In honor of this new listing, I want to present the tiramisu recipe that inspired the onesie.
This recipe is from the Surreal Gourmet show on the Food Network. He layers it into a tea cup and melts chocolate on top and lets it harden in the fridge to make it look like a cup of coffee. Our coffee cups are very, um, utilitarian and not conducive to delicious looking dessert presentation so I made mine in martini glasses and chose to sprinkle the top with cocoa instead of the melted chocolate. One less pot to clean, you know? Anyway, Ryan said it was the best tiramisu he ever had. And it was ridiculously easy so I will definitely make it again. The mascarpone and kahlua made it a little pricey, but worth it.

Cup O’ Tiramisu

• 3/4 cups espresso
• 1/4 cup Kahlua
• 16 x ladyfingers
• 3 x egg yolks
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup mascarpone cheese
• 1/4 lb. dark chocolate, chopped into tiny bits

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, mix espresso and Kahlua. Dip ladyfingers in the liquid, hold for 5 seconds, then reserve on a plate
2. In a mixmaster, or with a whisk, beat egg yolks, sugar and vanilla until ribbons form. Fold in mascarpone. Reserve.
3. In each of 4 coffee cups place 2 soaked ladyfingers in the bottom. Then add 2 tablespoons of mascarpone mixture. Add 2 more ladyfingers and another layer of mascarpone. The last layer should be approximately 1/2 inch below the rim of the cup. Smooth the top layer with the back of a spoon. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
4. In a bowl over simmering water, melt chocolate. Pour a 1/8-inch layer of chocolate over the top layer of the mascarpone mixture and return to refrigerator for another hour so that the chocolate hardens.

(from the Surreal Gourmet)

Gen makes really delicious tiramisu, which literally means “pick me up”:

Espresso Corto (short):

And finally, a family of espresso cups with a little demitasse cup:

There you have it: onsies threesies.

Favorite new thing: freezer paper. Up until just a couple days ago I didn’t even know what it was. It’s like wax paper but only waxy on one side. Which makes it perfect for using as a stencil - just cut out an image (cut out all the parts you want to be colored) and iron it on to your shirt (or, in my case, hoodie), waxy side down. You get clean crisp lines like a silkscreened image, but at a fraction of the cost and time. It works really well.
You can draw right on the paper side of the freezer paper, cut a sheet of it down and print right on it (I was scared it would wreck our printer), or print out an image in black and white and put it underneath and cut it out.
I want to order some fabric paint online because there is very little selection here. Actually, there is a huge selection of 3D puffy paint - who uses that anymore?! Apparently you can use regular paint, acrylic or something, but it won’t stand up to much washing.
We had Ryan’s little brother and his friend over last night to try this out. I found out that I am not very good at explaining things. I don’t like over-explaining things or repeating myself but that usually just means that I under-explain. So here are some good, thorough tutorials:
Craftster
Instructables
Neither Hip Nor Funk
Some warnings:
-don’t do anything too intricate
-if you have any inside pieces, make sure you keep them and mark the paper side with a pen or something because it is really hard to tell which side is waxy when the pieces are so small (for example, if I had wanted my deer on the back of my hoodie to have eyes and a nose, I would have kept the little pieces and ironed them on)
-iron straight down, don’t move it back and forth
-when painting, dab straight down along the edges or they will start to lift

I think I am going to rummage through my closet to see what else I can paint on. Hmm…

One on the many organizational accomplishments of the weekend is this new magnetic spice rack. I know, the whole magnetic spice tin thing isn’t news by any means. Maybe even a little played out. But it’s still genius. We put them up on the side of our fridge. I wasn’t going to label them because I always think I can tell the difference between oregano and basil (which, due to many years of not having a sense of smell, I always get mixed up). And of course there are times when I end up throwing curry into my greek salad. Well, one time anyway.
So I designed these little labels with some futura fontage (futura is currently my favorite font - I used it on my etsy banner too).
This reminds me - our new filing cabinet is in need of some file labels. Is it sad that I’m really excited about that? We cleaned out the office/guest room this weekend. Both of us had boxes and boxes of things that we have been storing at our parents’ houses and now that we’re settling down were forced to take back. Boxes and boxes. And Ryan has approximately one million canvases.
We had just collapsed from exhaustion and were sitting, enjoying the clean result, when Dan called and said he’s coming to visit. Good timing! We’ve got a functional guest room and, now, a guest for the room.
Last year Dan came at the end of March and we all ended up jumping in the lake. It’s still really cold so I’m hoping he doesn’t make us do that again.

I just couldn’t throw it out. It was a huge vintage poster from a school in Kaslo, with a scene of a park on one side and a kitchen on the other. The walls of the kitchen were a delightful pistachio colour. A friend of ours saved it and others from the trash and passed it on. But it was too big to hang anywhere in our tiny abode. So I lovingly selected my favorite scenes from within the pictures and turned them into postcards with rounded edges (which are, in my opinion, the best kind of edges). Ryan designed a nice little backing sticker for the address, stamp and message.

They are listed for sale in my new store on etsy (you can click on the images in the sidebar or go to www.cucumbersome.etsy.com to check it out) in packs of three.

My store mission is simple: Sell the things I make because we just don’t have room for them all. And then make some more.

This is the giraffe that I made for a baby gift. We have to ship it off right away but I thought I’d post a picture because I’m pretty proud of this, my first attempt at a stuffed animal. I really love the ones I saw at Wren Handmade, but they were $60 each. One of my lines is “I could make that” but I rarely follow through. Hurrah for finishing a project!

I think he needs a name… hmm…

For the last two months that I lived in Calgary, I worked in the coffee shop in the main library downtown. One day, on a break (from the hard job of doing the Times crossword with my co-worker and occasionally making a latte or two), I wandered into the basement and found a rack of books being sold for pennies. I bought this choir book. Then I took it home and ripped out all the pages, covered the inside with a neutral paper and made it into a CD case for Ryan.

Each sleeve is just taped inside, so it’s not the most sturdy thing.

A friend of mine back in high school really liked Brand New and this quote (from their song Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t) that I wrote in the spine has been swimming around in my head for years: “I hope this song starts a craze, the kind of song that ignites the airwaves, the kind of song that makes people glad to be where they are, with whoever they’re there with.”

Anyway, I forgot about this CD case until I saw Ex Libris Anonymous, a site that sells journals made from old book covers. Even the coil bindings look good. I want one.