update!

Obviously many things have happened since I've been absent from my blogging...

Pippa has been growing like a weed. I attempted to introduce her to Justin's dog Buck....

Notttt too successful. She is quite the maniac lately until night time when she likes to lay across my neck like a scarf and suffocate me. Both mine and Shawn's hands are covered in scratches from her attacks. To the point where I've had multiple random people ask me if I have a cat. Luckily I can say yes, but I keep thinking about what an awkward question that would be if I didn't...

Thinking back over October and what we've been up to, I can pretty much only think of one thing: Halloween. I don't believe I've ever done so many Halloween-related activities in my life. To start, Shawn worked in a haunted house for the month of October, which involved a daily dousing of fake blood and wearing of white-out eye contacts which all began to not even strike me as unusual around Day 10. 

Then came Zombie Crawl. Thousands of people dressed as zombies rambling around the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver. There were definitely some sights to see. And some sticky blood to be had, considering the fake stuff we made was mainly corn syrup. Oh yeah, that felt good :(

Sometime in the Halloween blur of October, we managed to carve what seemed like a thousand pumpkins:

Can you guess who is who?

Shawn did this one for work.

All that pumpkin meant that of course we had 2 rounds of toasted pumpkin seeds, a loaf of pumpkin bread, and are now in the process of making pumpkin soup to freeze for Thanksgiving :)

Speaking of Fall recipes.. I finally managed to make a tart with my tart pan I bought months ago... a scrumptious caramelized apple and onion tart with homemade rosemary crust. Deeelicious. I must apologize to my dear mother for hating her rosemary potatoes so much growing up because I now think it's one of my favorite flavors. Who knew?

You'd think with all this Halloween-ing we would've planned our costumes ahead of time.. but no. So basically at the last minute before we headed out to our apartment community get-together, I had the grand idea to be Goldilocks and Shawn would be a bear. Pretty much based solely on the fact that he was wearing big bear feet slippers and I have a blonde wig that I need to lower my PPW on (Price Per Wear, that is). So I whipped up this little ensemble and then got to work making Shawn into a bear.

This may have involved a brown pillowcase over his head with a cutout for his face. The two corners tied at the top to make ears. Let's just say he did not love, and thus, no pictures :( But he was a good sport and I was freezing. Very jealous of his brown snow pants and brown hoodie. The party was actually thrown by our apartment management company who owns a ton of properties around Denver. Two of our neighbor friends won $250 off rent and $500 off rent. We walked away with a $100 gift certificate. Not too shabby! For the record, it was a random drawing, not a costume contest :)

Aside from all that nonsense, I've been staying quite busy at the j-o-b's. Things are going very well at the Holiday Inn. There's been talk of putting me strictly in charge of the wedding business. Which sounds like a fantastic idea to me! I've also been working with Pink Posey here and there, which got me a little gig making a sign for a bride's ring bearer to carry down the aisle:

Still waiting to see the professional photos from that one, but I can't imagine how it was not the cutest thing ever. It also allowed me to decorate my first ice cake. Shawn actually helped with this one. The bough of flowers across the bottom was his lovely idea :)

Unfortunately, with all this working there haven't been many estate sale visits. Or perhaps it's the fact that our tiny apartment has reached capacity. This hasn't stopped Shawn from Craigslisting, however, and I am "proud" to say that we are now the "happy" owners of:

60 bottles of hot sauce from around the globe...

A cat condo larger than my own body...

A PS3 that is the reason I am undistracted enough to be writing this at the moment...

More fish and aquatic beings than I can even count...

And an iguana who basically came and went (i.e. got the boot) in one weekend. Luckily while he was here, it was necessary for us to acquire another ginormous tank so we have a home for the next "surprise" !!!

Needless to say, things are never dull. But it finally feels like we're getting into the groove of normal life for the most part, which is a nice change from the semi-chaos of the past few months. And to top it all off, there's a Jacksonville trip on the horizon! December 1-6 we'll be home to visit for the holidays. Can't wait!

ultimate cuteness

I have about 5 million projects to update about and tons of estate sale/thrift store finds (finally got a paper cutter, yesssss!) But! there's a more important addition to our tiny apartment... a tiny kitten!

Meet Pippa!

She's basically the tiniest and cutest little kitten ever.. probably due to her previous Craigslist owners taking her away from her mother too soon... but she's now loving life and Shawn is probably the happiest ever in his whole life being a foster mom :)

After these pics I'm sure you will agree with me. And yes, that last one is her in a baby sling that I made out of a pashmina so I could actually get stuff done with her little mew-ing self. Love her!

