Ratatouille

We had a family dinner in honor of my grandfather and were asked to bring a dish that reminded us of grandpa. I made Ratatouille, as it comes from France where my grandfather is from. I also made it because I'm a huge fan of the film and thought it would be fun to make. The preparation took what felt like forever. My hand was so sore from chopping vegetables into VERY thin slices. But all in all it was fun to make!

The dish consists of layered zucchini, onion, tomato and eggplant. The sauce is tomato based with some great herbs, it simmers on very low heat for some time until the water has evaporated. The dish itself cooks for 2 and a half hours :O On very low heat, this allow the vegetables to keep their shape.

Mask All Finished!

The mask is pretty much finished, I added a few things to it last night. Gotta stop adding!! God, it could go on forever.
But overall I think it turned out pretty well.

Mardi Gras Mask

I'm SO thrilled that this year's Christmas party will be Mardi Gras themed. Every year they choose a new theme, last year's was the Academy Awards and it completely surpassed my expectations.

I've started working on my mask. It was an old mask that my sister had sparkled black and lime green.
First I bronzed the entire mask in bronzy orange sparkles. Then I hot glued the sequins on, added the ribbon and added the paper mache music notes. Everything so far has come together WAY better than expected, I'm so pleased. It's not done yet, I still have feathers and other bling to add.

Lucy

Here she is.....with her crooked nose. I attempted to fix the nose by recutting the piece and sticking it together with a pin, I don't think the end result was all that successful. Oh well, lesson learnt! The patterns are from pumpkinglow.com, a great site. I was thrilled to carve lucy's portrait, I've been a fan since I was 14 years old.

ps. trying to upload pictures tonight has been one problem after another. So the images look all off centered and weird. I'll try and fix that later!

Happy Halloween!!!

A couple more pics!

So last night I started pumpkin carving. I took my time and carved what I thought would be a great pumpkin. Unfortunately my moment of being completely satisfied with my work was VERY short lived when I illuminated my pumpkin. I had accidently cut off a very important part of Lucille Ball's nose :O So I've recut part of the nose and stuck it in with a pin. It ain't pretty, kids. If I have the courage to post pictures I will. My sister said she looks like Gilda Radner,ahaha

Little Vanilla Vanilla Dreams.....

Here they are.....yummy :D

Billy's Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes

I'm SO exhausted, my legs actually ache. And it's not like I was exercising, I was making cupcakes!! Let me tell you, it was no easy feat, two and a half hours later........pretty little white cakes with a beautiful creamy vanilla icing sat before me. They really are cute. I'm too tired to take pictures right now but I will tomorrow. And I may be tired by I really did mean to write vanilla twice,ahaha

Pumpkin Carving

This one is from last year. It was the second time I've had done any sort of scrapping, it was tedious and took forever, as I did not have the proper tool. So this year I will be heading to Home Depot to find a lenolium cutter. We've been carving pumpkins for the past seven years or so. It all started when my sister and I found a site called "Keith's Pumpkin Portraits" and were astounded at the pumpkins he had carved. And as luck had it, he had a few patterns on his site as well. Luckily the patterns were of the entire cast of The Wizard of Oz, one of my favorite movies :D that was it, I was hooked! and now look forward to Halloween every year.
The patterns are relatively easy to do bit take a fair bit of time and LOTS and LOTS of patience. You can't rush them, as I have tried in the past and something always seems to break. It's important to do a lot of scrapping inside the pumpkin before beginning. If the pumpkin walls is too thick, it makes it incredibly difficult to poke the pattern as well as to cut the pieces out. Don't be discouraged if your pumpkin looks like absolutely nothing while carving, the magic begins when you light it up and finally all those pieces you've been slaving over, come apparent.

Abraham Lincoln:

I finally remembered my password and username for this blog, I can't believe I forgot it :O I was starting to worry I'd never again be able to update. So I've been so slack in posting anything. I had a wonderful dinner party a month or so ago. I can't wait to do it again. Here's some pictures from the soiree.


I started decorating the night before, I couldn't wait. In some ways, the only downfall was that the summer days are so long and as such, the sun sets much later. The room looks better when the sun has gone down, creates much more ambience.


I made these paper flowers out of tissue for about 50 cents a piece. Martha, darling Martha Stewart wanted $32.99 for a package of 4, I think not.


yah see, daylight isn't quite the same.


Flowers from the garden :O Which turned out a million times more beautiful that I had counted on. When things turn out in design, I find it's from playing rather than planning.


The table all set, pictures never give it justice. It felt so warm and nice. I couldn't have been happier with how everything turned out.

Yellow/Brown

Photoshop has been trouble lately, as I'm loosing some of the beautiful saturation which only seems to exist in pds form and not jpg, oh what to do?! The image below is FAR paler than it should be, which makes me sad because the colors are quite brilliant in psd form. Any suggestions?!

Color is an incredibly important element in design and by far my favorite. I've always been attracted to bright, lively colors. I think I was the only girl in grade 5 to have bright green runners, I quickly learnt that they were far from cool but couldn't have cared less because I loved them!
So I created this tonight, I would like to do a series of color variations. Here is, Yellow and Brown!

Mother Earth

I made this one on Earth Day. I've always had a fascination with space, the stars, the sun, the earth, the moon. So for Earth Day, here's my tribute to Mother Earth.

Heart

Stardust

A little something I created this morning. If the song "Stardust" sung by Nat King Cole could be illustrated into an image, I'd imagine this is what it would look like.

Greenthumb

Something I've been working on tonight. And for the record, I don't garden,ahaha

Mission: Space

I just finished giving this design an overhaul. It was made a couple years ago when Mission:Space was unveiled in Epcot.

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower painting, done recently. It's one of my favorite, famous landmarks. The proportions are a bit off on this one, I would like to redo it. However, the sky turned out rather nicely.

Brown Bristol paper - Gauche - Pencil Crayon - acrylic paint

Bunnies!

A couple sketches of my dog's poor little bunny.

WDWIP

The site that I intended to use but never did. Either way, it was fun to design.

Haunted Mansion

Grim Grinning Ghosts!,Weeeeeee. One of my absolute favorite rides in Walt Disney World, highly nostolgic.

Oscar

A couple sketches of my baby, Oscar.

Palm Trees and Hearts

I uploaded some new brushes the other night, they ended up being brilliant and I have had hours of fun playing.