In my imaginary closet

I've always been a little weary of color. I'm more of a muted, earth tones kind of person. But this spring has been a colorblock smorgasbord and I can't help but pretend to be on board.

Colorblock by nahollings featuring a heart necklace

Sick day

I have a whole bunch of sick days that I should use up before I leave working life for graduate school. So I told my boss that come beautiful summer days and slow work days, I may come down with some unexpected illnesses.

Even though this week has been pretty gloomy weather-wise, I decided to come down sick tomorrow and take a trip to Provincetown with a friend. I've been to the Cape before, but never to Ptown so I'm pretty excited. It's not going to be warm and beach weather, so I thought I'd pull together a warm nautical look for the occasion

Ptown in April by nahollings featuring dolce vita shoes

Let the day trips commence!

Welcome Home Wilbur!

Finally, after blogging and blogging about it, I got my hedgie!

Welcome Wilbur T-Rex Poop-monster, Senior.

When I first picked him up he was such a bundle of fun (and poop).  But before I could take him home we had to do some shopping first.

He had temporary lodging in a cardboard box so obviously our first stop was the pet store. Everyone wanted to take a peak at him!

But he didn’t have to live in a cardboard box for very long, here he is surveying his new digs

Actually, he didn’t like his igloo very much, so he’s been sleeping in an old tshirt of mine. Awww.

I also introduced him to some of my hedgehog memorabilia and he didn’t really care.

uninterested

For a seriously adorable video of him, I suggest you check out my tumblr,

Also the teal color is from his breeder to mark him. It will probably dissolve after a while, but I do like that color so I’m not complaining.

I love my hedgie.

Spring Break

I cleaned out my closet a little bit this past weekend. Mostly dresses that each year I say I’ll wear, then after I put them on, I take them off immediately. Hopefully they’ll go to a nice home to someone who appreciates them.

In the meantime, however, I wouldn’t mind having this ensemble with a weekend destination in mind. I do need to visit Provincetown before I leave New England…

Spring Break by nahollings featuring vintage tote bags

Spring leads to sprung

The weather doesn’t seem to show it, but it is, indeed, springtime.

Which means it’s time to plant herbs for summer consumption!

I was going to follow THIS fantastic tutorial by I Spy DIY but I couldn’t find any chalk board paint that wasn’t in quart size. Since I’ll be moving in August, I didn’t want to worry about transporting paint so that idea will have to wait until I’m a little more settled.

Fortunately, I remembered THESE planters that I purchased from ikea last fall.

They were the perfect pots for my succulent cacti. And since I managed to kill them all (I blame it on sitting them on the radiator), I decided to re-touch the planters for my herbs.

All this required was a white colored pencil and a little design work to get these:

   

For the garland patterns, I looked to Shanna Murray’s beautiful decals.

I think they turned out rather cute. Let’s just hope they grow nicely.

I also need a nice planter for my lavendar seeds. When I was looking for my planter at ikea, they seemed to have some cute ones online. I think a trip to ikea needs to occur soon.

Recipe per week, Samosas

If you’re not familiar with Indian cuisine, samosas are these delicious deep fried pastries filled with veggies, lamb, pork or whathaveyou. I order Indian food a lot for work and try to snag one of these for myself before I feed the rest of the lot. What can I say, I’m a little a selfish.

When I saw THIS recipe for homemade ones, I thought I would give it a try. Now I am not a “from scratch” kind of girl. My thinking is, if they already made pie crusts, pasta and bread so readily and cheaply available, why should I bother making it?

But when the only substitute for the dough for this recipe would have been phyllo dough, I just knew it wouldn’t get the texture I wanted. Also this dough was easy, just flour and water, no yeast involved. So I thought I’d give it a go.

And just a warning, this isn’t step-by-step as much of this process was too messy for me to juggle a camera at the same time.

I started out by mixing up the dough and letting it sit wrapped up while the potatoes boiled and the peas defrosted.

Once the potatoes were nice and soft (about a half hour), I removed the potatoes and boiled the cauliflower for 4-5 minutes. Then I cut them both up into tiny cubes/florets and added them to my bowl.

You want to cut everything up small because your going to have to stuff your samosas and the smaller, the better.

I used my trusty wok to sauté the shallots, potatoes, cauliflower and peas. Then I added the cilantro and curry powder to get this tasty contraption.

Then comes the part that I almost wanted to quit on. I separated the dough and rolled it out individually but I had a really difficult time stuffing the samosas without tearing the dough. And if you’re going to deep fry something, trust me, you do not want tears.

The recipe tells you to hold it like a cone which DID NOT work. It was three times easier to just spoon the potato/cauliflower mixture on one-half of the half-circle dough and then wet the seams, encase the mixture, and close with a fork.

Also I didn’t have any wax paper and my first solution of using aluminum foil did not work, the dough just stuck and ruined some of the samosas. The floured pan seemed to work better but the sticky dough situation was really, really frustrating me.

But I was able to salvage all but perhaps two and the deep frying was super easy. Once they are all fried up, you are ready to eat!

I highly suggest serving with mango chutney! Though it sucked at times these were truly delicious!

