Weekend Away

Recipe for Perfect Martha’s Vineyard Evening:

1. Kayak 40 minutes to the next town over and pull your boat up on some nice person’s backyard/ handy beach.

2.  Take the short cut to the Menemsha Fish Market.

3.  Eat your newly purchased chowder and raw clams on the pier out back, legs swinging, overlooking the fishermen hauling in lobster.

4.  Carefully pack your fish for dinner into the kayak.  Plastic bags and ice recommended.

5. Kayak home as the wind picks up.

6. Steam up some corn on the cob, set the table, light some candles, sear the tuna.

7.  Tuck in.

8.  Thank your lucky stars you have an aunt who happily welcomes visitors.

Wedding Fun

This past July, on the only sunny weekend, Austin, my friend (since nursery school!) was married in her parents’ beautiful backyard overlooking the water. 

I made a few items for the event and I’m really happy with how they came out. 

Wedding programs waiting to be cut:

Printed Pablo Neruda poem read in Spanish by Austin followed by the English translation by Oliver.

Place cards made from vintage National Geographic Maps:

Can you tell I’m a little obsessed with my round-corner-punch?  

Congratulations Austin and Oliver!

Moleskine Group week 1

I’ve been doing a “Moleskine exchange group” since July and I keep forgetting to share my drawings. It’s been super fun to do– the book has 60 accordion pages, there are ten of us, so we each draw on 6 pages and then pass it on to the next person. Sort of like Exquisite Corpse. Or a chain letter?
Anyhow I started off my moleskine with this:

My (2nd?) cousin had just been born and everyone was over-the-moon thrilled. I was in Vermont with my family when she arrived.  The coyotes were howling that night.  

Hence the baby and the coyotes.  

Its been challenging to just draw.  Right on the page.  No scanning, no rearranging, no computers.  Not much planning.  Coloring with whatever I feel like.  It feels like a good stretch.  

There are more images on Flickr if you’re interested.

Success!

I mentioned yesterday our food for the wedding was a success.  

 Somehow it all went from this:

to this:

We can’t take all the credit.  Actually the wonderful caterer Tamara, of The Sunday Night Dinner, deserves a good deal of it!  She took our food shoved into tupperware containers, (and food from lots of other people) and turned it all into that magical buffet you see up there.  Not to mention all the delicious food she prepared, the wonderful bar tender, and her assistant (Melissa, I think her name was?)  They all worked so hard, and everything tasted and looked incredible. If you’re in the New York area and have an event coming up, I know everyone there that night would recommend them.

Wedding Wrap Up

We’re back in Providence, still recovering from the wedding weekend of fun.   Gorgeous weather! Lots of dancing! Our food was a success! But most importantly… our friends got married!

 And it was completely beautiful and wonderful. 

Congratulations you two!

Photo by by Nishat

Preparing a meal for a gaggle of guests

We’re so excited!  This weekend our friends are getting married and we’re preparing some of the food!  Which means cooking for about 80.  I think about 120 people are actually attending, but as a bunch of people are participating in the food portion of the night, plus a caterer, we’re only worrying about 80 portions. Only.  Incredibly, or perhaps just ignorantly, we are actually not worried at all.   Our menu is:

• Roasted Lamb with Minted Yogurt, and Spicy Mixed Fruit Chutney
• Three Rice Salad, with jicama, cranberries, cabbage and parsley.  

We got everything, excluding the lamb, yesterday.  And I did a bunch of the chopping last night.  Tonight we’ll pick up the lamb legs, marinate them and make the chutney.  Tomorrow we’ll roast (or grill, weather permitting,) the lamb, and make the rice salad.  Friday we drive it all to Brooklyn, add the finishing touches and then chow down that evening.  Whoo!

Regardless of the food, its going to be such a lovely wedding.  I really cannot wait!

Welcome back.

There’s been a lot going on around here, so there’s lots to talk about. Like birthdays! and presents that were made. New dresses, ladies trip to New York, rowing in the rain, lunch with dear girlfriends from forever ago, a lovely dinner, taxes… and having a big dog visitor.

We got to dog sit for our friends for a few days. Samson is a wonderful old-ish German Shepherd. So laid back and sweet. We went on lumbering walks through the neighborhood. We drove around with him and laughed at how exciting the car ride was. We told him to lie down in his bed and… he did! The mister and I looked at each other in shock as it occurred to us that dogs are not cats. How lovely!

He was so calm the kitties decided he was mostly alright.

Our idyllic dog time ended with our ninety pound visitor napping in bed with the mister.  

An occurrence, only hours earlier, we couldn’t imagine happening.  But Samson was happy to convince us otherwise.

oh look at that little muffin!

Konichiwa (aka Sammy’s in Japan!)

 

image from Sweet Grass productions

My little brother, Sam, touched down in Hokkaido, Japan two nights ago.  He’s there to work with friends and their company, SweetGrass Productions, on a snowboarding film sponsored by Patagonia.  Apparently Sweet Grass has been there for months and their teaser looks amazing:

 

In other, pales-in-contrast, traveling news, I’m headed to Brooklyn for my friend Lila’s birthday this weekend.  Should be good times…

All The Pretty Horses

On Saturday, Jane took me and her dog for a walk to see the brand new baby horses around the corner from her house.  They had the longest legs…

They were just like human kids– running and jumping, staying close and generally annoying their moms, until they abruptly fell asleep.  

Its kind of crazy they’re basically born walking.  Apparently those little guys were only a few days old.  

Everybody was nice and furry.  

And curious about their visitors.  

We should have brought apples.

SXSW Excitement! and a glimpse of the shop…

The Mister is in Austin, TX at SXSW. About a year ago, he and his design partner  created the site Eric Piasecki: StockSearch.

And now its a finalist in 12th Annual SXSW Interactive Web Awards Presented by Adobe!  The site is gorgeous and I am beyond thrilled and proud of him.  Yay!  What a lucky duck: SXSW two years in a row!

In other exciting news:

It has been FOREVER since I sold anything in my poor little Etsy shop. But here’s a preview of the drawings I’ve been working on that will be for sale soon.

 So far I’m doing a bear series, a reindeer, and I think after visiting some colts with Jane yesterday, I’ll have to do a baby horse series as well. They’re all hand-drawn in ink over collaged vintage paper.