hello

and welcome to my blog. Things are a little different around here, new name, new look, new address. But I promise you, same fabulous content. To wit: dinner here tonight chez c-potion. Without intending to perform a culinary color study, we ate a meal in yellow:

Arugula and bacon quiche with a salad of golden beets, goat cheese and mixed spring and micro-greens. I actually drank the Trader Joe's lager earlier but I noticed the bottle sitting on the table and that it was yellow so into the photo it went. The flowers, in case you were wondering, were not consumed either. It was a tasty meal! I got the quiche recipe from epicurious here. I used store bought crust (left over from the apple tart I made last week since that only required one crust) and sub'd the gruyere for mozzerella which is what I had in the kitchen. I'd make this again. The arugula keeps the richness of the quiche and bacon in check without the usual bite you associate with this green. Even m who verbally turns his nose down on quiche (not manly enough) loved it.

I hung decorative stuff around the house:

I made these boards about a year ago to hang in my old office where the accent walls were a soft yellow and the furniture an orange-y brown. They looked good in there but my current office is all cool blues with reddish brown furniture so I brought them home thinking I might re-cover them or something. Turns out they look nice with the new couch. They probably won't stay quite so empty for long.

Finally fixed the backing issue with these frames:


Also about a year ago, I got this idea in my mind to embroider m and my initials onto pretty fabric and frame them as decorative stuff. I might have gotten the idea from somewhere, but I can't remember where right now. I'm not normally a monogrammy type of gal, but I was really drawn to this font (I think it's called...well, hold on, I can just look it up...shoot. Never mind that. It would take too long and I've got Hello Kitty line art to trace - more on that in a minute). So I printed out our initials and traced the letters onto fabric with just an ordinary pencil against a sunny window, stitch, stitch here and stitch, stitch there and voila. Art. Sort of. They're hanging in our bedrooms on existing painted over nails for want of a better home...er, in our home. But I do enjoy them and am glad I made 'em.

It's getting late and like I said, I have Hello Kitty line art to trace. M and I were invited to a Helly Kitty theme birthday party! Have I mentioned the pleasure I get from forcing macho-man guys to have any kind of association with cute girly stuff? I used to write letters to guy-friends on pink, flowery stationary. And when I sent off my father-in-law's gift, I tied a Hello Kitty bow with flourish to the top. Tee-hee.

Anyways, one of our co-worker's has a little girl who is turning one and the mom (our co-worker) is a Hello Kitty fan. The birthday is in May and I was trying to figure out what to give as a gift. I'm so not into the gifts ideas I see in stores these days. Either the stuff is over-priced and/or cheaply made or I look at it and think: I could SO make that (and make it cuter). So I decided to make the birthday baby some finger puppets! Hello Kitty themed finger puppets!! I got the idea from reading this blog and the finger puppets (scroll down a bit to the middle) she received for her daughter. I'd actually prefer to create my own finger puppet characters, but I don't know this co-worker very well and so I'm thinking that Hello Kitty puppets will be a safe bet. I really want the gift to be liked for what it is, you know? So tonight I draw the HK characters and this week I'll go out and pick up the felt and then start the cutting, assembly and embroidery. Hopefully it won't take too long (fingers crossed). And if I don't make the deadline, I'll just pick up something from BabyStyle (gr.).

And because no post feels complete without a gratuitous kitty photo, here's the Och pulling off her best Ingre impersonation:

A gold star goes out the first person who can name the painting I am referencing (okay, it's the reverse of this one).