A Chocolate-less Home

I moved around a lot growing up. You'd think that the whole leaving people/people leaving thing would get easier but it never does. Yesterday Lana moved back to Philly. It was a hard day for me. I had an amazing friend who had so many similar interests to mine yet was different enough to be constantly opening my eyes to new wonderful pieces of life. And the most awesome part was living three blocks from each other. Late at night when one of us was bored or sad or wanted out of our houses all it took was a quick text and a few minutes walk and things were fun again.

We spent her last days in Portland doing all the things you don't do when you live in a city because they're always there. One of those things being a tour of cupcake bakeries. Even though the last week she was here I always had in my mind the number of days until she would be gone we somehow still managed to have fun and not be sad until the very last day.

I'm not going to say I lost a friend because I don't think I did. Our friendship has changed but it's not gone. And I am truly glad that she's in a place that makes her so happy now.

This is going to sound weird, there's no way to make it not, but in some ways I'm thankful for the experience of her leaving. I would take her back here in a heartbeat but for the first time in my life someone has left and I don't feel like my entire world is ending. I don't feel like I want to close up and not talk to people again. I mean, okay, for a minute there when this became real yeah, I did feel like "Why is this happening AGAIN?" but I realized yesterday that this is okay. And knowing that I can now handle something like this without falling apart is so invaluable. I feel like all that time spent sitting in that giant leather chair in my therapist's office actually produced something.

I have to give Lana some credit though because even though I never mentioned it to her my biggest fear about her leaving was that she would end up back with all the people who love her and fill up her life and there would no longer be any room for me. I think it's a testament to how close we are that she knew how much that was weighing on me without one word uttered. I won't get into the mushy details but she wrote me a letter and in it addressed that fear of mine. And I love her so much for just knowing that that's what I needed, and for helping to make this huge change in my life seem not so daunting. I'm going to miss you Miss Lana.

There Will Be No Pillow Fights

Well, it's official. Lana is moving back to Philly. I'm going to miss her terribly but lucky for me today is her last day in her apartment and she doesn't actually leave until next week. Know what that means?

Lana and Lauren sleepover extravaganza!!

Rain, rain...

There are supposed to be thunderstorms tonight. Lana is back from London (man i missed that girl) and we plan to spend the evening being cozy, ordering in, and watching way too much Glee. There will likely be chocolate involved as well.

I'm too tired to be clever.

Well, I am exhausted. Work has been extremely hectic and crazy lately. As a personal assistant it's pretty much my job to keep everything together and there have definitely been significantly more things to keep together recently. Luckily Lana offered to come in and help me with some things on her two days off this week.

This is where I get mushy.

Lana has a really full life. She has a big family to keep in touch with, bunches of friends, a job that can involve some pretty early mornings as well as some late nights plus a ton of other stuff. If anyone deserves a nap or bubble bath or mimosa or whatever it'd be this girl. So the fact that she gave up two whole days she could have spent doing any number of more fun things is pretty amazing. Plus, I basically just bossed her around all day telling her things to do and not once did she look at me like she wanted to strangle me. Which is pretty impressive.

I always think of Valentines Day as a day to celebrate and reflect on all kinds of love, not just romantic love, and yesterday got me thinking. I'm really truly lucky to have a friend like Lana who isn't competitive or jealous or mean spirited in the least. It can be hard to find friendships with women that are truly healthy, uplifting, and supportive and I am so thankful I found this one. I look at our interactions and they always seem to have the same goal, which is doing good. Whether the aim is our own happiness, creating good food, making something beautiful, solving a life problem or any number of things, the bottom line is making things better all around for everyone. And maybe I just haven't had a lot of those sorts if friendships and that makes me the odd one but this whole thing is so refreshing and just brings so much happiness and inspiration to my life. Which is what friendships should do.

I love you Boo.

I Love the Weekends

My day has included major sleeping in, snuggles with Javi, lunch at Jo Bar with Lana on her lunch break, picking up a lace tank and some very adorable shorts at Free People, a tabloid with the season one Teen Mom girls on the cover, Restaurant Impossible, and a mango smoothie.

Weekends are the best.

