Recipe Adventure: Spinach, Thyme and Garlic Pesto

By Nicole & Andrew

Apologies, my camera phone photo really doesn’t do it justice, but it disappeared off the plate too fast to take a quality photo.

Ingredients:
2 cups baby spinach, torn into small pieces
1/4 cup fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
3 garlic cloves, peels and smashed
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan
1/2 cup olive oil
pinches of sea salt and pepper to taste
(Quality rustic bread)

Instructions:
Using a food processor, blend all ingredients until well combine and to the consistency of your liking.
Spread onto quality toasted bread and enjoy!

Note: I think it would go really well on grilled fish, chicken, or even on slices of cucumber.

Christmas Wrapping

I am the type of person that likes to be thrifty when wrapping gifts (and for pretty much everything else in life too). I especially hate buying wrapping paper, so I tend to recycle and reuse whenever possible. I try to add in a few fun touches here and there by using asian newspaper, string, or even random objects instead of a bow. This year I mixed brown paper grocery bags with small bits of wrapping paper instead of ribbon and topped them off with various gift tags i’ve found online. I am specifically in love with the tag designed by Brooklyn Limstone, it’s super fun and really well designed. Download the printable tags here.

DIY Christmas Ornaments

Last weekend Andrew and I went to a local shop to pick up a few craft supplies. If you live in Vancouver and haven’t been to this store, I really suggest you go there, they have just about everything, it’s awesome!
We wanted to find all the scrabble letters for both of our names, after scratching through the bin of letters, we were both in luck.

This was such a simple and fun project! All it took was a bit of glue, some felt to mount the letters on and some string to hang them. We also found random game pieces that represented our birth year.

Embroidery – Then and Now

There’s been a recent comeback of embroidery and i’m loving it! I’ve been working on an embroidery project myself, it’s small, but it’s actually been taking a while because I just don’t have the patience like I used to (at the age of 12) for tying hundreds of knots! I was influenced by the hair wraps we used to do when I was in grade school and I figured it was the perfect way to disguise my old dirty white iPod headphones. Check out some of my fun finds below and some photos of my little headphone project.

 

 

Oddstitch available on Etsy

Cookies In A Jar

A gift I made for my friends birthday.

Recipe:
1 large glass jar
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups oatmeal
3/4 cup light blue m&ms
3/4 cup dark blue m&ms
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
3/4 – 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
(the amount of nuts may vary depending on the size of your jar)

Keep in mind the amounts of ingredients may vary depending on the size of your jar.
You can also make seasonal gifts depending on the colours of your m&ms. This would be fun for halloween with orange and brown. Or for a baby shower you could do pale yellow or pink or the blue i’ve used. I will be doing this again for other friends, so you may just be the lucky one!

Layers:
1. Flour/baking soda/baking powder/salt all mixed together
2. Oatmeal
3. m&ms
4. Brown Sugar
5. White Sugar
6. Nuts

Retro Design and Antiques Fair 2011

Fall Finds 2011

This season i’m really into jewel tones, but then again, i’ve always been a lover of purple…and teal and… alright so it’s hard to pick just one colour, but i’ve picked out a few items that caught my eye this fall. I always think that accessories really change an outfit. You could wear black everyday (like I usually do), but add a cute scarf, some awesome boots and some bold jewelry it changes everything.

I’ve been loving that amethyst is really in style lately, it’s literally everywhere from handmade to mass made (h&m, aldo) it’s a must have right now. I specifically love it, because its my birthstone and one of my favorite colours. So keep the chunky crystal gemstones coming, I hope they never go out of style.

one: leather narcissa boot | two: amethyst crystal necklace | three: felt pendant necklace | four: circle scarf | five: gloves | six: felt hat | seven: Plum Wool Cordones | eight: amethyst crystal necklace

Dear Steve Jobs

Dear Steve Jobs,

Thank you for creating the Macintosh Computer. Without your invention I would not be the Graphic Designer I am today.

1994   I used my first Mac and fell in love with it. I made artwork in MacPaint and animated graphics in HyperCard.

2001   I had a class that let me play with photoshop, photo editing and fonts. This was when I fell in love with the Mac and discovered its true power.

2003  I took my first official photoshop class. I now realized I could actually have a career doing something I loved.

2006  I got my first full time job as a Graphic Designer and finally could afford to buy that MacBook Pro i’d always wanted. 

2011  Will be upgrading to the new MacBook Pro.

 

p

Steve, you will always live on through Apple products.
Here’s hoping you’ve gone up to that giant apple in the sky.

p

message above found from an unknown source on twitter

Design Sponge Book Tour: Vancouver

Tonight I went to the Design*Sponge book tour at Anthropologie. It was great to meet the face behind the blog i’ve been reading for ages. Grace is so kind and so petite! Even though you could tell she was tired from touring all over the place, she still took the time to ask me questions and even pose for photos! Local Vancouver blogger Poppytalk created a beautiful driftwood backdrop, where the photos were taken, it was very West Coast. As for the book, it’s awesome, you should buy it if you haven’t already! Check out some photos below:

Christmas Craft Project: Advent Calendar

I know what you’re thinking. It’s barely even Fall yet, why are you doing Christmas crafts?? Well every year I think of things I wish I had made for Christmas, but at that point it was far too late, so I thought i’d get a jump on things and get crafty on rainy days.

I’ve always wanted an advent calendar that I could reuse every year, so I used an idea I found online and added a picture frame and fancy numbers to it.

Supplies needed:

• A thrift store frame or discount frame from a home store
• Spray paint in gloss white
• Acrylic paints in colours of your choice (I used red and white)
• Wooden clothes pegs
• Mod podge or white glue
• Printed numbers or your can paint them by hand

I’ll post an update in December when we have all our items hanging on the calendar, but for now here’s how the process went: