oh, suga suga.

I usually buy an ice cream cake for my David when it's his birthday, but this year I decided to save my money and make ice cream cupcakes instead.  Very easy.  Very delicious.

still working on this whole sugar addiction... it's a hard habit to break.

cake topper.

I'm trying to duplicate this.

more pics and crafts to come...

wedding plan.

After some thought about how to share our wedding planning with the world, we decided to forego The Knot and make a blog.  Soooo... I may be spending more time here and less time here... I'll try to not play favorites, though.

come over and find out how things are going on the planning front...

daveplusal.blogspot.com

engaged!?

I got engaged today.  I'm still in shock a little, but took some time to take some pics of my ring.  Let's get ready for some crafty wedding blogging!  woo!

weird and delicious.

Last weekend I was visiting my brother's house and ended up staying up later than everyone in the house (everyone being wifey and kids).  So I sat in front of the fancy television and searched for something fancy to watch.  Since I don't have cable at my place, I found it quite a luxury to surf through the waves and waves of digital channels.  I happened upon this weird show on IFC...

Food Party on IFC.

It was so odd I couldn't stop watching it.  I was so excited to go to the boyfriend's house and watch the newest episode this past Tuesday, but Tuesday came and my world crashed down when I found out that my boyfriend doesn't get IFC.  What?!?!  So I have resorted to watching old episodes and random clips on Youtube.  It gets me through the day.  Check this show out... it's wonderfully strange and magnificent.

meatless monday: pesto!

so I've missed the last few Mondays... but I'm back.  It was such a hit that I actually got a text message earlier today requesting that I blog about it.  So here it is...

this is someone else's pic... my pic looked too much like baby puke.

We put the pesto on some cheese tortellini and it was pretty tasty I must say.  Here's the recipe.

decoupage bird art.

I have been recently inspired to redecorate my apartment, but budget decorating takes time and a lot of creativity... so with a little bit of inspiration from the Color me Katie blog, some Pier One catalogs that keep getting mailed to my apartment, some black paint, and one large canvas I made this...

and a little more up close and personal...

painted plates.

I must admit that I got this idea from the Big-Ass Book of Crafts, which if you haven't taken a look at this book you really really must. It's packed with some fantastic ideas.

So I decided to try my hand at painting some plates (with the help of some printed images to guide me). Here's how I did it...

I purchased some clear plates, printed some silhouettes that I found on Google image search (I know, really original, Al), I taped the images face down on the top of the plate, then flipped it over and painted on top of the image. Then, I spray painted the plate on top of the image I just painted. Flip over, and voila! A pretty cool plate.

birds.

beatles.

black bean and corn salad.

It's just another meatless monday... I have to admit I was writing that to the tune of "Manic Monday" by the Bangles. I was thinking that I would share this a few weeks ago and it never happened... so here we go, a black bean and corn salad (with avocado! heck yes!)

not my recipe, but here's where I got it.

yoga makes me glow.

I have recently been introduced to this fantastic website called YogaGlo. It has many different styles and levels of yoga that you can download and practice. The site is very user friendly and I just love it. I've been recommending it to many of my friends who are interested in keeping a regular yoga practice but can't afford to go to a studio. At $18 per month, you just can't beat it!

broken.

my favorite sunglasses.

It was a good run. Thanks for the bug-eyed memories :(

feta cheese spread.

made it last night... thought it would be a great meatless monday post. Recipe here.

tasty.

meatless mexican... a week late.

cinco de mayo has come and gone and now I post a mexican veggie meal.

This is what we had last wednesday for dinner...

cheese quesadillas and homemade guacamole!

tres leches cake!

completely meatless... and not even on a Monday? what are we? loco?

dreamy.

The other night, David and I were kinda wanting something to do so we bought some poster board and made "dream boards." A dream board is something where you can just draw or paste or write or color (or whatever medium you like) things that you want in life or things that you want to get done. Here are our dreams...

me.

david.

paint by numbers.

last week I went to a paint-by-numbers party. I hadn't painted by numbers in years... since I was a kid. However, I never remember them being as intricate as the one I was given. I didn't finish it at the party, but I was determined to complete my numbered masterpiece.

grrrr, baby.

wrappin' up some veggies.

my meatless monday post... veggie wraps.

I actually ate this for dinner tonight. Leftover sauteed veggies wrapped in a tortilla topped with cheese. Here's how it went down...

veggies.

wrapped.

I used spinach, asparagus, red pepper, tomato, squash, zucchini, onion, mushrooms and broccoli. The beauty of a veggie wrap is that you can use whatever veggies you like!

noodles of squash.

it's Monday... this means another meatless post. I was thinking the other day of food that would be easy to make meatless and I decided that today I would blog about spaghetti squash. It is such a blast to open up and scrape out noodles. I LOVE it! You can really put just about anything with it as it doesn't have a strong taste, but here is a recipe that I use pretty frequently...

click.

handmade in the laundryroom.

fels naptha + borax + washing soda + a ton of water = handmade laundry detergent.

