Spring Fever

Yay for being April! Actually, I guess it's still technically March, but it's April in my mind. I can't even express how burned out I am with school right now, and how ready I am for this semester to be over. The timing is horrible, of course, because I still have a 10-page paper, a test and 7 art projects to go before I can even start thinking about finals. Which is why today I decided to be super responsible... and skip half my classes doing entirely non-school related things, like cooking, watching Project Runway, and, of course, blogging.

I have been more responsible than I'd like to be, though. For instance, I haven't spent my time finishing this:

Crochet is seriously gangsta. I have to admit that I lost motivation for this project 50% through. Just as I was getting really excited that I'd finished the first glove, I remembered--gloves come in pairs :( I still occassionally wear just the one glove, though, much to Chris's chagrin I'm sure. It keeps me surprisingly warm, and I feel like it's some sort of fashion statement. I have the yarn to finish it, though, so maybe I will someday.

I've also managed to restrain myself from making another one of these:

It's kind of weird, but I've been on a sort of homey, crafts kick recently where all I want to do is sew, crochet, and home decorate (though since we're planning on moving for the summer, I haven't bothered with any decorating). As a part of that, I decided that I wanted to learn how to knit. After doing some online research, I ended up buying Knitting for Baby, because I heard it was perfect for people who'd never knit before--it explains it well, and every project introduces a new concept in order of difficulty. The hat above is the very first project in the book, and I think I did pretty well--I only dropped 5-10 stitches, and all of those were in the first half of knitting. I have no immediate use for it, though (and anticipate not using it for quite some time--after Suzanne's blog announcement, I figured I should clarify this), so I guess I'll just have to box it up for later. Once this semester's over, I do want to make another hat, maybe this time in a boy's color. The next project in the book is a blanket, and I want to do a really good job, so I figure I could probably use some more practice before starting on that.

However, I couldn't restrain myself from making this:

Recently, I decided that I want to work on my food photography, so I'm going through my favorite recipes, cooking, and photographing them, and I'm going to compile them into a little cookbook that I might publish online using Lulu or mypublisher.com or something. I had actually never made this recipe before--I was just online and had somehow wandered onto the Johnny Carinos website and I realized that I had to have Italian food. Immediately, if possible. The description of Chicken Milano looked good, so I started looking up recipes and eventually found this one, which is actually a copycat recipe of the Chicken Pasta Milano at Macaroni Grill. It turned out great, though there were some mishaps along the way. First of all, it called for 4 chicken breasts, and after skimming over a few reviews I found that most people thought there wasn't enough sauce in the recipe, so I figured that since I was cooking for two, I could half the chicken and be okay. Turns out there still wasn't enough sauce (so anybody who'd actually made the full recipe would've really been in a bind!). So next time I'm halving the chicken again (because there was too much of that for my taste), and I'll probably still double the sauce, and then it might work out. The second problem was with the basil. Basil is the last thing you add to the sauce, so I was almost done when I happily added the two tablespoons the recipe called for. It was right as the second tablespoon went in and the little green leaves were spreading everywhere that I had that heart-stopping moment of fear--was it 2 tablespoons of fresh basil, or dried? I had used dried, but as I looked at the overabundance of green now permeating the sauce, I was very much afraid that it was referring to fresh (and there's a definite difference between 2 tbsp. of fresh basil and 2 tbsp. of dried!). So I immediately added more half and half to thin out the green, then took my handy dandy strainer to see how much I could get out. Unfortunately, I couldn't really take out the basil without also taking out a lot of sundried tomatoes, though in the end that might have been a good thing, because there really were a lot of sundried tomatoes. However, miraculously, the recipe still tasted good, which for me means it's a keeper. I just need to quarter the chicken, double the sauce, half the basil, and maybe use less sundried tomatoes, and I'll be set (seriously, who wrote this recipe??).