A Little Sparkle and Shine

I haven't worn eyeshadow for awhile. I always get tired of the way it changes color through the day and having to use primer to keep it from creasing. As much as I love products I don't actually like needing to take a lot of time to use them. I've just never been a sit down for twenty minutes and put on makeup kind of girl. Before I went to Seattle I needed to pick up a few of those makeup essentials, foundations, concealer, etc. There was this older woman who walked up right after me and seemed to be in one of those old lady hurries that they get in even though they don't really have anywhere to be. So I told the salesgirl she could go ahead and help this other woman first. Which ended up taking fooooooorrrrrrrreeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvveeeeerrrrr (I hope you're picturing Sandlot right now). While I was waiting for my turn I got to playing in all the makeup and decided I wanted to wear eyeshadow again. I tried on a few and fell in love with a "Metallic Long Wear Cream Shadow" by Bobbi Brown in Goldstone. But, it was all sold out. Lovely Sarah at Nordstrom offered to call me when it came in and hold it for me which I'm thankful for because their second shipment sold out in the two days it took me to go pick mine up. Anyways, it's gorgeous and has primer built into it so it seriously doesn't crease or change color at all during the day.

I'm also one of those low maintenance makeup girls who loves the idea of lipstick but isn't so keen on it in reality. Mostly because I spend the entire day wondering if it needs to be touched up or if I have it on my teeth or if I'm going to look like that crazy aunt who leaves lipstick on everything every time I take a drink. I like more "don't need a mirror" kinds of lipcolor. Bobbi makes these tinted lip balms and I found an awesome one that looks like I'm wearing lipstick but that I can totally put on in the car without looking. Mine's Pink Raspberry.


It should probably be noted that that gold shadow can be layered or put on more sheer. I tend to wear it in a day appropriate manner.

Also those gold rings are Lana and my friendship rings and I'm feeling like a three year old who has been fed pixie sticks, handed a puppy, and told we're going to Disneyland because she comes back from vacation today!

The Day the Mixer Died

Last night Lana and I decided to attempt making pasta from scratch again. Only this time we decided to not do ravioli. Not because ravioli isn't awesome but because we wanted to try something new. We decided to sort of follow this recipe but also sort of not since I don't like measuring and Lana doesn't like spicy things. Or actually, she likes them but can't handle them.

So anyways, we decided it might be to our benefit to follow a recipe for the pasta part of this adventure. After our not awesome ravioli attempt I purchased a pasta book which is pretty much the most amazing and informative book about pasta ever. Given it's the only one I've read. It's called The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles by Cook's Illustrated.

I forget what the actual recipe said but we figured out it should be one egg to every 2/3cup flour. This was helpful to know because I have a mini food processor so we couldn't fit it all in at once.

The book also has lots of neat tips about how to know when the dough is the right consistency or how to fix it if it isn't.

This is also the point at which I sliced my finger on the food processor blade because apparently I cannot cook with Lana without blood loss. It hurt a ridiculous amount when I did it but now it's mostly just making it a pain to type. I typed 'amount' as 'amouint' four times before doing it correctly. You're welcome for my sacrifice.

I didn't get any blood in the dough by the way.


I have this thing that is awesome. It's called a pasta press. It's made by Kitchenaid and has these disks that attach to it for making different kinds of pasta, "including spaghetti, bucatini, fusili, rigatoni, and large or small macaroni."

Awesome right?

We decided to make bucatini which is a long noodle like spaghetti but is hollow in the center. Then we put this thing to work.



This is where you would have thought Lana and I had been raised in some third world country with no running water and were seeing, I don't know, a computer or like Times Square or something because the excitement in that kitchen was ridiculous.

Then we made a pasta tree.




When we were pretty much done my mixer shut off on it's own which it will do if the motor is being worked too hard in order to keep it from breaking. So we decided to forgot about our last little piece of dough and start cooking the pasta.

If you decide to do this at home (which you should) know that this pasta gets very...puffy. What seemed like a normal sized pot to cook pasta in became not at all sufficient and I had to dump everything into a larger pot partway through.

I didn't take photos of our sauce making because it wasn't very exciting and also I forgot but we used the recipe I showed you above except I didn't measure the grated cheese, we used more of the wet ricotta, and we used feta rather than ricotta salata. Also we used less red pepper and more actual pepper.

We decided to not use bread crumbs or oil on ours because we didn't think it really needed either. We ended up trying it and liking it a lot with the bread crumbs but still didn't put any oil on top. I'm honestly not really sure why you would.

So that should have been the end of things and we all lived happily ever after except my mixer still wouldn't turn on. So we looked online and in the manual and it said to let it sit for 30 minutes to cool. So then about 2 hours later I tried and it still wouldn't work. I tried switching outlets, putting another appliance in that same outlet, using the breaker...I was not feeling good about this. I decided to wait until morning to see if that would bring better news. But it didn't.

