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• Font finder
• Breakfast cupcakes
• Summertime is popsicle time
• The other reason I haven’t been updating much
• Why I haven’t been updating much

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• CAKE – Sheep Go to Heaven
• The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra – Audry (Love keeps moving)
• CAKE – Ruby Sees All
• of Montreal – Du Og Meg
• Aphex Twin – Windowlicker
• Caesars – Boo Boo Goo Goo

more fuzz

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people i don't hate

• Caye Shoals
• Laughs, hugs, smiles and contented sighs
• lost liver
• no cash, no gas.
• skankage
• sunny crittenden
• sweet catastrophe
• the life pursuit

August 30, 2010
Font finder

So I’m generally not one for infographics (I find the trend extremely overplayed at this point). However, I printed this one out because I found the way to get to comic sans hilarious. I hung it in my office at work, and it’s garnered a lot of attention. We had a group of students come in who loved it and thought it was hilarious. The crowning achievement is that one of the creative directors now comes over to my desk to actually use it. So, person who designed this infographic: Thank you for causing at least one person in my office to not default to using Gotham or DIN. I am SO TIRED of seeing both of those fonts used on EVERY SINGLE piece of collateral we send out.

August 16, 2010
Breakfast cupcakes

Candied Bacon.

Okay, now that I have your attention…

I had an idea to make french toast cupcakes with bacon on them. A quick google search showed me that it had been done before, but that just makes me easier for me! I modified a recipe slightly, as it didn’t call for candied bacon. I’d been wanting to candy some bacon for a while.

Breakfast Cupcakes

recipe from Life is Better with Cake

French Toast Cake

1.5 sticks unsalted butter
1c sugar
1.5c cake flour
1.5tsp baking powder
.25tsp salt
.5c milk
1.5tsp vanilla
1tsp nutmeg
1tsp cinnamon
3 eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 375°, and paper the cupcake pan.

Whip egg whites on high until stiff peaks form. If your mixer only has one bowl, transfer these out to another bowl and then proceed.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy on high. While that’s beating, sift the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, and spices) together, and combine the wet ingredients (milk and vanilla) in a second bowl. Add each egg yolk one at a time, letting them beat until fully incorporated between additions.

You know the drill, drop the mixer to low and add 1/3 of the dry ingredients, raise to medium until fully incorporated. Then drop back to low and add 1/2 of the wet ingredients, raise to medium until fully incorporated. Repeat until all wet and dry ingredients are fully incorporated.

Slowly fold the egg whites into the batter in 1/3rds. Scoop into muffin pan and bake for 20-30 minutes.

While these bake, it’s time to prepare frosting.

Maple Frosting

2 sticks unsalted butter
3.75c confectioner’s sugar
2tsp heavy cream
.75tsp maple extract (Let it be known that i had no extract. I watered down some maple sugar and made a simple syrup with it, which replaced the cream and extract.)

Beat the butter and sugar on low until incorporated. Add the liquid ingredients and beat on high until light and fluffy. Store in the refrigerator as the cupcakes cool.

Candied Bacon

Bacon
Brown Sugar

Drop the temperature on the oven to 350°. Put the brown sugar on a plate and press one side of the bacon down into it. Place the bacon on a cookie sheet, sugar side up. Bake until the bacon is crispy and delicious, 10-25 minutes. Watch it very carefully, it can easily burn and that’s not nearly as tasty.

August 15, 2010
Summertime is popsicle time

When I first heard about King of Pops, I was inspired. Here is a man who was down on his luck and turned it into an opportunity to spread local, handmade frozen confectionery infused joy to the people of Atlanta. And what joy it is! My personal favorite is his Blueberry Lemongrass (also called Bluegrass), and I watch his twitter feed like a hawk for whenever it’s offered. Some of my all-time favorite flavor combinations are herbs/spices with fruit, especially berries.

I was inspired to put some blackberries to use. This is very much a recipe of whatever i had on hand, but it turned out super tasty! For those of you who can’t make it to the corner, this cream-based blackberry popsicle might just hit the spot.

Creamy Blackberry Cardamom Pops

yields 5-6 pops

1 box blackberries
scant 1/2c turbinado (raw) sugar
3 cardamom pods, crushed
scant 1/4c water
1/2 small carton heavy whipping cream
3/4c milk

Combine sugar, crushed cardamom pods and water into a small sauce pan. Bring to a simmer until slightly thickened, then set aside to cool.