R.I.P. LT

I wish I could blame my absence on our first out-of-town guests, but the fact that they left over two weeks ago makes me think I've just been lazy... so now I have a ton of backlogged news and stories to share.

First I must share some rather devastating news: the mighty Lord Tennyson is no longer with us. And of course it had to happen while Jess and Jesse were here. Their lovely guest suite had been set up in the living room and Jess was not too keen on sleeping in such close proximity to a frog. We assured her that he had never escaped in the two months that we had him. One morning while Shawn was making breakfast for everyone, I casually wandered over to the tank to watch the fish. That's when I realized LT was no longer there. {Enter the FREAKOUT} I started frantically looking everywhere; behind the tank, under the couch, in every nook and cranny, wanting to find him but at the same time knowing that I didn't really want to find him. He's fully aquatic so he can't live outside of water. I knew the clock was ticking especially since we didn't know if he had escaped during the night or some time the evening before while we were out. Jesse was helping with the search, Shawn was chained to the stove lest he burn the eggs, and Jess was basically just freaking out that the frog may have hopped across her in her sleep on his way out.

I continued my search in the bedroom, looking under the bed, under the dressers, finally moving to the closet where I slightly moved the laundry bag and there he was just inside the closet door! Unmoving :( I screamed (obvs) and went running out of the room doing the scream/cry much like my sister upon seeing a spider. Shawn finally decides to step in since I have basically become useless at this point. He gets some paper towels and scoops up LT from the floor, heading towards the trash can. (Ew.) "He's alive!!" Shawn yells all of a sudden and makes a beeline for the tank. Jess and Jesse are in the path and both run straight out the front door. LT plunks down into the water and definitely appears to be shaken up but still alive.

Unfortunately it didn't last very long. He had been out of the water for too long and just couldn't recover. A couple days later I noticed some conspiring among Jesse, Jess, and Shawn and soon discovered that LT had met his end.

pure deliciousness part II

Our second evening out was veeerrry different from the first. We decided to class it up big time and Shawn treated me to a 5-star meal at the Brown Palace Hotel. We weren't eating until pretty late so when Justin called wondering what we were up to, Shawn told him to come on by. He brought with him the ingredients to make Tominis which are a cocktail he used to drink with an old salty dog he knew in Maryland who lived on his boat for a while. So obviously they were the perfect refreshing summer time drink. Gin and coconut water with a squeeze of lemon. Cocktail hour delivery service? Yes, please!

We went up on the roof and ended up meeting some neighbors. Pretty soon a game of Texas Hold 'Em was underway followed by a little Black Jack. Also, after some chatting, we found out that Rose (new neighbor friend) was moving out and temporarily moving into a place with some friends who have a German Shepherd. So she was not going to be able to bring her cat, Sam, with her for that month. Obviously we offered to cat sit since I've been dying for a cat anyway. So now we have a little furry friend who seems quite happy here with plenty of fish to watch for entertainment. He does have a habit for crying rather loudly in the morning but we're working on that.

Sam, Samuel, Samtastic, Sam Adams, Samson, Samsonite, Sammi-Sam, Samilicious

Anyway... on to the good stuff. So after a mad dash to get ready after cocktail hour ran a bit over time.. we arrived at the Brown Palace and decided to go for the tasting menu since that's what we like to do. We ordered a bottle of wine and awaited the goodies to come. After an antipasto skewer for an amuse bouche, our appetizers arrived. The sommelier came by and poured us a bit of wine that he had paired with our respective dishes. Of course his trick worked and we went ahead and asked for the wine pairings with each course.

Boy am I glad we did though. (Aside from the fact that we already had a bottle of wine on the table and a martini under our belt and had more wine coming than is even slightly normal...) But the pairing really was the best part of the meal. I mean, obviously the food was nothing to turn up your nose at, but I've eaten an awful lot of good food in my life. The way the wine went with it was amazing. My soup course was an artichoke soup with a small grilled ham and cheese in the center of the bowl. As the sommelier poured the wine, he said, "It's hard to tell where the soup ends and the wine begins.." with an air of mystery. He was right! It seriously blew my mind how good some of the pairings were. The wine with Shawn's salad tasted like someone had practically made it from the salad ingredients. And the tasting menu wasn't fixed as some of them are, so we had options for each course. Obviously we ordered all different things so we ended up getting to taste ten different dishes with wine for each. Well, okay it was only nine. I opted out of my dessert course and got coffee instead. I was seriously full. But Shawn had ordered Bananas Foster which we could both barely eat a bite of.

