Can you believe it?

March is almost over. Wow. But, it really was the best month ever [until next March.]

Unfortunately, Louisville lost today, so unless Kansas pulls out a win March Madness is over for me. Wah.

Tomorrow being the first, means the unveiling of a new blog design. I won't reveal everything right now, but here's what I'm working with:

I love being able to redesign this every month, and change it with where I am in my project. I'm feeling really great going into April, but I'm still not 'there.'

Another AWESOME Day!

Ok--so the streak has continued. I still like designing stuff. Seriously.

I was actually afraid to go to sleep last night because I thought it might wear off....

I can't wait to show you EVERYTHING I've been working on, but that day isn't today.

Here's a very sneak peak into the cutest little thing I made today:

Remember that little guy?

Hopefully I'll be able to show you the entire piece very very soon....

Betcha wanna see what I did today....

Welp. Today is another one of those days that I have spent about 9.5 hours doing creative stuff, but I can't show you a single thing.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

But, since yesterday, something huge has happened: I ACTUALLY LIKE DESIGNING THINGS AGAIN!

This is huge. Seriously huge. A major break through.

For the past three months, most days I'm really really pushing it. Forcing it. But today, something clicked.

I was designing something totally out of my normal aesthetic, and I noticed I was smiling. Seriously.

I was smiling at my freaking computer.

You want to know what else I was doing? Listening to really loud music. Feverishly kerning. Eyes straining. Finding nasty rivers. Fixing them. Totally-going-at-the-design-thing-and-loving-it.

I haven't done that [and smiled] since the January of my senior year at PLU. Seriously.

The most amazing part? I was designing something for someone I care about. I was designing something that was totally out of my design-comfort-zone. And, it turned out AWESOME. Seriously. Better than most things that I have done in the past three years.

Today, designing something wasn't a chore. [OK--full disclosure, it totally started out as a chore.]

Today, designing something started out as a chore, and turned into an awesome project-filled-experience that made me smile. Seriously, smile.

Am I cured? Probably not.

I am still going to have days that I don't feel comfortable doing it.
I am still going to have days that I hate weird designer things like Pantones and talking about type.
I am still going to have days that I can't translate what is in my brain to paper.

It's going to happen. But today? I smiled. While designing.

Trying to be inspired.

Have you ever had one of those days that it is INSANELY difficult to be inspired?

I mean, I'm super productive today, but I have one project that I really need to work on--and I can't find the inspiration to get it done.

Unfortunately, I can't show you what I'm working on (show ya later.)

Instead I will show you a couple pictures to help me get inspired to finish this project--TODAY! [doubt it.]

So I present to you: The French.

Via The Graphics Fairy

Via The Graphics Fairy

Via The Graphics Fairy

This really has nothing to do with anything.
I just like the idea. Maybe it will inspire me to
do something else...
Via The Graphics Fairy

What helps you get over the non-inspired hump?

Evolve.

I have about a zillion projects going. Seriously. I only planned on having about three this week, but I've got some last minute assists that came up late.

So, basically I could show you a zillion things today, but I'll choose one.

Here's a little logo-in-progress for your Tuesday:

Going through a mini-neon-celedon-love-fest.

What do you think?

Tomorrow, I'll share my NCAA Men's Tournament bracket progress. Lets just say, I have 3 out of 4 teams correct in the final four. Told ya I'm awesome.

Happy Birthday, Ben!

Today is Ben's official birthday. Since it's his official Golden Birthday, we've been celebrating for a while. Yesterday, we went on an epic DT Portland drinking extravaganza (in the middle of the day) that included a Rum Keg + Mai Tais at Trader Vics, dropped off for a burrito and beer at Cha! Cha! Cha! and rounded out the Pearl Tour at Rogue with whisky and a sampler. 

Then we went home and ate cheeseburger pizza from Papa Murphy's (surprisingly, this WAS AWESOME.)

