Happy 2009!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I was absent from blogland as I was working on keeping my booth stocked at the Blue Genie Art Bazaar, and spending time with the fam. There were a lot of really fantastic artists at Blue Genie this year, and despite the current economy, sales were strong. Rose & Duke sold a decent amount of items, but I was expecting to sell way more and so now I have a lot of stock to fill my site and some local shops. That is what I will be spending the next few weeks doing; photographing items, uploading them, and taking samples around. I am super bad about updating my webshop, and my 2009 resolution is to make time to keep it current.

In crafty news, I had a fun time doing an ornament swap with some great bloggers. It was called the "Los Locos Calicos" swap, and I'll post a link to the flickr group as soon as more folks have uploaded their photos (hint hint ladies). I received the cutest ever Christmas bunny pom pom ornament from Frizz. It came inside a hand-pained wooden box which I now keep my barrettes in. I'm linking you to her photos of the critter, because she took really great ones. I ended up sending out two ornaments. The one that I made for the swap is this one:
I hand embroidered sliver thread onto blue wool felt . It wasn't that easy to remove the stabilizer, let me tell you.

I ended up making a batch of these birdie and vintage millinery flower ornaments. I had a box of vintage wooden thread spools in a drawer and the inspiration just hit me. I ended up including one in the swap.

Sorry for the overexposed photo. My other 2009 resolution is to take better photos. I end up rushing a lot and the results are not always pretty.

Guess what awesome thing happened chez Dunlap? Our ruby grapefruit tree gave us the sweetest grapefruit ever! A hail storm knocked off all but one, and here she is:


We also had a Christmas visit from my mother, and she and Harlan made a gingerbread house together:
Please note the Playmobil midevil guards out front. Somebody put them there to ensure that no one else tried to eat the house. This, after receiving the Jen Corace Illustrated Hansel and Gretel from Sanata. It's the loveliest rendition of the story I have ever read.

Greetings earthlings

Yes, it has been a long time since I posted an entry here. The explanation for my absence is that we took a long vacation back to NYC for Christmas and then down to Florida for Harlan to meet my 95 year old grandparents.

Since our return I have made a new year's resolution to get my time management under control, and to prioritize what I spend my non-Harlan time doing. This blog has been bumped down a notch, along with reading my favorite blogs, because right now I am under a deadline for the launching of the new Rose & Duke site and so I'm spending whatever time I have working on samples of the 2008 designs to photograph. I also made it a new year's resolution to make more time to work on personal craft projects for my home and my family. It seems like I used to spend a ton of free time making cute outfits for Harlan and other nifty creations, but sadly that free time got all eaten up by work obligations, and suddenly what began as a fun way to make money without leaving the house became a very full time job. I am going to try and find balance this year my friends.

Without further ado I present the highlights of the past month:
Harlan enjoyed opening a ton of Christmas gifts at his grandma "Mimi's" apartment. It was so bittersweet to be home (Joe wonders how long it will be until we call Texas "home") and see all our family and friends. We miss everyone a lot but at the same time our peers with toddlers are stressing about finding places to live where a second child could fit, and getting their toddlers into pre-school. As many of you may know the pre-school scene in NYC is super competitive and expensive. These are two adjectives I'm not so thrilled with, and our trip basically reaffirmed that we made the right move to Austin.
Our trip to Flordia was ironically freezing cold. The local news seemed to have around the clock coverage of the local citrus growers and how they were trying to salvage their crops. Harlan enjoyed meeting his great grandparents, but let's just say they had forgotten how two year olds act and seemed to think that I had let a wild gorilla loose in their condo. Above is a photo of a house that had a crocheted gaslight cap. I really wanted to get up on the lawn and get a close up shot for the blog, but I was too chicken to get out of the car with my camera. There were a LOT of crocheted gaslight caps, all in green, white, and red for the holiday season (or because everyone in Florida is Italian, but I tend to think the holidays had more to do with it).
This photos was taken at a recent turkey fry potluck party that my friends Kevin and Jenifer hosted at their home here in Austin. The Jackalope that Harlan is posing on was made by Kevin at his amazing business Blue Genie Art. By the way, if you have never tasted a deep-fried turkey before you are seriously missing out. I went to the party thinking it would taste just like turkey except with a fried skin on the outside. Instead it turns out that frying a turkey seals in all the juices and flavors that end up pouring out of the meat when you bake it in an oven. D-licious. Below is a shot of Kevin deep frying some Twinkies. I didn't try these, but I heard they were pretty F'ing good too.

