Milk Chocolate Florentine Lace Cookies

I decided to make these spur-of-the-moment because I was craving the texture and flavor, and wanted to give some to friends. These ended up tasting like the kind sold at Trader Joe's or World Market, excluding the carmel drizzle that the store bought versions have. That said, they turned out to be really tasty, though the process of making was pretty messy (I feel like anything requiring melted chocolate turns out to be a mess). Friends and family all enjoyed them and I would definitely make these again and recommend this recipe from Cooks.com .

Ashleigh's Yoda Pizza

During finals week we had a Bro-Dinner celebration in which Ashleigh (the mastermind behind Cookie Monster ) agreed to make a pizza in the likeness of wise old Yoda. I had randomly discovered this done online here and had hoped Ash would be up to the challenge.
She followed through and took it on, even going beyond and making Yoda ice-cream bars (shaping mint-chip ice cream into the shape of Yoda's head, and adding chocolate chips for the eyes). Here is how it turned out, it obviously used a lot of veggies:

funky quesadillas!

LOADED
One of my favorite things to make for dinner are quesadillas packed with a lot more than just cheese. I loooove putting some corn, beans, avocado, (and sometimes tomato and lettuce...although that makes it more of a panini on tortillas). The only hard part is getting the quesadilla to flip on the stove without falling apart once all of that is shoved inside!



GOURMET
Another quesadilla idea I recently discovered was brie cheese, pear, and carmelized onions. Reid and I made this for Mother's Day (along with a warm steamed artichoke and fresh fruit) and it was DELICIOUS! When I went to Costco a week later and found that a huge thing of brie Cheese was only like 5 bucks, I decided to make them again...and they were just as good the second time! I didn't get to take a picture of this one because it is best eaten hot off the stove, or else the cheese begins to cool.

floral design

This spring I had the urge to take a Floral Design class with UCSD Extension, just for kicks. It was awesome! The class was super fun and I made a couple of senior citizen friends. Every class (there were 5, but I had to miss 1) we made a different type of arrangement. My roommates definitely enjoyed coming home thursday nights to find a new floral creation! I feel like I got a lot of experience with guidance and also creative ideas/inspiration to keep me goin for a while. Here are some pictures of my creations, enjoy!

Week 1: Free-standing Hand-tied Bouquet (typically used in weddings)








Week 3: Asian Influence

Pretty much what it sounds like. A lot of tropical flowers!








Week 4: Interpretive Waterfall

This week was a little frustrating because we didn't get as much guidance (as it was "interpretive" and I also don't particularly like the "waterfall" type of design, I think it's kind of ugly. So this was my least favorite design...however the construction was pretty cool! We used tomato cages as a stand, and had to use wire to connect the floating oasis (green foam that you stick the flowers in) so that it was floating and centered in the middle! Then the goal was to cover up all of the elements of construction! The first photo is from the inside looking up. In the second one you see a dark brown curly stick thing...its actually a plant called Monkey Tail! Haha.







Week 5: Avant Garde!

Basically, he handed us materials and told us to whip something together. I was nervous that I would have no ideas but I just started working and it all came to me. This last week was especially fun because everyones was extremely different. Some people had theirs go sideways, circular, criss-cross, you name it! I especially liked the colors of this one. And our instructor really liked it! Wahooo!

taste testin'

WAY back in September I tried out two recipes I found on other blogs, but never got around to posting them. The first was Zucchini Goat Cheese Pizza by my fellow blogger and friend- Cookie Monster. It turned out really well, considering the goat cheese texture was really hard to work with. My entire family thought it was tasty.

The other recipe I tried out was for Red Velvet Cake Balls, found on Bakerella's blog. I just love Bakerella- so many great pictures, ideas, and recipes! The balls were delicious and made ALOT. The only downside was that they needed to stay refrigerated because of the cream cheese- so I couldn't drop them off at people's houses.

photog

So its been a long-song-dong-chong while since I've posted. I've been following other people's blogs, just not doing anything with my own. There are so many awesome blogs out there! Anyway, here are some pics I took this summer (mostly in Vermont, the sunflowers were in San Diego). Just random ones that I thought were cool/inspiring.

HUGE sunflowers!

you could even see the sunflower seeds!

Pics I took from the butterfly observatory in Niagara Falls

That's all for now!

-london

graphic-tee pillow

Got an old tee shirt that you still like but don't necessarily want to wear again? or maybe just too many tshirts than you know what to do with?! I thought of turning this tee into a pillow-cover a while ago, and just recently finally had time to actually do it! Here's how it turned out...

Closing the bottom/back was a bit tricky. I didn't want to go through the trouble of adding a zipper or buttons, so what I did was simply fold it over and safety pin. However, I made sure the fold was straight and even across so that it looks decent. The entire project took me about 20 minutes.