Saturday, March 31, 2007

lEGGos, grover cakes, one long, weird ass nightmare

what do you get when you mix legos and eggs? lEGGos!



i love easter just for the candy and the eggs.

leff and i took a quick trip to daiso yesterday for edible book festival supplies. we managed to only spend $25 which is a new world record for us.

on the way there, we saw this.



i like the red and yellow against the pavement.

later that day, i worked on my the monster at the end of this book edible entry. but since leff was also working in the kitchen on his book, my icing got all goopey and i had to start over.



here's the end result. (i made a dozen of them but only photographed one.)



eh, it's ok. it's really goofy which, you know, is fine.

for now though, i have to try and sleep again. i had one really long nightmare that involved 1) me being murdered repeatedly by the same serial killer as different victims 2) my having to chum the open waters of the pacific and 3) my being forced into marriage which, you know, are three things that i don't ever want to experience. and, as you can probably tell, it wasn't very conducive to sleep either.

Friday, March 30, 2007

etsy order, package from chodta!!, the edible book saga continues!

thursday was slow. partially because i scratched my left eye and couldn't really see well for most of the day and partially because leff was working on bookton. (which, you know, is awesome, so i'm not complaining.)

i got a cool bird painting from snew.



AND a package from chodta! it not only had her kick ass moo cards in it



but ALSO these toast sprinkle packets!! (THANK YOU, CHOTDA!!)



i have to agree with her. if these were made in the u.s., i'd probably roll my eyes at them and not try them. but because the packaging is nice (don't get me started on how lame i think most u.s. packaging is. i could go on for HOURS.) i'm *dying* to try them!

anyway, when my vision cleared a bit, i realized that i only had a few days left until the edible book festival. yikes! time to start baking! guess what i found while i was digging through my baking drawer? old cotton candy.



did you know that it compresses into a hard lump of sugar after a few weeks? me neither. i hit leff with it and he said "ouch" so it's official. cotton candy can be used as a weapon in a pinch.

*ahem*

i made some blue batter



which i turned into blue cupcakes.



they've been dubbed "smurfcakes" on flickr. i think that's the greatest name for these!

k, time to head to daiso for more cupcake liners and a backdrop for leff's entry. i also need to hit a candy store for pink jellybeans.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

well, how cool is this?

i clicked over to serious eats today (i'm a longtime amateur gourmet reader, you understand, and he writes for them.) what did i see? my poptart ice cream sandwich! what a wonderful surprise! thanks, for the mention, lia!

sculpture park

wednesday smelled like spring. and since i'm all about sniffing a new season (i'm part bassett hound??), leff and i took a walk to the sculpture park.

it not only smelled like spring but it looked like it as well.





i'd never eaten at the restaurant located inside the main building at the park before. (you can't see it in this pano. which makes me wonder why i put that photo here....)



i had an "adult" grilled cheese which consists of some delicious apples and grilled onions and muenster cheese on sourdough and a side salad of lightly dressed greens. oh, and a mint water.



one really cool thing about the sam "diner"? ALL of the packaging materials for food are compostable. including the plastic containers! (also? i think the forks are made of bamboo.)

i finally got a photo of the serra with some blue sky in the background.



not a big deal, i just like rust and blue together.

leff and i spent a lot of time sitting outside just watching ferries and tugs on the sound. i appreciate that sam will let you drag chairs anywhere that you'd like to sit in the park.



on the way home, we saw this pup on a truck.



a dropped by later and there was much discussion about cat butts and ice cream (but not in combination). i don't have pictures of either. so, you know, you'll have to use your imagination.

and that was my day. see, i told you that it wouldn't amount to much.

today involves recasting in the silicone mold (the first attempt hadn't dried long enough. sigh...) and, uh, i don't really know what else. as usual.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

vegefest and a goonies vacation!

please be warned. this is going to be a long post with a lot of photos and quite a few links to videos. are you ready? ok, let's begin.

sunday, leff and i hit vegefest at the center. if you're really interested in this, check out the flickr set. there were lots of free samples. if you have questions about it, i'll answer them in comments.

but now let's get to the good part. leff and i went on a goonies vacation!! a lot of the movie was filmed in astoria and cannon beach (both in oregon) both of which just happen to be really close to seattle! so off we went in our purple rental car (not pictured)!

we wanted to stay off the interstate as much as possible (you can see more interesting things that way.) so it was hwy 101 for us. this was exciting to me not only because i'd always wanted to drive 101 (it is spectacularly scenic in many places) but also because there are small towns where things like this still exist.



a freakin' "analog" gas pump! wow! i hadn't seen one of those in years!