Food Ups and Downs

I've been having a major hankering for rice pudding lately. There's a shop on east Spring St. in Manhattan that only sells rice pudding in many different flavors. I've only ever gotten the chocolate hazelnut because it's so good, but I would like to try some of the other flavors eventually too. Their pudding is perfect; rich and velveteen. Needless to say I have never tried to make rice pudding, and the other night there was a bevy of rice left after we had a stir fry for dinner so I attempted my hand at it. I looked in the Joy of Cooking and saw a baked pudding recipe that seemed pretty simple, so I just went with it. I added my own zip and doodahs by throwing in some golden raisins, pistachios, and cinnamon. The result was not exactly what I expected, it wasn't creamy and custardy like a bowl of Kozy Shack. Instead it was quite rice heavy and savory and reminded me more of a noodle koogle with rice instead of noodles. The best part turned out to be my zip and doodahs, which really gave it a nice flavor. Live and learn.

On Monday we went to dinner over at my father's in lower Manhattan and right before we got there we decided we were in need of some hot chocolate (it was a cold windy week you know). There is a chocolate shop a couple of blocks from my father's that has gotten great reviews and I'm shocked to say that I have not yet tried it. I love their packaging most of all:

We walked into Mariebelle and I immediately wanted to move in. The whole place was decorated like some 18th century French chocolate shop and the glorious packaging and stacks of chocolate and caramels were practically giving me a panic attack. I love brown and robin's egg blue together, more than perhaps any other color combo and of course I love chocolate, so there you have it. For a fleeting moment I considered making Mariebelle my new favorite chocolate source (sorry See's, please forgive my temporary insanity). This moment was super fleeting though. Major fleeting. Into the back room we went, tables and chairs were packed with wealthy Italian tourists eating dessert and drinking hot chocolate. They were seriously all polished from head to toe with buttery leather outfits and glistening hair. One table had even gone into the front of the shop to look at chocolates and left their LV wallet on the table alongside a very sexy looking flat digital camera that had a brown leather front. I was eying it to see what brand it was but had to quickly look away so it didn't seem like I was wanting to steal it (OK maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but that's what I was thinking at the time). We walked up to the counter which had a glass case of bricks of chocolate covered nuts and rice krispies ($30 a pound). Joe asked for a small hot chocolate to go, and, $5 plus tax later, here is what he got:

I had to save the empty hot chocolate cup and place it next to a regular sized coffee mug so that you could see just how small it was. It's seriously the size that you get when you are handed free samples of something. We got maybe two shots of hot chocolate. MAYBE two shots, for $5 plus tax. Yes, it was good, but so is the hot chocolate at City Bakery (my personal favorite) and Jacques Torres (my second favorite) and both of those places give you an actual coffee cup filled with hot chocolate AND a homemade marshmellow for much less than $5 plus tax. Did I mention the tax?

After feeling ripped off by the world, karmic justice soon made its way back to me. First, in the form of mail. I received a very unexpected gift in an ass-kicking package from Frizz:

I love her drawings and rubber stamps so much and now I have one of my very own. Her illustrations and paintings are really unique and I hope she can soon earn a real living from them.

The next piece of karmic justice that came my way (and this was a major coup) happened as a result of the best night of the week: recycling night, or as I like to call it, cheapskate's shopping night. Before the sun goes down each week on this day, I carefully take note of everything neatly piled up behind my neighbor's fences, as it all sits in wait to be placed at the edge of the curb after dark. There is always a Swiffer or two (one was mine as soon as I realized that I couldn't replace their stink-ass chemical laden spray with something non-toxic), a lot of Fresh Direct boxes, and piles of New York Times. But this time there was something a little extra special, just for me:


That's right, a huge-ass pile of Cook's Illustrated, including the very first issue! This is my favorite cooking magazine, and I have coveted them for several years now, although I have not subscribed due to budgetary constraints. For those of you unfamiliar with Cook's, the editors take a few basic well loved recipes and cook them with every conceivable (reasonable) method possible, in their official test kitchen. They then publish the results. One issue might have roast chicken, lemon mereingue pie, scrambled eggs, and tuna salad. Alongside these basics there are reviews of items like butter and toasters. It's really been a great addition to my own repetoire of kitchen skills. Aside from the folks at Cook's and Martha I can honestly thank Ina Garten for teaching me how to cook. During my thirteenth summer I got my first job doing food prep in her store Barefoot Contessa which at the time was in Westhampton NY. Some of you may wonder how a thirteen year old got such a job, but the explanation actually speaks volumes about the labor market in the Hamptons. Locals who live there all year need work that is not seasonal, and stores like the Barefoot Contessa were seasonal. They opened at the beginning of the summer season, and ended when the city folk cleared out. Winters out there were like a ghost town. Almost all of Main St. was shut down except for the movie theater and the drug store and post office and maybe one or two restaurants. Local kids worked the summer shops and restaurants during the high season and the pay was pretty good. There were a handful of kids like myself who didn't live there all year but who also weren't the typical summer kids who also got the jobs in town. The fact that we may not have been able to get working papers was never questioned. I didn't even know about working papers until I was well over twenty one. What I remember working for Ina has very little to do with Ina actually. She was in and out of the shop but mostly it her super hot (and super gay) sidekick who showed us the ropes. He showed us how to quickly chop veggies, make guacamole, and prepare lemon squares, cookie dough, roast chickens and other delicious treats, then we'd go out back and smoke cigarettes and admire his little MG, or maybe it was Fiat, I can't remember which. My friend Patty who was the townee to work there used to whisper with me constantly about which women who came into the store we thought he might be dating. I'm not sure why we didn't realize he was gay, but it hit me last year while watching a Barefoot Contessa rerun on the food network. He showed up on an episode and I seriously blushed at the memory of Patty and I sitting out back smoking her mother's Kools while gushing over this much older, much gayer man. Ah the innocence of youth. I am seriously veering off of the subject, but the point is, that I learned how to cook at the Barefoot Contessa over the summers of my teen years and I still love their cookbooks very much in addition to my Cook's Illustrated magazines. Between the two I'm good to go. I have no idea how I strayed over to the Joy of Cooking for a rice pudding recipe, but the result was not good.

