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.

matsutake: My DIY Bedside Table!. Via Craftzine.

A Whole Mess of Staples « Manhattan Nest. He upholsters an Ikea bedframe using an army blanket and it come in under $100. My hero.

Design*Sponge » DIY 101: building your toolbox – saws part I.

A Curtain at the Front Door | Apartment Therapy. When we lived in houses where the front door opened directly into the living room I always wanted to hang a heavy curtain over the door, at least to make the room seem cozier and less sidewalk adjacent.

Wall-Mounted Nightstands Round Up | Apartment Therapy.

Is It Still Called An End Table If It’s Made From Lamps? | Apartment Therapy San Francisco.

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.

My internet has been nonexistant today so I’m sending this from my iPhone. This is a photo of the bolognese I started at 10am. I’m starting to suspect the recipe author and I have different definitions of "a low simmer". Still, I think given enough time it might be impossible (perhaps Megan proof?) for a bolognese to turn out badly. It would be easier to pass the time if I has the Internet to amuse me. So far I’ve cleaned the house and washed the dishes and practiced with eyeshadow to create a smoky eye (it’s not supposed to make me look like I’m upset, right?) and I’ve even sorted some kitchen cabinets. The Internet better return or I’ll have my tax preparation done before the day is out.

There is no photo here for you to see today. Know what’s difficult? Getting pictures of people playing music onstage. Know why it’s hard? Colored light gels make skin look very strange, low light and movement make for lots of blur and capturing one person singing in a moment when their eyes are open and their mouth is closed is difficult while catching two people is impossible. So tonight at the secret early test the waters type of gig for a new band consisting of Scott Andrew and Jerin Falkner I got exactly zero usable photos. If anybody has suggestions for super awesome Canon lenses that will help me capture decent photos of people on stage I would really appreciate the guidance.

Favorite wines from Trader Joe’s?| Ask MetaFilter. I like the tip about looking for yellow tags, which means the wine was bottled specifically for Trader Joe’s and is about half the price as it would otherwise be.

6 DIY Mustard Recipes | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn.

Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Roast Chicken, Shredded Brussels Sprouts, and Parmesan | Serious Eats : Recipes.

the parsley thief: Penne Frittata. Pasta cooked into eggs is one of my favorite things. Via Pinterest.

Fantastic Mayo-Free Egg Salad Sandwiches › shutterbean. I like mayo just fine, but this looks yummy and I’m going to try it.

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread — Joy the Baker. Oh my goodness.

whole wheat goldfish crackers | smitten kitchen. I love the little fish shaped cutter.

How To Make Scotch Eggs | Nothing But Bonfires.

What’s the most honeycrisp-like apple? | Ask MetaFilter.

Can Food Lovers Really Survive a Cleanse? | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn. A cleanse with actual food from the pages of Bon Apetite.

How-To: Throw a Wine Tasting Party @Craftzine.com blog.

Cookbook of the Month: Social Cooking, Chowhound Style – CHOW. This is just like the Cookbook Club I’m involved in, but online. It’s a brilliant set up.

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

Origami box with lid | How About Orange.

Savvy Housekeeping » Turn A Bar of Soap Into Liquid Hand Soap. Via Craftzine.

Blush & Bashful: DIY: Crepe Paper Flowers. Via Pinterest.

DIY Spicy Sugar Scrub, at Whole Living. Cloves, orange zest and sesame oil.

How hard is it to learn to sew? | Ask MetaFilter.

Design*Sponge » diy project: knitting needle case.

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.

List of Independent Alternatives to Closed Borders Bookstores, via The Morning News.

Good Chemistry Salt and Pepper Shakers – Untitled Document at Room Service. Add to my list of lovely salt and pepper sets.

I’ve finally convinced my husband that we need a canister vacuum, what’s the best option on the market, in terms of a happy balance between quality and price? | Ask MetaFilter.

Which are your favorite teeth cleaning products? | Ask MetaFilter. I love all the opinions on floss.

shop – upon a fold. Amazing and beautiful things. I have no idea where I first clicked through to this site.

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!

Great TV Shows on Netflix streaming? | Ask MetaFilter.

n+1: How Sassy (Should Have) Changed My Life.

This Amazing Sculpture of Muhammad Ali Was Made with Punching Bags, at Gizmodo. A hanging object picture thing similar to my ornament tree but way cooler, and heavier. Thanks go Kara for pointing me towards this!

Starting a Part-time Food Business: Everything You Need to Know to Turn Your Love for Food Into a Successful Business Without Necessarily Quitting Your Day Job, by Jennifer Lewis. Sounds very helpful.

Men’s Journal » The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See. This is especially notable to me because it was mentioned all over the place the very day I finished reading The Underland Chronicles where a character learns to do this same seemingly impossible thing. Via Long Reads.

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.