BIG NEWS BIG FUN

Okay y’all, hold on to your hats because we’re shaking things up. When January 1, 2011 rolled around I made a list of projects and goals and aspirations for the upcoming year. Let's not call them resolutions because no one ever keeps their resolutions. I didn't achieve my goals or follow through on most of my projects either. I mean, like, yeah, I did promise you more than nine blog posts in 2011 and it didn’t happen but that’s not important. But still, they weren't resolutions so just drop it, okay?

Well it’s now December 2011 and I’ve gathered the gumption to start one of the bigger projects on my list. I’ve been planning it all year so it’s not like I just abandoned it, but now is the time to DO rather than SAY. And I’m a big proponent for the old adage ‘actions speak louder than words’. I know the saying doesn’t really have anything to do with what I’m trying to get at but it has ‘actions’ and ‘words’ in it so whatever.

Well here it is then; I’m launching a website.

If I were fifteen, I might liken it to Rookie Mag, but I’m about a decade older (yikes!) so I’ll try not to divulge my desire to relive my teenage years too much. Really, it’s just a portfolio of what I can do. That is, a showcase of all the hobbies I’m not really that good at. The blog will live on and since I really do want to make something of this little chunk of the internet, I will update it at least weekly, pinky swear.

Also, who cares about the blog! What I’m most excited about is the monthly interviews I will be conducting. I’ll be drinking mimosas and drunkenly questioning fashion-, music-, and art-minded people that I think are totally rad. December’s interview is with one Miss Tammy Leung, personal assistant to Jeanne Beker, Editorial & Production Assistant at Fashion Television Magazine, and all around babe.

We will be launching BEFORE Christmas if I can get my act together and if my slave labourer of a web designer can find the time between studying for his exams and being nagged by yours truly.

In the meantime, here is my recipe for the best soft ginger cookies in the world (because baking is another one of those hobbies I'm just sort of okay at and also I don't think I've ever shared a recipe on my blog before and also because it IS Christmas time so why wouldn't you want ginger cookies?):

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The Best Big Soft Ginger Cookies (adapted from here)

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsps ground ginger
• 2 tsps fresh grated ginger
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/4 tsps ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp orange juice
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 tsps white sugar to dust

1) Keep in mind that the spice blend can totally be adjusted. I like more spice. You can use less but I probably wouldn’t use less than half of the amounts listed above.

2) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F

3) Sift together the flour, ground ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Do this in a small bowl because you will just be dumping it into the large bowl you are using in the next step. But don’t dump it yet! Wait until I tell you to.

4) cream together the butter, which you have softened and cut up into little cubes, with the cup of sugar. I use a fork for this part because I don't have those fancy contraptions that cream things together for you. Anyway, try to get it super creamy and fluffy and a really pretty pale yellow.

5) Then add the egg, orange juice, fresh ginger, and molasses. I switch from fork to wire whisk at this point. This part is also kind of weird and off-putting because it smells real bad when the orange juice and molasses mix. Power through it because the results are delectable.

6) NOW you gradually stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. I usually add it in three parts.

7) Grab a hunk of dough and roll it into a walnut-sized ball but don't make it too smooth! You want those nice cracks that form when they bake, like in the picture.

8) Lightly roll this ball in the additional sugar and plop it on your baking sheet. The last time I made these cookies, I pressed them down ever so slightly but next time I think I will just let them sit in ball form because maybe that will make them extra fluffy, who knows.

9) Bake them for 8 minutes. EXACTLY 8. Well, maybe for less than 8 if you like but NEVER more. You're cookies will be hard and that’s gross.

10) When you take your cookies out of the oven, let them chill on the baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer them to a cooling rack.

11) Enjoy these cookies on their own, with milk, as an ice cream sandwich, topped with Fluff marshmallow and drizzled in chocolate, deep fried, crumbled into a crust for pumpkin pie, cut up into chunks and added to vanilla pudding, filled with icing and rolled in chocolate chips, and any other which way you like!

when i grow up i want to be: eloise at the plaza

who says you have to grow up?

acne relaxed blouse, jllu (etsy) grow up wool felt bow headband, the joyce hotel paris, see by chloe pleated crepe mini skirt, new kid horse bit loafer,

obsessed: exposed closets

with the beginning of the new year often comes a list full of generic resolutions that fall by the wayside by the time valentine's day rolls around. among these? be more organized! A little trick to help us stick by it (when it comes to our closets at least): air it like your dirty laundry! not only a great way to keep tidy and organized, it also makes any room look chic (given you've got taste... well maybe this isn't the best idea for everyone), and is great solution for a sans closet apartment (um...maybe the only solution).

(skona hem)

(me melodia)

(unknown)

(apartment therapy)

i particularly love the use of simple white walls with this look - it makes the clothes pop and become a focal piece in the landscape of the rooms. swoon.

how do you say these words?

roll, comfortable, orange, both, tour, toilet, sure, Nevada, roof, chocolate, route, drawer, coupon, Ramen Noodles, pecan, caramel, milk, again, Caribbean, wash, New Orleans, crayon, envelope, coffee, Reese's Pieces, data

literary forebears: william shakespeare

9 posts in 2010? here's shooting for 10 in 2011.

literary forebears: nabokov

unemployment pros: more free time
unemployment cons: less free cash flow

this creates the ultimate dilemma: more time to create but less money to do so. the lack of fancy software or other supplies doesn't mean you can't at least make the effort. even MS paint goes a long way. (ask my friend guy- he's a pro)

for the above, i just grabbed a photo, found a fitting literary quote and a decent font on MS paint (it is difficult, i won't lie) then laid it over the image. consider a longer quote to fill the entire image or simply one word that strikes your fancy.

words of wisdom: ernest hemingway

(an excerpt from an interview with the paris review, spring of 1958)

Q: Who would you say are your literary forebears—those you have learned the most from?

A: Mark Twain, Flaubert, Stendhal, Bach, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Maupassant, the good Kipling, Thoreau, Captain Marryat, Shakespeare, Mozart, Quevedo, Dante, Virgil, Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Patinir, Goya, Giotto, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, San Juan de la Cruz, Góngora—it would take a day to remember everyone. Then it would sound as though I were claiming an erudition I did not possess instead of trying to remember all the people who have been an influence on my life and work. This isn’t an old dull question. It is a very good but a solemn question and requires an examination of conscience. I put in painters, or started to, because I learn as much from painters about how to write as from writers. You ask how this is done? It would take another day of explaining. I should think what one learns from composers and from the study of harmony and counterpoint would be obvious.