living artfully

january photo calendar

Tomorrow marks the start of February. One month down. Looking back on my Project 365 in calendar format is probably my favorite way to review the pictures. Seeing 31 pictures all at once reminds me that the photos together add up to something really special to us. 

 

Like the calendar format? I'm loading my pictures into monthly calendars at Shuttercal.com. Here's to 11 more successful months!

 

red velvet cupcakes

Welcome to the Spread the Love Blog Hop! We are excited to be bringing you ideas for Valentine's Day. On this stop, I'm sharing a recipe for one of my most favorite kinds of cake... Red Velvet! It's a party and one of the sweetest holidays of the year, so of course our blog hop needs a cake!

 
  
Red velvet is rich, slightly chocolately and not overly sweet. We chose this as our wedding cake and now enjoy any excuse to have a slice or cupcake.

 
cake ingredients
2-1/2 cups flour
2 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa powder, unsweetened
1 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups sugar
1-1/3 cups vegetable oil
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 tablespoons red liquid food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

frosting ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature 
12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
4 cups confectioner's sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract



Makes approximately 24 cupcakes.
 
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place paper liners into muffin pan.
3. In a bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, and salt.
4. In a separate bowl, combine sugar and oil using an electric mixer on medium speed.
5. Add eggs, one at a time, to bowl of wet ingredients and beat until incorporated.
6. Add food coloring and vanilla extract to bowl of wet ingredients and beat until incorporated.
7. Alternate between adding flour mixture and buttermilk to the bowl of wet ingredients. Beat on low speed between each addition of ingredients. 
8. In a small bowl, stir together baking soda and white vinegar. Allow to become foamy.
9. Add foamy mixture to the batter and mix on medium speed for approximately ten seconds.
10. Pour the batter into lined muffin pan, dividing evenly among the muffin cups so that each is about three-quarters full. 
11. Bake for approximately 20 minutes at 350 degrees, until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean.
12. Remove from oven and transfer the pan to a wire cooling rack before removing the cupcakes.
13. Allow cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.
14. Beat butter and cream cheese with mixer on medium speed until fluffy, about two minutes. 
15. Add sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating on low speed after adding each cup of sugar.
16. Add vanilla and mix until smooth.
17. Spread onto cupcakes and enjoy!

Red velvet cupcakes are already colored for Valentine's Day all on their own. But if you want to make them even more festive, you can make your own toppers like I did.

To create these toppers, I was inspired by the popular conversation hearts. I simply chose my favorite sayings, printed them in an all-capital-letters onto colorful paper, and punched out the sayings with my heart punch. I then put adhesive on the back-side of one heart, rested a toothpick onto the heart, and sealed it in place with a second heart. Yummy and pretty!

 

I hope you'll check out the other amazing projects we have to share with you for Valentine's Day! Please stop by these blogs for more great ideas...

Carrie at Through the Camera Lens
Laura at Cameron Crazy
Maya at Basement Chronicles
Melissa at Sunlight and Simplicity

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a very lovely Valentine's Day!


 

all better!

Rocco asked me to tell you that he is feeling all better! His neutering went very well yesterday, but it was a bigger day than expected. The vet found that he needed to have his hernia repaired, too, as well as four baby teeth that needed to be extracted.  Even though he had three procedures instead of just one, he could not be in better spirits. In fact, I wish he'd take it a little easier! Thanks to everyone who thought of our little guy yesterday; your kind words and reassurances made us feel much better :)

 
And don't forget, you're invited to come back at noon CT today for the Spread the Love Blog Hop. We are bringing you lots of fun inspiration and ideas for Valentine's Day. Right now I can smell something very yummy in the kitchen for this party. Hope you can visit again later!

rocco-taco

 

Our Rocco goes to the vet this morning to be neutered. It's a very common and routine surgery, but of course as his mama I will be worrying all day long. I'm wishing for an easy surgery and a quick recovery for our little guy. 

design your life - week two

This past weekend, I finished up the layouts for Week 2 of Design Your Life.  This class has been great to keep me moving along on our 2009 scrapbook. I don't scrapbook chronologically, but I do store our layouts that way... at least I do now, pre-Library of Memories. I'm still playing along with the DYL assignments, enjoying the process and not stressing about staying "on schedule."

