the absurdly bright red wall I pass on my way to the train, every day.

rescuing more plants than I know what to do with

instant results

sprinkles!

buy back drinks from Max Fish

this visual list of 1960′s Japanese cartoons

extra long shoe laces

leaving situations I don’t feel like I deserve to be in

seeing my reflection, unexpectedlyfacebook, for reminding me of a very different time in life

making mountains appear in flat urban areas

laughing out loud in public

aj’s impromptu drawing sessionsthe vent to my sidewalk that blows warm air that smells like fresh laundryflowers that bloom and die at the same time friends who’s jobs involve picking noses.

light houses. This one in Ohio may be my favorite one.

Honorable Mentions:

• Himitsu no Akko-chan
• David Bowies Hunky Dory album. According to iTunes, I’ve listened to “Oh! You Pretty Things” 22 times this week.
• thick yet soft bed sheets
• layovers in Atlanta
• drinking papaya juice and watching people get drenched in the cold rain
• my grandma for always worrying about me, no matter how silly the situation
• watching people stumble into moving walkways, in airports
• this photo that Molly Burkett took of me
• learning something new and being up until dawn exploring its possibilities
• flying out of Laguardia airport, and seeing a birds eye view of the entire city
• Bottle Rocket “They’ll never catch me, man… because I’m fucking innocent“

• you hand it to the person who makes your food, and they hand it back to you with the total on it.
• if you lose this ticket, you get charged 50 bucks.
• this “lost ticket fee” was instilled about 10 years ago.

You choose the person you want to make your sandwich, and they chop the meat in front of you, and give you a sample of the fresh meat while you wait. I always try to find the oldest guy because he’s usually the biggest asshole who makes the best sandwich.

Although the sandwiches are a bit pricey (15-17 dollars a pop) I bet you can’t get through half of one without wanting to die a little inside. As a meat eater and a lover of irrelevant history, this is one of my favorite New York establishments.

Heres a few more Katz facts:

• Katz is where they filmed THE scene from When Harry Met Sally
• It was established in 1888
• During World War 2, they used the slogan “send a salami to your boy in the army” and still use it to this day
• Each week, Katz’s serves 5,000 pounds of corned beef, 2,000 pounds of salami and 12,000 hot dogs

All photos by Chloe Rice

I’m a total coffee snob. I drink it black, so that usually means I can taste all of its imperfections. If its burnt, old, ect.

Heres some tips on how to make a perfect cup of coffee.

Grind:

• Should be fine enough to allow water to pass through coffee grounds without overflow.
• If you’re able to access a proper coffee shop, just ask them to ground it for whatever coffee chachkaa you use. (meletia cup, drip, french press, ect)

Measure:

• Start with two level tablespoons for every 6 oz cup; adjust to your taste

Water:

• Water should be sweet, without excessive minerals or salt. Use spring water, if you’re not sure.

Temperature:

• 190 Fahrenheit
• The water should never be brought to a boil, because it’ll burn the coffee.

Storing:

• Good coffee will stay fresh for 2 weeks if kept air tight and away from moisture condensation.
• Those waxy paper bags with the twist tie on top, that the coffee usually comes in? yeah. those work just dandy just as long as you squeeze out all excess air. and tightly close it.

I may have missed my ohJoy this Thursday, but its only because life is pretty amazing.

you’ll need:

• a saftey pin
• black felt
• scissors
• pins
• embrodery floss
• sewing needle
• stuffing

start by cutting two identical hearts out of felt.

pull the string though one heartanchor the string with a knotsew part of the safety pin to the heart, starting with the circle part

don’t bother cutting the stringpin the second piece of felt sew them togetherbefore closing it, fill it with some stuffingstitch it up and give it to someone you love, despite Valentines Day.

Its Thursday! The day that I have started collecting photos I’ve taken through out the week, because they relate to things that I love about life. Such as:

The guy who plays songs from Amelie in the 14th street station.

people who enjoy their jobs

drinking coffee on a tree

using long exposure to give me the power of invisibility

that some of the most important items in my life, right now, weigh less than my dog.

my dog

eating meals with friends

gingers. (They’re apparently the new black.)

making a barricade of beverages

having my blog on the front page of wordpress.com!

feeling like one of those people who starts looking like their dog (photo by Molly Burkett)

tiny cookies

turning people into cartoons while helping make things for their etsy shop

when eve the snow wants to get out of the cold

big sandwiches made by old polish women

Honorable Mentions:

• “I got hot sauce in my eye tonight, and I thought of you”
• buy backs at bars
• holding hot tea when its too cold to feel my fingers
• Rediscovering my love for Marcys Playground
• ice cream cakes
• waking up before the sun
• thick socks
• getting paid for doing manual labor
• vitamin E
• Katz deli
• cynical texts from my brother
• living vicariously through the parties I hear my neighbors throwing, almost every night
• everything about this

I had a friend whos mom, would place them in a pie tin and they would expand. Being what I thought cinnamon buns should be, this was illusive concept to me. I only ate them once and have been trying to find ones that compare, ever since.

Heres what ruins anything that has ever come close to those homemade cinnamon buns that I have spent a lifetime dreaming about:

• the weak cinnamon to bun ratio
• not enough frosting
• raisins. gross. Why do people find the need to add pruned grapes to something so perfect?

I realized that in order to do something right, I would just have to do it myself. Baking with yeast is still pretty new to me, so I was a bit scared of it. My baker dad informed me that yeast and humans live comfortably in the same temperatures:

• If you add yeast to something that is about the same temperature as a warm bathtub, it’ll flourish.
• If you add it to a liquid that is too hot, you’ll kill it.
• If you add it to something cold, it’ll hold out on expanding until the temperature is warm enough or it’ll just take longer.

