Rant/Rave: Vanity Plates

So apparently, it is quite cheap to get a vanity plate in NC.  As a result the state has more of them then I've ever seen, including in Cali I think.

Most of the time they are silly and mean nothing to me.  But, recently I saw two amazing ones:

and,

So good. I'm glad some people take the time to be awesome.

xoxo

out and about last week

There was some tasty food (and drink) recently.

We had a well timed ladies happy hour where the bartender was being trained...aka we received many of his testers; someone has to make the sacrifice after all.

It was an unproductive night to say the least thanks to my favorite local bar, The Standard.

Evan, Yuna, and I had a lovely long lunch at Sandwhich. I had the outrageous BLT with Avocado and Roasted Jalapenos. So yummy.

And then, I ended my week with Jonathan at Calavera. An empanada and tequila bar. Seriously? I might be in love with this place.  I had a pineapple coconut margarita and as for empanadas, we had: a jerk chicken and mango salsa, habanero pork and corn, black bean and sweet potato, poblano, and of course, two nutella and banana fried pies for dessert.  So frigging good. 

Did I mention I was sitting outside in the lovely sun for all of these festivities? Oh yes, spring is good.

xoxo

food lately: greens

Well I'm pretty sure spring is in full swing in NC, so I've been phasing out of my winter cravings in exchange for delicious greens and things.

Salad with egg, tomato, cucumber, and maple-dijon vinaigrette: 

Greek salad with Feta, tomato, cucumber, olives, falafel, and tzatziki dressing

And finally - caprese salad with pesto

Eat your veggies!

xoxo

apparently i eat a lot of it

Pizza that is. Here were two from one dough recipe: 

Oil base for both -

Then Goat Cheese, Jalapenos, and Pineapple for one -

 

And Ricotta, Pesto, Broccoli, and Sun-dried Tomatoes for the other -

Yummy in my tummy:

You can never have too much pizza. 

xoxo

it's good fat...

avocado that is. and delicious too. I had seen this a while back and then Casey reminded me how amazing an egg cooked in avocado sounded, so I made it. 

I just sliced off the bottoms, left the skin on, and put the halves in a skillet.

And then I plopped two eggs into the holes.

I had a small avocado and large eggs so some of the whites fell out. 

Conveniently I had some biscuits in the freezer and some beans and corn stir fry in the fridge to go on the bottom. 

Yeah, we were right, friggin' delicious.

xoxo

it's madness i say

march madness that is. and for a girl in nc that means bracket time.  we've got a little group together to see which random strategy will win out...clearly "my favorite teams" should be a slam dunk! ha!

but really, let us not lose sight of the important things in life: food

Ashbash showed this to me and I just about died: The Ultimate Southern Food Bracket from Garden and Gun.  I'm so excited about this I can't even handle it. Seriously, so many of my favorite things are on this, it makes these decisions so difficult. And, it's really making me hungry.

But, we have to make decisions in life so, my final four:

cornbread, shrimp & grits, deviled eggs, and crawfish boil.  

Game time!

xoxo

bow ties for all

It started as a semi-joke.  

Jonathan asked for a bow tie with his face on it. To teach in of course. Yeah. 

So when I told him I was seriously making him a bow tie, he changed his tune and requested a plaid.

He picked a nice blue-green fabric but it just so happened I had some left over denim from our jort making experience, so I decided to take on two bow ties. hmm...

I used the pattern from lovely Martha. 

I printed and cut out the pattern. (Pretty simple so far)

And then applied some interfacing to the plaid fabric. 

Cut out the pattern from the fabric.

I don't have a mini rotary cutter so I did the curves with scissors. 

 

Looking good so far, right?

Repeat with plaid.

 

Then the sewing started. I deviated from the instructions, because I wasn't quite sure how they expected me to pull the whole bow tie through a little slit.  

So I sewed the two sides together before joining the two ends. This worked fine. 

 

Flipped inside out:

And then poorly stitched the ends together. It looks a little funky but hey, it works.

Turns out, I'm awesome at tying a bow tie,

on myself. 

xoxo

arkansassy, per the usu

So, speaking of kid's birthdays, Jake turned 6 this year! Well sort of. 

Jake's birthday is February 29th, yeah he's one of those.  

But it means he got a real birthday this year! 

Which also means I of course had to make a trip down to the AR for a little celebrating.

The party was fabulous of course, this kid's party was cowboy themed however, still with a pinata and actually the same temporary dinosaur tattoos... 

Other things happened on this trip.  Like a trip to the Garden Ridge where we saw absolutely ridiculous things like these high heel shoe chairs:

and of course, who doesn't want some armor in their home?

But really, more importantly there was food. Many trips to The Sonic, greek, bbq, and lots of breakfast.

BBQ from the best - Whole Hog: 

Oh and Mema sent me home with a whole bunch of homemade chocolate candies. 

Be jealous.

Besides being sick for most of the trip it was a solid time in arkansassy, per usual.  

xoxo

(kid's) party time

Ashley and Casey have February birthdays, which of course calls for a joint party.  Ashley was inspired to have a good old fashioned kid's party.  Conveniently, Ashley and Casey's ages each add up to 7 this year. What? Casey turned 25, 2+5=7 so it was a seven year old's birthday party. 

Dinosaur themed of course. 

So precious right?

We played games, like pin the bow tie on the t-rex, and there was a pinata too. 

And of course, there was cake.  Ashley made it and wanted something especially awesome.  So she made a rainbow cake!

And it was delicious. 

Good times team.

xoxo

scarf season, sort of.

Well, winter was certainly a bust this year, at least in North Carolina. But I think we all know I'm quite okay with this.  

It does however mean that I have not been wearing scarves as frequently, which is a shame. 

But that hasn't stopped me from making more for future use...

I decided on an infinity scarf, because, well, I'm partial to them.  I had some nice soft brown and picked up a chunky cream-colored yarn to go along, they both were sized for my US 10.5 needles. 

It's very simple, just a good ol' basic stitch through the whole brown yarn and then I added in the cream (which was a smaller roll). I cast off the end and then sewed the ends together, by hand. 

Before I did though, I twisted one end so I would actually have a mobius scarf as Casey thought this would be awesome (and it is).

The final product ready for one loop or two:

 

Now, I just need some weather worth wearing it in.

xoxo

we need some stinking patches

So, I have this sweater. 

A great cardigan but it's seen better days and now has a good size hole at one of the elbows. 

What was I to do? 

Make elbow patches of course! And not just any patches, black suede heart patches. 

I just picked up a small piece of suede from the craft store and cut it into two hearts.

After deciding where to place them (so they were proper elbow patches and covered the hole) I realized I was going to have some trouble sewing the hearts on. 

I needed to use the machine since the suede is so thick, but i couldn't get the sleeve onto the machine with enough mobility. 

So I cut a slit in the arm sleeve and sewed the hearts right on and then the seam back up.

 

Ta-da! 

Hole sweater is an elbow patch sweater now. check plus.

xoxo