"You guys got a wheelbarrow back there? Somebody's gonna have to roll me outta here!"

Haha don't worry, neither of us actually said that. But I understand where those people are coming from :) All in all, a deliciously fantastic meal that was a real treat. Taking pictures didn't seem quite appropriate so you'll just have to use your imagination...

relaxing

After a drizzly week last week, I'm happy to say that the weather has cleared up and today is turning into an absolutely GORGEOUS day. Unfortunately I have to work a wedding tonight so I won't get to enjoy it as much as I'd like. By some weird twist of scheduling, Shawn's been off the past three days so we took advantage Thursday night and had a cookout.

Strangely enough, on Tuesday night Shawn stopped into Mellow Mushroom after work (that's definitely not the strange part..) and happened to run into a guy that he worked with on the cruise ship! Cliff was here on a short break so Shawn invited him to come over on Thursday night when we were having Robyn and Justin (and their dog Buck) over.

We had pork ribs with Shawn's Secret Recipe barbecue sauce and steak. I made veggie kabobs with onions mushrooms and brussels sprouts and Shawn made what is becoming a cookout tradition--baked macaroni made with Annie's white cheddar shells and a toasted Cheez-it topping. Only this time he added a bit of crumbled bacon and some cream cheese so it was of course even more delicious. A side note about brussels sprouts: if you've never tried them before because you once saw on a cartoon when you were a child that they were gross and have just been believing it for the past 20 years, please try them! If you cook them right and don't overcook them into slimy little balls, they can be so delicious and a good way to mix it up if you're sick of broccoli and green beans. -end brussels sprout soapbox-

Anyway, the weather was nice so we sat up on the roof deck to eat. Enjoying one of those fabulous evenings talking with friends, drinking beer and eating good food. Basically, what life was made for in my book :) I meant to take pictures but well, we were lucky to remember to even turn off the grill, so blogging was not exactly on my mind at the time..

Never one to be idle, Shawn stayed busy during his days off, surprising me by taking Civ to get detailed (she was looking a little rough since the move) and bringing home a completely scrumptious Nutella crepe that I thoroughly enjoyed. A shiny car and a delicious pastry? *swoon*

He was also able to finally get the doorknob installed on the bedroom door which has been a sore subject for quite some time now. This glass knob was another gift he had surprised me with way back in Jacksonville way back before he went to Hawaii. So it's been around a while. At the time, he had tried to install it on my bedroom door but it didn't fit with the existing hardware. Then when we got here, we discovered basically the same thing. So after two trips to the locksmith, two episodes of the knobs breaking off their base due to Shawn trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole, a failed attempt at epoxying the knobs back together, and some filing out of the doorknob hole in the door, we have a working knob! And it sure is purty :)

Our aquarium of wonders has also gained a few more residents:

Sue the bichir fish.. She has an eel-like body and just two little side fins right behind her head so her movements are usually pretty odd. But she gets along with Lord Tennyson, which is apparently a difficult thing to do. It seems like every fish we want will either eat or be eaten by him. But I caught them both together in the hiding spot in our tank, so I'd say they became fast friends. Or luvaaaas.

When we went to the fish store the other day, we saw this really cool black knife fish that we were gonna get. Then as the girl is about to scoop him out, she casually asks us if we have frozen brine shrimp, since that's all he eats. We have frozen krill, is that okay? Since that's what Sue and LT eat.. No, he really needs brine shrimp, she says, since they're much smaller. And then she says, "What I usually do is get a little of the shrimp in a dish with some water in it so that they thaw out and then I use an eyedropper and suck some of them up and reach my hand down in and just squeeze out a couple at a time right in front of him..." Me and Shawn look at each other. "Uh, can we just get a snail?"

So now we have Gary:

I was not too excited to be getting a snail since I prefer my pets to entertain me, but Gary has proven himself to be a rather adventurous snail (climbing to the tops of the trees, above) and so he's won me over.

also starring...