I won't spoil what I got him for his birthday, but it's pretty epic. And, I think I'll have some extra street cred with his boys.

But, here's his special birthday treat (Reese Brownie Muffins, obvi a family recipe):

I buy the giant Costco box of brownie mix, so here's my make-shift recipe. 

Put the batter into a well-greased muffin sheet.

They invented these awesome Reese's that don't have wrappers. YES.
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't allergic to nuts.
Actually, all the time I wish I wasn't allergic to nuts. I MISS YOU NUTELLA!

Plopped one right in the middle. 

Since these were in muffin tins, it only took 30 minutes at 325 to bake.

I'll let you know the review later. I can't personally eat one because of my new nut allergy (can you tell I'm a little obsessive?)

Now, on to the more important part of today.

Happy birthday, Benny.

You are one of the most inspirational people I know. 

Look at those hops!

You are the nicest-most-caring person I know (seriously, he is--you would totally agree.)

Nice enough to not let me fall down. 

You never do something half-way, you give your all in everything you do. That includes relationships.

Ben and his boys, giggling. 

You always let me do what I want--a very important characteristic in any person.

I'm pretty sure this was when I was telling him that he needed to keep smiling for the pictures.

And, on the plus side: You are darned good looking.

Hey, GQ.

So, happy birthday, Benny! Thanks for being you. 

P.S. All the pictures from the wedding are courtesy of Blake James Photography and Katy Weaver Photography. Srrsly check them out for all your photo needs! 

Easter Practice

Ben and I are having our first Easter 'alone' this year. So, I've been dreaming up ideas for how to make this one special. 

Frankly, Easter is an early morning holiday--and I am not an early morning person.  Thus, I am thinking of easy brainless things/things I can do in advance.

I found super easy cinnamon roll bunnies on the Betty Crocker website, so I tested out the recipe before hand [I'm a big skeptical of baked goods that come out of a can...] 

The goods. (It's the 8 roll pack.)

Each bunny takes two rolls. Unroll one into a strip, then fold it into itself to make the ears.
Pinch the middle, and attach to another roll. Then press a couple raisins in as eyes (push 'em in real hard so they stick.)

Bake them like the package tells you. 

The frosting comes in a little cup, so pour it into a baggie and cut the tip to make a piping bag. 

Betty Crocker wants you to use sliced almonds as teeth. I'm deathly allergic to nuts, thus I used frosting.
Totally turned out looking like Hitler. Good thing I practiced before to Easter... 

Based on my moderate success, and little-to-no-early-morning-brain-power these should be a winner for Easter. 

I volunteer as tribute!

Wow. Hunger Games was awesome. Seriously. It somehow kept the same energy as the books, without over-cheesing the Peeta-Katniss-Gale situation.

To all you haters [AKA: the annoying people sitting behind me pointing out every time the movie differed from the book]: The thing that you were watching was a MOVIE. It was a two-hour-twenty-two-minute movie. It wasn't the book, and they can't fit in every 'Prim-didn't-give-her-the-Mocking-Jay-pin' detail due to time constraints. If you think you could have done it better, go to film school, become a director, and get on contract for Catching Fire. 

For a movie/book, it was perfect. It kept all major elements, the things they left out made sense, and it was shot beautifully. Ben even agreed to read the series. [This guy hasn't read a book for fun since first grade. In all honesty, it took him a lot of convincing to not start at Catching Fire...]

Today is Ben's birthday Saturday. It's his golden birthday this year, so we begin an EPIC BIRTHDAY FESTIVAL! Today, 18 holes. Tomorrow, drinks and happy hour with his sister/BIL, and Monday is Helvetia Tavern for a birthday burger!

Since I made part of his birthday present today, and I don't want to spoil ALL the fun, here's a shot from our round-o-golf this afternoon:

Look at that form!

What a stud!

Happy Hunger Games!!

Ben and I are about to head out to see Hunger Games! I am so nervous.