I called the Kitchenaid people and spoke to someone who asked me what happened and I explained and then she ended up telling me that apparently whatever powers the motor also brings in air to cool the motor. So basically, in order to power this attachment with the disk we were using we should have had it at setting 10 to bring in enough air but we were all nervous about overworking it so we used it at setting 2.

Now I fully admit that this was totally my fault. Lana asked me if I had the manual for the attachment in the beginning and I told her it should be in the drawer where I keep those. When it wasn't I remembered I had read it while laying in bed but I didn't go try to find it in my room and we just soldiered on. If I had read the manual I would have known how to not break my mixer.

But, the amazing thing is, Kitchenaid is replacing mine with a brand new mixer in my same color and paying all the shipping. No one said, "Sorry girl, you're an idiot and we print huge booklets of instructions because um, they matter." Instead they explained to me how to not break the mixer and are giving me a new one. How incredible is that? I mean, I'm sure they'll get my old one and refurbish it and sell it which will likely cost them little but they totally didn't have to do that and even though it's probably a small blip on their radar it makes my day.

I'm taking a pasta making class next week too so I'll pass on any amazing bits of knowledge I end up with.

The Emerald City

Lana and I went to Seattle this past weekend. She also taught me that Seattle is called The Emerald City which I said makes no sense and asked for the reasoning behind the name and she said "I don't know, why is Portland called The City of Roses?" and I told her it was because Portland has a climate super conducive to growing roses. Which I think makes me the winner of that exchange. I did try to look up why Seattle is called The Emerald City before writing this but mostly a bunch of Wizard of Oz stuff came up and the Wikipedia article for Seattle is really long so I gave up.

We left Saturday morning and started our trip with a stop for coffee and me taking the longest route possible to a gas station. After that point Lana got to be in charge of directions for pretty much the whole rest of the weekend. When we got to Seattle she got us to our hotel very smoothly except we ended up on the wrong side of the street so I did this super badass U-turn in the middle of the very busy 1st avenue in downtown. It was pretty much action movie worthy. Also I didn't hit anyone.

This was our room. After we slept in it though. It didn't come like that.


After we checked in we left to shop. We started with a couple cute shops across the street from our hotel. One of them was actually cute but extremely over priced. Plus none of it was stuff we couldn't find elsewhere. There were a bunch of candles and soaps and stationary and some jewelry and Stonewall Kitchen things. Lana did get a metal dog tag that said "treat" on it.

The store next to that was deceiving. It looked like this cute little shop from the outside and then it was all penis shaped planters and ceramic bunnies with knives in them and a pile of packing peanuts made of plaster inside. We're not talking funny gothic naked people in a snow globe, we're talking art. Unfortunately it was also one of those places that is small and has one person working there who definitely has nothing better to do than watch you as you realize the second you walk in that this place isn't for you and then you have to do the awkward obligatory stroll through before bailing since walking in to immediately turn around seems rude.

Next we went to Free People and this other really neat shop I can't remember the name of but they had great clothes. It was also 500 degrees in there so we had to leave. We ended up going to the biggest Nordstrom ever, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and probably my new favorite place ever. It's called All Saints. It's sort of like someone met Lana and me and smooshed our styles together. They had loose and baggy, masculine fabrics, flowy things, beading, sequins, and 99% of it was in the most gorgeous neutrals. The brand is based out of London but has seven US stores. It's a bit pricey but everything was like 70% off so I ended up getting this gorgeous dress for a fraction of it's original price.

I'm thinking belted with a harder wide brown leather belt it will be amazing. Actually I know it will because Lana tried it on later in our hotel room and looked super adorable.

They also have this amazing children's line. I might have to get knocked up just so I can buy my child a tweed funnel neck trench. Apologies for the blurriness. I think my camera hates Seattle.


After our shopping adventure we went back to our hotel to figure out dinner and change. When we got there we realized we had about five different lights in our room but the one main one wouldn't work so I called down and asked for someone to come up and look at it. The maintenance guy came in, turned it on, and looked at us like we were the stupidest girls ever. And adding insult to injury were all the shopping bags sitting around.

We aren't actually idiots I promise.

We then decided to check out a place called Emmer and Rye that had been recommended to me. When we showed up sans reservation the wait was a bajillion hours to they recommended a place called Who Cooked The Wolf or something. I'm not going to bother looking up the real name or posting a link because the menu was lame and there was a loud child so we left and found ourselves at a lovely little place called Portage dining next to Loudon Wainwright III. I knew his voice sounded familiar and after some sneaky Googling on Lana's part we figured out he was Steven's dad on Undeclared. As well as in a bunch of other stuff. Lana also took a sneaky picture over my shoulder that I'm pretty sure we totally got away with despite all our giggling.


