Make Monday: Black Hearted

February means the saddest excuse for a holiday, is upon us. Valentines day. If your heart is as jaded as mine, then perhaps you will enjoy my craft project for this Make Monday. A little black heart pin for you or one of your mutually bitter single friends.

Make Monday: Chocolate Covered Popcorn

I used to be really intimidated by popcorn. Thats right…..popcorn.

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.

Pocket Notebook!

This week, I’ve started coming to terms with the fact that if I don’t write things down, I’ll forget about them. Yes. I’m getting old.

SO,  for this edition of Make Monday, I thought it would be a pretty good idea to keep a pocket notebook handy.  This not only will help me remember who I’m supposed to meet up with but will also help me get rid of some stationary scraps

and unused paper in my archived journals.

Squash Sucking Freaks

There has been a little pumpkin sitting on my coffee table for nearly two weeks. It was dying for me to use some of my kitchen witchcraft to turn it into a pumpkin pie. Everyday I would come home and there it was. Begging and pleading for me to chop it up and toss it in the steamer until its little pumpkin guts turned to mush and doused in nutmeg.

Sick of its incessant cries, and inspired by the best scene in Blood Sucking Freaks, I  pulled out the power drill, some diffrent sized drill bits, and a roll of measuring tape and created a different kind of jack-o-lantern!
The perfectionist in me could deal with the thought of trying to carve a face and loosing a silhouette eye or tooth in the process. So I measured out a starburst shape with the measuring tape, tagging the measurements within an an inch along the way, and the used multiple drill bits to pierce holes through the little squash.

It was a lot more fun for me to watch ribbons of pumpkin swirl out as the drill punctured it, than feeling like it was the first time I had ever used a knife, all over again. Plus, I think it looks really pleasant!

Its not very scary but it does make it feel a little more like fall, around here.

I’m pretty sure I make up for my lack of Halloween spook on things I have in my room year round. A good example being my bedside shelving:

And although I may not have had the time or forethought to make the bedbug costume that would have been perfect to galavant around New York in, I did let my hands get into costume for the occasion.

eeek!

Happy Halloween, internet.

Magic Trick of a Florist

I like finding hints of nature in very urban surroundings, so finding this little DIY tip on ReadyMade really just sprinkled my ice cream.

Oh-reos

A while back, I promised to transport a pile of treats to a friend for his birthday. Now, if I were meeting up with someone for a cup of tea or a visit to grandmas I would bring something like biscuits or scones. But for a celebration you need icing!!! Unfortunately, getting anything frosted from point A to point B in mint condition is nearly impossible unless I plan on lugging some oddly shaped piece of Tupperware back home….a chore I am not fond of.

So I went on a hunt for a tasty transportable treat and stumbled upon this recipe for homemade Oreos! I’m not a huge fan of Oreos, but these cookies have changed my mind. They were so fun, quick, and easy to make that I want to bake them all of the time.

My Broken Cubical

I had recently recovered a hard drive full of music that I haven’t heard since high school, made myself a girly Ska mix, and spent all of yesterday partaking in my favorite spring time activity. SPRING CLEANING!

My non-cubicle was my favorite and most improved area.

Feel free to step into my office:

Brain Shades (96/365)

When I moved in to my apartment, I was told that the building across the street was abandoned. With this knowledge, I procrastinated putting up shades for a few months and frolicked around my room as naked as a flower child, knee deep in acid, at Woodstock. This was fine and dandy up until the day I looked out my window to see several workers peaking their heads out of cracked windows of the NOT SO abandoned building.

Next day, I had my curtins hung but they weren’t long enough to cover all my window space. So I punched some holes in my MRI’s, attached them to each other with fishing wire, and hung them from the ceiling.

Now those dirty ole’ worker have no choice but to see me for my brains and not my tits. 

Tommy Hilfiger Pet Collection (86/365)

My room mate seems to think that one of our neighbors is some sort of homosexual practical joker. The facts:

• Fact 1: Every time he goes down the hall and does his laundry, he comes back with a pair of man panties that, he claims, are defiantly not his.
• Fact 2: well….there is none. Fact 1 should be hard evidence enough though, right?!

Pretty sure that he has about had it with these jokes, I slapped a face onto Tommy Hillfigers crotch zone, stuffed him up, made him squeak, put him in stiches, and sent him into the hallway for the dog to tear to shreads.

Charlie and I can now attest to how sturdy a good pair of under-roos are, after turning them into a new chew toy.

Patched Up Hearts (75/365)

I had a ton of red scrap felt, so I cut it into tons of little hearts and made Valentines day patches with my friends initials on them!

Its pretty simple all you need is:

• embrodery floss
• needle
• felt
• thread that is the same color of the felt
• fusible interface

Sew the embroidery floss through the heart so that it creates a letter, stitch the interface onto the back and volia!

I made a card, and attached the patch onto it, but now i wish I would have somehow attached it to my Valentines Mix.

Click on my Valentine for some lovely tunes

Circus Family Robinson

Did you have a motto for 2009? Now that I’m starting fresh, I realize that I did.

2009: Well, That Sucked.

Luckily I began this year in a place that I had never been before and always wanted to go. New Orleans. After a ten minute walk down Bourbon Street, I had had my fill of rednecks walking with their barrels of brightly colored sugar excessed alcohol. Its like Time Square of the south. Horrible.

I was invited to a place called the NOLA Art House. Its a home for young Southern based mixed media artist and ex circus performers who have created an entire Swiss Family Robinson zone in their backyard. I guess they throw parties on occasion. Calling in hundreds of drunk kids to climb the narrow and slippery steps toward the top of their wood based duplex (after signing a waiver, of course) The tree house is made up of chair frames, crate platforms, play pen tubing, and trapeze nets.

Everyone was given their own bottle of champagne, along with a balloon and Sharpie to write their resolution on and let go of at midnight. Quite picturesque. A cute idea for the next Hillary Duff movie, I guess.

Living in New York, its easy to forget that people are just happy to smile and compliment, and get to know your name. It was a nice change of pace. A good place to visit, but I kind of miss getting flicked off on a subway already.

All photos by Chloe Rice

Letting Off Some Steam

Ikea sold me an extravigant amount of tea lights for an unbelieible small amount of money!
I grabbed a steamer that was about 5 bucks in Chinatown, and loaded it up! Now they sit in the bathroom waiting for the end of a day that calls for a candle lit bath.

Bring in the sexy song!

cup 'o green

I’m not much of a garderer but I recently felt that my apartment could use some greenery beyond my plasitic Ikea plants. So I went to the farmers market and picked up a pot of dill, rosemary, and basil.

Came home only to realize I had nothing to put them in. So I grabbed some old cups, filled the bottom with mulch for my snakes cage for drainage (marbles would have worked too). Split the plants up and put the directly into the cups!

Its been working suprisingly well. With the exception of the one time I over did it on the water for the basil and ended up drowning one root. (r.i.p. basil buddy)

Lego Life

According to Tim over at Brickshelf, turing a bland cheap flash drive into something cute and ascetically pleasing is a fairly simple project!