Why, nervous? Because I'm afraid they are going to Twilight the books. [Disclaimer: This opinion is out of what I have heard about Twilight. I haven't watched the movies or read the books. But, I do live and breathe, thus have heard the press around the series. Thus, I am an expert.]

I'm really hoping that they don't over do the 'lovey dovey' stuff. I hope Katniss is as badass in the movie as she is in the books. And, I hope the Capitol people really do have green skin and metallic tattoos.

So, here you are! Your Hunger Games badge for the day. Feel free to copy/use where you wish, just credit it back to the blog!

Happy Hunger Games!

I really don't like Luke Babbitt.

Tonight, we're headed to another Blazer game. For my mental health, I needed to post a Blazers-related rant, it's at the end of this post if you are interested.

Due to the Blazer game, there will be no Wagamama night (sorry, I'm really failing at this Week-o-Wagamama, I'll make it up to you next week.)

Every once and a while[actually...pretty often] I get requests from friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends for a project. The Oregon Synod office of the ELCA (Lutherans) contacted me a couple weeks ago about helping them out with materials for the Synod Assembly in April.

They already had a concept [awesome] and just needed someone to put it into a format. They haven't approved anything yet, but here's what I did off of their original concept:

Again, they haven't approved anything, so don't look down on them if you don't like my designs :)

I love helping people out with design-related issues, especially not-for-profits. If you or someone you know needs help, go ahead an email me or leave a comment at the bottom of a post.

WARNING: I'm about to go off on a Blazers rant, so stop reading if you don't want to hear something negative: 


If Luke Babbitt plays more than 5 minutes, I'm going to personally go to the GM's office trade/release/fire him. In Tuesday's game he played 15 minutes [about 14 minutes too long.] He was 0-3 from the field.  IN FIFTEEN MINUTES.

This is what Luke Babbit does best:

Look at him wave his arms. Pathetic.

In fact, if the Blazer Bench doesn't score more than 9 pts tonight, I'm firing the whole team.

Oh--and open letter to Blazer's Marketing Team: Don't ask for cheers for your 101st(?) consecutive sell-out when half of the Rose Garden seats are OBVIOUSLY empty because Season Ticket Holders didn't bother coming to the game.

Ugh--sorry for the mini-rant. I just needed to get it out somewhere. And, I seriously dislike Luke Babbitt.

Wagamama-dos

It's Wednesday! We're almost there!

Today, the Boss and I spent the morning (7-noonish) outside. in the rain. and the cold. ugh. 

I'm still thawing.

I was super excited for another Wagamama night. Since I was so cold, I opted for another ramen.

Today's ramen: Chili Beef! The process was similar to Monday's Chicken Ramen.  IE: Cook some meat, cut up some veggies, cook some noodles, cook up some broth, and combine. 

Started out by frying up a steak:

I got a top sirloin, it was plenty for two servings.
Rubbed both sides with a little bit of oil and s&p, then cooked it up until medium-rare.

Again, I made sure to get all my veggies together before everything was cooking. 

I did green onion, straight up onion, bok choi, and bamboo shoots.

So this next part went by so fast I didn't have time to take pictures. But, it's simple:

1. Finish cooking the steak, set it aside for a couple minutes, then slice it into thin pieces.
2. Cook your noodles, I used Japanese ramen noodles, only takes about 3 minutes.
3. Make some yummy chili sauce: 1 part fish sauce, 1.5 parts sweet chili sauce, 1 part rice vinegar, little baby bit of sugar. Mix it up well, set it aside for a bit.
4. Heat up your stock. (Chicken or Veggie works best)
5. Time to plate! Here's the order of the layers: noodles + veggies + meat + stock. Then, add the yummy chili sauce to taste.

It looks something like this, and tastes awesome. So. Awesome. 

Here's for hoping for better weather tomorrow. I don't know if I can handle the rain-cold-not-sticking-snow for that much longer...

