A little bit new

Quick note: I know all the grass is all dying, but I couldn't help but change to a greener header.

Hope you like it!

Font: dubtronic inline

Recipe of the week, 10/24

This week was another one of those times where I didn’t have an exact recipe per say, so I pulled from a bunch of different sources.

Truly this is probably one of the easiest things to make and probably the most hearty – Pulled Pork Sandwiches. Oh yea!

I wanted to buy Pork shoulder/butt (I guess these things are interchangeable…I can tell you the meat on my shoulder versus my butt is not) but alas the butcher didn’t have anything smaller than 6 lbs. So I decided to get a nice manageable 3 lb pork roast. It didn’t yield that nice bone-in-taste but it was easier to shred.

I went home on my lunch break to start cooking the pork.

I began by trimming away that top layer of fat then I rubbed each side with cumin, salt and pepper.

I just happened to be wearing my favorite (faux)pearl necklace that day and was channeling a little Julia Child

After the rub, I placed it in the crockpot with some beef broth and water until it was submerged.

Then I set the crockpot on low and went back to work

When I came home four hours later, I shredded the entire roast and started to make my Pulled Pork sandwich.

I’m only using a small portion of the shredded pork for this sandwich as I have plans for the rest of it. I began by cut up an onion to put in with the pork and coated them both in Rich’s Sweet Heat (a delicious locally made BBQ sauce). I let this bake in the oven at 350F for around 15 minutes.

Then I served it with my favorite side dish – sweet potato fries (those are sweet potatoes in the photo above, already peeled).

These are easy to chop, season (with whatever your preference is), and bake for 30 minutes in the oven.

Then once everything is all baked and compiled, I had a delicious, hearty pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries

I’d love to hear if anyone else has some hearty meals to get them through the winter!

Neat shit worth sharing

Sometimes I get inspired to share some of the things that I think are cool/helpful/exciting. I'm going to originally name these posts, "Neat shit worth sharing" FYI.

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I'm currently more in love with my new 2011 planner then what I'm guessing is healthy, but it fits all of my calendar needs: monthly view (this is a must!) followed by the dates on one side with a "Notes" page on the other.

This way I can give myself a list of things to do per day, per week and per month - aww endless deadline torment! Oh and it’s Cath Kidson, so it’s adorable to boot!

I know it's only November (okay, almost November) but I couldn't pass it up.

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I just found this fantastic free font website, thanks to Creature Comforts. It’s called Font Squirrel and it truly is an awesome resource for free, cool fonts!

via creature comforts using dubtronic

via Emily Heskett Photography using FFF tusj

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And lastly, Poolga which I mentioned in THIS post, has an iPhone app. You receive 15 images with the free app. I’m hoping that they continue to add or update with new backgrounds because I love what they do.

Oh deer

I have a confession to make, although it’s only October, I am already  getting pretty excited for Christmas. This is very unlike me as I’m normally the person bitching about how Thanksgiving doesn’t get enough love because it’s just completely overshadowed by Christmas.

But for some reason, I cannot wait to decorate for the holidays and, I think this is key, getting to go home and celebrate with my family!

My excitement may have initiated when I found these cute little candle holders at Salvation Army

I couldn’t pass them up! They just screamed Christmas to me. And oddly enough while scanning one of my favorite blogs papernstitch, I found this image in one of her tutorials

Which was actually kind of perfect because I was thinking about what color I wanted to paint these two guys and gold was one of my options.

I was also considering my oh-so-favorite color turquoise or a nice yellow, but since I’m considering buying some candle sticks for these I opted to go with white.

I bought this spray paint a long time ago for another project (that I swear, one day I’ll get around to) but I was always concerned about spray painting indoors. Luckily this weekend was beautiful so I turned on my ceiling fan, opened my windows and went at it.

After a couple of coats and some touch-ups here and there they were all finished

So until I can no longer contain my holiday excitement, they will quietly adorn my bookcase – with the ranks of my favorite photo of my two favorite people, busts of Mozart and Beethoven and my books.

Recipe of the week, 10/17

I had initially planned on blogging about THIS recipe recreating a Top Chef hot and sour eggplant winning dish on the show. I don’t watch this show (or any reality TV, really) but I thought it’d be neat to try something gourmet.

So I bought the items, I made it and I didn’t like it.