I still stick to the fact that the phyllo dough would not have yield the results I wanted. But will I be making this recipe again soon…likely not. Nor any other dough for that matter.

Also I was able to use the left over potato/cauliflower mixture for a tasty brinner – just add an egg and you have a tasty curry hashbrown with cauliflower and fried egg. I think that needs to be on a brunch menu somewhere.

Recipe per week, 3/20

As I said in THIS POST, I decided to make beer bread this weekend using a recipe from this great foodie blog, Honest Fare.

Not only did this blog provide a great recipe, but [he/she] also took it a step further by creating a Beer and Cheese Sandwich.

I followed the beer bread recipe and ended up with this yummy treat below:

In case your wondering I used Newcastle beer and found it to be a pretty dense textured bread. Not light and airy like a cheaper beer might provide.

Since my bread was a little thinner then the original recipe called for, I thought attempting to actually grill it, like I do a panini, might come out as sloppy disaster. So I went with a broiling method which proved very successful.

I caramelized the onions and loaded them onto my bread slices. Then I put sliced Irish cheddar and Fontana cheese on top

After a few minutes in the broiler, the cheese was gooey, warm and the meal was delicious

Oh the globs of cheese.

I’ve been all about the comfort food lately. Perhaps when they’re not calling for three inches of snow (like they are tonight!!) I can get back into my fish and veggie summer phase.

That will be nice.

New media

I'm not one to join every social network there is - I never had a myspace and I don't twitter....Okay maybe those are the two main ones I didn't join.

HOWEVER, after looking around at my friend's tumblrs, I realized this might be a great way for me to share without having to be so wordy.

My tumblr site is http://redheadextinction.tumblr.com/

Below is what I've posted in the (quite literally) hour that I've joined:

content deleted because it kept updating. I suggest you visit MY TUMBLR



small obsession. 

So if your reading this blog, please feel free to follow, bookmark, hate on this new site as well.

Recipe of the week – well, not so much…

I’ve been a terrible blogger. And to be honest, I don’t actually see myself getting back into it anytime soon. I started blogging when I was at a pretty low point in my life; when I really, really needed to capture some inspiration.
Now life has gotten 300x better, maybe 543x better, and blogging is just more of a bother than anything else.
Recipes especially have been hard as this winter, I was completely uninspired to cook anything. I don’t even want to tell you how often I went with a frozen bag of pasta for dinner. Shameful.
But as the season changes, so does my excitement over food. I realized with happiness that I need to start planting some herbs soon in my kitchen and that farmers markets will soon be popping up again!
One thing that can certainly help with my cooking-inspiration is this fantastic site They Draw and Cook. They take the blandness of recipes and combine it with fun art. I was especially excited to see a recipe that I was already planning on baking this weekend, Beer Bread. Although I will be eliminating the cheese part.

While I would probably never in a million years make this, I love the illusion.

And in honor of the day after St. Patty’s, a recipe you may need

I love a good feasting for the eyes and stomach. Happy weekend!

Neat shit worth sharing – Hedgehog edition deux

You may or may not remember NSWS – Hedgehog one, so here’s A LINK to remind you of how popular they were and still are.

Instead of showing you all of the new great products out there, I thought I’d share what I’ve purchased of the hedgehog relation as of late.

  
Not only is this an adorable trinket but it is (more importantly) a bottle opener!



I purchased this from Anthropologie  back in December and finally, after multiple backorders, was sent it two weeks ago. Obviously, a hot commodity.

I also found this fantastic print on etsy and then was shocked to find it being sold in a store in Providence. Obviously I had to buy it


The card that came with it from the artist reads:

Not only did this hedgehog win the "Most Popular" vote his senior year but he also won the "Most Artistic", "Cutest Smile", and four other categories! This is his portrait for the "Best Dressed" win.

How cute is that! The shop, BerkleyIllustrations, is stocked full of these fantastic animal prints and stories.

So are you saying to yourself, ‘I thought she said she was on a waitlinglistorsomething to get one. Was that all talk?’

The answer: No way nay-sayer!

I just put one on reserve with the breeder yesterday!  Here he is at 2-weeks old. 

Unfortunately, I don"t get to pick him up until he's at 7 weeks. I can’t believe I have to wait 5 more weeks before I get to meet him/take him home and love him forever!

Don’t worry, pictures of his homecoming will be coming!

Also that blue spot isn’t a light trick, she marks them to tell them apart for reservation purposes.


I. Cannot. Wait.

Neat shit worth sharing – school edition

Hi all, long time no write.

As with all bloggers who experience a prolonged absence, life just got kicked into overdrive. Fortunately for me, overdrive meant very, verrry good things.

I might have mentioned that I was applying to graduate school and right now we are in the midst of interview season. I went on one and I have two more next week.

Well, I’m happy to say I got in! I’m going to enter a PhD program in the upcoming fall!

Which means a couple of things: 1) I can finally not stress about my fate being determined by admissions committees any longer and these next two interviews are completely stress free since the school I got into was my top pick and 2) I get to do back to school shopping again! YAY!

So while I wait for the Lisa Frank online store to get back into working order so I can buy a new trapper keeper, I thought I’d focus on my favorite item, the back to school bag.

