Thanksgiving Wrap up / Christmas Beginning

Well Hello!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We sure did. I was busy all day Thursday cooking up a storm and had a few friends over for the afternoon and had a bonfire in the evening. We had gorgeous 70 degree weather for Thanksgiving. What more could you ask for? ( well maybe snow...)

I got to admit. I really like Thanksgiving and stretching my culinary muscles but I really like to get it out of the way so I can start decorating and celebrating Christmas. It almost seems like there isn't enough Christmas time to celebrate. Every year I go home to Wisconsin and while I love the snow and being there I miss those days of being at my own home and being around our Christmas tree and our decorated home. Its just not the same to spend it somewhere else.

So last night we went and got a tree and started to decorate it. While Jack got it all set up in the stand and strung with lights I popped over to the kitchen and started to whip up a batch of homemade marshmallows. Ok, Lets just stop and talk about these insanely scrumptious treats. I've been reading about them on blogs about how they taste so much better, blah blah blah. I thought...sure..I guess they probably taste a bit better. Usually homemade stuff does. No, these are amazing! Especially in homemade hot chocolate. They just melt and get all soft and gooey. My life has forever been changed by these SIMPLE amazing marshmallows.


I followed Martha Stewarts simple recipe. The only thing that I would say is difficult is if you've never made any type of "candy" before. In step 2 she refers to a soft ball stage ( 238 degrees) on the candy thermometer. The way that I have learned to do this when making caramels. Is to take your spatula and get a small amount of the boiling liquid on the end and drop into a small dish of cold water the liquid. Then with your finger you should be able to pick it up and roll it into a softish ball of candy. If its at the right temperature it will do this. I tried this at 235 degrees and it stayed all liquidy and didn't firm up so I needed to wait 3 more degrees till it was ready to be removed from the pan.


A few more tips:
I highly recommend using a kitchen aide type of mixer ( not sure if a hand mixer would even work). After you've cooked your liquid you add it to the gelatin and it needs to whisk on a high speed for 12 minutes. You're arms would fall off if you used a hand mixer I'm guessing. Also, get a candy thermometer. They are inexpensive and will save you lots of time/guessing as to when your sugar mixture is done.

Spray the cookie sheet first with spray oil then cover with parchment paper, spray the paper with oil and then do a light dusting of cornstarch over the paper

When your marshmallows are firm. Flip the cookie sheet over on to a clean work surface ( i flipped it right side up in the cookie sheet) so the parchment paper side is up and remove the paper and do a light dusting of cornstarch over the new exposed side.

Lastly, when cutting the marshmallows ( either in shapes or cubes) I dusted my cookie cutter/knife with corn starch to help cut and when the shape/cube was cut I dusted the sides ( sticky) with more cornstarch. This helps them from sticking in the fridge if you're going to store them. I ended up cutting them into a mitten, bell and star shape and throwing them into a Tupperware container.

I hope you can muster up the courage to make these because they are super simple ( even if it appears that they are difficult) and delicious!

xoxoxo

Raech

Here ya go!

I put together a little Thanksgiving day playlist! Enjoy! Its kind of supposed to be chill background noise so sorry if its slow and boring!

By the way, the first song is a bit crazy but its the only real Thanksgiving song I could find!

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

EEK!

I've been trying to maintain blogging everyday if not at least everyother day and already its almost Thursday and I just blogged on Monday! Bad bad bad!


I don't have much to say. Things are busy over here in LA. I am letting pie #2 cool. Pie #1 is a pumpkin pecan pie. One of us, ahem not me, doesn't really care for pumpkin pie. So I compromised by making a pecan pie with pumpkin filling. It smells rather heavenly and I think will be a good buffer to the overly sweet pecan pie filling ( which by the way I think is amazing). Pie #2 is just plain old pumpkin. I thought that I could get away with just baking a non traditional pie but after pie #1 was cooling I started having regrets! Plus, I already had pumpkin pie in a can, evaporated milk and another crust ready....So for 4 people we are having 2 pies. Seems even right?