Pulse blackberries in a food processor until it’s a homogenous purée. You don’t want chunks, but you also don’t want juice. Strain this mixture if the idea of seeds in your pops makes you uneasy, it will take a while to force this through a strainer, just be patient and keep pushing it.

Once cool, also strain the sugar mixture into the blackberry purée. Stir in the milk and cream. Pour (carefully! blackberry juice stains like a motherfucker) into popsicle molds and freeze 4-6 hours.

Bonus!

For those of you who prefer ice cream and don’t like cardamom:

Blackberry Icecream

yields a bit over a pint

2.5c blackberries
6tbs sugar
1.5c half and half
.5tsp lemon juice

Prepare your ice cream maker. Mine is the kitchenaid mixer attachment and requires freezing overnight. I almost always forget to do this. If you do not have an ice cream maker, you can approximate one by pouring the custard into a large bowl and moving it into the freezer, pulling it out every hour or so to stir until it’s completely frozen.

Purée the blackberries and strain into a medium-sized pot. Add the rest of the ingredients. Heat over low heat until it just begins to simmer. Do not let it boil. Remove from heat and cool completely.

Pour into your ice cream maker and churn until the mixture doubles in size and reaches soft serve consistency. Spoon into container and freeze.

August 12, 2010
The other reason I haven’t been updating much

As some as you might know, for the past year or so i’ve been up to my tits in wedding work. As in, i’m getting married and my designerly pride will not allow me to hire vendors. For anything.

I have written copy for, designed, printed and assembled all of the printed collateral (save the dates, full invitation suite with crazy information booklet, programs, and crazy pop up thank you cards.)

This is pretty expected, aside from the fact that I rented a letterpress to print them. I had the plates fabricated and sent to me and then they were printed one at a time on a manual feed vandercook. I’d like to say that I cranked them all through myself, but tim ended up doing much of the grunt work.

I also decided to sculpt a cake topper, and to source some felt and cut, embroider, and assemble all my own flowers. This has been a monumental undertaking. It took months just to pantone match the felt, which pushed the project back way farther than I wanted it to be. Plus, just embroidering a single flower takes about half an hour. I burned through a lot of them during shark week, but now my attention is more scattered and it’s hard to get these last 60 or so done.

My attention is more scattered because I’ve received some free advertising from facebook for my website. I’d like to make use of this free advertising, but need to finish the site to be able to do it. I have until August 30th to finish fleshing out the site and redeem the coupon, which is also when i want to be done with wedding crap. There’s some serious time management issues that are going on right now. I’m so close to finishing the flowers that I want to just knock them out and be able to focus solely on the site, but the site has MUCH farther to go and I feel like I need to work on it more because of that.

As an aside, all of the time spent letterpressing lately has cemented in my mind that starting this stationery company is the right thing to do. I love it. There’s this sensual quality of letterpress that you don’t get with any other type of printing. I feel dirty talking to people about it, because the entire process is so intimate and tactile. Feeling the depth and smoothness of the impression on this thick cotton paper that’s velvety soft is something that gives me chills. The slight shadow on the ink from the impression is gorgeous. Hell, I even love the smell of the ink and type wash. This is what I need to do. If not for the rest of my life, at least right now. I grow weary of pushing pixels around all day and then receiving a finished product in the mail. I miss that satisfaction of being able to follow through the process and bring my designs into being with my own hands.

July 22, 2010
Why I haven’t been updating much

On May 12th, my grandfather lost a 10 year battle with severe emphysema. His death has taken the wind out of my sails in a lot of respects.

Eventhough it was inevitable, I still feel as though he was ripped from my grasp. I can only imagine how my mother feels. I’m 3 hours away, and she still lives in the now empty house we and my grandparents called home for 13 years.

My grandfather really stepped up to the plate when my parents divorced and became my father as well. He was an amazing man and a great role model. He was honest, steadfast, and full of depression-era frugality and wisdom that was an endless source of entertainment.

My grandpa was the oldest born into a poor oklahoman family in the midst of the depression. He used to tell this story about how he used to lure their neighbor’s chickens into their yard with a trail of corn, so grandpa could kill them and the family could eat.

When he was 17, he lied about his age to get into the military because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him anymore. He wanted nothing more than to be a pilot, but a tragic drunk driving accident at the hands of his father left him with a caved in chest and missing half a lung. The airforce wouldn’t make him a pilot.

