Sunday, September 30, 2007
Illustration Friday - The Blues
Acrylic in a sketchbook, Warming up to the Blues for Illustration Friday. This is my first submission; I'm very excited that I finally contributed! Influenced by the matryoshka dolls popping up everywhere from The Small Object to Fred Flare to Anthropologie. Now time to burrow into the Martha Stewart Halloween Holiday issue, while ignoring the vile creatures Bear tries to eat on television (Man Vs. Wild). I sincerely hope you had a fantastic weekend.Labels: artsy girl, illustration friday, sketchbook
Friday, September 28, 2007
Welcome to Soul Plane!
I got back from San Francisco on Wednesday and have been spending most of my time sleeping and cleaning and catching up (as always). I look forward to the day that I've finally figured out a routine where I get to clean the house/make dinner/walk the dog AND paint/read/write/draw for an hour each after work.
For now it's balancing keeping house with keeping up with my calendar. More pictures from San Francisco and life later, for now, enjoy this peek inside the new Virgin America airlines -- or as Ryan likes to call it, Soul Plane. The lighting was literally NEON PINK and PURPLE. What happened to flying with class??Labels: photolog
Where Does The Time Go?
Every evening after I get home from work/tutoring, my life looks something like this:
6-6:30: Walk Lucy
6:30-7:30: Wash dishes from last night/this morning, baking something (see banana bread, above), make dinner, make sure Lucy eats her dinner (she's very prissy about eating).
7:30-8:00: Clean, sweep, wipe down, lint-roll the apartment.
8:00-9:00: Check personal email, catch up on personal email, calendars, accounts, bills, write in journal, etc. while the TV is on the background (for catching up on shows and news, see).
9-10:30: Draw, make lists of all the things I need to do/remember, make Ryan dinner.
10:30-11:30: Sit & catch up with Ryan while he has dinner.
11:30 - 12: Take Lucy for a nice long walk together.
12 - 1am: a black hole of time filled with either last-minute things for tomorrow or time spent cleaning.
Occasionally cleaning gets shoved to another day so that I can go running with Annie, and usually once a week I get out and see a friend or two after work. I really admire the people out there who can do all this AND have children AND have active social lives (do these people exist?)
Perhaps I need to learn to shove more aside, as here's what I'd like to be doing each day after work: one hour of each: reading, writing, drawing, painting.
I used to feel guilty about not going out to parties/bars as much as I should be in this time of my life, but with age, I've finally come to realize that I don't really give an f- about other people and what they think. There is so much I want to do in this life that I can't spend half of my life spending all my money at bars and the other half dragging through the day like a bloated paunchy sorry sack of crap.
Instead of spending all that time feeling bad about myself and my sub-par social life, I learned to really crave and love and covet-all-Gollum-like the nights and time I get to myself (and with Ryan around). Perhaps this has made me a rather anti-social creature, and no one will come to my birthday parties or funeral, but goddammit if I'm not going to love my own little world.
Feeling guilt-free in any small aspect of my life is a wonderful thing. Now if I could just take control of my time after work and delicately balanced social life, and actually use it on the things I want to spend all my time on -- making my way into an artistic and literary life.Labels: daily, growing up
Monday, September 24, 2007
Travel Essentials
I'm mostly packed and ready to go, though I am very sad to leave my little boy and little dog. My travel essentials include Martha Stewart Holiday, Allure, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, my red journal, and a delicious pack of new colored pens. Have you ever taken a look at the Paper Mate logo? The two hearts are just adorable enough to brighten up your office space. Sure, I may be over-prepared for the one hour flight, but I'm anticipating the wait time that will probably in total exceed my time in the air. I'm looking forward to catching up on episodes of This American Life and getting some actual reading done.
For my last dinner before the trip, I made Cappellini in Fresh Tomato Cream Sauce from VeganYumYum's site. Mine wasn't vegan however, because I shredded up some gruyere instead of using nutritional yeast. It was mighty delicious and completely demolished within ten minutes.
I'll leave you for the next two days with this sketch I did over the weekend. Most of the paint happened because I was trying to use up the acrylic palette I was working from on another painting. You'll see the painting when it's done, it's going through some awkward growing pains. For right now, a tribute to the rain finally coming to LA.
 Labels: domestic goddess, foodie call, sketchbook
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Home Sweet Apartment
Things are finally starting to feel like home. Here are some of my favorite corners of the apartment so far, where things feel just so right:
I love the color of the bedroom. It's like sleeping in a Tiffany's box every night.
We saw Avenue Q yesterday night, and I absolutely loved it! It was hilarious and inspiring -- perfect for a Friday night after a looong week. On the way home, we saw fantastic lightening happening off the coast and were cozy in bed by the time the storm came. I've been sketching this weekend, but nothing solid yet. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have some scanned work to show and a piece on canvas started/on the way to completion.
Additionally, the rest of the weekend is being spent resting and drinking up on fluids as I might have been bitten by the flu that Ryan brought home from the dirty art students.Labels: domestic goddess
Thursday, September 20, 2007
London Calling
Hello dear readers. Do you ever have those days where you suddenly miss everything and everyone you'd lost touch with for no real good reason except geography?
The coming storms always make me fall down this rabbit hole; I miss London and I miss Cambridge. I miss friends down the hall, my little attic room in Botolph Court, the feeling of academia, the feeling of community within hallowed halls. Additionally, I must confess that I certainly do miss Topshop, Office, and Miss Selfridge. Even though they all have online shops, there's nothing like browsing through London shops.
Enough nostalgia, I promise I'm getting back to artwork and writing. To help pave the way to future experiences to be nostalgic about.Labels: the real world
Monday, September 17, 2007
Hallow-ready!
Thanks for the encouraging words on my last post, friends! Here were two more from that night of sketching, hope you enjoy them.
Who else is excited for Halloween? I'm pretty sure Halloween is my favorite holiday because (a) costumes, (b) candy, (c) the creative noir decorations, and (d) lack of family obligations. The scary becomes corny and folkloric, and I just adore the autumn-infused decorations. You bet your bottom dollar that I will be making these cute witchy cupcakes from Martha Stewart. Good Thing: Martha (and her editors) post all the recipes, crafts, etc. on the encyclopedia of Martha (also known as her website).
I also hope to have another pumpkin carving night with friends, while watching Nightmare Before Christmas and eating too much candy corn. I'm going to be Little Red Riding Hood this year, a project simple enough to use my sewing machine & coordinate with Ryan without being the uncreative gross couple. Anyway, it's time to take Lucy out for a walk again soon and study for the GREs -- have a wonderful evening, good friends!Labels: holidays, sketchbook
Sunday, September 16, 2007
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Some sketches I did during the move, when all I had left in the apartment were some crappy Crayola doodling markers, a pile of magazines to be recycled and my sketchbook. 10 minutes, no erasing.Labels: artsy girl, sketchbook
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Notes on Fall
Recently, I discovered Kate Spade's amazing site. I've never been much of a fan of her boxy, ubiquitous purses, but her site gives great insight into the genius of her design (and team). It's full of wondrous little niches, the kind of thing you aspire your online site and portfolio to be. Just look at this amazing wallpaper/printable book cover. It totally gets me into the fall back-to-school and study mood.
I'm so happy to have internet back. I've registered for GRE courses online and am catching up on uploading all the summer pictures from my camera along with many many personal emails. Fall always feel like a new start, even more so than January.
Finally, Anthologie is finally back on after a summer hiatus. Start checking daily again.
P.S. Having cable TV again is going to be amazing/interesting. I'm going to start tonight with LA Ink. I'm really looking forward to catching recent episodes of The Office and Heroes though!Labels: good links
Monday, September 10, 2007
Dita Von Teese
"Do I go to yoga class with red lipstick, false eyelashes and heels? No. But I do hide my yoga clothes underneath a great trench."
-- Dita Von Teese Labels: fashion love
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Small Pleasures
I had leftover sour cream chocolate frosting from the weekend's baking, so of COURSE I had to make cupcakes to use it up! The go-to recipe in my holster is the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I cannot rave enough about this book and how it's revolutionized my way of baking! So! Much! Easier! I always have apple cider vinegar in the pantry and soy milk in the fridge, but I might not always have eggs (I vacillate between being a pesca-vegetarian and an ovo-pesca-vegeterian). AND these are more delicious and cakey than regular cupcakes.
Don't take my animal-loving word for it though, I brought half a dozen leftover cupcakes (I baked them for a friend coming over the night before) to work the next day, and they were snatched up within the first 15 minutes. And my carnivorous peers LOVED them!
So two lessons learned: the recipe for sour cream chocolate cake icing is over triple the amount you need, and vegan cupcakes are the gateway to a happier vegan-friendly living.
There was something else I wanted to rave about, but I can't seem to remember right now -- so I'll end with, have a wonderful weekend!Labels: domestic goddess
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Hello Fall!
As you may have heard through the interweb or the collective hum of bitching and moaning coming from Los Angeles this weekend, it was clay-oven-hot. So hot that most of Gina's visit was spent seeking out giant air-conditioned spaces. Turns out, everything in this goddamn town is OUTSIDE so that we may enjoy the gorgeous blue-skied mid-70s weather 90% of the year. We went to the Pasadena City College Flea Market on Sunday morning, and I do believe that was the most miserable heat I'd ever been in. I bake cakes in lower temperatures!
Speaking of cakes, we baked Nigella's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake over the weekend, and it was gloriously delicious. I'll upload some pictures once I get that darned internet thing hooked up at my apartment on September Eleventh. Have I emphasized how I can't wait for this day enough?
Let me make you a list of all the things that will happen/have happened before The Day Internet Is Bestowed Upon Apartment #6, and how I can't take any pictures of it to share with all my friends-through-the-wire UNTIL THEN:
- a newly decorated apartment!
- a cute clay owl that Ryan brought back for me from his trip to Arizona!
- cute clothes from the flea market!
- starting Life Drawing & Advanced Drawing classes this weekend!
- LA River Tour!
But it's all probably for the better so that I can focus on really riding this wave of Autumnal motivation and start studying for the GREs on my own and working on my novel again. I LOVE fall and the feeling of all the glorious new books to study and school supplies galore.
I'll end with this picture Gina took at a yard sale over our extra hot Labor Day weekend. I didn't even realize this was me until I said to myself (while musing over the pictures she posted this morning), that girl has my dress!
But really, who doesn't have this dress if they go to American Apparel and have $36? Though I must confess, it hung at the back of my closet gathering dust bunnies for the greater part of the past three years until I saw this amazing video with at least 15 different ways to wear this dress.Labels: fashion love, losangeles
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