Also, we're making a tofurky. Kind of scared about this. We weren't going to and then last minute we changed our minds. On the bright side if its absolutely disgusting we have plently of other yummy sides to fill up on!


ok my dears! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families! Hug everyone a little tighter tomorrow and be thankful that you have wonderful people in your life!

xoxoxo

Raechel

Oh Boy.

So I'm having problems uploading my photos to facebook and blogger so for today we will forgo the pictures from the fair this past weekend.

I'm watching on Insant Netflix a really beautiful documentary called "Ballerina." Focusing on the russian ballet and what the girls go through at the young age of 6. Its beautiful and much to be admired about these girls! I wish I had 1/3 their skill! Deffinetly worth checking out if you're a ballet fan!



via google and the Netflix link

Silverlake Art Craft and Vintage Fair!

Come out and check us out at the Silverlake Art Craft and Vintage Fair tommorow from 10-4! We will be at our booth, Jack and Till.




Here's a little sneak peek of some of the merch! We've been super busy all weekend long creating the display piece and finishing up t-shirts!




xoxox

Raechel

Blueberry Cool Brew Green Iced Tea

I :heart: you. Like a lot. So much that I got my favorite giant red coffee mug out of the back of the cupboard to make you in.

Love yours always,

Raechel

p.s. incase your snooping and reading my love letters this is what i'm referring to. Pick some up ASAP! Nummy iced green tea in 5 mins. What more can you seriously ask for?

Fats Waller

I have a special place in my heart for listening to vinyl records. I absolutely love the crackly crispy warm quality that comes out from the record players. Plus you can get steals on great records of past great musicians. Lately, I've been listening to this giant TIME magazine sponsored vinyl set of Jazz Greats. I think the first 4 are all of Fats Waller.


This is one of my favorite songs below

• Your Feet's Too Big by Fats Waller

More Fats Waller music on iLike

I'm also a huge fan of django reinhardt

• After You've Gone by Django Reinhardt

More Django Reinhardt music on iLike

and least but not last one of my favorite french records

• La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf

More Edith Piaf music on iLike

I know these few songs are quite a bit different from my music selection yesterday but they just are so charming. I love to put on a few good records and drink some great wine. They make such great background noise for a party too!

Hope your Tuesday brings you lots of good music (and wine)

xoxo
Raechel

I could spend hours

on this website mixpod.com creating playlists.

MySpace Music Playlist at MixPod.com

this is what i'm listening to today. its all pretty slow and chill music. I'm just in a mood to relax

xoxo

raech

Old Patterns

I could wear a hole in a floor with how much I love going to the same places. I don't mean to do it but I like comfort. I don't like to be disappointed and I don't like to disappoint those people who work at my favorite haunts.

I'm talking about my favorite restaurants. We always go to the same places when we go out. For a nice dinner we go to Silverlake and go to Cliff's Edge, for sushi we go to Miyako, for Indian we go to the place by our house, and for Thai we go to Chan Dara which is literally in our alley but for some reason this weekend we put a toe outside of the box.


Drum roll please......We tried Ethopian Food and absolutely loved it! In Los Angeles there is "Little Ethiopia" and its on Fairfax also nicknamed "Ethiopian row". We were driving back from Ikea and wanted something good for dinner but didnt' want any of our usual ( gasp..how could this be?). So we decided to try ethiopian food.

So we used Urban Spoon ( iphone app..love it!) and found, Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Restaurant. It was amazing. We split a millenium special for 2.




This isn't exactly what we had but it comes out like this. Little mounds of stew and served with this spongy pancake that has a slight sourdough flavor. Its actually the brown part under the stews in the above image. The meal also came with a big basket of the spongy part and that is what you ate with. There were no forks, spoons, knives, etc.. ( though an obnoxious table of 10 teenagers did order forks). If you've never had Ethiopian its very similar to Indian as far as texture but different spices. My favorite was a carrot and potato stew and the split pea stew. The perfect compliment to all these spicy stews was a fresh coconut juice. Yum. Over all the experience was really good and it hardly hurt at all to step outside of our comfort zone! The only part that was not so good was the service. There was one waitress for about 15 tables and we had finished eating and waited almost 30 minutes to be able to flag her down for a check. A little disappointing because of service but the food far out weighed that part.