Here's the recipe with my edits:

Chicken Pasta Milano (serves 2)

2 tablespoons butter

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 cup sun-dried tomato, chopped

2 cups chicken broth, divided

2 cups half-and-half (original recipe called for heavy cream, but this is healthier)

1-2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (your choice, depending on how much meat you want)

garlic salt

pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons basil

4-5 oz. fettucine pasta, cooked and drained

In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add the minced garlic and cook for about a minute. Add tomatoes and 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth. Increase heat to medium and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered, for about 10 minutes. Add cream and bring to a boil again, stirring frequently. Simmer over medium heat until sauce is thick.
Sprinkle garlic salt and pepper over both sides of chicken. Heat the olive oil in a skillet, then add chicken and saute until chicken is no longer pink in the middle (about 4 minutes each side should do it). Remove chicken from skillet and set aside somewhere warm (like a warm oven). In the same skillet, stir 1/2 cup chicken broth with the pan juices, and bring to a boil; reduce slightly and add to the cream sauce. Stir in basil.

Slice chicken and serve atop the pasta, coat with the cream sauce.

An alternate way is to slice or cube the chicken and mix it in with the sauce, then serve that over the pasta.

Photo shoot with Chelsie (and a beautiful jacket)

My parents are spending the week in Portland selling their book (good luck Mom and Dad!), and that means that all of my siblings are home alone with Jordan in charge. So, since I have nothing going on Wednesday evenings and Chris has class until 10, I figured I'd head down there, make some zuppa, and hang out a bit. We had a really good time--they appreciated the real food, I stole their Sweethearts, and we all watched Ghost Whisperer together (a show that they're apparently really in to right now). I also took advantage of this opportunity to take some pictures for my photography class. I decided to photograph Chelsie jump roping. I guess I could've chosen my location better (my teacher was complaining about the telephone pole in the background), but I thought they were cute :) Oh, and... maybe don't tell Chelsie I posted these? ;)

Lots of fun :)

I also wanted to tell you guys about a new boutique I heard about in the Daily Universe yesterday called Lady Danburry Tailoring & Design. She has a blog at ladydanburrysews.blogspot.com, and also an Etsy shop. I checked out her blog yesterday and found out that if I advertised for her on my blog, I could maybe win a beautiful coat!





















Yep, that beautiful coat. So that's what I'm doing. Check her out--I really like a lot of her stuff!

First post of the decade (sad, huh?)

So I just realized that I haven't posted anything all decade! (Sounds worse than it is, doesn't it?) Actually, I didn't just realize it--I've been aware of the fact for a while, now. But since I have the day off of school (thank you, George Washington) I decided to do something about it today.

It's been kind of a busy semester. Chris and I are both taking classes, and he's working full time(more on my own unemployment later), so we don't tend to see a lot of each other except on weekends. This past weekend was a particularly good one, though. It was Valentine's Day yesterday (which I've noticed is a much better holiday when you actually have a Valentine), and we celebrated by making homemade risotto and steak. Yummmm. Chris gave me flowers and chocolate in the morning, and I made him chocolate chip cookies in the afternoon, and it was a really good day. I also finally started using my Wacom tablet that I got for Christmas. I mean, I'd played around with it before, but I really had no clue what I was doing. Finally, though, I looked up a tutorial online, and realized that I wasn't treating it enough like painting--the process goes a lot smoother when you pick out a color palette and combine colors by varying opacities. Anyway, this is what I ended up with:

I guess it's a self-portrait, since I was going off of a picture of me. It's not really done, and I definitely hurried on the shirt, but that's probably as done as it's going to get. I guess it's not bad for my first tablet project, though I'm going to keep practicing--I definitely need to use a little more contrast.

I've also been taking a photography class. Luckily, I got my Pell Grant this semester, or else I probably couldn't have afforded this class--the teacher wanted us all to have D-SLRs, which are about $500 at their least expensive. Kind of ridiculous for a class with students who will probably never take another photography class again, but it is a good investment (better than a textbook), so it was kind of nice to have an excuse to buy one. It's been a good class, too--somehow, photography seems so much easier now. Here's some of my pictures:

These were done by shining a bright light through Jones soda bottles with the wrappers taken off. The assignment was to focus on color. It was fun to do, though apparently there's a Jones soda shortage going on--I had to go to five stores before I found one with even a semi-decent selection. Most stores didn't even have any. What's the deal, Jones?

I should probably mention that this is not our faucet. It's the faucet in the girl's bathroom of this random building across from Wyview that used to be an Albertson's, and is now used for bookbinding and other art classes. It's a pretty sweet faucet.