I have been on a never ending search for the perfect tanish/brown, leather, messenger bag that I think may still be out of my reach for reasons like this:

$1,250.00! For that amount of money I want more than just free shipping – I want it shipped and delivered to me by a shirt-less, male model riding a horse.

This almost makes this bag at $450 sound reasonable.

Such a cute style and color! But alas, no amount of saying “I’m worth it” is going to convince my credit dog.

So here are some more wallet friendly options – what do you think?

Happy weekend everyone!

TGIF for realzies

This has been the longest week I can remember. After being hit with numerous snow storms, a busted pipe in my office (causing a flood) and going stir crazy in my apartment – I’m very glad to see it’s over.

Since I wasn’t able to post around the chaos, I thought I’d leave you with a video that truly made me smile.

I may have found a new love in the artist, Olek. Who is responsible for this on Christmas day on Wallstreet



The video of how she accomplished such a feat is still making me smile. You can see it HERE (via Honestly...WTF)

Also if you need more of a street art fix, watch Banksy’s “Exit through the Gift Shop”

Seriously, it’s on Netflix instant, don’t miss it!

Let’s hope next week is a little less calmer. Especially you, snow storms!

Neat shit worth sharing – resolution edition

I didn’t make any official resolutions this year, but if I had to come up with it one, it would definitely be to read more. Its been pretty easy so far with all the snowfall to want nothing more to sit next to my window with a good book and a cup of coffee.
And these adorable bookmarks from the Spoon Sisters would be a fun way to mark my progress.

*******

If you are the kind of person who makes resolutions, I can think of no better motivator then seeing a reminder when you reach for your phone. Artist Chris Streger felt the same way, so he had his artist friends create art work with their resolutions that can be used as a phone background. He called it The Resolve Project.
Like I said, I didn’t make resolutions, but if I did…

*******

Last summer I bought a bike and found that I didn’t take it out on any of the great bike paths near me. That needs to change this summer (ahhh, summer) and definitely would if I had a sweet ride accessory from Eungi Kim

*******

I hope if you made any resolutions that you’ve been successful!

Recipe of the week, 1/17/11

The topic of conversation that comes up every time I hang out with my friends is our incessant wanting of Summer.

Sun, warmth, the beach, outside activities. Sounds so much better than the slip-and-slide sidewalks I encountered endlessly during my walk to work this morning.

To help with this wanting, I decided to go tropical with my meal this week with a copycat of Red Lobster’s Coconut Shrimp and Pina Colada dipping sauce.

Believe it or not, there are no Red Lobster’s in New England. Or Bob Evans. It’s not a tragedy but it was a funny thing to realize.

Back to the topic at hand, here’s my cast of characters for the sauce:



Just mix and refrigerate so it’s nice and chilled while you prepare the shrimp.

Then onto the main course:



I accidentally cut off my flour in the picture. I also forgot that all I have is wheat flour in my apartment, I didn’t notice a difference though.



I butterfly-cut my shrimp by cutting them from end to tail. This let the whole area of the shrimp be coated. Leaving the tails on. It also gave me a good excuse to use the awesome new knife set I just purchased from Gilt.

Then I prepared my batter stations:



Dip your shrimp (starting left to right) and I would recommend coating all of your shrimp before deep frying.



I had a lot of left over mixture after I dipped all of the shrimp, as you can see



I would recommend cutting the recipe by at least a 1/3rd. I would especially decrease the amount of breadcrumbs, but that’s just because I like more coconut and found that it seemed to have a hard time clinging onto the shrimp.

Once fried, plate with the pina colada dipping sauce

Nothing like a taste of summer while it’s snowing outside.

Recipe of the Week, 1/11/11

When I was home for the holidays, I kept seeing these cookies everywhere. I know I had tasted them before, probably at some long ago school christmas-party function, and they just looked to good to pass up!

After I got back to Providence, I was checking one of my new fav blogs, Sweet Paul, and he had THIS recipe in which he donned these delicious cookies the name, Snowcaps. I knew then that fate wanted me to eat these cookies.

This was my cast of characters:

I hadn’t baked in a really long time and realized that I didn’t have any cocoa powder. I looked up whether you could substitute hot cocoa mix and the results where, “Better not.” Just an fyi.

I always get a little bit apprehensive about melting chocolate in the microwave (I’ve had too many disastrous run-ins) so I did the double boil technique and this really did work out perfectly

While the chocolate melted, I mixed up all of the other ingredients except the powder sugar. Then mix in the melted chocolate

blurry gooeyness

I followed his suggestion in the comments section of letting the batter refrigerate for a 1/2 hour, then form your cookie balls, then refrigerate for another 1/2 hour.

I can’t speak to whether this is actually easier or not, but it certainly still was a mess. Chocolate dough was all over my hands and the smell really let me know what I was dealing with – these were going to be good.

After your poop chocolate cookie balls are refrigerated, coat them in powder sugar.

snowballs!

Cook, transfer to a cooling rack and enjoy!

They’re so so tasty and so so rich. The perfect way to start off ruining of any “eat better” resolutions.