The focus of week 2's assignments was asymmetry. And since I often use asymmetry in my own designs, I was feeling much more in my comfort zone this week.

 


 
And our color challenge below was to use rich jewel tones with brown. Okay, so maybe this isn't quite jewel-toned, but I couldn't bring myself to use deep pinks or purples on this layout :)

 

I chose to make it feel "me" over following the assignment to a T and I'm okay with that. If the colors for our color assignments aren't ones I'd normally scrap with or if I don't have supplies in those colors, I'm accepting that and moving on with supplies I already own and love. I'm the type to normally pride myself in following rules and instructions exactly, so this is a big revelation for me!

The photos for Week 3 are edited, now to get some more scrapping done!

the happiness project: my commandments

Instead of making a real dinner, catching up on Design Your Life, or doing anything on my "to do" list, tonight I'm going to keep digging into this...

 

I am so fascinated by the idea of playing an active role in determining your own happiness that I can't stop reading. It begs the question, instead of waiting or assuming happiness is just around the corner, what if you made conscious decisions and took actions toward goals that you knew would bring you more happiness.

Gretchen Rubin wrote "The Happiness Project" after her year-long project to add more happiness to her own life. There are multiple schools of thought on happiness, whether it's something that can be increased, and whether you have a say in the matter. After her own extensive research, Rubin decides that "yes" you can influence your own happiness. With that settled, Rubin determines her plan for the year and chronicles the project.

Although I'm not far in the book, it's been packed with thought-provoking ideas and quotes. For example, as Rubin develops her plan, she establishes some guiding principles and "commandments." And she whittles down all the research, theory and opinion to this basic concept: "To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth."

I'm very inspired by Rubin's idea to think about and record your own personal commandments. Recording your own commandments is an opportunity to identify the values and the principles that you want to guide your own actions and thoughts. I think it's a useful exercise to help you reframe situations when your gut-reaction is not the best choice. So today, I reflected on my own values and came up with these ten personal commandments:

• Be Sharyn.
• Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
• Lighten up.
• Outer order contributes to inner calm.
• Act the way you want to feel.
• Do it now.
• Always with love.
• Be polite and fair.
• No judgment.
• Take good care.

I already had the chance to practice these commandments. My drive from work to home takes me through very busy Milwaukee streets, where drivers are known to frequently switch lanes and speed at minimum of 10 miles over the limit. On the drive home tonight I was cut off by a car that was speeding. My usual reaction: "what a stupid driver!" Or worse! Today, I told myself, "no judgment," said a little thank you that there was no car accident, and immediately got back to enjoying the radio. I know it sounds minor, but I really do believe that small daily choices to be positive add up to overall feelings of joy.

If you like the idea of recording your own personal commandments, I encourage you to visit two places:
Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project Blog
The Happiness Project Toolbox

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that this concept didn't fully click for me until I picked up the book. I had been following the blog for a couple of weeks, but I wasn't inspired to action and didn't make as many connections until I started reading the book. Which is not to say the blog and toolbox are useless! But if it's not 100% clicking for you but you know you're intrigued by the topic, I encourage you to pick up the book, too.

I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts as I continue to read "The Happiness Project." Have you been following Rubin's blog or read her book?

valentine's day crafting

Valentine's Day is three weeks away! Have you made any plans? Or started any crafting for the holiday? 

I still remember when I was a little girl and ADORED getting to pick out and sign little Valentine's cards to give to my classmates. And of course I also loved the candy, especially the conversation hearts! Nowadays, I'm not really into candy anymore, but the hearts sure are fun to read!

If you are looking for inspiration to get you into the Valentine's spirit, please check back here on Saturday, January 30th at noon CT. Some lovely friends and I are going to bring you lots of Valentine's Day inspiration!