I'm also just realizing that I need to post a long overdue piece on local bakeries. O.K. I promise to do it soon.

Eatin' + makin' is what I crave

Born on a mountain Raised in a cave Bikin' and F'in is all I crave.

Huh? Why would I have typed such vulgar nonsense you ask? Well, it's because when I was about ten my father bought a motorcycle and our neighbor whom we kept running into would say to my father, "I got the best present for you, you're going to love it!" When he finally brought the gift by it turned out to be a refrigerator magnet with that very poetic life-vision emblazoned on it. My father was appaled. I found it hilarious. What this episode has to do with my blog is simple: Eatin' and makin' is all I crave these days. Okay, I realize how that might sound to anyone as scatalogically inclined as I am, but I meant making stuff . Today I had my very first Jessica Day where Joe took Harlan out for an adventure and I got the chance to do whatever I please. This day will now occur once a month. This is my new year's resolution, along with monthly Joe Day and monthly Joe and Jessica Date night. Anyhow, I had originally made plans to go into Manhattan and hang out with a friend of mine, but I was not able to get in touch with her. Instead I relaxed and read my brand new premiere issue of Cook's Country- the new country-cousin version of the high-brow Cook's Illustrated.

Now don't get me wrong, I am still a big fan of Cook's Illustrated, the magazine where the editors have their very own test kitchen, where they try every method thinkable for different recipes and tell their readers what worked and what didn't. The end result is always a perfect description of how to cook/bake just about anything. I am also recently addicted to their T.V. show America's Test Kitchen. Without this cooking team I would be making dry chicken and gluey lemon squares amongst other atrocities. The Cook's Country quickly stole my heart with its wonderful late-fifties font and design. Even the recipes reminded me a bit of a lot of foods my grandmother loved to make, dishes like apricot Jello with clementimes in it (although my grandmother would probably omit the fresh clementimes). Check out this recipe for the Monte Cristo. Everyone in France eats them, why not me?

After deciding to try their chicken marsala recipe this week I got to working on my new Dreamweaver 8 tutorial. I have to say I am feeling a bit like a computer geek for loving this new web design program so much. I never thought I would love anything remotely related to programming, but learning about how to set CSS style sheets makes my heart soar. I can't wait to completely redesign my website. Bun Bun Babythreads is seriously a "D.I.Y" venture from top to bottom. When I was finished working I decided to look into my WIP drawer and get a crackin'. I started to embroider a pirate/sea theme quilt for Harlan when I was pregnant. At the rate I'm going I realize that the quilt will be a twin size instead of a crib size, but this is probably better since he will get more use out of it this way. Here are the squares I have so far. The designs are from Sublime Stitching and some vintage patterns that I have on hand.

I'm going to use some type of nautical fabric for every other square and for a border. I saw one I like over at superbuzzy, and some at Atelier Jade , but I can't commit quite yet.
After deciding on a few more designs I want to embroider I put the squares back in the drawer and pulled out this vintage stuffed animal pattern I've had laying around for a while:

I decided on making one of the small elephants. I got out some great stretch cord houndstooth fabric from reprodepot and decided to make this the primary fabric. I'm going to put some mustard wool felt on the back of his ears and use it for his tail. I am out of stuffing though, so a trip to Canal St. is a must this week. I wish there was a damn craft supply store in NYC. Where on earth do people go to get things like pellets and animal eyes around here? I have to get mine out in Riverhead when visiting my mother in Long Island. Oh well, enough complaining. How can I gripe when it was such a great day?

P.S. Did anyone on my block catch the pile of dogcrap with the G.W.B. flag stuck on top of it with a toothpick? Pretty rad.