To the Blazers

I'm headed to the Blazer game tonight, meaning I won't be cooking from the Wagamama cookbook tonight--sorry, I'll make up for it later.

Sticking with the Japanese theme, I wrote a haiku for my Blazers:

Blazers are my team
Even when they fire Coach Nate,
My team, they remain.

Week-o-Wagamama

I love Wagamama.

What's-a-wagamama?

Oh boy, do I have a treat for you.

Wagamama is an excellent Japanese noodle restaurant in London. I was introduced last year when I visisted my friend. Why was Wagamama so awesome? It was the only thing in London that wasn't deep fried, smashed, or mushed. It also didn't cost $50. It was also highly edible. 

For my birthday, Emilie got me the Wagamama cookbook--score!! Thus, welcome to the week-o-Wagamama! I'm going to cook a delicious meal from this cookbook every night this week. I hope to start this type of cookbook series once a month...Maybe for April I'll do Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Or not...

I started  with an easy favorite: Chicken Ramen. 

I started out by cutting all the veggies ahead of time. My experience with most asian-style cooking tells me that this thing may cook super fast and make me super stressed if I don't do this... I'm so glad I did.

You can really use whatever veggies you want, but I used bok choy, green onion and bamboo shoots.

Heated up a pan and cooked some chicken. After it was cooked, I cut it into bite sized pieces

 
While I was cooking up the chicken, I cooked up the noodles. It only took about 3 minutes to cook these. After they're done, I rinsed them with cold water.

This is not Top Ramen. This is real ramen. (At least I think it is--I couldn't read the Japanese on the label...)

I forgot to take a picture, but I also heated up some chicken stock. You can use homemade if you are into that kind of thing...I used a tsp of 'Better than Boullion' and it was awesome and took .5 seconds. 

 Now, to plate! This is probs the easiest part. Put the cold noodles in a bowl. Throw in a handful of your veggies. Put the chicken on top. Then, pour the super hot stock over the top. 

...and.....

 

 

 

Tah Dah!! It was awesome. This is definitely going to become one of my favorite weeknight/left-over veggies meal. So easy, so yummy, and tastes awesome with hot sauce.

Congratulations, Erick!

Sorry today's post is a little late--I had to wait until I gave it to the receipient!

Ben has been so fortunate to work for an amazing manager, Erick, who was recently promoted through the company (Go, Erick!!) Today, we got to celebrate him with a couple drinks at McMenamins. 

Ben and I wanted to put something a little special together for him--so here it is!

The process. 

OOOO..so pretty. So seriously awesome. 

I did a little 'cleaning up' after this picture--but I love the kraft papah!

Made a sweet sleeve for the card.  

And, here's the finished product. 

So, congratulations Erick! You so deserve it, and we can't wait  to see Rebel Empire play....

The Starbucks Cup

Happy St. Patty's Day, all!

I love St. Patty's Day, not because of all the drinking--but mainly because I can order Guinness and nobody says, "Oy, Guinness? That's like drinking a meal!"For the record--no it's not. And, according to the Guinness Brewery itself--has the lowest carb count of most beers. 

[Side Note: If you ever go to Dublin--you MUST do the tour at the Guinness Factory. It has supplied me with countless fun facts about our favorite stout, and lots of cool bar tricks.]

[Second Side Note: If you ever go to Europe--you MUST go to Dublin. It is like the Portland of Europe. Totally awesome, hasn't quite been 'discovered' yet, and the Irish people are crazy/awesome. But, watch out for the Australians...]

Thanks for traveling on that tangent with me. Now, on to today's project: The Starbucks Cup.

Ben works for Starbucks. Heard of them? 

He also happens to work with a great team of partners (SBUX speak for 'co-workers.') Ben and crew decided they wanted to start a monthly challenge--with the award being the Starbucks Cup. For March Madness, they are doing a friendly little bracket pool.

Thus, I was commissioned with making the cup. Ben headed out to Value Village and found quite the chalice:

BAH BAH BAAAHHH!

