Rolled-Up Magazine Art

http://www.ragandbone.com/blog/?p=1526

I will put this painting/sculpture by Lee Gainer in my mental file listed "Project #173 that I want to do, but probably never will." Now I finally have a meaningful way of disposing all of the magazines, catalouges, junk mail that I throw out every week.

Because I've Always Wanted a Piano Table

I am not one for buying a.) novelty furniture, or b.) any type of furniture that I can plug something into. But I am IN LOVE with this ipod/piano/table! So sleek, and it even has a convenient drawer for storing stuff, aka, piano keys. The middle flap opens up to reveal speakers for your docked iPod, while mimicking an actual grand piano. Designed by Lovegrove and Repucci, it can be yours for a mere $14,000

Photos from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gocce/3287101633/

Photo Wall ≠ Brick

Photo from: http://www.walldesigns.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Photo-Wall.jpg/

I have a blank wall in a hallway in my apartment, that I've always wanted to do something with...So out of boredom, I googled "Photo Wall" to see if any innovative ideas would come up. Nope, just a whole lotta images of brick. Not really sure how brick = photo wall, but I did get one inspiring image. Although this is not a photo wall, I really liked this city headboard. I am such a sucker for anything with a cityscape on it. I guess I should try "Accent Wall."

The Beginning of Katharine's Top (Not So) Secret Database of Everything!

One of the reasons I started a blog was because I wanted a central place to put things that I found awesome, whether it is recipes, projects, photos, tutorials, tidbits of information, clothes, videos, and the list goes on, and on, and on....and on. A central place where everything I wanted to always remember would always be. And of course I would like to give credit to all the fantastic creative individuals who have inspired me to create this database and also to create in real life.

I have so many different interests and no place to see it all, whether it is coming up with the perfect crock pot recipe, or designing my own fabric. (Yes, I have "go-to" sites for each.)

I can't tell you how many times I have remembered a recipe, or a project that I liked but couldn't remember where I found it, resulting in many hours looking through the internet history/my email to see if I could find that place again. My inbox is FILLED with links that I've sent to myself to remember certain things. Many of which, get filed away into various subfolders, never to be seen again. Hopefully, the visuals on my blog will inspire me to actually complete some of these projects.

Here's a tutorial I found at The Purl Bee via a blog I already follow, Say Yes To Hoboken, to make these sweet felt flower pillows. And as en extra bonus, the tutorial doesn't look too hard.

I love the look of big fluffy pillows with extra-large patterns and bold prints. I love that the folds in this pillow give it an extra 3-dimensionality.

Photos from http://www.purlbee.com/

Click for Tutorial

Photo-Montage-Marathon

A coworker of mine asked me to do a simple rendering for him of a home renovation he is doing to the front facade of his house. Little did I know that this would be a 3-night marathon of photoshopping. Coming home from work just to begin more work. Brings me back to my college days. But other than 3d modeling, photo montaging is one of my favorite things about architecture. I just love being able to take a vision, or in this case a sketch, and make someone else be able to understand said vision. I like (love) to Design!

Anyway, enough words, here's the goods...

Oh yah, and I finally figured out how to attach larger images. Thanks to my flickr account, there will be no more uploading small and/or pixelated images. Let there be full-bleeds! (If such a thing existed on the internet...)

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July! (Belated of course.)

I brought these Berry Cheesecake Squares to a Fourth of July/Retirement Party and they were gobbled up in minutes! I found the recipe from this sweet new website I found, Tablespoon.com. Since they're made of pre-made pie crust, they were super easy to make! Recipe can be found here.

Bugs and Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my friend for her birthday last week. It all started when I wanted to get a cupcake late at night.

We drove around town hoping that one of the many cupcake shops in our town might still magically be open. No dice. Dejectedly, we came home and I whipped up a batch of these. Nothing complicated, just store-bought strawberry cupcake mix and cream cheese frosting. I did however make the effort to try and make them look pretty by making my own piping bag by cutting a hole in the end of frosting-filled plastic bag.

I took some inspiration from these bug cakes my family and I made for my niece's 1st birthday a couple months ago. We stayed up until 2am to make and decorate 32 bug cakes!

We definitely got better as the night of bug-cake-decorating progressed and learned which icings were easier to use. Some words of advice: don't use gel icing unless it is atop a solid layer of actual frosting....otherwise it sinks into the cake and makes it spongey. Lesson learned.

Some of my favorites.

The 32 bug cakes live to see another day...until they all got eaten by ravaging humans the next day.

This one is one of my favorites...I call him "Enraged Deer-tick!" Because that's not gross at all, right?.

Fun with Illustrator

I love playing around with new software, especially Adobe. Although Adobe Illustrator is not new to me, I hardly consider myself an expert. So just for funsies, I decided to experiment with the different live-trace filters just to see how they all looked next to each other. And of course, I had to use a photo of a familiar building in NYC, the Hearst Tower. Just some fun facts...It is the first high rise in NYC to achieve LEED certification and it is LEED Gold. The tower portion of the building was designed by Norman Foster (One of my favorite architects), and it was completed 80 years after the original 6-story building was built.

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few days ago, I had the sudden urge to bake some chocolate chip cookies. I don't know where this urge came from, since I'm not really an avid baker. All of the chemistry and precise measuring just drives me crazy. I like to just throw things into a bowl and hope something works, which is probably the reason I have had so many baking failures.

I googled chocolate chip cookie recipes and found this gem at allrecipes.com. (I basically only picked this recipe b/c I knew I had all of the ingredients in the house and it only has 3 steps. SCORE! Of course I am stubborn and can't follow simple directions; I had to make it my own. But how could I make this different/better?

So I looked into the fridge and what do I see? An entire untapped bag of luscious cherries that would go bad if I didn't eat them immediately! Sure why not? I sliced and diced these up, took out the pits of course, and threw them into the batter. (Disclaimer: I did alter another step of the recipe. Before I put them into the oven, I put them in the fridge to chill for 10 minutes. I guess it makes the cookies spread out less, or something?)

Anyway, here's my recipe (As altered from allrecipes.com):


Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened (I use Smart Balance)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons hot water
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped cherries (without pits)

Directions

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2.) Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour and chocolate chips. Add the chopped cherries to the batter last. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans. ( I ignored this and Pammed mine.)
3.) Chill dough in the oven for at least 10 minutes
4.) Bake for about 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.
5.) Cool on a baking rack.

End result: Pure ecstasy in my mouth! Soft and warm gooeyness! And an added bonus, my boyfriend didn't scarf them all down because he was weirded out by the cherries in them. More for me! They did end up spreading out to make one large cookie on the pan, so make sure you leave extra room.

Chillin in the fridge

Fresh out of the oven

Slacking

I know, I know, I have been a huge slacker when it comes to this blog. (Perfect example of a fail-blog, lol!.) But I am bound to change that. I have done a few "design-worthy" projects in the last few months and I am definitely going to work harder at posting them. Here's a painting I made for my best friend's son's new nursery.

As you can tell, it is safari themed, and matches all of the things she already got for her nursery. It is acrylic on a 40" x 18" canvas. I worked on it every day after work for a week. You can see the composition I laid out on photoshop before I started. The end result looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

And some details...