 
Believe it or not, those hearts are the inspiration for my project! I hope you'll come back on Saturday for our "Spread the Love" blog hop!
 

project life

How are you doing on your daily photo projects? They say it takes 3 weeks to form a new habit... and that's about how far we are into the new year. With some help from my husband (since I want to document from his perspective, too), I've been sticking with the project. It's definitely starting to feel like a more natural part of my routine!

For the documentation of our Project 365, I've decided to record our photos in three different places:

- My Flickr Account - 2010: 365
- My Shuttercal Calendar
- Project Life

I've decided to use Becky Higgins' Project Life album kit as the only paper / hands-on record of our 365 photos. So far, it's been a super easy way to scrap: just print the photo as a 4X6, fill out a small journaling card, slap on a date sticker and it's done. This is exactly what I had in mind for creating a paper record of these photos. With all the other projects I want to work on this year, I really wasn't interested in anything more complicated or time-consuming. I'm interested to see how this album changes my decisions on what to scrap for 2010. Here's the start of our Project Life album...

 

 

 

 

If the kit is something you're interested in, I definitely recommend checking out Becky's blog for more details. This album version is so fun and easy, I think it would even appeal to non-scrapbookers because of the similarities to using a standard photo album. And if you want to stick with doing the project on your computer, Becky is launching a digital version next week that can be printed into a bound album.

I hope you are having success with your photo project! Anyone with me on using Project Life?

anthony bourdain

I admit it. I have a serious crush on Anthony Bourdain.

 

Seriously. I mean, he's got this whole mysterious, rugged, older man thing going on. But maybe it's just me! My hubby has learned to deal with my crush and together we love watching his show on the Travel Channel, No Reservations.

And tonight, we are seeing him LIVE! He's doing a tour right now, talking about food, travelling, and writing. So it will be an evening of dinner and then the Anthony Bourdain show.

I. Can't. Wait.

Do you have any favorite food and travel shows? And please tell me I'm not the only one in love with this man!

review: the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society

I love books. You may not know it from this blog, since it's not a popular topic around here. But I'm a reader, through and through.

My college degree is in English Literature. I walked into college as a lover of many kinds of books, but most specifically anything on the Oprah book club list, with a few Stephen King novels thrown in. I graduated obsessed with anything written by Margaret Atwood and with an emphasis in postcolonial women's literature.

I started a book club this summer with friends and we meet every six weeks or so. We met this week and got on the topic of what we read and why. I'll normally choose a challenging novel over lighter reading or self-help. It's not about trying to be pretentious. Or high brow. I really think it centers around the personal decision on why we read. In college, I became accustomed to being challenged by novels and ended up liking that aspect of the reader experience. I like to have to think about what I'm reading and like learning something in the process. I also became accustomed to writing ridiculously specific essays that analyze a novel to pieces. I'm convinced that writing in this way trains you to be very good at writing analytical essays and very bad at writing general reviews.

But I want to change that. I want to feel comfortable writing my general reactions to the books we read for book club. So I do hope you'll enjoy if I share a few thoughts on our books for this year... starting with our most recent selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer and Barrows.

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an immensely delightful novel that passes far too quickly because of its style and charming characters. Written in the form of letters between the novel's major and minor characters, a story unfolds of the German occupation of the British Guernsey Island during World War II. But this is not a novel about war. Rather, it's a few years after the war and a London writer begins an unexpected exchange of letters with the people of Guernsey, who started the society named in the title and begin telling the stories of their society and the occupation.

The characters are well-rounded and interesting. And the way they "wrote" their letters had me laughing and near tears along the way. I never felt like the letters were overly-contrived, considering they were the authors' only method for providing us with important details. I breezed through this novel because I couldn't seem to put it down and kept thinking I'd read "just one more letter."

There were many interesting themes to this novel. The war is present to frame our understanding of their real-life conditions. But in the end this story is about friendship, hope, love, and the power of reading. The novel was historically interesting, easy to read without being "fluffy," and very enjoyable.

I definitely recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society! Have you read this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts!