a belated birthday wish

to a cool little niece who inherited both her mom's sass and love for red velvet cake :)

I appreciate the fact she tries to save some cake for later by storing it in her dress - she's a smart lady.

VICTORY. Check out that look on her face. She knows she won.

A scrumptious bunny gift from Aunt Candice. 

Happy first year of life, little one. 

happy thought for a gray day

'What have you done for color today?' 

                                -Henri Matisse

goldfish painting

the week condensed

Losing The Game That Must Not Be Mentioned appears to have really put a damper on my blogging for this week. C'est la vie. I instead took a plethora of pics so you can see what you've missed, because I know you've been dying without me around, Internet blogosphere. ;) It's been a pretty big week, actually. I made my first king cake (!), I bottled my first beer, had my first Chicago snow storm (woot) and cooked some dee-licious (if I don't say so myself) frito pie. Not pictured: started knitting a bunny for my niece's first birthday gift, booked my flight for my classy lady party and finally got around to framing and hanging my birthday present from last year (picture coming soon). 

If you do nothing else this weekend, you MUST find time to listen to this. It will rock your world and 'rebuild you from the inside out.' I'm going to go ahead and say you owe it to the world to listen to it. Yep, I just went there. After you listen let me -and the world- know what you think. Many thanks.

Cheers and happy weekending. 

a big night

Despite all of the controversy, apathy, anger and passion, I am thrilled/nervous/pumped/etc. to see my very own LSU tigers playing for the BCS national championship tonight. People can cry all they want, but until something changes, this is the means by which everyone agreed to crown a national champion. Even though I'm slightly depressed to be so far away from New Orleans, you better believe I'll be yelling at the TV like I'm actually in the Superdome tonight. 

da-da-daaa-dum...

happy new year...

...and welcome to 2012! I'm pretty stoked, because this is the year I will marry my favorite person in the world. This also means I get to spend the first half of this year planning a giant party for this very event and it is going to be awesome (I thought about using 'the bomb' here, but I don't think people say that anymore). 

Also, I woke up this morning to a snow-covered world. I don't think that feeling will ever get old. It really is like waking up in a (snowy) parallel universe. The outside world saw my big coat for the first time. It's warm, cozy and like getting a hug from a sleeping bag, which is a good thing because I'll probably be wearing it for the next 3 months straight. 

In other exciting news, Marc and I brewed our first beer Saturday! It's a fairly involved process and one wrong move can ruin the entire batch, but it is a blast.

 

We are at T-5 days until bottling. Hopefully it turns out good enough to share with friends, otherwise we will be drinking our own mediocre beer for a while. 

Happy Monday, friends. 

p.s. one of my favorite bloggers opened up her new paper shop today! I'm a fan.