Lord Tennyson

The newest addition to our household :)

While Shawn was working the other day I took a stroll over to the enormous public library downtown (free entertainment, anyone?). After his shift he scooped me up and informed me that he wanted to "go get this CraigsList thing" he had just lined up. Of course I was curious but he insisted that it was a "surprise". Well, Shawn is not exactly the best person at surprises and so within 5 minutes he told me that we were going to get a 30 gallon aquarium.Which led to a discussion on the difference between a "surprise" and a "secret". Obviously my home decorating scheme had no room in our < 500 square foot apartment for an aquarium suitable for Shamu. He had clearly planned to pick it up and bring it home before I could resist. But he made a valid point that I've pretty much made every decision about what will be purchased and placed where soooo.. off we went.

Soon we were the proud owners of a gigantic aquarium with its very own faux wood stand. Hooray! Luckily it fit easily behind the couch with its base perfectly concealed. Of course an empty tank will just not do.. "CraigsList powers activate!" Next mission: African Clawed Frog. Which I was informed was actually the whole reason the aquarium was purchased in the first place. Shawn had his eyes on these frogs for a while and heaven forbid Lord Tennyson be confined to 15 or even 20 gallons.

We met the frog seller in the parking lot of a convenience store, giving the whole exchange somewhat of a drug deal ambiance. Shawn gave him the cash and he handed us a plastic bag containing a frog that was WAY larger than I had imagined he would be. We promptly placed him in a Big Gulp cup to keep him and his water from tipping over.

A second quick stop was made to pick up some free cat food and kitty litter (also a CL find.. just looking towards the future, ya know?) followed by a stop at the pet store (a real brick and mortar one this time, not another strange CraigsList animal dealer) and we were back home to set up LT's new habitat.

It should be noted that Shawn had interpreted "bottom feeder" to mean algae eater. A quick glance in the tank the next morning however confirmed that Lord Tennyson is in fact a minnow eater and he has continued to consume one at least every other day since he came to live with us. At least they are only 15 cents. But somewhat troublesome considering they're some of my favorite little guys to watch dart back and forth. Meanwhile the algae has started to grow and we are now in the position of having to buy a rather large algae eater lest LT consume him as well.

On a similar note, during a trip to the reptile store a couple weeks ago I witnessed a boa slowly consume a rat for the first time in my life. Supremely disturbing.

Anyway, LT has been providing hours of enjoyment and I must say that I am now happy he has come here to live. Since I realize not everyone is into amphibians and reptiles and such, I'll leave you with this pretty bouquet that was from an event I worked this week with Pink Posey Design to bring us back to Martha Land.

Ah, that's better.

introducing...

Our newest rommates: Pesce and Poisson!

(pay-shuh and pweh-son)

They’re called Half Moon Bettas because their tail forms a semi circle when its fully flared. The crazy fish girl we bought them from had about 20 of them. She was originally just going to sell Poisson but she said they seem depressed when the other one isn’t around so she wanted to sell them as a pair. Okay. But then as Shawn pointed out later, when they flare at each other, it’s because they’re wanting to fight.. so technically they are actually arch enemies and not BFFs.. but we will keep that fact to ourselves. Also, they eat these little live worms which totally freak me out. So I will leave their feeding up to Shawn. I just hope he doesn’t “over love” them and cause them to die of obesity.

Other than the fish excitement, it’s just been business as usual over here in Craft Town. I’ve been practicing my calligraphy..

Anything to make a buck, right? ;) p.s. I'm aware the word "success" is spelled wrong.. I was copying some lettering I found online and the girl had a little quote written out and framed but it was spelled "Sucess". Very annoying to me.

We created an art masterpiece from an old framed Jimi Hendrix poster we found in the trash pile. A mixed media of sorts with craft paint, semi-gloss furniture paint, tissue paper, bits of gold trimming, vegetable oil, foot spray, and nail polish remover. You’d never guess Jimi was hiding under there.

I also finally finished the coat rack that we got (ha, almost said “bought” but nope, it was CraigsList free!) with the table a while ago. It started out a hideous glossy flesh toned color. Not sure why that color even exists… but it was promptly sanded off and replaced with a fresh coat (or three) of shiny black.

before

after

I bought a little white side table this past weekend at an estate sale. It’s a good fit but it wasn’t really exciting me. I also found a gold vent plate at a sale with no idea what I would do with it, but I loved the pattern. So the two have now been combined and I am very pleased with the outcome.

I have been seriously into geometrics lately.

                

Plus the couch pillow patterns, key holder, and the base of my yellow ottoman. They’ve been catching my eye everywhere I go. I’m thinking curtains next. Or a rug. Maybe a subtle monochromatic pattern. Once I get a paycheck :)