Tea Swap Success!

Remember how I organized a tea swap a while ago?  Well, it looks like some of you have already received your teas, including Amy and Annika!  It was so awesome to read their emails about their excitement for the packages, and it sounds like a friendship has been formed as well :D

Here are some of the goodies that Annika sent....

And here's what Amy sent...

I'm pretty stoked about this!!  I'm thinking of organizing more swaps soon, including the Easter Candy swap that I organized last year.

Ciao bellas!

~E

Downtown

There's some parts of downtown where I live that I try to avoid, especially at night.  One place in particular is east of the downtown area.  It's a shame, really...it contains beautiful old architecture, but it seems that the city has decided to leave it on the wayside, and instead focus on ever expanding suburbs.  

I think these old buildings have potential.  And I hope that the writing on their walls never fades away.

Photos taken with my Canon AE-1 Program.  Good Lawd, I love that camera.

Later gators!

~E

Wisdom Tooth

Someone had her wisdom tooth pulled out a few days ago.  OUCH!  It started last Saturday night with a throbbing in my head that wouldn't stop.  I decided not to mess around with this one and get it pulled ASAP.

Six needles and hardly and freezing later this sucker came out and I'm now left with a sharp ache in my jaw.  But is it stopping me from eating solid foods?  Nope.  I tried the liquid diet for a couple days and had enough of it.  One can only eat so much soup before their palette tires of it.  Am I right or am I right?

And yes, I kept the tooth.  Initially I was creeped out by the idea, but then I thought it'd be pretty fantastic to be even creepier and freak out my boyfriend with it.  Totally worked.  He won't even look at it, mwahaha.

That's my story.  I have 2 more wisdom teeth to get pulled, and I'm not looking forward to it :(

Later gators!

~E

Mail Swaps

As you may have noticed, I like designing blogs.  I don't charge, but instead I do a mail swap with whomever I'm doing the blog design for.  I think it's a pretty sweet trade off...a brand spankin' new design for some snail mail?  Yes please!

You may remember the design I did for Toni of Lost Cabin a while back.  She's a great lady from the land down under and sent me some Aussie goodies, along with a super sweet sweater and earrings from her Etsy shop.  I'll post photos of the sweater at a later date...perhaps an outfit post?  Oh yeah.

The chocolates above are VERY intriguing.  I have no idea what animals these are.  Australia is a pretty magical place. ;)

Toni also sent a turtle for Benji, but he's since hidden it amongst his other toys.  I do have this one photo of him lying with it.  He really didn't want his photo taken that day.

I'll post some more photos later of swaps that have happened.  Viva la snail mail!

Later gators,

~E

With Love, Jamie

I was contacted by Jamie quite a while to do a blog design, and I was thrilled to!  She's pretty awesome and I love reading what she has to say.

Jamie had requested purple, lace, and a tattoo-ey look to her blog.  Initially I wanted to do a lace background, but thought the Victorian wallpaper was better suited for her blog.  The header was pretty fun to make too...viva le vectors!

One problem I encountered with this design though...the new Blogger interface simply didn't want to accept the HTML code for the whole design.  I kept getting this EXTREMELY frustrating error that was of no use.  Seriously, I wasn't about to play the Blogger Support bastard runaround game.

It finally occurred to me that if we switched her back to the old Blogger interface, it may just take the HTML code.  AND VOILA!  So, if anyone out there is having trouble uploading a new template to Blogger, this may be your problem.  An absolutely ridiculous problem that a large site like theirs shouldn't have, but what do I know?  I'm just a blogger.

Anywho, this was a really fun layout to work on, and I hope Jamie is peachy with it!  Thanks Jamie for letting me do this for you!

Later gators!

~E

Murderface Says Hi

It's been a long time since I've posted a photo of Murderface, my axolotl, so I thought I'd share this one.  I have him trained to take his food from chopsticks.  It's adorable...periodically he'll "sit" on his little tush waiting for food to come down to him, like in this photo.  

He's seriously the best and most intriguing pet I've ever owned, and I love him to bits.  Sometimes I'll give his wee head a pat when I change his water and he seems to respond positively to it, so that's interesting.

My grandma, who's 74, often wonders how my "little lizard friend" is doing.  When she was a child in the 1950s she had a pet salamander she found in her backyard and kept him for ages.  Our love for lizard-esque critters runs in the family. ;)

I'll post some more photos of Murderface later.

Ciao bellas,

~E

An Attempt At Making Chocolate

A while ago Raimund and I had the "brilliant" idea of making our own chocolate with help from this video.   I say "brilliant" because it didn't actually work out as we had expected.  I'm not sure if any of you have ever made chocolate before, but trying to get the taste just right was tricky.

Like our make-shift scale?  That was Raimund's doing.  He's a computer nerd and has wires all over the place.  It got the job done.  Oh, and that's not butter.  That's vegetable shortening.  I've never baked with it before, and I quite frankly don't care for it.

The whole process was fun, but the results weren't what we wanted.  I think instead of vegetable shortening we'll use coconut oil, and make some more minor adjustments.  We're not going to give up though...chocolate tastes too good, even if these weren't what we desired.  We'll figure it out eventually.

These were the ingredients that the recipe called for.  Instructions are all in the video I linked above.  Maybe you guys will have better luck with this recipe if you try it.

125g vegetable shortening (Copha or solidified coconut oil works fine)
125g confectioner's sugar (pure icing sugar)
6 tablespoons cocoa powder (good quality)
4 tablespoons powdered milk (full cream)
Pinch of salt

PS...if you know of any chocolate making recipes, link me!

Later gators!