I don't really have a lot of drawings to report this semester, since my only drawing class is figure drawing, and I don't know how you'd feel if I was posting pictures of girls in bikinis and guys in Speedos. Figure drawing, as it turns out, is really hard. It doesn't really help that it's a 3 hour class from 7-10pm, either. I am getting a little better, though--I've been practicing by watching episodes of So You Think You Can Dance and pausing them to get cool poses to draw. I've also been drawing my own face a lot by taking pictures of me with the laptop camera and drawing off of them. It's kind of fun.

Recently, I've been learning to crochet. I even made myself a happy yellow scarf, pictured below:

Chris didn't think I'd ever finish it, so I finished it in less than a week. Turns out, I work best when trying to prove someone wrong. Go figure. Now I'm working on a scarf for Chris. This one's taking a little longer, since it's striped gray and navy, and I've had to learn how to change colors. I don't know if I'm doing it right, but it hasn't fallen apart yet, so that's something, right? I think I'm going to learn how to knit, too--there's this yarn shop in Provo, and the ladies there will teach you how to knit and crochet for free if you buy your supplies from them. Pretty cool, especially for a college student with a limited budget.

I'm not working right now, though I've been trying to find a job. It's been over a month with no success, though Brick Oven Pizza is looking really promising--my cousin works there, so I have an "in," which is about the only way to find a job these days. I'm really, really bugged that I even have to look, because I am not supposed to be unemployed right now. Last November, I decided to start looking for options aside from Pita Pit where I was working--mostly because they were overstaffed, and partly for other reasons--and I found out that Zupas was hiring. I interviewed, and was hired, and they told me that they'd start me the week after Thanksgiving so I'd have time to put in my two weeks notice at Pita Pit. So I did, and I stopped working at Pita Pit--and then Zupas put off my hiring date. First they said it would be in December, and then they told me that it'd be after New Years. So I went in at the beginning of January, and they said, "Oh yeah, we decided we couldn't hire you after all." Gee, thanks for telling me. Like I said, though, I'm really hoping for Brick Oven, and if that doesn't work then I have a possible in at the Sweet Tooth Fairy. That's been my major stress this semester, though. I have been typing a bit for my parents to promote the Reading Teacher's Plan Book, and that's been something, though I really would like a steady job again.

Well, that's about all I can think of to talk about. Basically, Chris and I are doing great, and we hope you are, too! So... ciao!

Christmas trees, and more gouache love

Chris and I decided to get ourselves a Christmas tree the other day. We went to Walmart looking for a tree stand because Chris really wanted a live tree, but apparently they've been all sold out since Thanksgiving--is there some increased demand for live Christmas trees that we're unaware of? Anyway, we don't have much room for a tree, so we ended up buying one of those little fiber-optic trees, and lighting a tree-scented candle so we can pretend it's real. Here it is:

And here we are:

With finals basically over and my new job taking forever to start, I've pretty much been hanging at home this week. It's been really, really nice to finally get to take a break; I was finally able to go out yesterday and get Chris's Christmas present, and I'm finishing up thank-you's today (umm.... yeah). Today, though, I had the urge to get those art supplies out again--specifically the gouache--and I started messing around. I didn't make anything amazing, but I did end up with this little painting.

This is actually really small--probably about 3 inches tall, or less. It doesn't look a ton like the picture I was painting from, but I was mostly just messing around with shading on the face and I didn't do a sketch beforehand, so I'm okay with that. For the curious, this is actually Emma Watson (you know--Hermione). She's started doing some modeling recently, and I found her in one of my magazines. Her pictures don't actually look much like here--way more makeup than she ever wears in the movies. It makes for some fun contrast, though.

Final projects, plus some other stuff

It's been a crazy, crazy week (crazy as in two major papers and two final art projects due this week, resulting in me having slept a total of 10 hours this week since Monday, plus lots of snow and really cold weather), but I just turned in my last portfolio and I'm turning in my last paper tomorrow, so I figured I'd celebrate by eating a pita, listening to some Regina Spektor, and finally posting on my blog. I just finished my pita and my iPod's playing, so I guess now it's blog time.

