Valentine's Day is less than a week away!

Hint:  It's this coming Sunday!  Which is also Chinese New Year!  (The year of the tiger - my year!!!!!)

What are you doing for all those folks that deserve a little love?  We spent a part of our weekend putting together a few valentines for our friends and ourselves.  (Because if you don't love you, who's going to????)  I'm sharing the fruits of our labor with all of you just in case you need an idea or two.  Plus I got a totally awesome iPhone app that has all these nifty camera filters and I'm really excited because my photos are SO GOOD!  (At least I think they are and I am SO excited about them it is ridiculous.)

I'm sure you've seen the recipe for these shortbread buttons.  I saw them on so many blogs I thought I was reading the same blog for two weeks.  Anyway, we did the whole button thing a week ago and they were tasty enough to warrant another batch.  But this time we made hearts and x's and o's.

And we made pink ones using maraschino cherries which weren't very cherry flavored but were pink!

After eating more cookies than we should have, we dug around in our paper recycling for those bags they put your wine bottles in so you don't leave the shop carting two bottles of wine for the world to see.  (I suppose I should make wine carrying bags so we don't end up with this collection of paper bags but I'm certainly glad we had some for this project!)  I practiced my Spencerian script for about an hour before I felt comfortable writing on the bag.  And then viola!  (Some inky smudges added a little something to the bag, eh?)

Our next project also involves those paper bags.  This time to wrap up tin cans.  (I may have spent more time digging through my recycling than making these valentines...)

Inside the tin cans are bulbs.  Specifically, spring beauties.  Which are the prettiest blue hyacinth when in full bloom.  The can is filled with soil and bark and then three bulbs are nestled on top.  The warm sun and weekly watering will force them to bloom before the bulbs in our yard do.  Which is a great way to bring spring home before Mother Nature feels compelled to bring it to New England.  We saved a bundle from our fall planting just for this purpose.  And because we're nice people, we will be sharing these bulbs in recycled tin cans with some friends (Robin, please act surprised!).

Our last little project involves some sewing so for those of you that don't take to the needles, this might not be the quickest or easiest valentine ever.  But it honestly isn't hard.  We used scraps of linen and wool felt from other projects and lavender we harvested last summer to make these little satchets.

  

Using the most basic stitches and very simple messages, I had these stitched up by the time Emma and Mr. Knightley had professed their love in the garden.  Once stuffed with lavender these hearts not only look swell but they smell real nice, too!  I'm wondering if the post office will accept this fabric envelope so I can ship Heather her valentine?

Happy Soon-to-be Valentine's Day!  (And Chinese New Year!)

p.s. Aren't the photo filters awesome????  Polaroid!  1974 (the year of my birth)!  Magazine!  You can get them for your computer, too!

To Trying New Things!

Every time I take this to Trader Joe's or the farmers market, I get compliments. "My friend made it," I say. Then people fall on the floor, they're so impressed.This year is shaping up to be one of Bold Moves, of Chances Taken, despite chickenyness and contrary to The Girl In The Back Of Our Heads Who Doesn’t Care If We ALL Get Killed,  who is so very fond of telling us that trying new things is scary and hard and we’re probably no good at them anyway, so why don’t we just stay home?

My heart thumped with gladness to hear VBJ might just finally start her OWN Etsy shop.  If you’ve been here before, you already know thatDishcloths by VBJ. I am saving them for the prom, as they are clearly too nice to use on gross dishes. Virginia makes things that are beautiful, useful, AND v. thoughtful—they make the world nicer, and not just because they’re terribly, terribly ecological, at heart.

If you’ve scrolled down to the bottom right corner of our blog-o-fantastico, you’ve seen Virginia’s favorite things already on Etsy (geniusy, all of them).  All this Etsy-thinking made me realize how pleasant the internet CAN be, and the sprinkling of loveliness (and hilarity) that’s made its way into my own home and life via this vast online craft fair.  So here are some of MY favorite Etsies…plus some of my favorite VBJ creations, ones I frankly know she could CLEAN UP with were she to offer them for sale!  (All via my own terrible photos…you will be glad to know I am NOT for hire to shoot anyone’s Etsy pics.)

My own, personal custom Anna Joyce tank + bottoms. Red and orange were what colors our wedding was. (Wrinkles are my own.)First, Anna Joyce Design!  Handmade clothes and linens and art and pillows, often from vintage fabrics, all of it supercute yet grownuppy, joyful yet peaceful…her things make me feel like it’s spring: that soft, warm, bright-but-not-blinding softness…  Plus, she looks uncannily like double agent Nina from ‘24,’ and I happen to know she throws a BRILLIANT wedding shower.

