Painting on canvas is intimidating.

I really wanted to name this post "Crafting and other fuckery," but that would make for some inappropriate newsfeed fodder.

I went to Iowa last week to visit a few folks over my vacation. One stop was in Ames to see the lovely and talented Katie who kicked non-AGD Greek ass at the GW Quiz Bowl (there also should have been a question about the meaning of life; the answer is, of course, 42). Another stop was in Iowa City to visit my lovely and talented sister who spends her days staring deeply into people's eyes. Or something. I actually don't know what a typical ophthalmology resident's day is like.

The point is that Iowa occasionally cracks me up. This was in an antique store in IC; the use of the term "head gear" to describe a headdress tickles me:

I also accompanied my sister to the post office, where we spent ten or fifteen minutes in line because some guy wanted to double check that the package that was put in his doorway was his fruit. From the fruit-of-the-month club. Seriously. The postmistress (postermaster? I have no idea what the PC term is) ended up calling the mail delivery guy. Direct quote: "Did you put Mr. Baird's fruit in his doorway?" AND HE KNEW.

As you may have guessed from previous posts, I have a bit of time on my hands. This is even with time devoted to vet school decision making. So, to keep myself from going utterly batshit occupied, I've been doing and planning to do crafty things beyond cutting up t-shirts.

My current project: some wall art. It was inspired by this post on Who's Watching the Baby, which makes my project a knock off to the (counts quickly on fingers) fourth power.

These pictures blow. You have been warned.

First, I got a couple canvases. They are probably too big, but as the philosopher Funny once said, "Think big." (One little voice is calling me, calling me...)

Next, I picked out some colors I liked. My family has accumulated quite a collection of acrylic paints from various projects over the years, so I didn't have to buy anything. I like free.

Also, plastic lids make the best palettes. And bowls are pretty good makeshift iPhone speakers.

I decided to paint the canvases "Custard." On a sort of unrelated note, I really dislike that word. I imagine that this is the way that some people feel about "moist," which is a word that I hold no quarrel with. Then I painted the "branches" on.

I am not good at painting on canvas. Damn texture. I finally decided that clean lines are for losers; I'm more of a smudgy line person anyway.

After that dried, I started adding the circles. I can't draw a good circle to save my life, so free handing one with paint was right out; I traced. With a soy milk bottle cap and an old wooden nickel from the orthodontist. On to the paint!

This is it midconstruction. There are a crap ton more circles drawn on there, and I haven't mixed up the red I wanted to use yet. Thus far, I'm liking it, but not quite sure about the blue.

Other crafts that I would like to attempt:

• a paint chip mosaic
• cloth pumpkins*
• a woven map basket
• quilted cloth coasters
• TP roll wall art (sounds weird, but trust me)

I also looked at these, but as the first three words that came to my mind were "cook," "swear," and "beer," I don't think that that would be such a good idea.

Future craft posts to come.

*I've actually attempted to make one of these. It turned out to be pretty tiny and sort of special. I call him Bob. I didn't want Bob to feel bad about himself, so I stuck all of my craft needles into him to give him some purpose in life. Which actually makes this picture sort of creepy looking.

Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional.

This post is for my friend Katie; happy 22nd, friend. I wish that I could be there at dollar pints tonight, but I'm snowed in.

And a big middle finger to you too, winter.

I was in an antique store yesterday (yes, I am an old lady; leave me alone). In addition to finding some more jars of interesting buttons, there was a booth with a bunch of old/newly-made-to-look-old tin signs. Most of them were normal, with old advertisements or cute sayings on them, and there were a few that were... questionable.

Like this one:

And this one:

There were others, but I was getting funny looks from the middle aged man in the next row over, so I smothered my giggles and put my phone away.

When life gives you lemons, make cookies.

It snowed today. Stupid winter. I would be less disgruntled if the city of Neenah had started plowing earlier so that it didn't take me 40 minutes to get to the kitty shelter this morning. After the significantly shorter drive home, I decided that I wished to bake. Baking on a snowy day just seems like a correct thing to do.

I once again hauled out my trusty "America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book" (aka my Bible) and flipped to a recipe I've wanted to try for a while: glazed lemon cookies. They are cookies of the "icebox" variety, which I'd never tried before.

First I assembled the ingredients for the cookies:

3/4 c sugar
2 Tbsp lemon zest
1 3/4 c all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces and chilled
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 large egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Everything is supposed to be done in the food processor, but the only one available for me to use was a little three-cup one, so I modified a bit.

Next, zest the lemons. Lemon, actually; it only takes one. For those of you following along at home, try not to zest your fingertips or knuckles along with the lemon.

Next, food process (what is the appropriate verb for this situation anyway?) the lemon zest with the sugar until it's yellow. Add the salt and baking powder and 1/4 cup flour and pulse until combined. Dump the contents of the FP container into a mixing bowl.

In batches, combine the rest of the flour and butter chunks in the FP. It'll look crumbly and sort of like cornmeal when you're done. Add to the mixing bowl.

Juice the lemon. Feel free to swear a bit when you realize that the juice thing you're using is a bit too large for the glass and there is lemon juice all over the counter and your hands and you have a paper cut dammit.

Separate your egg. Combine the yolk with the 2 Tbsp of lemon juice and mix a bit. If you like curdled egg, do this in advance; if you'd like something you can actually use, do this immediately before you need to use it. With the mixer running, add the lemon-yolk mixture. Keep mixing until the dough clumps together in a ball.

Form the dough into a 2-inch thick log and wrap in Saran wrap or your plastic wrap of choice. Refrigerate for about 2 hours. While you're waiting, you can shovel the four inches of snow off of your deck and front walk.

