Top Chef

Every once in a while my friends Bill and Rebecca host a Top Chef competition.  Luckily, Rebecca's sister Jessica is an amazing documentary film maker (or something like that) and Rebecca is an editing genius. Together they have managed to create a video which captures the competition in ways I couldn't begin to describe with the written word.
Enjoy!

Camera Found! Holiday Shwag Created!

My camera has been found.  It was hiding in the couch cushion just as I had suspected.

More importantly, I spent the whole weekend doing Christmas-y things and watching movies (The Sting loved and The Big Chill meh).

I've always known that I love Martha Stewart, and I don't even care about the whole prison thing.  As far as I'm concerned, she left that prison in a blaze of glory with perfectly folded sheets and passed the warden a hand written thank-you note (on beautiful stationary with die-cut corners, no less).  That prison has probably never smelled better, nor experienced such expertly crafted center pieces in the cafeteria.  So, yes, I love Martha Stewart, but I've recently gotten really into her website.  It has delicious, fairly easy recipes, and they are always so cute and creative.

Being that it is nearly Christmas, I opted to make the Candy Cane Marshmallows.  Wow, I never knew marshmallows were so cute or so delicious.  Go me! (Or, I guess Martha.  I love you, Martha.)

 You have to let your marshmallows congeal in a pan dripping with cooking spray.

Delicious.

Then, you cut the marshmallows into a hot-chocolate-flavoring size.

Finally, you store your marshmallows in a jam jar because you wish you were Martha Stewart.

In a less edible endeavor, I've decided that I want to have a lot of home-made holiday decorations.

I saw this garland on anthropologie.com, and I think it's pretty cute.

But do you want to know how much it is?  

$128.00.  

That's a lot of money for some holiday cheer.

Please see expensive garland here.

Not wanting to blow my entire Christmas wad on one home made-ish item, I went on an excursion to Michaels and compiled these materials:

• ribbon
• felt
• bandanas
• hot glue
• yarn

 I laid them all out on my desk so I could take a picture of them for the blog :)

Next, I cut the bandanas into triangles, glued a contrasting ribbon on top for trim, and glued letters that I cut out of felt on front.

Then I hot-glued them to a piece of yarn.

Ta da!

Speaking of my desk...

I found this desk at Excellent Williams (Good Will),

 painted it the color of macaroni, and added cute knobs.

And radioactive desk was born!

Important News

Here it is:

I made dinner.

It created this many dishes, none of which I had to do because my boyfriend is the best boyfriend.

Also, said boyfriend tries to pull terrible pranks on me.

Piece of Evidence #1: Putting a large, feathery dream catcher on our bed.

I told him that I hate the dream catcher. 

Then he told me that his grandmother purchased it for him on real Navajo tribal land while driving from Texas to Sacramento to visit him when he was a little boy.  

This was no prank.

You can't make someone get rid of his real Navajo grandma gift.

But I don't have to like it.