Love the Design!

The other morning while I was waiting for my car to be washed. I walked down the street to yum yum and had a coffee and a donut. It wasn't the best donut ( I'm a fan of the ones from the danish bakeries in my hometown) but it was good. What I was a fan of was the really cute vintage graphics that were on the outside of the bag. So cute! So I thought I would share. I love this genre of art/typography/drawing. Its just so sweet and cute.

Have you seen any great typography/vintage labels lately?

Cheers-
Raechel

Update on our Trip Savings!

Happy Saturday! Boy this week was a doozy and I'm glad its over! I was updating our wine glass savings chart for the big trip this fall and thought I'd show our progress! Its kind of exciting how close we are to our goal! eek!!



Before

After

Saving is a funny thing. In one respect I feel very proud for saving and being able to take a trip that I dreamed about forever but in the other it can become a bit of a fun breaker. It deffinetly makes me think twice about going out to lunch or shopping. I try to remind myself that I will certainly have more fun once we're there spending the money than I would now.

Now, to start planning for our next trip. I think we're thinking Italy and/or Greece. What do you think?

Cheers-

Raechel

Stressed

I'm a bit stressed at the moment. So right now, I'm just going to look at pretty pictures of calm places that I'd really love to be.

I guess I have a thing for calming beds. Take a look at some older posts about places I'd like to be here and here . On the plus side, even though, I'm stressed. Its Thursday and that means only 2 full days of work and its the weekend! Yes!

Cheers-
Raech
P.S. Image from weheartit.com

Impromptu Wine and Cheese Dinner

I went to the grocery store in mind to have BBQ chicken and maybe some light summery salads - caprese and watermelon & jicama. After we got home and unpacked the bags all I wanted was cheese, fruit, and wine. So we saved the chicken for another meal and went to town throwing together an impromptu cheese platter. This is what we came up with! Starting from the cantaloupe slices going L-R ( once for the outer circle which stops at the balsamic cippolini's and then a second circle for the fish/meat area.)
Cantaloupe, An Italian Cheese ( similar to a Gouda), Espresso Lavender Cheddar, Candied Pecans, Boursin Gourmay Cheese, Red Grapes, Strawberries, Balsamic Soaked Cippolini's, Smoked Fish, Roast Beef, and Rosemary Ham

A close up of one of my little platters - cantaloupe wrapped in ham ( similar to cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto) a few grapes, and bread with roasted garlic and boursin cheese with a glass of rose. That's some serious yum right there.An awful picture of us. We went for a 90 minute hike/walk/stair climb and it was upper 70's/80's here and hot. I got a bit of a sunburn going on and I need a shower but who cares right?


To end the meal, we had homemade vanilla bean ice cream with fresh strawberries. I haven't quite figured out how to make homemade ice cream without it getting a bit icy/slushy and not quite smooth and fully frozen. It just is more slushy and milky but still tastes yummy none the less.

I might add part of my favorite part of the meal was that we left the TV off and we listened to some of our favorite records and lit a candle. It was nice to spend some quality time together, talking, snuggling, eating and relaxing!

Cheers-

Raechel

Chad Lowe and I

are in a relationship together. We decided that we had an undeniable attraction to each other and we couldn't deny it......or at least we did in my very vivid dream last night. Bizarre I know. I've supplied a picture incase you are wondering who my new lovah is.

He's definitely got the face structure of a Lowe boy but man do I have the hots for his brother, Rob Lowe. Yum. Now that is a piece of fine handsome man. Rob is invited to my dreams anytime!

Cheers-
Raechel
*pictures from google search

Saving is boring

sometimes......I know its the grown up thing to do and can get you what you want in the end by saving your pennies but its still boring. This weekend we went to a movie and had about 45 minutes to kill till the movie started. We wandered into GAP and I saw these amazing sunhats. I tried one on and fell in love. Knowing my track history, I would buy it and it would sit in my closet with the tag on it unworn. So, the hat remained at GAP and I remain boring.

Floppy Straw Hat from GAP

The link to buy that hat from GAP is under the pic in case you're interested! They don't have the black and white one online but they have a chocolate brown and a natural one.

Amazing Tattoo

Like I've said before, I'm not really brave enough to tattoo a piece of permanent art on my body but this tattoo is gorgeous!

Such a beautiful tattoo and she writes a great little blog! I love her stuffed creations they are simply too adorable!