For my drawing and 2D design classes, we were required to put together portfolios with four of our best projects from this semester, plus our final projects. I figured that since I haven't posted several of the pictures that went into those portfolios, I'd post them now (plus some of the rejected pieces that didn't quite make the cut ;)

Drawing Portfolio

This was my final project:

This was done in ink and gouache (pronounced GWASH, like "squash" and "ohmigosh"), and is a picture of some ruins in Capernaum. It took forever and I pretty much used up a whole Micron pen on this thing, but it was fun. Especially the gouache. It was my first time ever using gouache, and I really want to use it again. Seriously, people, this is true love. <3>

Ta da!!! I did this a while ago, back when I was drawing eggs. It took FOR-EV-ER. That's the biggest problem with pencil drawings--they're super time-consuming.

The last thing I submitted was this HFAC drawing:


I know my teacher's going to be disappointed when he sees that I submitted this drawing, because what he really wanted me to put in was this house:

So obviously, this house isn't quite finished. It was even less finished when my professor saw it. Picture it without the lines to the left so there's just the detailed parts, and that's what my professor saw. It was one of those things where it was taking much longer than I thought it would, so it didn't get finished on time and I figured I'd just take in what I had so he could see that I'd been working on it, and then I'd turn it in late. Well, he absolutely loved it. Just the way it was. I think it was his favorite thing I ever turned in, actually. He did agree that it probably did need a little bit more, though, but he didn't want me to finish-finish it. He wanted me to maybe fill in the details around the window and on the chimney, outline the left side in ink, and just not finish the bottom right corner. I started doing that, obviously, but ran out of time, so I turned in the HFAC instead. I kind of feel bad about it, though, so I think I might finish it up next week and show it to him when I go to pick up my portfolio, because for whatever reason, he really really liked it and was super excited to see it "finished".

This is what did not make it into my portfolio:

It's a picture of a dinosaur. Or at least, I was looking at dinosaur bones when I made it, and there might be some dinosaur parts in it. Something I discovered about myself this semester is that I'm really not good at abstract art--realism is kind of my thing, I guess. My teacher pretty much hated almost every abstract art piece I made this semester, though the dinosaur one was actually his favorite abstract that I did. He gave it a 9, which is definitely more than you can say about my other ones :P Luckily, we only did a few, or it probably would have killed my grade dead.

2D Design Portfolio

My final for this class was actually a series of three paintings, including a painting of me, Jordan, and Chelsie. The original plan was to not use the picture of me (which was actually from an earlier assignment) and to do one of Amanda instead, but I ran out of time and could only get two done. I'll have to make it up to Amanda later.

They're all painted with acrylics, though painting Chelsie's made me think that watercolor or gouache could also be really cool for something like this. Jordan's pose was kind of fun--I stole the picture from Facebook (BWA-HA-HA!!!). The color scheme on Chelsie's is kind of weird, but it's grown on me and now I really like it. Maybe I'll do one of Amanda in my free time--it just feels right that all of my siblings be reduced to large, simplified fields of color. Or something like that.

This is a collage I did of a Matisse painting using the $80 paper they made us buy for this class (seriously :P). It took a long, long time, and by the time I was done I felt like Jerry Seinfeld on that one episode where he signs a bunch of 12 cent checks, and afterwards his hand is all cramped and injured. Cutting out paper for over 12 hours straight has kind of the same effect. I do like colors, though, so using all of those colors was kind of cool.

This is another collage. We did way too many collages in this class for my taste, but since our class is made up of people going into all disciplines of art (photography, graphic design, studio art, ceramics), our teacher was told to not give us assignments that would favor some students over others, and to our teacher that meant collages. I don't entirely get this, though--all of the photography students had to take Drawing, and half of them can barely draw at all, and none of them are being graded easier than the rest of us. But anyway, collages my teacher said, and collages we did. That was one of my better collages. Yippee.

To tell the truth, I didn't even like this thing. My teacher did, though, and so did the rest of the class, and my teacher really wanted me to put it in, so I figured I was just being self-critical and put it in. It's the letter S in a box, rotated and flipped and colors inversed. My teacher said it had flow.

This was the last thing in my portfolio, and it's much bigger in real life. It's only about 2 inches tall, but it's two feet long. For this, there were 12 boxes, and we had to listen to a song and add elements to the boxes as the song went along to reflect the music. I did "Blue Caravan" by Vienna Teng, whom I love.

Rejected:

This is my logo for a store that sells candles and cupcakes. We had to take two items, which could be related or unrelated, and group their images together somehow to make a logo. This one was cute, but I decided not to put it in the portfolio. It was lots of fun coming up with ideas for this assignment, though.

Also rejected:

Sorry if there are any typos in this post. I'm running on low amounts of sleep, and my typing ability seems to have decreased. I typed "explosed" instead of "exposed" earlier, and laughed much harder than I should have. That is all.

Rawr!!!

I have a new musical obsession! Can you guess what it is?

Yes, I am most definitely talking about The Lion King (some costumes, huh?). I really love the music in this, and was kind of surprised by how much I don't know, and by the fact that Disney left some of the best songs out of the movie. :( Fortunately for me, I checked the touring schedule, and Lion King comes to SLC next summer! I just hope tickets don't sell out before I even know they're on sale like what happened with Wicked. How soon do they usually start selling tickets, anyway?

So, I don't really have much to report. I made some cheesecake-swirl brownies on Thursday, subsequently decided to go on a temporary no-sugar diet, and made Chris give away half a pan to the people he home teaches. I also made rye bread this week to use in sandwiches, though the loaves came out smaller than I thought they would, so they make kind of small sandwiches. I managed to score some King's Singers tickets for this Wednesday, so Chris and I are planning on going to that this week, and Jordan's coming down late on Halloween night to watch Sweeney Todd the Musical with me, which is playing in Provo this week. I've spent way too long sitting in the stupid HFAC this week, drawing the inside of the building. I don't have that picture to post yet--it's not done, and I can't bring myself to work on it right now. I think I'll just wake up early and do it tomorrow. The herb garden Chris gave me for our second monthiversary is thriving once more, after I almost destroyed it through lack of water, and the parsley's doing much better now that the basil and mint aren't completely blocking it out. The rosemary and oregano are pretty much toast, though. Chris has made the switch from contact lenses to glasses, so we're now the official "nerd" couple of our ward. I keep thinking about cutting my hair, but I'm continually talked out of it by Chris and my mom, so I'm thinking maybe I could dye it instead. Maybe something like blue? Or rainbow?

I think it could be cute, but maybe they'd rather I just went with a haircut instead ;)

And... that's about all of the random stuff I could think of to spew on this blog post. Oh yeah, I did finally finish the cover for my mom's book!

There might be some minor changes made, but this is pretty much it, and I'm super happy to finally have this done! And now I'm going to bed. Sure, this is kind of short, and very random, but at least I posted!

She's Coming...

I'm finding it a little hard to believe that I'm actually halfway through the semester. The weeks have just been passing by so fast... and yet, I just took a midterm, and my computer art class is almost over, so it must be so. Speaking of that class (which is on block schedule, so its last day is Monday), I must've spent over ten hours this weekend finishing up all of the assignments that are due. I mean, luckily it's a pretty fun class, so I didn't really mind doing those assignments, but it's still a lot of time, especially when I also have a large drawing due on Monday and a brochure and cover to design for my mom's book ASAP. At least I have some fun things to show for all that effort, though (or at least I think so). For example, a lovely self portrait:

Looks just like me, right? ;) I also have a very lovely room (and don't judge me--my professor told me to just let the chair float so it would fit in with the linear perspective, but I needed something to explain the floating chair, so...):

An extremely useful chart documenting my level of alertness everytime the snooze alarm goes off in the morning (notice how my level of alertness skyrockets the very last time it goes off when I realize that I only have 30 minutes to get to class):

And... this:

Apparently there was a reason I edited all those voodoo doll pictures, and this is it. I still don't completely know what to think about this... but it was lots of fun to make! I wish you could see it in all its glory, but I had to get it down to a pretty small file size to upload to Blogger, which involved a lot more work than I thought it would :P Rest assured that, viewed at its full size, it's very cool.

And... that's pretty much the gist of everything we did in my computer art class. Will I miss it? Well, it was a lot of fun, but it did start at 8 in the morning, and now that it's over school doesn't start until 11, so... I think I'll be okay ;)

Oh, and beware the Egyptian voodoo doll. She's coming...