Sunday Sketching

Decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and sit outside to do some sketching. I first cut a few flowers from the yard and put them in a little metal cup to have as sketch subjects.



I started out with just my pencil, but then decided to grab my cheapo watercolors for some extra fun.

Used Book Finds

My husband I and hit Better World Books yesterday. Have you heard of it? They take donated books and resell them, but that's really all I knew until I read the back-story to write this post. I knew they were located a stones throw from me but didn't realize it was started by two recent Notre Dame grads. You can read their story here.

From the site:

To date, we have raised millions of dollars for literacy, saved millions of books from landfills, created jobs for hundreds of people, and provided wonderful books to millions of readers worldwide. The rest of the story is still being written. We invite you to join us on our journey. It’s only going to get better.

Pretty darn cool. They have an outlet store located at their warehouse and it's filled with books on all subjects and all are less than about $4. It's the bomb. It feels like a really small elementary school library - not fancy at all - but it's a lot of fun to just wander through the shelves, seeing what they have.

In addition to the books right there on the shelves, you also have access to their entire warehouse. Well, not literally. You can't go in there and browse, but all you have to do is ask the wonderful people that work there to look up any title you want. If they have it, they'll put in a request to the warehouse and in less than 10 minutes, you've got your book. It's amazing and I'm still in awe that something this cool is in my backyard, so to speak.

So while we were browsing yesterday, I picked up some new finds. It's THE BEST place to find interesting papers for my art journal or any other mixed media work. Children's books galore (hello, fun illustrations), reference books (Dictionaries! Travel Guides!) as well as many old, amazingly cool hardbound books. I also discovered a new little shelf - foreign language books. SCORE!


Here are the two I picked up. They're both fairly small but full of possibilities.

I honestly don't know what language this is (if you do, please let me know in the comments!) but it's just gorgeous. I had to have it.


This Japanese Chinese book is filled with page after page of beautiful text and also has illustrations scattered throughout. Lovely!



The ultimate find, as far an I'm concerned, is this copy of Longfellow poems. It was from a library that marked it obsolete. Literally.





I was an English Lit major, so I know some of you might be horrified by this, but it's going to make the PERFECT art journal.



I mean, look as the reproductions of hand-written poems. All of the blank space. Every facing page to a page of the poem is blank and there are many completely blank pages at the beginning and end. AND the paper is really nice. *So happy.* It's a little over 7" x 10" and about 1/4" thick. I love it.

p.s. I'll be gathering some of these pages as well as going through all of my other papers to make some super awesome paper packs for my Etsy store, so be on the lookout for that! I always include some original art tags and other goodies in my paper packs.

Post-Running Rorschach Test

After Dwight's run last weekend, he came back rather sweaty. He always ends up that way, but the pattern this time was decidedly unique.

Me: You got a little sweaty.

D: Yeah, I probably overdressed. It's like a Rorschach test. Quick - what do you see?

Me: Uuuuuhhh. SEAHORSES.

D: (walking to a mirror so he can see his shirt properly) *Pause* Yeah, I can see that.

So, quick! What do YOU see?

They're EVERYWHERE

I had to look up what exactly these are. Dwight calls them "worms" but their official name is "catkins" (or tassels) and they are the spent male flower from oak trees. See, we all learned something new today. I had no clue. Well, one clue. Dwight and I figured they must have something to do with pollination or creating acorns and I guess we were kind of right. They DO contain pollen, and they ARE required to make acorns. Did you know acorns are the fruit of oak trees? Me, neither. At least I never thought of them that way, but I guess it makes sense. After all, acorns are what make new oak trees. (And by the way, we had a crap ton of them in the fall.)

Oak Trees — The tree that keeps on giving. (Don't even get me started on the leaves.)

Toffee Mocha Blondies

If you want something sweet, quick and adaptable to whatever you have on hand, this is your recipe. You can even make it all in one bowl, depending on your preferences and flavor combo. I ended up using a small sauce pan and a bowl, because my theory is, if you're going to melt butter for a recipe, you might as well brown it. It means a longer prep time, though, so skip it if you're in a real time crunch. (The original recipe only calls for melted butter, not browned butter, so it's baker's choice.)

The first time I made these, I added macadamia nuts, mini chocolate chips and coconut — awesome. White chips would have been even better. I recently picked up some toffee bits, and since the browned butter adds a caramel-y flavor, I figured it would be a great add-in. I thought "toffee mocha" sounded divine, so I added semi-sweet chocolate chips and some espresso powder. Boom. Done.



Toffee Mocha Blondies
adapted from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything
Makes 16-25 or however big you decide to cut them!

Ingredients
1 stick (4oz) butter, browned*
1 cup (200g) light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (homemade, if you've got it!)
1 cup (130g) all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp instant espresso
1/2 cup toffee bits
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 8" x 8" pan with cooking spray.

Cook butter in small sauce pan until fragrant and the solids at the bottom turn slightly tan. It's best to use a stainless pan so you can see the color! This will take about 5 minutes. Stir constantly. Cool 5 minutes then pour into heat resistant bowl. I use my large Pampered Chef batter bowl. Add brown sugar, stirring until all is incorporated into the butter. It will be gritty, not smooth. Add egg and vanilla and stir vigorously. Add flour, espresso, toffee bits and chocolate chips. Stir only until all dry flour is absorbed–don't over mix. Batter will be thick and greasy-looking. Spoon into prepared pan and spread evenly.



Bake 20-25 minutes depending on your oven and desired doneness. If you like gooey, go with a shorter bake time, but bake until center is set.  I baked these exactly 20 minutes. They were super gooey and seemed almost undone when warm but set up after completely cooling. If you just can't possibly wait, feel free to dig in after a brief cool-down, but I recommend waiting at least 30 minutes. The flavor will develop as they cool.



Remember, you can adapt this any way you want. Possible add-ins include coconut, cinnamon chips, peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, any kind of nut, dried fruit, even peanut butter cups, M&Ms or other candy. Substitute any flavor extract for the vanilla. Booze, even. GO WILD!

A quick shout-out to one of my most loyal readers, Ed Wynn. Sorry it's been so long since I've posted a recipe. :)

*browning the butter is completely optional, but I love the depth of flavor it adds.

EDITED 4-25
I made these last night with regular melted butter (Browned butter - I ain't got time for that), approx 3/4 cup finely chopped pecans and approx 3/4 cup cinnamon chips. I substituted the vanilla for maple flavoring. I served it still a bit warm with a scoop of butter pecan ice cream. Holy WOW, people. It was  freaking awesome.

Weekend fun

Here are some things I've been working on this weekend...

A cute little doodle tag. Lots of time for such a small piece, but it was very fun.

I planned on turning this canvas into a similar piece – doodles and dots and swirls...

but it's kind of calling me in a different direction. I'm going to sit with it some more and see where I decide to go with it.

This is a work in progress from my art journal. I glued a magazine ad to the page, covered it with gesso and then painted over it using my fat Pitt pens/brushes and some black ink. Not sure what else I'm going to do to it, but I really like how it looks. 

And here's something I've been working on for a little while. 

This is before I messed with the hair/circles area. I'm not happy with what I did, so I'm going to fix it, but I love love love how it looks here. The texture is from tissue paper. I LOVE what that does to the painting. I think it adds an incredible amount of interest. 

I hope you did something fun this weekend!