This year my Easter eggs were not quite as dramatic as past years, but here are three of my favorites. I didn’t do an ostrich egg this year, but my brother did and I’ve included a photo of his “Hokusai” egg at the end.
My brother’s ostrich egg margutis.
The Octopus Project – Music Is Happiness
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Octopi . . . what’s not to love? They are super intelligent and have a unique and amazing look to which I am consistently drawn. If I’m going to do anything for Valentine’s Day, I generally like to make something rather than buy a teddy bear or some other item that expresses one of many canned sentiments. This year I wanted to make a card with a bit of depth, so went with a layered pop-up card/diorama idea that seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out my cutting and diorama-creating skills. I am pretty happy with the result and think I might start making more of these.
Note: My Valentine gave me a card with octopi on it as well. Good taste!
The Soft Moon – Parallels
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It’s that time of year again . . . and this year changed my life. My brother picked up four ostrich eggs (one full and three blown out) as well as some tiny (quail?) eggs to mix it up a bit this year. It was a bit intimidating to start out on a massive egg, but once I got going I was hooked. I didn’t have a plan going in, but just took it a step at a time and am pretty psyched with the results.
My brother boiled the one full ostrich egg and used it as his “battle” egg for our Easter egg wars (clearly there was no competition). After he opened up the egg, we were all pretty grossed out by the translucent quality of the egg white.
Click on the photos for a larger view and more specifics.
Kisses – People Can Do The Most Amazing Things
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Welcome to another World Nutella Day! This is my third year celebrating World Nutella Day (check out 2009 and 2010) and I think I overdid it a wee bit. I started off by baking extra pizza dough, that I made earlier in the week, into sweet/salty breadsticks (or Nutella Dunkers™) and dunked them into a freshly opened jar of Nutella.
This evening, while at a fancy(pants) restaurant, I slyly wrapped two delicious buns in nakpins and put them in my bag to have for dessert at home . . . with Nutella of course! So delicious.
How did you celebrate World Nutella Day?
Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso
Mucca Pazza – Modutrongulous
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Where did December go? I was all wrapped up in family/holiday/travel craziness and never got around to updating my posts.
I hope the new year is treating you well so far. I spent my New Years Eve in Chicago cosmic bowling with family (there were more than 20 of us) and seeing Mucca Pazza (probably the greatest band to see on New Years Eve, and one of the greatest bands to see live). The following morning my sister and I were the support crew for my brother and cousins who ran the polar bear 5k and plunged into Lake Michigan. After photographing them, I stripped down to my bathing suit and went for a quick dip as well. It was cold. Crazy cold . . . 22F with a 20 mph wind (so it felt like 2F). My feet and hands were so numb when I came out of the water that my sister had to help me get my clothes back on. Although it is one of the more insane things I’ve done, I felt pretty great after thawing out.
We followed the insanity at my brother’s friends’ place, where his chef friend (who also ran and plunged) fed us with delicious (warm!) matzo ball soup. It was the perfect thing to eat after a freezing dip in the lake. That evening was my aunt’s wedding, which was full of good times, and now I am back to reality . . .
Before Christmas I jarred and designed labels for the “Lithuanian” cherry liqueur I made with my mother this summer/autumn from tasty farmers market sour cherries. Here is the result . . .
It’s been three years since I started this blog and I am looking forward to continuing the “weekly” projects in the years to come. There is no song today since I used up all of my good Halloween songs last year.
This year for Halloween I had my head in the clouds and spent an amazing evening among some pretty creative costumes (a guy you can count on, political puppet, double rainbow, Benoit Mandelbrot). Below, you can see the raw materials for my costume and the final product, as well as my jack o’ lantern for this year (although I have to say I like last year’s better). You can’t tell from the photo, but the mouth goes all the way around the pumpkin.
Thank you for checking out the blog and being patient with my sometimes inconsistent updates. Here is hoping this year I can really make them weekly projects.
Martina Topley-Bird – Something To Say
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I am back and hopefully the technical issues are all taken care of. As usual, the Saturday before Easter I spent most of the day decorating eggs. I won’t go into the specifics since they are already mentioned in previous posts here and here. The only difference this year was that I bought Ukrainian dyes to test out. I bought edible and non-edible dye and was kind of shocked to see which colors worked and which didn’t. I thought for sure the non-edible dyes would be more vibrant, however some of the colors (like the green) barely stayed on the egg. I will have to try again next year and see if I did something wrong. I was pretty impressed with the black, both edible and non-edible (as you can see I used it a lot).
To view the images larger, just click on them.
It’s always great to see what other people come up with. My brother went with a minimal design on some of his eggs this year and focused more on playing with color. My cousin, on the other hand, was a big fan of dots and filling her eggs completely with the design. Below are some of my favorite margučiai from some friends and family.
Tom Waits – Chocolate Jesus
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It’s that time of year again . . . it’s World Nutella Day! It’s been snowing here most of the day, but I was determined to hunt down the illusive Nutella jar and get its photo (then eat its contents). I found this one attempting to hide in a tree. Busted. Here is last year’s Nutella Day post.
Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso
Gorillaz – O Green World
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Hello again . . . I hope you had a fantastic end to 2009 and are ready for 2010 (whatever that means). In reality I just see it as a continuation of time, but I do like to think of it as a “new beginning” of sorts. I didn’t do so well with last year’s “hopes” so I will skip on writing any down this year and just say I hope 2010 is even better than 2009. It would be really nice if I could post on a weekly basis like I claim I do.
Since I am a bit behind again, I will post at least one extra post this week and another the following week. I was in Chicago for Christmas and although I didn’t take too many photos of the actual Christmas festivities, I did get some photos from wandering around Chicago and the surrounding areas. A few of my cousins and I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory on a particularly chilly icy day before Christmas. If you’re ever in the area I recommend checking it out, it is quite refreshing to walk around in Amazonian and desert climates when it is cold and snowing outside (that that I mind that, I love snow).
This is what it looked like outside . . . cold and snowy and there were white caps on Lake Michigan.
Ultrafox – Ice Skating
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Ultrafox – Ice Skating (Glacier Mix)
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Firstly, I posted two versions of the same song because I still can’t decide which version I like better, so why not share them both . . . Secondly, I present to you this week’s project. I wish I could say these are the cards I am mailing out this year, but they are not. They are actually an office holiday card I was asked to design. They were pretty specific about what they wanted (lone tree in a snowy field with the company logo as an ornament hanging off the tree), and I was pretty excited to do it since this is something I’ve had in my mind for a a few years. They chose the top version (all white) over the version with the black trees. Normally I don’t post “work” stuff, but I like how this came out, and it’s a look I want to continue to develop. Enjoy!