With this, I began skimming through cinnamon bun recipes, plucking what I liked about each one to concoct my idea of the perfect cinnamon bun.

It was so good, that my appetite almost didn’t give me time to take a good photo of the final product.

What you need for the dough:

• 1 package (0.25 oz.) yeast
• 1 1/4 cup milk, warmed
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 4-4 1/2 cups flour

For the Filling:

• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

• 2 tablespoons softened butter

For the Icing:

• 1/2 package cream cheese, very soft
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla (I really love vanilla, though)
• 1 cup powdered sugar

start by warming up the milk

warm the milk on the lowest possible flame. My goal was to get it the milk to “bath water for a baby” warm.

Put the warm milk into your mixing bowl and add the packet of yeast. Let it sit for about 5 minutes, then stir together.

add 1/2 cup of sugar, 1tsp salt, vanilla, 2 eggs, and 6 tbs of butter. (fittingly, I made this treat on Paula Deens birthday)

and stir it all together.

stir in flour

I did it one cup at a time until it made a dough that was thick enough to kneed together (about 4 1/2 cups)

flour a surface, and kneed the dough until its smooth (I did it for about 5 minutes)

Lightly grease a bowl, place the ball of dough into it, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it sit in a warm place until it raises to twice its size. (The time it takes for it to rise depends on the temp of its surroundings. I put mine into the unheated oven because its still much warmer than my unheated apartment. About 2 hours later, the dough was huuuuuuge!)

While you wait, you can mix together the fixin’s for the filling.

Put the dough onto a floured surface, and roll it into a large rectangle.

spread on 2 tablespoons of butteradd the brown sugar mixtureroll it up and cut about every 2 inches butter up a pie tin (or two, in my case) or a baking dish and place the cinnamon rolls in it until the expand into the pan (about 40 minutes)while waiting to them to look as squished as they do in the photo above, preheat your oven to 350. Pop them into the oven for about 30 minutes

or until they start getting brown on top.

beat together all of your frosting ingredients. Adding the sugar last and in small increments until you reach the amount of sweetness you want from it.

smoother your hot sweet buns (get your mind out of the gutter!)

Eat them until you fall into a sugar coma.

I suggest only serving them fresh. I got 9 buns out of this recipe and tried saving 4 (unfrosted) ones overnight, but by the next morning the bread pretty much absorbed the cinnamon swirl. Which was fine by me, since the bread aloe is AMAZING.I think I’ll make a loaf of it for french toast, next time.

all photos and illustrations were done by me

Chloe Rice

• His ability to minimize consonants in order to create a perfect song
• His contagious smile
• His video featuring Day DeVito, Kathleen Turner, and Michael Douglas

Puppy distractions

friendship distractions

getting ‘shotgun’ when it really makes a diffrence

seeing situations from a different perspective

teaching Charlie an awesome new trick!

sewing my finger into the sewing machine….

because it resulted in the purchase of these adorable bandaids!!!

leaving slightly comical/ passive aggressive notes

having people in my life who will put on my clothes, and those who will take a train out of their way just to make me smile.

getting exercise by being ridiculous

when a row of photos I’ve taken come up in a row on Facebook.

honorable mentions:

• Being stopped at the metal detector at the passport office, for a bottle of hot sauce in my purse. “Boss, is this considered a drink?” “Only if she’s Jamaican.”
• re-watching The Smoking Room
• getting cut off in a lunch line by a guy who insisted on buying my meal.
• rearranging my office space
• finally finding a way to stream I Love Lucy episodes
• catching one of those old trains with the orange seats
• pizza with bacon and eggs on it, from Robertas
• spelling things out phonetically with a phone operator. “V as in Vagina” “….ok, that was V as in Victory, correct?”
• teasing my hair up
• jumping jacks
• baking almost every day
• prematurely digging out my summer clothes for my trip to Thailand, next month

The thought of making it outside of those pre-buttered microwave bags or pre-buttered aluminum tins, seemed impossible. I thought I hated popcorn, but turns out that I just hated that weird butter. Ever since someone showed me how easy making your own popcorn could be, I’ve been eating it pretty much every day.

My teeth may hate me for saying this, but I LOVE popcorn! I love it so much that over the summer, I’ve tried 12 different kernels and several kinds of salts to add to them. After extensive research, my favorite popcorn combo is the plain ole’ popcorn drizzled with chocolate and sprinkled with corse salt.

Turns out its really simple to make!

Start by heating up a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a large pot with about a cup of popcorn kernels.

when one starts to pop, put a lid on the pot while occasionally shaking the pot to make sure all of the kernels are getting heated at the bottom of the pot.

Keep the heat on until there  is 2-3 seconds between popping sounds.

Lay the popcorn onto a cookie sheet thats lined with parchment paper

put about half a bag worth of chocolate chips into a double broiler (or a metal mixing bowl on top of a boiling pot of water, in my case) and mix with a fork until the chocolate chips become a puddle of chocolate.

lightly shake a fork full of melted chocolate over your sheet of popcorn.

continue doing this until you’ve lightly covered all of the popcorn

sprinkle some salt over the coated popcorn, and place the tray in the refrigerator for about a half an hour, or until the chocolate hardens.

I put my finished product into a plastic bag, attached a cute drawing, tied it with some string from the hardware store, and had a lovely little treat to give away!