Preheat the oven to 325 and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Slice the cookie log into 3/8-inch rounds, or whatever thickness you think looks like 3/8 of an inch. Put them on the cookie sheets about an inch apart and bake for 15-16 minutes until the cookies are set and the edges start to brown, rotating and switching the pans mid-bake. Let them sit on the cookie sheets for three minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Next up, the glaze.

1 Tbsp cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 c powdered sugar

Whisk the cream cheese and lemon juice together in a bowl until smooth. It should be noted that by "whisk" they mean "use a fork or the cream cheese will retreat into the center of the whisk and refuse to come out." Add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time (I found that the glaze was REALLY thick and REALLY sweet when I used all of the powdered sugar; next time I'm only using a cup).

Put a bit of glaze on the center of each cooled cookie and spread with the back of a spoon. But only if your glaze is spreadable; if not, use a knife to slob it on.

Viola! Lemon cookies!

In other news, I've narrowed it down to three schools: Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kansas State. The pro-con list is in progress. Thank you, sorority chapter meetings.

Quick! Someone get me something shiny!

I've been looking at the 2010-2011 tuition for various vet schools. They range from $17,000 to $42,000(ish) per year. SCARY. I'm going to have to pro-con the shit out of this to make a final decision, but right now I don't feel like being a responsible adult and making life-altering choices.

To the internet!

My most recent web wanderings have taken me over the Hark! A Vagrant! store, and I've decided that at some point I would really like to buy/frame a print of a Kate Beaton masterpiece. Problem is, I love them all and lack the funds to purchase every one available (damn you, decisions). I've narrowed it down to eight. I can't copy and paste the actual images, so if you have a bit of time and feel like some high-brow humor, click through.

First, the science-y ones. I quite enjoy this one of Marie and Pierre Curie, but I also have to consider this comic about Rosalind Franklin. If you don't know who she is, shame on you; Google her this very moment.

Next come the literature-based comics. There are a lot of them. I like the nod to Animal Farm, and EAP's expression makes me crack up every time I see it. Poe and Verne was also the first HAV comic that I saw, so it holds a special place in my heart. Radish-hating, pervy Dracula is pretty spectacular as well. And for some reason a frustrated Mr. Darcy is hilarious. Stubborn Javert is equally amusing.

This is just silly.

I'm crafty like a fox, but better since I have opposable thumbs.

Being an involved member of a sorority during college, I gained many things. Like t-shirts. Add those to the ridiculous amount of swimming t-shirts that I've been accruing since age eight, and you get an amount that's somewhere between "ouch" and "boing."

Movie reference, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Okay.

I needed something to do with all of these shirts. Honestly some of them are kind of ugly and/or stained, so giving them away isn't really an option. Besides, I don't think anyone is going to want to wear a secondhand "2004 Girls' Swimming Conference Champ" shirt. And then, like a grail-shaped beacon on the horizon (movie reference, anyone?), I came across this post on Polk & 2nd, a craft blog written by a friend of my sister. The necklace tutorial in turn brought me to this entry, and I was inspired.

The first t-shirts I sacrificed were some oversized swimming shirts from my 10-and-under days and a neon yellow one that I figured I wouldn't miss if I screwed up horribly. After a laughable first attempt to cut a straight line, I used a ruled cutting mat and rolling cutter. WAY easier.

I like it despite the fact that it pretty much glows in the dark. The best part is the button I used for the center of the flower. I think I got it in one of those mystery jars of stuff that they sell for a few bucks at antique stores everywhere.

Next I tried making a longer one out of some t-shirt yarn I had made. I think it turned out pretty well, if a bit too short to double loop comfortably.

Next I upped the ante by actually using an outgrown "nice" t-shirt. I was rather pleased with how it turned out.

Since I determined that sewing the flower on the first necklace I made was a major pain in the tuckus, I made them tie-on instead. That way, I could move or remove them as I pleased and not stab myself in the finger repeatedly with a needle. A win-win situation if I ever saw one.

The most recent one I made was for my mom, and it's probably my favorite thus far. The flowers are still of the tie-on variety, but I sewed buttons on the part of the tie that sticks out of the front.

I'm probably going to end up with a million of these things.

Doing some spring(ish) cleaning.

I decided at the end of January that I was tired of wading through the masses of crap on my floor and was going to clean. Not only would I clean, I would ORGANIZE. I would DONATE STUFF. I would DUST and POLISH and VACUUM.

Several weeks later, I am finally done. And my room is beautiful. While cleaning, I discovered/realized a few things:

1. I should never buy pens again. My desk has 22 little drawers (no joke), and there were at least six pens in each of them. 22 x 6 = a shit ton of pens.

2. Same goes for dental floss.

3. I didn't actually find my camera cord, which means that it probably fell into a crack in space and time and will only emerge when I have purchased a new one.

4. I don't have enough shelf space. I have a freestanding book case as well as built-in bookshelves at one end of my window seat, and I still can't fit all of my books onto shelves. I'm pretty okay with this problem since I love books. eReaders are great for travel, but there's something about the weight of a book in your hands and the smell of the ink and paper.

 
5. I have quite a few unfinished projects, including some throw pillows, several in-progress pieces of jewelry, and an apron. The fabric for the apron is great; I love bisected pome fruit.

In addition to thoroughly cleaning my room, I also inventoried all of the stuff that I have for my hypothetical apartment, which brings me to number six:

6. I have no common thread in the furniture I have. Color? Nope; it runs the gamut from turquoise to red to eggplant. Style? Well, most of it is kitsch. Other than that, negatory. Fabric? Nein.

 That being said, I like every piece of furniture. If it looks like design throw up in my next residence, so be it. 

Yes, these are seats from the old Neenah theater. I love the fabric on the backs.