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...

Radvent, Day 11 - DREAMING

What is your personal dream? What would happen if your dream came true?

It takes me a long time to decide on "a dream" because once I commit to having a dream, I will stop at nothing to make it happen. I often create dreams where I will expand a tangible dream into a crazy "intangible" dream.

Current dreams include:
Getting a golden retriever (crazy dream: living on a farm with hundreds of golden retrievers. I just want their furry, floppy, goodness all around me!)

Designing my own house. This one terrifies me because I would would want every "cool" thing I have seen in my own house. I might go crazy! Also, I heard that having yourself as your own client is a horrific experience.

To live an urban lifestyle. I am tired of relying on a car, not being able to have spontaneity, and having to plan out errand trips. (I once drove to 3 different grocery stores in one day.) I was inspired by a class I took in grad school where we studied urban/dense living in which communities would be built around transit, amenities, community. We have all been programmed to want big houses in the country side with acres of land, but that is just not for me. Give me my box in the city!

Radvent, Day 10 - LOVING

Radvent, Day 10 - LOVING

You are loved immensely. You are wrapped up in a big fluffy blanket of love everywhere you go because you deserve it! Make up your own self-affirmations today.

...you love to make people happy
... you are going after what you've always wanted
... you are a goofball, and if people don't accept that, you don't care
...you never give up
...you have no unexpressed emotion

Radvent, Day 9 - INSPIRING

Ask someone you love what you have done to inspire them. Be proud of yourself and marvel at how your own little sphere of influence is ever-expanding, completely out of your control.

Instead, I will now write about what inspires me about Hum-z.
1. Soccer - Anyone from any country, regardless of language barrier, skill level, or economic can bond over soccer. It brings people together. He can go anywhere and make friends, whether it is playing in a foreign park, or striking up a conversation with total strangers in a bar. 2. People who put their ideas into motion - He has so many ideas (most of which I shoot down.) But that doesn't stop him from dreaming. He has so many things he wants to do, so many inventions, business endeavors, designs in his head. 3. Helping people. He will go out of his way to help people. Key examples include: shoveling all the elderly neighbors sidewalks, staying late at work to help a coworker with computer problems, and the most recent, helping a lost traveler and total stranger, pay her parking fee, find her train while carrying her bag and running to get to the platform so they both didn't miss the train. The Princeton train station can be pretty confusing. His random acts of kindness inspire me to take the extra minute to help someone out if the chance presents itself.

As for me...Here's what inspires me the most. 1. Lists - It's like writing it down peer pressures me into doing stuff...I also like to cross things off. 2. The internet - I can always find something new. There is always something happening somewhere and the internet brings it to me, while I am sitting on my couch in my pajamas. 3. The city - I love urban! I love people, lights, crowds, motion. Each city I visit has an energy that cannot be emulated anywhere else. My favorites include NYC, London, Sydney. 4. Colors - My happiest day would just be to throw gallons of paint on everything, everywhere I went. I think it's fair to say that if it has a good color palette, I want it. I want to be surrounded by color!

Radvent, Day 8 - CREATING

I'm finally caught up with the Radvent schedule!
















Choose an object to symbolize your creativity and put it in a place you can see it every day.

This is a sculpture that I made for my first advanced studio in college. This is one of the only things from architecture school that I still have and display proudly. The assignment was to define a cube by using volumes. This assignment got me to think outside of the box and it also helped me to understand architecture as a volume, not just floors and walls. In the background is one of my marker sets. (This one is actually Hum-z's, but we share.) As a designer, I use color every day, whether I realize it or not. I even conducted a graduate semester-long project on how we perceive color. It was one of my favorite projects during grad school because I got to collect all of the data myself. I can't design anything without thinking about my color palette.