101 is an awesome drive. but i'm getting antsy. let's skip to the astoria part!



technially, leff and i stopped by fort columbia (one of the forts that guarded the mouth of the columbia river.) to get a pano of astoria. but none of my shots turned out. so i'm just gonna' start typing about the goonies stuff now!

i swear, it looks like a freakin' movie set in astoria! here's the flavel house musuem which, in my book, is known as "mikey's dad's museum".



immediately across the street from it is the country jail where the fratellis broke out!



seriously, they are right next to each other. if you stand "here"



you can see both of them.

sadly, we didn't have a gas can and a gun to recreate the get away scene, but that's probably for the best anyway.

a few blocks away are mikey's and data's houses! look for this sign,



park your car at the bottom of the hill and walk up. the owners don't mind people taking photos of their houses. (although i'm sure they must get tired of it.)

anyway, can you believe that the data and mikey houses are really this close in rl?!?



data could *totally* slide through mikey's front door. and, guess what?!? we saw someone do the truffle shuffle while we were there!! seriously! i have video!

near the houses is the astoria coffee company, a.k.a. "where rosalita crossed the street with some groceries".



aye! dios mio! make sure to look both ways before you cross the road!

since we had pretty much exhausted "goonies" locations in astoria (although we didn't get a shot in the bowling alley where chunk smashed a slice of pizza and a milkshake into the window nor did we find the football field where andy encouraged everyone to practice their spirit pyramid.) leff and i drove on to cannon beach and haystack rock!!



i mean, holy hell! is that not impressive? (er, not my pano but the geologic formation, silly!)

it was so awesome that poor luther shed a tear.



and leff had to moblog it.



we walked around with our shoes off for a while, collecting sand dollars and taking waaay too many photos. on our way back to our room, we found where the fratellis drove onto the beach to join the 4x4 race at the end of the chase scene.



and i also found some baby...RUTHS!



this rocky...ROAD came later in our trip, but i thought that it fit well here.



there's also an accompanying ice cream video that was shot at the tillamook cheese factory, but i'm getting ahead of myself.

back at our "hacienda" we watched, of course, "the goonies".



and later that night we went out for pizza at pizza a fetta where we ordered the crab pizza. (not only was it delicious, we also got to say "crab pizza, crab pizza" like we were on mst3k. (sorry, inside joke.)

the next morning, leff and i drove to ecola state park where, not only the fratellis' restaurant used to be located but where we also saw some elk!!



i also took a really crappy movie of an approximation of the goonies bike ride to the restaurant.

ok, so i don't know about you, but if i'm within easy driving distance of a cheese factory, i kinda' have to go there. esp if they have a self guided tour. which is how we ended up at the tillimook plant in, appropriately enough, tillamook, or!



they have lots of cheese samples.



but unfortunately, the plant was closed for maintenance. oh well. here's a shot of the ice cream manufacturing section anyway.



just outside of downtown tillamook is cape meares. the big draw is, i suppose, the lighthouse. but i'd read about the octopus tree and was *dying* to see it. (that's kind of a pun since it might possibly be a burial site.) anyway, here's the prehistoric, huge, wonderful octopus tree.



you can read a little more about it here but there's not a lot of info. i have a feeling that octopus trees are about to become an obsession of mine, however, so stay tuned for additional trivia on them, if you're so inclined.

oh! here's a video of the pine forest leading up to the octopus tree. it was really windy and the trees were bending and making a lot of noise. tres cool in a very scary, creepy kind of way! (although the video doesn't do it justice.)

having finished with the tillamook area, leff and i started the trip home. but not before stopping off one last time at haystack rock!



if i had enough money, i think that i'd get a vacation home in cannon beach. but only if i brought months of provisions with me because their grocery stores suck. (heh heh)

of course we didn't head straight back to seattle. nope! lewis and clark had been mocking us the whole way



so we decided to stop off at cape disappointment.



i've always loved how optimistic those two were. (haha!)

there's another lighthouse that we walked to. i'm sure that leff has photos. i shouldn't belittle these things because the views at all of the lighthouses that we visited were SPECATCULAR!! and at cape disappointment you can, apparently, watch whales from time to time. i was just too cold to bother dragging out my camera.

see, even the mouth of the columbia river only got a cursory "from the parking lot" photo.



and i dig the columbia river. (note to self: next time, when visiting oregon in march, make sure to bring your coat.)

and that, in a billion rambling words and photos, was our awesome vacation. i really, really want to go back to cannon beach. really.

today i think we're just recuperating. and maybe i'll work on my edible book. or maybe i'll surprise us both and make us bus to higo. either way, i've got to stop typing. my fingers are chilly.

Monday, March 26, 2007

on vacation!



see you guys later this week!

Sunday, March 25, 2007

ballard, deer, silicone molding diy style, collage and cake

leff and i needed to run some errands in ballard yesterday. on the way to fred meyer we saw some tiny trees



and some fuzzy hats.



we also had coffee at cafe moose



where i had the huevos con nopalitos (a.k.a. eggs with cactus). deeeeee-licious! (the coffee is quite nice too.)

after a brief stop at both the library (for worldchanging and i have chosen to stay and fight) and cookies for birds and bee cutters, we returned home. and then i took photos of these deer.





we also made a silicone mold for leff's entry in the seattle edible book festival. isn't this the grossest picture? (i assure you, it's silicone. pervert.)



here's a tutorial in case you'd like to make your own mold. it's a fast and inexpensive way to get a really detailed mold and i can't recommend it enough! (my sculpture prof, greely myatt, taught me the technique. thanks, greely!!)

i also started working on my edible book entry. here's part of it...4 cups of cake!!



i love baking in pyrex.

it took almost 2 hours for the cake to set so in my spare time between checking the oven, i knocked out a collage for scrapateria.



the theme was "japan". and, yes, i love grape pocky!!

today i have to do a lot of cleaning and packing for leff any my trip to oregon on monday. tomorrow!!! so if you don't hear from me for a few days, it's because i'm out of town without internet access. i promise you this though, i WILL have a ton of photos of goonies sites when i get back!!!