So, I set out on an etching adventure.

I love this frikkin' thing.

Pretty type, right? Totally chalice worthy.
It's called Atreyu--from Lost Type.

Pro tip: To avoid the total embaressment of putting this thing on crooked, it would be wise to
cut this long label into 3 pieces, right?

Yeah--totally figured that out before I put it on there. 

My nail color is seriously my new favorite.
I'm constantly finding ways to take pictures of my hands for the blog.
So far, I'm up to two pictures. 

I was too excited so I didn't wait for it to dry all the way after washing the etching cream off.
That's why it looks a little silly/messy. Promise it looks perfect after drying.

Fun, right? They're going to award the Starbucks Cup every month to the winner of the challenge.

Best news about this cup? It perfectly fits a tall iced americano with a little soy and caramel sauce.

Ill-hustle-straight-ing

I'm a little creatively done for the day. Seriously. [Actually, I'm pretty done for the week--but who's counting?]

I'm working on something that is 'in progress,' so I don't want to show too much of it...

So here's a cute snail:

Hey, Buddy!

I'll hopefully be able to show you the whole project in a couple weeks.

Happy pre-St. Patty's Day!

...and The Dance begins...

Hooray! It's the 'real' start of March Madness, today!

Today is actually a very bittersweet sports day for me. There was a big shake up on my Blazers today, and I haven't decided if I'm happy about it yet... But, I have to admit, they've been breaking my heart lately.

But you know what Blazers? I can't quit you.

Anyway, heartbreaking aside--today was a super fun sports day!

My bracket faired pretty well--not my best start, but pretty OK!

Brahanding

I've been doing some more work on branding for the blog--and today I settled on type and color. Yay for big decisions!

Here's what I landed on:

Logo, still not final. But still pretty awesome.

whaddya think?

What is soda bread, that isn't soda bread? Scones.

In preparation for St. Patty's day, I planned to make soda bread. But, a migraine set in this morning, and that just isn't happening. Also--after looking up a zillion recipes for soda bread, I decided that I really don't like soda bread.

So, instead of soda bread, I decided I wanted to make scones--but I didn't want to work for them.

I found this in my pantry:

While I didn't plan my nail color to match the Fisher Scone box, it is a happy coincidence. 

If you haven't had the pleasure of going to a Washington State fair and having a yummy, perfect, warm fair scone--you are seriously missing out. There's something so perfect about those little warm handfuls of flour, butter and jam--mmm. The Fair Scone mix is just as nice, and you don't have to smell pigs and cows to get it. Just add water.

I thought, "Hey I can doctor this up to be something yummy, right?" So I did.

I looked in my pantry and found some oatmeal and raisins. Yes!

I didn't measure, but I put about a handful and half of raisins, and a couple shakes of oatmeal.

I added water as per package directions, then mixed for a consistency.
I added a little more water until it looked like it was sticking together without being watery.
Just like this. 

Put it onto a flour-ed cutting board and kneaded it a couple times until it was a pretty ball. 

Cut the pretty ball in three pieces. 

Turned each of the pretty balls into pretty domes, then cut them into quarters.

Baked it as per package directions, added a little butter--yumm!
Just what this migraine needed to release its wrath on my brain.

For St. Patty's day, I thought I'd give you a little inspiration for fun things to do (that don't involve drinking...that's Saturday.)

Source: the-cooking-of-joy.blogspot.com via Lauren on Pinterest

Corned beef, mashed potato and cabbage sushi!


Not a huge fan of corned beef--but this might work! 

Source: browneyedbaker.com via Judy on Pinterest

So, I know I said no drinking...but Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes


for our meeting this week sound awesome...

Source: alexandrahedin.blogspot.com via Lauren on Pinterest

Found this from Alexandra Hedin's blog. Lucky Charm Rice Krispy Treats! 

What do you have planned for St. Patty's day?