I was just too spicy for my liking – I needed to cut the curry amount by half and that’s without even adding any red pepper flakes. I saved the rest of it because I think it’s salvageable paired with some Naan, but I just couldn’t eat it as is.

Happily, the next day I received my first CSA delivery

Fresh greens (which have turned me off bagged salad indefinitely), local coffee, bread from this great bakery in Providence and local goat cheese. It was all so marvelous!

Since I had leftover eggplant from this recipe, I decided to make myself an eggplant & goat cheese panini!

I included an onion and sun-dried tomatoes soaked in oil for some extra flavors.

I started by cooking the eggplant and onion in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. I lightly oiled and salted them before roasting.

  
While the onion and eggplant were in the oven, I covered one side of the pillow loaf with the goat cheese and topped it with some sun-dried tomatoes. Then I removed the onion and eggplant from the oven and compiled my sandwich.

You could just stop there, but I love panini’s and have always wanted to make my own, so while I was making my sandwich I heated up one side of my grill pan.

Then, because I don’t have a panini press, I filled a large pot with water to weight down the sandwich.

This picture makes me laugh, but it worked! I let it cook for a couple minutes on the grill like this, then flipped it and did cooked the other side.

Paired with a side salad and I had a delicious meal

This was super tasty and I really can’t stress how great it was that everything was fresh. I regret only getting the goat cheese every other week, but considering how much I gorged on it last night, it was probably a wise decision.

However I will be getting the pillow loaves and greens every week, so more panini’s are sure to come! I know I’m excited!

eye candy

I haven’t updated in a few days and while I don’t have anything crafty or tasty of mine to share (I’m hoping to try out a recipe tonight), I thought I’d share these amazing art pieces from Yulia Brodskaya.

She does these simply amazing PAPERgraphic pieces. Once you see them, I bet you’ll find in blogs/magazines and squeal a little with the knowledge that you recognize the artist (already happened to me!).

I love irony.

I would love to have this as a welcome into my apartment.

Perhaps one of these days I’ll be inspired and design some thing similar for wallart. There are a couple of DIY’s that I have found online, but you can bet you need a whoooole lotta patience and an equal amount of time. Which I’m lacking both at the present.

Hope this leaves smiling if not inspired!

Homemade Halloween!

I can barely put into words how excited I am about my Halloween costume! Hence why I'm posting on a Saturday!

I decided this year to go after the ultimate fashion no-no icon:

A completely ridiculous idea but I knew the whole outfit hinged on finding cheap, white feather boas. Once those had been found (4 to be exact), it was a matter of being patient and stalking salvation army. Fortunately today was my lucky day!

Here was my cast of characters:



Feather boas, a child's black t-shirt, an orange onesie (it was thicker than a t-shirt and I liked the color), a large men's white t-shirt and the piece de resistance: a child's Christening gown.

In the spirit of New Dress A Day, I couldn't help but put it on before snipping away at it



The muslin in at the bottom needed a little love to get right, but it was the puffiness of this dress that made it perfect!

I started with cutting off the...um, fringe near the neckline. I'm definitely keeping it for when I feel like dressing like a schoolmarm



From there I don't have a lot more photos because I was in full-on crazy crafting mode. But once the neck on the dress was cut off, I worked on the swan neck.

I cut up the white t-shirt into two long strips and sewed them together leaving both the top and bottom unstitched. Then I cut up the orange onesie (which made me feel kind of bad) into two sides to make up the beak and sewed those two pieces together leaving the one side open so that I could then sew it onto the white tube. Once I sewed together the white "neck" and orange "beak", there was visible stitching when I turned it inside out, so I covered this with black ribbon. I hot glue gunned the ribbon and black t-shirt to make the eye. After all of this, this is what I had:



I also glued some jewels on for the eyes that I found in my craft box. I stuffed the swan with the extra t-shirt & onesie fabric - reuse and recycle!

Then it was just a matter of securing the feather boas to the lacy part of the dress. I found that fishing wire worked perfectly -- it was so easy to knot it into a small part of the lace and just wrap it around the boa so that it held it in place. It took me 3 boas to wrap it around the front of my dress (I left the back plain) and 3 hours later...TA DA:



I left the lace sleeves on because I think it looks kind of cute and it will be warmer in the New England weather. Believe it or not the feathers keep me pretty warm, so I think it will be great for walking around outside.

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Happy High Fashion Halloween, ya'll!!