I love using Etsy to send gifts.  One of my favorite bits of joy to send is Leah Pellegrini’s floaty, jewelly wee mobiles—bright bits of glass waft in space, sometimes in galaxies small enough to hang off the edge of a desktop monitor.  (I see she has ‘make your own mobile’ kits now!  Fun!)  If I send you one…act surprised.

To be entirely honest, I found these next two purveyors at an ACTUAL craft fair, but they’re v. much on Etsy, too!  Every time I step out of the shower, Berkley Illustration’s squirrel portraits make me happy.  If I had a zillion dollars, or any say in the decoration of my nephew’s nursery, he’d have dozens of these anthropomorphized animals on his wall.  (Check out the upside down bat!  At the craft fair, people kept putting him right-side up.  Which was wrong.)  I also love my MincingMockingbird bird art—it makes me feel like a kindred spirit of Auntie Mame and Katy McColl (remember her, from Jane Magazine?).

Anyway, VBJ, I know it’s supereasy to look at someone else’s Squirrel bag, courtesy of VBJ (different from the squirrel bag she made for my mom); there's an inside pocket--THE defining detail of A Good Bag.life and know what to do.  And I know I’m not exactly an impartial observer.  But, as a representative of the universe, I want to heartily and vociferously encourage you to use your powers for good (rather than for evil), ever confident that you will reap tremendous rewards—which you could sock away to, I don’t know, take a cruise, say?  In sum:  you rule.  Make that paper, booboo.

My VBJ patchwork pillow! (As we pack for our cruise! Note: ties, floppy hat.)Finally, it was one year ago--February 1, 2009--that we 'officially' launched Green Is The New Black as a joint venture.  I have absolutely loved this whole year of learning, sharing, and staying in touch.  Viva la blog-o-fantastico!

Happy Anniversary Blog! And Gnocchi Fail!

One year ago Heather and I decided we'd share a blog as a way to keep in touch after spending six months sending emails (which we still do) that we read outloud to our spouses (and sometimes our friends) and thought ourselves to be quite geniusy.  Well, I still think we are quite geniusy and I'm wicked proud of us for keeping on top of the blog each week even with our schedules and travels and getting waylaid by life.  Sure, some posts have been better than others but we have yet to miss a week!  We've chronicled some highs and some lows.  We discovered that strangers sometimes read our musings.  And we certainly prove that lifestyle blogs can be a bit messy.

In that vein, I present you with Noah and Virginia's Great Gnocchi Fail!  (Which was ironic given my great craft success last week.)  We have never made gnocchi before so all we really knew was what it looks like when we either buy it freshly made or order it at a restaurant already prepared.  Everything before that was/is a mystery.  This is perhaps why we didn't see things were actually going horribly array.

We were trying a recipe from Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm, which is one of the most beautiful books ever.  Honest.  And it is organized in the "seasonal way" which is my new favorite way of organizing recipes (I'm doing this with my digital recipes!) because that's how we cook.  Jeff & Bettina make everything seem so easy and achievable AND we'd had many a success prior to the gnocchi experiment.

After struggling to make the gnocchi look like the picture (we had to add SO MUCH flour to get the damn things to even resemble dough), we figured we should simply toss a bunch in the boiling water, wait for them to float, set a timer and then taste them.

As you can imagine, there was lots of cursing when we pulled those mishapen dough "squares" out of the pot.  (Because cursing seems like the right course of action when you realize that dinner may be ruined.)  We sprinkled them with a bit of olive oil and then popped one in our mouths just to see.  Ummm, not how we remembered gnocchi tasting but weren't positive we were remembering right (?????).  I threw in another batch of them and let the first batch cool.  Noah began to make the butter sauce (butter fixes everything, right?).  We tasted the cooled gnocchi.  So much worse than the hot gnocchi. 

We called Mike and made him taste a couple.  There was some hemming and hawing (it's not terrible, well, it is sort-of.  what should it taste like?  do you think it's actually edible?  should it be this gummy?) and then we decided to scrap dinner and order Thai from down the street.  It took from the moment we decided to order Thai to Noah's return with dinner to clean our kitchen of sweet potato carnage.  Later that night I did some gnocchi research and think perhaps we should try it again... next year.  (Plus I read some reviews of this particular recipe and it seems we were not the only people with a very messy mash of potatoes!  The number of potatoes may have been off (go with units not weight)!  And I learned that those potatoes should really bake (for a long time) and be nice and dry or you'll have your very own gnocchi fail!)