~E

January Photo-A-Day: 7 Thru 12

I thought I'd share some more photos from the Photo-A-Day meme going around Instagram...

The Childhood photo is my favourite.  In case you didn't guess, that's me on the left, and Ben on the right.  Good genes!

Later gators!

~E

And So It Begins....

It looks like we have our first successful tea swap!  Sara got this little surprise from Bonnie, including a tea strainer!  VERY cool.

Those of you participating in the tea swap, send me photos of what you got!  I'll gladly post them up on here.

Happy tea drinking!

~E

The Goal Dress

I keep mentioning on here that I have goals set for 2012.  I've yet to reveal them all, but one is to lose some weight and tone my muscles.  Cliche goal, right?  Yeah, I know.

After Brendan broke up with me in August (we're still good friends!) I got a gym membership and began seeing a trainer twice a week.  It really helped with my depression, and made me feel so much better about everything after each session.  But to be honest, I slacked a lot in October and November when it came to working out...I just didn't feel like it.  

Now it's my goal to shed some weight.  It's mostly stubborn baby weight around my belly, but I think it can be manageable.  Ben was a huge baby, 10.5 lbs, so obviously quite a bit of weight was gained while carrying him (for the record I'm 5'1").  As well my core muscles are super weak.  You know how most people can get up easily from lying on their back?  Not me.  It's a struggle since my stomach muscles were weakened and my hips/lower back have gone to shit.

Here's where the "goal dress" comes into play.  While on one of my thrifting excursions, I came across a pretty cute vintage dress.  Only problem was that it's a bit snug, mostly in the tummy area.  Here's what it looks like on me now:

I *could* probably get away with wearing it out and about now with Spanx or some crap, but I don't want to.  You can kinda see my tummy poking through and I'm a bit self-conscious about that sorta thing.

My goal: lose a couple inches.  I'm not expecting to drop 30 lbs in a month or anything, but rather I want to lose the weight in a realistic amount of time while maintaining a healthy diet.  And what could be more motivation than being able to fit into a cute dress? (Hopefully by summer!)

So, that's one of my goals for this year.  We'll see if I can actually achieve it or not. 

Later gators!

~E

January Photo-A-Day: 1 Thru 6

So, if you're not on Instagram, you may not be aware of this January Photo A Day meme started by Fat Mum Slim.  It's actually pretty cool seeing all the thousands of photos that have been uploaded since it first started almost a week ago.

The list goes as follows:

Fun, right?  It's become a normal part of my morning routine now and I'm really digging it.  I wanted to share my first 6 days of this list.  Nothing mind blowing, but still a fun peek into my life if you're at all curious.

Is anyone else playing along?  Link me with your Instagram name and I'll come a-searching for you.  Pinky promise I won't get all stalkerish.

Later gators!

~E

New Look

Maybe you've noticed the changes around here.  I completely re-vamped the blog!  New year, new look.  Why not? 

This time around I used Pugly Pixel's Lemon Meringue Blogger layout.  I was using Strawberry Shortcake before, but I've always liked the simplicity of Lemon Meringue.  Badda bing, badda boom, here it is.  After a few hours in Photoshop I haz my new layout.

Here's how the blog looked before.  I failed to take a proper screen shot before I implemented the new template....

And you can plainly see the after results.  I miss the wood background, but all white gives it a cleaner look.

So there you have it!  Also, I have a new layout for a friend almost ready to go...can't wait to see how it looks live!

Ciao bellas,

~E

Tea Swap Partners!

YOO HOO, TEA SWAPPERS!

I've finally had a moment to get all my emails organized and partner you all up!  If anyone is missing from this list, email me! (click the name to link up to their blog.)

Chrissy & Jaza

Miss Lou & MaDonna

Bonnie & Sara

Tids & Jamie

Toni & Andrew

Amy & Gini

Kaili & Chelsea

Jenny & Danielle

Meag & Lizz

Jess & Madi

Alice & Daisy

Annika & Amy

I've already asked a few of you, but if you want to swap tea with me personally, let me know!  In the excitement of organizing this I failed to partner myself up with someone.  Wah wah waaaah!  So email/tweet me and let's swap! 

Drink up!

~E

Christmas Recap

Christmas Eve was spent out at Raimund's family farm.  It was the first time I ever tried tartare, and I'm not sure if I'll ever want to eat it again.  Something about raw beef creeps me out...

Raimund's family is German, which means they have slightly different traditions from what I'm use to.  For example they bring in their Christmas tree, set it up, and decorate it that night.  Also, copious amounts of booze are consumed.  I'm not much of a drinker, so I just stayed back and vegged out.

As well, one of their farm dogs had puppies, so I was cuddling the hell out of them.

The last photo was from Christmas Day at my Grandparent's house.  I didn't take many photos that day, I was too busy enjoying myself.  Ben made a haul of goodies.  You see that power drill he's holding?  He likes to put it up to my knee and pretend he's tickling me.  That's my boy!

Ciao bellas,

~E

2012, Y'all

Print from THIS Etsy shop...I just bought a copy!

I'd say Happy New Year, but I'm sure you're all sick of reading that. ;)  Hope you're not nursing too bad of a hangover!

Like everyone else, I'm hoping 2012 will be stellar.  I've been reflecting a lot on 2011 the past little while, and I'll share my thoughts soon enough, but not just yet.

One of my goals for this year is to blog more, as I've been rather sporadic with this in the past few months.  So, be prepared to hear more from me, mwahaha.

I'll post more goals later, I have a little list going on.  What are some of your goals for 2012?

Later gators!

~E

(PS...tea swappers!  I'm waiting on a couple more emails, and we'll all be good to go.  YES!)