....

Last year I started shooting with film again. It felt great to get back into taking photographs and to play with two plastic cameras and an awesome vintage camera and focus my creativity through a lens. I was definitely inspired and encouraged by the sweet man in my life who gave me two of my film cameras. In total I took 357 photos which breaks down to 220 Holga photos, 104 Diana photos, and 33 Yashica photos. Those numbers make me happy. And while I'm prefectly content sharing my photos with just friends and family it's also nice when strangers notice. So I was pretty excited to have one of my photos chosen for the second Photoworks flickr group zine.

It's a great collection of photos and a fun little book and I'm delighted to be included in the collection.

sweets

I'm getting a little obsessed with shooting people holding cupcakes. Maybe I'll do a series of them. More here.

book box

A few weeks ago I went down to Molly's studio and she taught me how to turn a lovely old book into a secret box. She'll be teaching a lot more people how to do the same thing in LA this weekend at French General. The class is already sold out but I'm trying to convince her to start teaching some arts and crafts here in the Bay Area so stay tuned for that.


And if you're around SF on February 4th be sure to swing by her art show at Serendipity on Valencia Street. I got a little sneak peek of her work for the show and it's pretty fantastic.

Sister Corita Kent Exhibit

I just found out that the Museum of Craft & Folk Art will be holding an exhibit of Kent's work beginning in February. I posted about Kent a while back here and I am so totally thrilled to see her work in person. I can't wait for this one.

dinner

Last week I went to Paragon for lunch and got the chef's special which was a delicious pan fried chicken in a lemon butter sauce with capers. I thought about it the rest of the week. The dish seemed simple enough and while I'm not a master at much in the kitchen yet I thought I'd try to recreate the dish at home. You're looking at the result up there. It came out yummy but it wasn't quite the same as the dish I had at Paragon. Either way it was a fun excercise and instead of following a recipe in a book for the sauce I found a great video which I played a few times while I was making it. It's a really simple sauce which I'll definitely try making again. Next time I'll follow his instructions completely and not add extra lemon juice.

Etsy Finds

Lovely jewelry from House That Crow Built.

...

Sometimes it's not a good idea to go to Whole Foods after three cocktails. Because you'll probably spend more money than you intended and you'll definitely leave with a bottle of Lillet you didn't really need but had been wanting to get for your apartment for a while. And you might just run into a co-worker in the wine aisle and have way too much to say when they ask your opinion on the best cheap wine to buy while noticing all you have in your basket is a giant bottle of Lillet. Just sayin'.

Pineberry? Yes please.

More here.

Artist Crush: Sonya Philip

I stumbled upon Sonya's amazing work while in a flickr 'black hole' one day and immediately fell in love with her ability to transform ordinary objects into pieces of art. I love seeing the mundane made new again through her knitting.


You can send Sonya an object to transform or suggest something you'd like to see her knit on.


blog here.
flickr here.

a day off

Made these delicious green smoothies for me and my sweet in the morning. (Recipe & photo from Joy the Baker.)

Arizmendi pizza for lunch.

Matinee for one.

Trash TV with friends.

Heaven.

crafts for poor people

just when i thought i couldn't love Amy Sedaris any more...

underground market

I've always wanted to check out Forage's Underground Market where people sell homemade food mostly made with local and organic ingredients and this weekend I finally made it there. It felt a lot like a big craft fair but with vendors selling baked goods, homemade sauces, body care products, and delicious hot food. We started out with some raw food, took it all in with a beer and then made some purchases before we headed out to enjoy some sunshine. I'm excited to try the BBQ sauce, butter, and jerky we got. If you haven't been it's a fun thing to do and a great way to check out some delicious food made in your own backyard.

i swear

some co-workers and i were talking about how much we love swearing the other day. it really is one of my favorite things to do. i may need to get this shirt.

via swissmiss
available here

keep on the sunny side.

my love for you

s.treatzone

sfgirlbybay

heidihi

Let There Be More Light

evidence of a ladies night.

Angel was missing and Danica was there but you can barely see her cute little face in these photos. But she took the photo of the photobooth photo so that's her hand up there.

Handmade Weddings Book Trailer

Thanks to Hello Lucky, Shana Faust, and Ryan Khavari for all your awesome hard work on this project!!

(p.s. it's better to watch this big so click through to YouTube to view)

1. Cook more

I got Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking for my birthday last year and while I read it right away I hadn't cooked anything from it until today. I want to keep up with all the cooking I started last year but make it a little healthier if I can, using ingredients I wouldn't normally base dishes around.

I kept going back to the Sweet Potato Spoon Bread recipe and even though it's more fitting for a side dish at Thanksgiving it sounded like a comfort food I could handle in this cold weather we've been having. And it's a healthy comfort food, using not too much butter, goat cheese in place of marshmallows, and whole wheat flour. The dish came out delicious and I can't wait to eat it all week long, and share it with friends as there's no way I'll get through the entire casserole by myself.

Cupcake?

From my third roll of film taken with the Yashica. I love this camera. And I love the anticipation of picking up film after you've forgotten what photos you took on the roll. It's like Christmas morning.

Wendy MacNaughton

Loving the diagrams of Wendy MacNaughton. Available for purchase at 20x200. Be sure to click on the above image to see it large.

I started early

Portrait of me at about seven years old. My Mom painted this years ago and I loved seeing it on the wall when we visited her over Christmas. I think I was actually holding a can of soda in the original photo she based this on but I love that she changed it to a can of beer.

clean slate

Hope you had a fun New Years Eve. Not really any resolutions for me, just lots of things I want to do more or less of this year... we'll see how it all goes!