Well, I'm glad we didn't try this with dinner guests!  Unless those guests were Heather and Adrian.  In the end, the Thai was delicious and we did laugh a lot (and curse a lot).  And after finishing the kitchen cleanup we enjoyed another glass of wine!

Cheers to us and cooking fails and crafting successes and the blog-o-fantastico and all we may/may not do in 2010!

(from i can read)

The Light at the End of the Tunnel!

Well!  We…left the Midwest, flew to Albuquerque, kicked around for a few days—including the Albuquerque aquarium and Natural History Museum, plus a scandalous number of Lotaburger halibut samwiches—aaand then found ourselves BACK in Los Angeles!  You may ask yourself:  well…how did we get here?

I am loath to keep you in suspense.  By train, that’s how!

We booked a sleeper berth on the Southwest Chief—which originates in Chicago, by the by—and hunkered down to watch the desert spool by.  Okay, full disclosure: while I STARTED the trip all keyed up and romantic (“lookit me, I’m Marilyn Monroe!  You be Jack Lemmon!”), thinking it would be a GREAT idea to do the whole three day trek from Chicago to LA via train…I ended the trip glad for just the one night.

The Boob (or Eyes) Rule of Martinis: One's not enough; three's too many. (Above counts as a scanty two each.)There are many benefits to train travel…first of all, Adrian and I could BOTH enjoy cocktails!  It feels all quaint and romantic—kind of olden-times-y, from that marvelous era I never lived through that I always forget is over; that golden age when people dressed up to travel, and never had to be patted down by strangers in public whilst barefoot.  You get to sleep in bunkbeds (I dibsed top bunk—DANGER SLEEPING!)!  It costs way less than air travel, and there are more bathrooms!  (The lock was dodgy on the biggest bathroom…I walked in on BOTH a kindly older gentleman, AND a 15 year old boy.  (Two different trips.)  I reckon it’s the most action either has gotten in a while.)

We ate dinner (three courses, plus warm rolls!  A's dessert: teeny wee Ciao Bella! Supercute! And lemonlicious!Delivered by Mike, our porter!) in our berth, kicked off our shoes and shimmied into jammie-pants, split a bottle of wine, saw the moon rise over the desert, and watched “The Prestige” on my laptop (that outlet that says “RAZOR” secretly also means: “LAPTOP”) once the sun went down.  (I also learned that I’m a lot more able to forego my morning toilette than I am the evening one…I just HAVE to wash my face, take out my contacts, brush my teeth, before I go to bed.  Somewhere, my 20 year old self is laughing rudely at me.)  Overall: JUST lovely!

Old Route 66 is peppered with fantastic old-school motels. Seen here. Swears. (Trains can be wobbly.)As an added bonus, train travel is obvi far greener than car or plane trips.  Besides the whole carbon footprint issue, Amtrak works to recycle not just on its trains and in its stations, but actual train parts, as well.  Plus, you can pay to offset the carbon messiness that gets used on your behalf!  Does my liberal guilt-y heart good!  (Plus, just LOOK at the adorable Amtrak eco-logo!)

Next up, I will report on whether or not a cruise to Mexico is as awesome as it sounds, as we leave on Sunday.  You, the reader, deserve to know.

Wear an Apron Wednesday!

This is one of my patented revelations to which much of the world will say:  duh.

The other day, as I dressed, I pulled out top after top, only to realize that the tummies were splattered with greasy spots.  Now, I’m a shirt-feeder extraordinaire, but due to the topography of my torso (more on that in a minute), most of my mid-meal splots end up somewhere north of my sternum.

From whence did the tummy-splots come?  From cooking, and from splooshily washing dishes in the sink.  Yes, I’m a mess.  Anyway, why it took me this long to realize the solution, I’ll never know.  Generations have known, myriad professions understand…you wear an apron?  Your front stays clean(er).

All together now:  duh.

I’m sallying forth, a reformed apron-wearer.  I even have options to get me going…I have this adorable cupcakey one from my sister, and one with a map of France, showing from whence cheeses come, from a geniusy faraway friend.

(I secretly hope to hunt down a good halter-style pattern, and lovely vintagey fabrics, to make my OWN apron…as the traditional square-top style tends to look like this on me:  BOapronOB.  (It leaves a lot of real estate uncovered, and makes me look like a Macy’s Day balloon.))

Anyway, that’s my tip:  aprons?  Wear ‘em.  Wreck less laundry.