However, he was stationed peacekeeping in japan in the early 50s. He always talked about how much fun it was. He repeatedly told me the only japanese words he learned were “beer” and “women”. He had a photo album of his time in japan, that my grandmother made him hide because it was just him with tons and tons of different ladies.

Alcoholism ran in his family, and until my grandfather gave up booze when my mom was little, he got into all sorts of hijinks. My favorite story was after he (and most of his family) had moved to california. My grandpa was an ambulance driver in southern cali when he and my grandma met. Unable to put down the bottle, he would often drive the ambulance drunk. Once he circled the hospital 5 times with someone in the back because he was so drunk he forgot where he was/how to get into the hospital.

My grandparents met because grandpa’s hospital was near my grandmother’s house. My grandmother’s two sisters were walking home, saw my grandpa and his partner and thought they were unbeleivably hot, so they drug my grandma out to see. My grandma started actively pursuing my grandpa, but he wasn’t interested. She waited through several of his girlfriends before he gave her a chance. 

After they were married, when my grandmother was pregnant with my mom, my grandpa was sent to weekend jail for his massive amount of parking tickets. He went one weekend and immediately had his job transfer him to another plant outside the state to avoid serving the 2 years of weekend jail he had left. He was transferred to southern georgia, and he and my grandma packed up and drove to georgia in the middle of the summer, in a car with no air conditioning. Grandpa said that they had a little bucket with dry ice that hung in the window for a/c. When they were driving through texas, they were literally the last car on a stretch of highway. After they crossed this barrier, the road was literally blow up behind them.

They settled in a small town, raised their children (and some of their grandchildren), and busied themselves with more mundane things. I’ll always remember my grandmother bent over her sewing machine or painting and the quiet times I had with my grandfather at 3am sharing a cup of coffee, right before I went to bed and right after he woke up.
 
<3

May 22, 2010
Where I grew up

My family moved to the country when I was 13. Not that we really lived in the city before that, we lived just barely inside the city limits of a small town in a quaint little subdivision that was stuck in the mid-60s. The neighborhood started going downhill when all of the original owners of the houses began dying, so we moved before the property value dropped.

The plot of land my family moved onto isn’t reachable without driving down at least a mile of dirt road. Dirt roads in south Georgia are iffy things. They’re either primarily sand or clay. Driving on sand is treacherous when it’s dry because there are pockets of deep sand you lose traction in and when it’s wet, it tends to just wash away. When the sand washes away, the county comes out and fixes the ruts in the road with clay. Driving on wet clay is treacherous because it’s like driving on ice. Basically, you’re screwed either way. When I drive smart car down there, the traction and stability control just goes crazy.

Although I was very put out about having to move 30 miles away from all of my friends to the middle of nowhere during the beginning of my adolescence, coming back to visit now I can appreciate the tranquility. I’ve been touched with it now, and deep inside me I’ll always carry a yearning for the smell of wet, green growth and the absolute silence you can only find down there.

This is the trip from the house down there to the nearest paved road. From that paved road, it’s an additional 10 minute drive to get to the nearest town (which borders on being a ghost town). To the nearest town with any stores, it’s 30 minutes. To the nearest proper city? 2 hours.

May 2, 2010
Roosevelt’s new dignified home

I’ve mostly finished Roosevelt’s Mario themed turtle playground. I’d like to put some plants in there, but he eats them pretty much immediately. He’s a pretty voracious turtle.

This is his basking platform, which he rarely ever uses if we’re home. He tends to only bask if we’re not here.

The platforms are made from plexiglass that I cut down to size, covered in the reptile carpet made from recycled plastic which is held on with the hard part of velcro. The platforms are suspended by small suction cups that are shoved through holes drilled in the sides of the platforms. This solution will need to be revisted when he gets a bit bigger.

The reptile carpet is doing really well being partially submerged in the water. It wicks water up, as you can see in the picture, but it’s pretty good about not getting moldy and gross.

The pipes were standard pipes from the home depot. They’re painted with metallic jasmine model paint. The paint is a bit streaky because I didn’t quite have enough. They will be repainted and clear coated at a later date. The short pipe is holding a bubble ring, the tall pipe is holding the heating element. The back of the tall pipe has a couple dozen hold drilled in it that you can barely see in the 2nd picture for water circulation. Roosevelt seems to prefer to hang out on this platform.

That secondary platform obscures the in-tank filter. Roosevelt’s favorite place to hide is to burrow underneath the filter, which scares the crap out of me because i’m scared he’s going to get stuck.

