Flying Zombies!

"They’re coming!! Get ready to meet Mike and Steve, two best friends who are trying to find a decent place to eat durring the zombie apocalypse,  January 17 the fun kicks off in Flying Zombies #1. It’s going to be a fun ride."
www.flyingzombies.com

My friend's webcomic, Flying Zombies, was officially launched yesterday after an awesome release party on Saturday with fun door prizes, a birthday cake for Benjamin Franklin, tacos, and prom style photos with Randy Rambo. Take a look at it. Bookmark it. Tell your friends all about it. It's good stuff.

Daily Doodle - 4

My bestie, Alex, is starting her first day at her 3rd job today, which just happens to be in my office. Unfortunately, I won't be there today or tomorrow because I'll be taking an insurance prelicensing course at the time. She should find this note on her desk via post-it note in a few hours. Enjoy, Alex! :)

Bath Balls a la Martha Stewart

This is a bit late, but still worth posting. For Christmas, I made the mistake awesome decision to have a DIY Christmas. Just about every gift given by yours truly was handmade-ish (handcrafted?) in my very own apartment. But right now, I'm just going to post about the bath balls and packaging that I made for the ladies in my family. I used this bath snowball tutorial from Martha Stewart's website. A word of warning, though, only do this when you have enough time to try again and definitely wait longer than 24 hours to remove the remaining half from the bath ball. The first time I attempted these, I only let them sit overnight and trying to reshape them is a huge pain, trust me. A trick that I learned (and could not find online) after breaking many of these in half for removing the second half of the mold is to lightly tap the plastic mold, while holding it upside down in your hand, and then carefully twist the mold off of the bath ball. For these, I used blue food coloring with lavender essential oils and orange food coloring with pomegranate and vanilla essential oils. I used large mason jars, colorful tissue paper, and ribbon for the container. Then, instead of wrapping, I wanted the recipients to be able to reuse the packaging, so I painted each person's initials on blank tote bags, sewed on a flower, and painted their names on Christmas ornaments instead of using tags. 

Luckily, I have an awesome family who loved (or at least pretended to love =P) their handmade goodies. I've heard horror stories of people who have made wonderful handmade gifts (which, as I have learned, typically cost more than store bought gifts and take much planning and hard work) only to be told things like "We understand, everyone is having money problems right now. It's the thought that counts." I can't imagine telling someone something like that. Even that hideous handmade sweater from your granny with the hot air balloons painted on with puffy fabric paint. Just smile, say "thank you" with enthusiasm, and shove it to the back of your closet in case you ever have to prove that you liked it enough to keep it. 

Daily Doodle - 3

For Alex and her love of octopi.

I just started a new sketchbook since my other one has become my jewelry sketchbook. This is the first page. It makes me smile.

Now I'm off to do some shopping for my costume for Comic Con. Wooo!

Daily Doodle - 2

This is how light posts in New Orleans start to look after a few drinks...

Daily Doodle - 1

Okay, so I'm going to try to do a doodle a day, and they're probably going to be on post-it notes, minus the yellow background because of a b&w scanner. Starting..... now.

Have I mentioned my unhealthy fascination with anglerfish??

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Boris and Natasha!

Simple, but Delicious, Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my biology study group last week and they seemed to be a big hit. I'll admit, I used box mixes for both, but doctored them both up a bit. I made the Chocolate Covered Cherry cake from The Cake Mix Doctor as cupcakes (Ignore what's on the back of the box and mix together: chocolate cake box mix, 2 eggs, and a can of cherry pie filling), but made a standard vanilla icing. In the spirit of the holidays, I thought about making some eggnog cupcakes that I read about on Baking Bites, but thought that might be eggnog overload. I've been on a red velvet kick, so I used a red velvet box mix (with an extra teaspoon of almond extract - love!) and experimented with different eggnog icing recipes with some Pennsylvania Dutch until I finally came up with something I liked. The red velvet eggnog cupcakes went first, but everyone who had the chocolate covered cherry cupcakes said they were the best. I loved them both ;)

Eggnog Icing
-1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
-1 1/2 c powdered sugar
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
-1/4 tsp almond extract
-Pinch ground cinnamon
-Pinch kosher salt
-1/4 c Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Soften butter in a mixing bowl. Using a hand mixer, gradually mix in the powdered sugar. Mix in remaining ingredients until well blended and fluffy.

After decorating your cupcakes with the eggnog icing, garnish them with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Things I'm Thankful for:

- My awesome family*
- My dependable friends
- My needy affectionate dogs
- The occasional afternoon nap
- Super sweet lindstrom pliers that are smooth like butter
- Good conversation, accompanied by good whiskey
- Sunday brunches

*My family spent the Thanksgiving holiday at my cousin's house. Aside from the obvious awesomeness that is Thanksgiving dinner, this family get-together was especially great because I was able to spend quality time with my cousin and his family, who I don't see on a regular basis since they moved. We took advantage of this time by trading skills. I went over color theory with him and his two beautiful and incredibly bright children as we made color wheels and he taught me how to weld.

These are the color wheels that we made. I'm going to try to put together a smaller scale template that you can download and print on cardstock to make your own color wheels. I also included areas to practice mixing complimentary colors and shading. We had lots of fun and I'm looking forward to doing some actual painting with them next time.

Here I am in some fashionable welding garb with my cousin. He welds to make parts for his jeep and has made some things around his house, like a lamp made from a wrought iron fence. Apparently I have a steady hand, which I learned is needed for pretty and consistent lines. We also played with a plasma cutter - awesome!

The Tick and Arthur vs. Halloween

  Our Mission: To protect New Orleans (The City) from tourists, gutterpunks, and other random villains while sipping whiskey. Evildoers, you face... The Tick (and Arthur!).

Alex and I made the majority of our costumes for Halloween this year. Alex did all of the fancy sewing with our skirts and bags. Like every other time we have made our costumes, we were working on them up until last minute. Alex's sewing machine malfunctioned a couple days before, causing some panic and fear of hand-sewing. Luckily, it was fixed in time and I made our antennae the day before using headbands with attached springs, cardstock, masking tape, and spray paint. Every Halloween and Mardi Gras, we swear we'll start on our costumes super early next time. It never fails. We end up super gluing/sewing/spray painting SOMETHING together as we're walking out the door to catch the streetcar to the French Quarter.

We were so surprised and excited over how many people actually recognized who we were (moreso than when we dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Mardi Gras this year). So, yeah, here are some pictures from Halloween night: