It’s been quite a week.

On Tuesday night, I heard a faint mewing outside our living room window. Kenn and I grabbed a flashlight, ran outside in our pajamas and searched the bushes, finally seeing this little fellow cowering and crying. Unfortunately, he bolted and ran into a tiny crawlspace.

Wednesday morning, we were awoken at about 6am by more crying. We found him on the back stairs this time, again alone and crying. Kenn captured him after much fuss.

The little guy was dirty, smelly, and starving. We went out and got him a bottle, some formula, kitten food, and a flea comb. I bathed him and spent about an hour picking off and killing fleas, which he was absolutely covered in (can you tell I’ve done this before?). We gave him a heating pad to lie on, and quite quickly he was playing, purring, and cuddling with us. He wolfed down a lot of food and slept peacefully on his heating pad nearly all day.

Luckily, I was able to find him a new home the same day, because Basil and Colette were very disturbed by this development. He started cuddling and purring with his new mom immediately upon meeting her, and she informs me he’s doing well in his transition from street urchin to pampered house cat!

We had a wonderful time in Sonoma last weekend. Hot air balloons are neat.

…and I love horses.

Afterward, we had breakfast in this beautiful garden. It was basically a scaled up version of my dream garden. There were separate mini gardens within it for various cuisines: Italian, south american, etc.

We also visited a very nice winery and had dinner at an adorable little restaurant in a converted old pullman train car. It was a pretty fancy birthday.

{more photos on flickr, if you’re interested}

This is my beautiful new dress, which Kenn bought me for my birthday. He is really good at buying me clothes. It’s been a year since I bought any new, non-handmade clothing, so dresses as gifts are a special treat. Polka dots and plaid are two of my favorite things. And bows. Also, pockets.

Other birthday gifts included a new lens and lots of great books. And this weekend, we are escaping to Sonoma to relax, drink wine, and ride in a hot air ballloon (!!)

I know this blog has slowed down lately, but only because I have been extremely busy working on stuff in my studio, scheming and dreaming. But I don’t want to talk in too much detail about my plans until I have something to show for it.

(cue the Beastie Boys’ “She’s Crafty”)

Have a lovely, warm & sunny weekend everyone!

I saw this dress while browsing the blog at Frances May, a shop in Portland, OR that specializes in independent designers. Portland has such amazing dress shops.

Anyway, this dress is by Lorick and it’s so lovely. I’m really into sheers lately. The dress I’m working on now is sheer and floaty and pink. But I think what really makes this one is the matching belt.

When I first started sewing, way back in high school, you could buy kits to make covered belts to match your dress at Joann or whatever. So many vintage dresses were made with matching belts, but not so much anymore. Maybe they are considered old fashioned, because they aren’t so easy to come by now. They’re still around, just not widely available.

On an unrelated note, we’re currently playing through all the music we own. We did this once before by putting our iTunes library on random for an entire month, and it was good for breaking the music rut. Now we’re playing whole albums, in alphabetical order, which is a lot less jarring. We started with Abattoir Blues. I am looking forward to hearing Bad Music For Bad People soon, as I think the Cramps are the best best best music to listen to on a hot day. Right now we’re listening to Morphine, which is also pretty sexy and sultry hot weather music.

Kenn is making mango-coconut smoothies for breakfast. It smells wonderful. That is all. I love summer.

Yesterday was Kenn’s birthday. I came home bearing a fresh bouquet of peonies, since it is that very brief season in which they do not cost 4875988492490 dollars.

I then made gnocchi alla romana and lemon roasted broccoli and coconut panna cotta with a berry coulis. The first and last recipes are from Super Natural Cooking, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Everything from that book is fabulous.

The gnocchi was AMAZING. I’ve never made baked (rather than boiled) gnocchi, nor have I made it without potatoes (these are semolina) but it was so incredible. Might have something to do with the entire stick of butter in there.

We’re continuing to celebrate through the weekend, this morning with whole grain pancakes with berries.

Basil likes to keep me company when I cook.

As an aside, thank you to everyone who gave their opinions on my dress! I’ll be sharing v2.0 soon!

We drove down to LA last weekend for family things, and I think it was one of the best LA visits ever. It almost made me love Los Angeles. I guess visiting all your favorite old haunts within a couple days will do that.

I didn’t particularly like living in LA, mainly because the sprawl is awful and the traffic even worse. Unlike other cities I’ve lived in, you can’t just walk outside, wander down the street, and find something to do. You have to find something, make plans, and drive 40 minutes. Always.

But LA has its magic, it’s true. There are undiscovered places not crowded with hipsters, beaches and sun, quirky neighborhoods, incredible art, and classic cars. I even like the seedy ruptured glamor of hollywood, in a way. There is some truth to the crumbling fairydusted LA sketched in Francesca Lia Block novels, but like a lot of things, you have to step away for a while to see it.

Here’s what I did:

• Baked a giant red velvet cake for my mom’s birthday, which was amazingly delicious. My brother said it looked like a cartoon cake.
  
  
  
  
• Visited Acres of Books, one of my favorite places on this earth
  
• Had cocktails at Yamashiro high up in the Hollywood hills, looking out over all of Hollywood at sunset

  
  

• Ate yummy vegan food and spent a day wandering around Silverlake
  
  
• Walked around Echo Park and saw baby swans in the lake!
  
  
• Saw some incredible homes in Los Feliz
  
  
• Had Chai and soup at The Bourgeois Pig, sitting in the back room which has been made into a crazy dark enchanted forest room (not pictured), while they played Nick Cave
  
  
• Drinks at The Dresden and Boardners
  
• Hanging out at a friend’s loft in downtown LA and eating homemade veggie tacos with pretty skyline views
  

Pretty hard to beat that for a fantastic weekend.

One of the things I really missed when we lived in san francisco was the beautiful, overflowing gardens of the east bay. I’m so glad we’re back.

This is a walk we frequently take through the neighborhood. We don’t live in the swankiest, greenest of neighborhoods, but we live very close to one. Which is almost as good. almost.

On this particular day, we walked to the nearby chocolate seller/cafe and shared a piece of chocolate cinnamon cake.

Last night, we had a couple friends over for dinner. I made a big salad with champagne vinaigrette, roasted tomatoes stuffed with fresh mozzarella, and two pizzas. One had roasted peppers and broccoli, the other had thinly sliced potato, gruyere, and homemade pesto.

This pesto recipe from Heidi Swanson is the only one I use, since I first tried it about a year ago. It takes time, but it is most definitely worth it. The flavor really is more complex.

PS: Today I’m going to the Maker Faire! This is the third year we’ve gone. good times.

Our favorite tiki bar is starting a new night, International Flight Lounge, featuring “A hi-flying mix of the best uptempo ’60s French pop, Euro beat and film soundtracks, exotica, British invasion, and much more.” Seeing as I like all of those things (particularly 60s French pop), we had to check it out.

I am drinking a macadamia nut chi-chi in this photo. It has an orchid floating in it. Why yes, I am a girl drink drunk.

I’m off to magical Portland for the weekend! This will be a nice little vacation to one of my favorite cities.