All of the art was pieced together from screen caps of the new super mario bros wii. The background was pieced together from 9 or 10 different screencaps from various worlds. All of the character art was recreated in illustrator. I have access to a vinyl printer/cutter at work, which made quick work of cutting all of the pieces out.

I don’t believe Roosevelt appreciates the mario themed home, but he does seem to like the bubble pipe. All is not lost.

things to do in the future:

• add plants that won’t be eaten in 5 minutes
• automatic feeder camouflaged as a question mark block
• repaint the pipes
• find a better solution to hold up the platforms

April 20, 2010
touristy things

In early March, 2/3s of my lovely future in-laws came down for a visit for a week. It was nice getting to show them around Atlanta and do tons of touristy stuff. And eat out for a solid week. My waistline wasn’t too happy about that.

Both the fiance and I had to work (me moreso than him), so I only got to really spend time with them on the weekend. We visited the new world of coke, which is INFINITELY better than the old world of coke; no wood paneling in sight!

Once you enter this world of coke, you get to sit through a mildly entertaining 10 minute commercial/movie that’s quite possibly one of the most bizarre wastes of money i have ever seen. The entire audience sat there with total “wtf??” faces after it was over. Then the screen lifts up and you walk into an atrium full of natural light. It’s really a beautiful space.

After the kitschy old advertising paraphenalia, you walk through a functioning bottling plant that’s running at a reduced speed. After you walk through the tasting room, you actually pick up bottles that were bottled at that plant. It’s pretty cute.

This is the crazy packaging robot that puts empty bottles onto the conveyor and takes full bottles off.

After exhausting the world of coke (which takes a while. I could sit near the Europe kiosk and watch people drink Beverly all day), we headed over to the aquarium.

I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned the fact that my future sister-in-law is TERRIFIED of alligators. I can’t wait until my aunt wins in her quest to bring my in-laws down to south Georgia and she loses her shit because I basically grew up in a swamp.

And here is an otter basically using another otter as toilet paper:

After future Mom #2 and sister left, fiance and I decided to use up the rest of their city passes and visit the High and the zoo. The High was really interesting because there was an exhibit on John Portman (the guy who designed Peachtree Center).

Backstory: A few years ago, I was bumming around Sea Island on my way to St. Simons and saw this crazy house. I thought for sure that it was some sort of private resort based on how… utterly insane the pool area was. I snuck onto the beach behind the house to get a better look.

Well, it turns out that this crazy house is actually John Portman’s second home, Entelechy II. I read that he had a residence on Sea Island and immediately thought “I wonder if that’s the crazy house??” and I turned the corner, revealing the scale model of none other.

After the High, we took in the zoo. It was… zoo-like. Stinky and full of animals.

Adorable elephant:

When I was in middle school, I played flute in band (and was first chair for the longest time). At one of the concerts we did, we played a song called “The Dragons of Kimodo”. Whenever I see Kimodo dragons, I hear that song in my head now.

You probably don’t want to watch this. This is a snapping turtle during feeding time.

April 8, 2010
Coming up for air

It’s been a crazy couple of months.

Work picked up pretty significantly. I’ve been scrambling with my freelance clients and at my day job. Just when it started slowing down, I got a call that my aunt died. This just pushed me behind again. I feel like I’m clawing my way to the surface just often enough to not drown.

Here are some funny things that have happened at my day job in the past month or so:

All in all, the day job hasn’t been too bad. We’re instituting a new time keeping system, which is causing a lot of grumbles in the background, but I don’t mind it… and I’ve been killing bitches design-wise. I recently landed the company a pretty major web design job that I’m pretty proud of.

I’ve also finally landed the creative director title with my largest freelance client, which was a long time coming. We just started working with some very important people over in europe that I’m pretty excited about. I feel better about where I am professionally than I have in a long time.

March 10, 2010
more turtley love

Roosevelt has been doing really well. We bought him some plants to munch on a little while ago, and munch he did! Apparently it’s pretty rare for hatchling sliders to want to eat plants, they’re primarily carnivorous at first. He definitely has a taste for the greenery, which is something I certainly don’t have.

Speaking of eating, Roosevelt is ferocious when going after his pellets. It’s adorable!

I’m still working on his mario themed home, but it’s nearing completion. All of the pipes are painted and installed, so are the platforms. I just need to finish adhering the static clings and get some new plants. I’ve posted some in-progress pics on twitter, but i’m waiting to get good pictures before I post anything here. It’ll have to be quick, because he’s capable of demolishing plants quick like ninja.

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