Here's how it all went down when I got together with some friends to make it...

this is not cheese... it's fels naptha. It's like a bar of soap.

after melting the fels in boiling water and adding the washing soda, we poured the mixture in a large container and stirred.

this is the consistency of it once it starts to cool.

Makes my clothes fresh and clean and is much more economical than buying regular laundry detergent.

meat substitutes.

The other night I was browsing through the Vegetarian Times website and came across this list of meat replacements to use when making your dinner meatless. I thought it would be resourceful to post this as my Meatless Monday post this week. Vegetarian Times is a really great resource for recipes and information on a meatless diet.

Ingredient	Substitute
Meat	Beans, cheese, seitan (wheat meat), tempeh (cultured soybeans), textured vegetable protein (TVP), tofu
Meat/seafood stocks	Vegetable stock, water in which beans, pasta, or vegetables have been cooked, vegetable bouillon cubes, miso (fermented soybean paste) diluted with water
Seasoned or smoked meats	Flavored soy meat substitutes, crumbled tofu seasoned with fennel, parsley, and garlic, canned chipotle chiles, roasted vegetables, toasted nuts, smoked tofu, smoked cheeses

almonds + pears + dark chocolate = a happy palette

This dark chocolate bar caught my eye yesterday when we were shopping for groceries while in New Orleans. Dark chocolate infused with pear and almonds. What a fantastic flavor combination!

green monster!

In honor of Meatless Monday, I'm going to start posting delicious veggie blogs every Monday. So today I am blogging about the green monster smoothie my friend Bethany introduced me to this weekend. She drinks one for breakfast every morning, but since I am currently having a passionate love affair with granola, I'm going to start drinking one for lunch each day.

These drinks are packed with vitamins, nutrients and green goodness... there's really not a whole lot of rules. Here is what I've been putting in mine...

You can really put whatever you want in one of these and it's a great meal replacement... or

snack. You can't taste the spinach, so throw it in to make it a monster. Here's what it looks like...

D.

Over the past few days, I have come across several different sources about how great vitamin D is for you. I never really thought about it much, but we generally don't consume it much in our regular diets. Here is why it is so awesome...

• it can help prevent cancer
• it helps to boost the immune system
• it regulates blood pressure
• it gives the body energy... woohoo!
• it works against depression
• it decreases mortality
• it protects against heart disease and diabetes
• it can reduce aches and pains throughout the body

Fantastic! Here's where you can get some...

• sunshine
• salmon
• canned tuna in oil
• fortified milk
• fortified breakfast cereal
• egg yolks
• dietary supplements

I think I'll go get some today!!!

a fantastic find.

thank you, Ashlee for the yoga album you found at the thrift store. It will be spinning on my record player very soon.

eggs!

tonight, my friends and I dyed eggs for Easter. I found a technique using electrical tape to make a cool design on the egg. Here's what I ended up with...

one totally rad egg.

Here are a few more I did...

I heart yoga... I loved that one.

bread for friends.

Amish friendship bread... a friend gives you a starter batter, over the course of ten days you stare at it, wondering what it's going to taste like, mashing the bag every day, adding flour and milk on day 4. I was so ready to make my bread this morning and, of course, I kept getting pulled away from it. Finally, I divided up my own starters to give away, and made a mighty fine loaf of sweet Amish bread.

should I grow a long beard?

pistachios + dried cranberries = awesome

+ =

I love pistachios. I also love dried cranberries. Since I had some of both on hand this weekend and I'm experiencing a mild obsession with granola lately, I decided to try my hand at making my own pistachio cranberry granola.

my latest masterpiece... ready to put some milk on it!

meatless mondays

So tonight I had dinner with a friend and her boyfriend and became inspired to follow more blogs of people that I don't know... I also became inspired to make my apartment cuter and cleaner, but that's a whole other blog.

So I was searching around for cool blogs and I was wanting to follow a good veggie blog when I came across...

I think it's a pretty cool idea... encouraging people who wouldn't normally go vegetarian to go meatless just one day a week. Could be quite a challenge for some people.

busted!

I have an omelet problem. I don't like my omelets to be too eggy and I love to overload them with veggies, so I usually end up breaking them. Unless my friend Ashlee Jean is with me, she brings my omelets good luck. Here's my busted up veggie omelet.

I don't care if it's busted... it still tastes fantastic.

something tells me I'm into something good.

too much time has passed. I went to massage school and took a hiatus from blogging... but now I'm back. I'm just going to go with my most recent cool thing...

My friend Robbie is a hula hoop maniac. She makes and sells hula hoops and even teaches hula hoop classes. She recently attended a hula hoop workshop where she sold hoops and some other items. She asked me if I would be interested in selling my feather headbands there, so I made a few for her to sell. Here she is modeling one of my feathers...

and here are some pics of my feathers that were taken at the workshop...