Upon doing a bit of research it appears that Rahel also used to own Messob which is next door to Rahel's restaurant. So maybe our next trip down there we will check out Messob.

Get your craft on!

Hey Friends-

Our online shop Jack and Till will be a vendor at 3 Silverlake Craft and Vintage Fairs in November and December for the following dates 11/22, 12/6, and 12/13. we hope you can all come out and visit us and say hi! If you live to far away don't worry about it! We have an etsy store that you can purchase products through!

Happy Friday!

xoxo Raechel

P.S. I think I have a serious obsession with 60s style drawings. Love it.



via

I want to be Parisienne

this new perfume commercial is to die for. I have a serious weakness for all things sexy. I also love these chanel commercials too!



I'm going to go find my leather dress and buy some roses.

Love it.

So I was copying the photo's from my iphone and ahem... I have 398 pictures on it. OMG....Needless to say I don't remember every single photo on there but I forgot about this one. Its of our feet at the Hollywood bowl and I love it.



I surprised Jack with tickets to see Ray LaMontagne this past summer. It was a warm beautiful night and Ray LaMontagne just has this sultry sexy voice that could make anyones panties drop ( hi mom! dont read that part) and the hollywood bowl is gorgeous. It was also amazing because the LA Philharmonic was playing with him. OMG. I can tell you that it was by far the best concert I've ever been to ( sorry DMB! you're really really really amazing as well!)

xoxo

raech

Impromptu trip to San Francisco

So I have not gone to alcatrez, rode on a cable car, or walked across the Golden Gate Bridge but what I have done is drank my way through some great restaurants in San Francisco. Two of my besties live up there and one lives in the city and makes it her job to try every cool place so that when I come to visit I have somewhere absolutely fun to go!

So Friday night we started at the Tipsy Pig for some drinks and food. They have this amazing drink called Strawberry fields and its crushed strawberries, vodka, simple syrup and other good things and these things are amazing. Its got a really cool pub feel going on and really great food!




We sat in the far right corner by the wall and a really awesome touch that they do is when they bring you the receipt it is in an old book. Love it. After that we met up with some friends and went to some pubs.

On Saturday we headed down for bloody mary's, mimosa, deviled eggs, and biscuits at the Elite Cafe. Where we made great friends with the tender of the bar and he hooked us up with drinks and even made some of his own personal cocktail creations for us. Let me say I am a huge fan of his espresso martinis. narm.



Also, girls if you're going out for breakfast sit at the bar and make friends with the 'tender! You will have a way better experience...Just sayin.

Fast forward to my last day up there and we decide to do a walking tour of SFO. First we, got coffees and wandered around Fillmore St. which is filled with really cool shops and restaurants. We decided to do lunch at Dosa, which is a South Indian restaurant. We had such good food and we both had elderberry mimosas. Yum.



Then we headed down to Japantown and walked through the little mall to walk off our lunch. When were done there we headed down to the Clift Hotel, which is an awesome Phillipe Starke designed boutique Hotel. How awesome is this giant chair in the lounge? Plus, I love all the mismatched chairs in the lounge.



We hung out for a bit in the lounge waiting for their bar to open which is called the Redwood Room and rumor is the entire wood covered bar was made from one giant redwood tree back in the '20's. How effing cool is that?


We had a cocktail here and decided to do some more wandering to other bars . We tried to go to Bourbon and Branch. A really awesome speak easy bar/lounge but when we got there no one was answering their doorbell ( which btw you have to give a password at). So we ended up wandering to an Irish pub and grabbing a pint .

At this point we were a bit hungry so we headed down to Betelnut which is an amazing asian fusion restaurant. The Best part is the wait staff wheres these really awesome little costumes. Loved it in there and the food was to die for!


