned how to use eyeshadow properly. On my last trip to the drug store I found these Rimmel palettes on sale for under $3 each and decided to grab a range of colors to see if I could find which ones work best on me. I remain skeptical that color will make a big difference but I’ve recently started using concealer under my eyes (pale skin + a very visible blue vein = help!) and figure I might as well take on eyeshadow while I’m at it. I’ll report back about undereye concealer, I still have little idea how to make it work. In the mean time I’ll point you towards the concealer reviews at Musings of a Muse, she’s dedicated to the search. She’s also a geek girl, within minutes of first browsing her site I knew it was love.

Related note: I suck at putting on eyeliner and have instead taken to using an angled flat brush (I have #266 from MAC) to smudge black eyeshadow (I use Carbon black eyeshadow, also from MAC) into the lash line on my upper lids. If you’re similarly frustrated by eyeliner I recommend trying this out. I’m too pale (daughter of a redhead) to put eyeliner on my lower lashes without looking rather strange, but I’m going to try the smoky eye technique that Busywork linked to recently so see how it works out. A few of the Rimmel palettes I bought are made for smoky eyes so I might do one eye in browns and one eye in blues to see how they compare. That reminds me, the other week I decided to compare my former (discontinued) favorite foundation to my current favorite foundation (Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse). Then I forgot my face was half and half and went grocery shopping. Let’s hope I don’t do the same with the sample eyes, I suspect it would be far more noticeable.

One last note on eye makeup, a friend of mine who knows her stuff reports that her favorite eyeshadow primer is Too Faced Shadow Insurance. I have not tried it yet but I plan on making the investment soon (eyeshadow on these lids of mine is prone to extreme creasing, I can use all the help I can get). Thanks Sarah!

Scott and I long ago gave up on making good coffee using a coffee maker and instead have been using a cone-over-the-mug setup for years. Recently we decided to upgrade from a plastic cone to a ceramic one. It only took me four days to chip it. I am the reason we cannot have nice things.

I am a fan of the cone dripper (aka pour over method) and highly recommend you try it sometime. I find that it’s easier to make good coffee, and it’s very convenient if you just want one cup. It’s also easier to wash than a coffee maker or a french press, which I highly appreciate as a lazy person. The one above is made by Bonmac and I bought it at Sweet Maria’s, who reports that “this humble Melitta-type cone beat all our other drippers in 2 different double-blind pour-over brewing tests”. Yay! And in a moment of synchronicity Ugly Green Chair pointed me towards this Cilio Porcelain coffee cone which does not have any branding on it, available over at Amazon*. Both of the coffee cones above hold a #2 filter, I prefer the brown paper ones, or a mesh filter.

* That link to Amazon is an affiliate link, meaning that should you choose to buy it I get a small percentage which I use to help cover my hosting costs. No pressure.