Check out Katie's blog - Skunkboy creatures by click on this link.

Happy Monday!

P.S. You can read a past blog about feather tattoo's that I wrote here!
P.P.S. In case you're not familiar with blogger, just click the word that is a different color. It has a link attached to another webpage.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

At Target today, this movie was sitting on the end kiosk. I picked it up and instantly knew I had to have it! Its one of my favorite movies from childhood. Not to mention that my Grandma had a big giant brass bed that I admittedly tried to turn the knobs a few time to see if it would take off and take me somewhere magical. If you haven't seen this movie ever take a look at the clip below! It won Best Effects in 1971. How charming is that!





What was one of your favorite movies from Childhod?

Cheers-

Raechel

I love my job

but I miss blogging! I miss looking at other people's beautiful blogs and being inspired to do/create/live. Sound depressing but for a lot of people being unemployed was simply dreadful but not for me. I enjoyed it 95% of the time. I did miss the stable income and sometime the personal drive to suceed at a job but its a trade for working and not being able to craft or read blogs or blog myself.

Hmmm.....What's a girl to do? I try to get up early and read some of my favorite blogs or I read them while eating breakfast. I remebered I haven't been over to We Heart It in a really long time. So Here's some pretty images I found this morning while over there!

I guess I'm in an aqua color mood. I randomly picked a few objects and they all appear to be in a similar color spectrum. How bizarre.






Here's to 2 more days of work and then 2 days of pure fun!

Cheers-
Raech

P.S. All images are from weheartit.com

Homemade Peanut Butter

This might be old news to you but it was new to me when I received my food processor for Christmas. I had visions of me making these elaborate pie crusts and processed food things but no, my food processor gets its mileage on shredding blocks of cheese and making peanut butter for me. Yes, I needed a $300 machine for those two uses apparently.

Oh well! My biggest fear is when I ask for some giant cooking contraption is that I won't use it. At least I use it even if the task is minimal.

Homemade Peanut Butter

1 bag of peanuts ( I like Trader Joe's Honey Roasted Peanuts - 1lb -$1.99)
Food Processor
Small Tupperware/sealing type of container

Place peanuts in food processor and turn on. Process until the peanuts are smooth and free of chunks ( If you like smooth pb, otherwise, I'd reserve maybe 1/4c-1/2c of the chunky mixture and add that to the smoothed pb by hand)

With a spatula, move the peanut butter from processor into your mouth..erm I mean tupperware container and place in dark, cool place ( food pantry). I've had mine in there for a couple of months and it doesn't mold/smell/etc...If you're feeling wierd about it place it in the fridge.

That's all it takes to make homemade peanut butter. It takes me about 5 minutes and it's free of wierd chemicals and a bit cheaper than the fresh ground peanut butter you buy at Whole Foods. I think that stuff is $5.99-7.99 a pound. Yowza!


Let me know if you have any other favorite uses for your food processor. I think once I get a hearty crop of my basil plant I'm going to make some homemade pesto sauce. Nom.
Cheers-

Raech

I suck..

I haven't blogged in like forever and a day.

I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! We went down to San Diego and celebrated Jack's 26th birthday.

It was kind of a last minute trip because we weren't sure if I was going to be working or not! So we took the amtrak from Downtown LA's Union Station. This station is amazing and beautiful on the inside. Here's a pic borrowed from google.


To my surprise when we got into San Diego's amtrak station it was just as beautiful too!



The train ride was a bit long ( 3 hrs) and a bit expensive but it was really fun to take down. Its not necessarily a better deal than driving but its a little bit less hectic. We went to the zoo and walked around for nearly 6 hours! That place is huge. I've got to admit we spent the majority of the time in the great apes/monkey exhibits. They are amazing too watch!

After a few hours of napping we decided to head up to Little Italy and go to Benecotto for dinner. If you're ever in the San Diego area I highly recommend! Soo good! We had cheese, balsamic marinated cipollini's, Lamb, Cioppino and Tiramisu. We were stuffed but everything was soo good we kept on ordering!

And finally a little pic of me waiting in the hotel room for Jack to get ready for our walk to Benecotto.


After spending some time in areas that you can walk/cab to most of the areas. I really start to wish that we lived somewhere like that. I love LA and what it is but I sure do envy places like San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago etc..where you can walk/take public transportation somewhere easy, fast and cheaply.

Hope your Memorial Day was fab!

Cheers-
Raech