After this we headed back to the house and fell asleep. I had a long day of driving ahead of me on Monday and we were both tired from our debauchery all weekend long. Maybe one of my most favorite parts of the trip was on Monday morning we walked a block down to her local coffee shop and the city was so sleepy and beautifully quiet. For being right in the middle of the city you would have never guessed how serene it could be. I love SFO.

Cheers-

Raechel

*all pictures were borrowed from a quick google search.

Dreadful

Dreadful

I have a shop on etsy and recently a friend directed us to this website that blogs about the worst etsy finds and omg some of them are hilarious. I mean I feel bad. I know that I spend a lot of time creating my etsy items and I would never want someone to put me on blast on the internet for having bad stuff but some of the items people put up are a little OMG.

Enjoy having a good laugh over on regretsy

Can we just talk about

how much I love graphic design. I could never do it myself but I love the way well done graphic design looks. I'm such a sucker for great labels. I think I've mentioned it before in another post about how I have the nerdiest dogs because their "dad" won't let them have the cool well designed dog food. Anyways, the point of this is not about dog food but about this great little paper store that I absolutely love their design.

French Paper is awesome. I absolutely love their color selection in papers, the graphics of their laels, and etc...

I really want this poster from their website but I'm not quite sure where I would hang it because my walls are backed to the brim already....sigh.




So I'm going to go be a label whore and drool over their beautiful papers and amazingly designed packages.

Cheers-

Raechel

Vampire's Assistant

On Halloween we didn't end up doing anything that was really Halloween-ie per say but I did manage to drag Jack to the theater to see this teen flick. I knew deep down that it was going to be very teenage-y and probably not the best movie but I was in the mood for it.



I didn't love the movie but it was entertaining enough. I liked John C. Reilly's character a lot and he had some good one liners and Selma Hayek was a funny beard growing lady who's bear grew when she was turned on by a man ( which would really suck!) . Over all it was probably a 2/5 stars movie but worth checking out if you like those kind of corny halloween movies that I can't get enough of! One of my favorite corny halloween movies is from the 80's and is soooooo corny but I can't help but watch it every single year is:

Worst Witch







Teen Witch







Oh gotta love those 80s cheesey movies. What's some of your favs? You know i've never seen "pretty in pink". I suck.


Cheers-

Raechel

Day 3

and all I can think of is shopping... Oh God this is going to be a long 2 months. So instead of concentrating on what I CAN'T buy lets look at what I DID buy before I lost my mind....

I picked up this super cute cotton shirt from Anthro on clearance for $19.95 ( what omg!). Even though I curl my lip at the thought of having 80 degree days in November I do really like the fact that I can buy summery shirts on clearance at Anthro for 19.95 and where them year round. If I did my math correct that is like getting it for free!

Anyways, I digress. So here is my new outfit that is getting me through not being able to shop!




+


+


+ ( a louis vuitton purse that the handles/leather has turned the carmely color)

I've personally choosen to wear silver with the outfit because I have more long silver necklaces and I also bought a new ring that I really wanted to wear.



but with the brown/carmel color I could definitely see someone rocking some gold pieces.

So if you see me for the next two months wearing this outfit because I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else to wear since i'm not "allowed" to shop please don't judge me!

Cheers-

Raechel

p.s. i did decide to center align my text today. i know what is the world coming to?

Hiatus

Dear Mr. Shopping-

I have meant to talk with you before this but it always seems to slip by. See this shopping thing we've got going on just doesn't work. I've been having a deep love affair with you for way to long and every time I think that we've broken up you lure me in with your shiny packaging and pretty things. Its over.....well until January 1st.

XOXO

Raechel


via


Ok...so I'm going to try a shopping hiatus. Not sure how this is going to work or if at all. I'm not going to buy any new clothes, jewelry, shoes, purses, etc...for myself until January 1st! Thank god I only have 59 days left. Phew this is going to be rough.