Next up was dessert. We headed to a place called Simply Desserts, one of those ridiculously tiny places that's always packed and doesn't take credit cards but can get away with it because the food is just that amazing. I had Mexican chocolate cake and Lana had some fudge cake thing (mine was better). As delicious as it was though, we couldn't finish.




Then we went and saw No Strings Attached at the weirdest theatre ever. Apparently it's the year 2000 because they still had a giant cardboard cutout for Big Momma's House. As well as Big Fish, which, by the way, has Loudon Wainwright in it.


Then we crashed.

Sunday morning we met a friend of mine and Lana's brother for brunch at Portage Bay Cafe. And that was pretty delicious. As well as surprising laid back for Sunday brunch when we showed up and they didn't have my reservation. They got us in within five minutes.



After that we just did more shopping (I told you that's all this trip was for) and visited Madewell, J.Crew, and H&M. By about 4:30pm we were dragging and decided we might as well start our way home on the condition we could find somewhere to eat on the way home that didn't come with a drive through. Lana got on Yelp and found this place that seemed promising so we made plans to hit it up.

Then we got gas which I've never done myself. And I guess I still haven't since Lana did most of the work. And by most I mean all.


So we drove and drove some more which wasn't super eventful. Then we exited the freeway and drove into the middle of an industrial park and then just into the middle of nowhere to go to a restaurant I was pretty sure was going to end up being a version of the ladies with the tea in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In actuality it was possibly my favorite part of the trip. This restaurant is called Mary McCrank's and is in an old house. Our experience here started with me pulling into the gravel parking lot and Lana telling me to not park in "the paralyzed spots" which has continued to make me laugh to myself even through today.

When we walked in the place was entirely empty. We were the only ones in this place that was pretty much the epitome of going to Grandma's house. I'm not sure words can fully explain.


See?

The waitress was this super friendly middle aged woman who kept talking to us but it wasn't even annoying because she was just so charming. We did finally have to tell her we couldn't eat anymore bread which really made it feel like being at Grandma's house. We ended up sharing salmon, salad, carrots, mashed potatoes and fried mac and cheese.

Lana went to the bathroom at one point and kept insisting I go too before we leave so after dinner we went in and as soon as I opened the door I burst out laughing. I'm not sure this room could have been more pink and old lady gaudy if someone tried. There was also a super attractive wall of mirrors.


Then we were on our way home. And there was this gross super misty rain that made driving a pain but as soon as we crossed the state line the rain became pretty rain that didn't make it hard to see and that's when it was confirmed Portland is my favorite place.

Oh, also Lana brought the Girl Talk album All Day for our drive and I'm addicted. Go listen if you haven't.

My most favorite thing this week.

I was watching something on TV that required little focus while sewing last night (more on that later) when I needed to take a break. Because sewing is actually sort of hard. So I decided to check my email. Which is where I found this.




I'm not really sure what CatPaint is but this is why I love this girl.

What could be better?

So, I have made a new friend. And I am super excited about her. I pretty much want to tell everyone about her like she's my kid and just scored a goal while playing soccer "Oh yeah, that girl, the one who can make treats like nobody's business and has the most fantastic craft ideas ever and doesn't judge me for buying a purse that costs as much as a month of rent? She's my friend." But even though I have been super excited about her and wanting to chat all about the things we do together I also didn't want to be a weirdo. But she was a weirdo first and wrote a blog post about me so I'm pretty sure we'll still be friends after this.

Anyways, her name is Lana and she is seriously awesome. You may remember her from this post. At that point we were more acquaintances than anything although we did often talk about getting together "sometime." Before I got my tattoo I wrote to Lana and explained that I had wanted a Portland tattoo for a long time but couldn't really figure out what I wanted, until I saw her Philly tattoo with such gorgeous clean lines. I made sure to tell her that I completely understood if she wasn't cool with someone walking around with a similar tattoo but instead she sent me back a message full of "I LOVE that idea!" and "DO IT! DO IT!"s. We finally made sometime happen and got together and after a few times of hanging out together Lana told me "We have to be best friends because we have matching tattoos!"

Clearly you can see why I adore her.


Lana also writes a very lovely blog full of fun clothing, crafts, jewelry, and other fun things. You can find it here.