Friday Favorites, vol. 32

1. knitting
While not quite cold enough to wear my knitted items, it's not too soon to curl up and knit something gorgeous. Nothing fancy. Mainly just different types of scarves and beanies for Nathan using this remarkably easy pattern.







2. carousels





3. ice cubes tinkling in a glass







BONUS: these ice cube trays

4. billie holiday







5. mailboxes








BONUS: handwritten letters. especially...

Behind the scenes of a photo shoot.

Our lovely friends Kendi and Bryan were in town a couple weeks ago. (They were also in town this past weekend, but I'm talking about the time before that.) Fantastic, independent designer, Megan Nielsen, had asked Bryan to shoot her fall lookbook, and asked Kendi to style and model her pieces. Bryan picked a really beautiful, secluded spot for the shoot. I tagged along so I could assist them with wardrobe and props, scare big ugly birds away (which I did well), navigate us to the location (which I DIDN'T do well), anything to help. I also brought my little D90 (which I think really needs a name... what about Stella? It just came to me. Or maybe Clementine? Hmmm.)

I'd like to share a few of the shots from my camera... and then will you please help me name her on the right?









Bryan and Kendi are not only wonderful friends, they are ridiculously talented. I mean RIDICULOUSLY talented, you guys. My hubs and I are constantly inspired by their art and their work. Go see for yourself!

Serendipitous sangria

We had a fabulous weekend-- with some lovely friends, yummy food and a little bit of serendipity. It started on Thursday when we accidentally bought this box of wine from Target. We meant to buy the cab-shiraz blend, but mistakingly bought this:


As you can see, it says "red table wine." It was pretty much terrible.

You might be thinking, wait-- didn't you join the Zagat wine club? Yes-- we totally did. But the brilliant thing about wine in a box is that you can have just one glass with dinner without having to polish off the whole bottle--better for the diet, better for building our lil wine collection. Wine in a box also keeps remarkably well-- something about the air-suction system (a technical term).

So, Nathan had the spectacular idea to make the crappy, overly-sweet red table wine into lovely sangria!
Here's what we (Nathan) did:
1. Put all the wine into a large container.

2. For each bottle, 3 tbl of sugar, 1/8 cup triple sec and 1/8 cup amaretto (or dark rum or brandy). Mix well!





3. Slice up lots of yummy fruit-- including strawberries, citrus fruit (we used oranges and lemons), peaches/nectarines and plums. The plums are very important.






4. Let it sit in the fridge for about 24 hours. Remove the fruit. Pour over ice to fill 3/4 of a glass. Add a bit of lime juice and top with club soda to make it bubbly. Delish!



P.S. This was another great chance for me to practice with a 55mm prime lens. I think I'm in love.

Monday Dose of Cuteness, vol. 14

For a while, Nathan and I went through this phase where we watched America's Funniest Home Videos (which I think is now called America's Funniest Videos? Eh.) For the record, this phase took place in the last five years-- not in the late eighties.

The show is still pretty hilarious, except for all the painful videos, of course. Those aren't funny. They're just painful. (With the rare exception of videos like this, which are both painful AND funny.)

This one is not painful. It's funny and also, it's really, really cute.