piece of cake

Woops! Where did the year go? The end of every year is sort of a whirlwind for me, what with Christmas, five million birthdays (including my own!) and New Years.  So here's a little slice of cake for you, internet, whatever you're celebrating.

Here are some photos from my annual celebration chunk:

tubular

Ahhh, Thanksgiving. Perhaps my favorite holiday? Shh, don't tell Halloween. Or Christmas. Or any of them really, I love all holidays.

ANYWAYYYY this was our first Los Angeles Thanksgiving, and it was a successful one. Prosecco was imbibed, deviled eggs were noshed on, pups were petted, turkey was consumed. Even though it was in the 80s until sunset I could feel myself getting into the winter holiday spirit.

Our contributions were cranberry relish (how I love thee) and roasted sweet potatoes with a spicy coconut creme fraiche. Doing research on a sweet potato dish reminded me of how hilarious the word tuber really is. Well done, little sweet potato, well done.

lately

Some random snippets of life, my favorite thing to post when I don't have anything better to post but really want to put something on the blog. BAM TRUTH BOMB.

Best car I've seen in LA / Painting Katie's new place

Still regret not buying this for the cover alone

Tasty Thai in South LA / Housewarming at Katie's aforementioned new place!

starlight

So my plan was to post photos of my brother and new sister-in-law's entire wedding suite as soon as we returned from the wedding itself... back in August.... and now it's November....

Yeah, a little late on that game. But better late than never? Right guys? Kelly and Jacob decided on a constellation theme pretty early on, which gave me plenty of time to work that into all their suite. All in all I ended up creating a save the date, invitation, map & reception card, RSVP card, escort cards, table numbers, the program, a return address stamp and some chalkboard art.

Listing that out it looks like a lot, but trust me dudes: this was a a fun one. Both the making of the suite and the attending of the wedding! We partied our patoots off until Bryan and I hobbled back to my parent's house to sleep forever.

I'm a big sucker for maps, so making this little fella detailing some of the great things to do in my great hometown was extra fun. Seriously though, if you go to Ann Arbor and you don't stop into at least ONE of these places I fully pity you.

And of course, congrats to Jacob and Kelly. It feels really wonderful to finally have a sister!

p.s. if you're getting married and want to talk invites, save the dates and more feel free to contact me: etrithart(at)gmail(dot)com! I don't have any rigid package structure, so we can work with your budget.

children of the corn

Ahh, October. A crisp breeze blows through the air, the leaves change, scary movies are watched. Well okay, I'm still on the fence about that last one... let's just say an overactive imagination doesn't mix well with creepy children lurking around the corner. You know what does mix well though?

....I mean, if you hadn't guessed from my little animation above, the answer is PEANUTS AND CANDY CORN. This "trail mix" was introduced to me by a fellow college classmate and I think I've made it allllmost every year since then. If you like candy corn you'll LOVE it, and if you don't like candy corn then what are you even doing here. Next you're going to tell me you don't like circus peanuts or black jelly beans!! 

My taste in candy may be a little strange.

Anyway, if you'd like to make this delicious concoction for yourself I have very generously illustrated this DIFFICULT RECIPE for you.

Yep, that's it. All you have to do now is sit back, relax, and enjoy as you watch Halloween for the umpteenth time because that's the only scary movie you can actually watch without waking up in the middle of the night due to ghost nightmares. 

What's your favorite Halloween treat? If you say apples and toothbrushes you can also leave.

Just look at that beauty.

ritual union

Look, I know anytime someone who has a blog gets engaged and posts about wedding planning says exactly what I'm about to say.. but I'll say it anyway: this isn't going to turn into a wedding planning blog. PROMISE! But I've got some major thoughts that I'm so excited about, and what's a blog if not a place to put those thoughts!

We're still more than a year out from getting married, so right now all we have is a venue and my pinterest board, but that's enough for me to make a little inspiration post! Bryan and I are both visual people, so this whole shindig is going to be a biiiig collaboration for us. There isn't going to be a theme (besides, you know, getting married) and I've been having a hard time even describing the look we're going for. Industrial moody romantic leafy natural mystical...? Does that.. help? No? Okay fine, just look at some inspiration photos.

jenn & dave stark photography / adventures in cooking

local gatherings

amy merrick / the reformation / sanktoleono jewelry

ritual

Hey bloggy buddies! Someone has been a neglectful blog poster. Not going to point any fingers or anything. I actually really enjoy updating my blog but I'm also bad at keeping up with stuff like this, and if I can't think of anything to post right away I normally push it to the side. Gonna try to be better - hopefully there will be plenty to post about in the coming months.

Like this illustration above! Bright had a fantasy fiction campaign a couple weeks back, and I decided to make a cool teen elf with an interest in alchemy. Purple hair, don't care. She seems cool right? I made her a playlist of vaguely magic-y songs for her magical crytal iPod, because that's apparently what I do for fun.

If you do nothing else please listen to that track by SZA, or at least go watch her dance around like a cutie. She is kinda my favorite right now.

In other news, it's been about half a year since we moved to California. Perhaps I'm due to make another update soon!

creepshow

Greetings, citizens of the internet. Happy weekend! Today I'm going to be running around town like a mad person, but right now let's take a moment to relax, take a sip of our iced coffees (Oh Trader Joe's coffee concentrate, how I love thee), and check out this illustration I did! 

The campaign was themed "Things That Go Bump in the Night", which I had a TON of fun with. Thanks to some awesome encouragement from a certain fella I live with this turned out to be a big piece for experimentation, too! The goal was to achieve a strong atmosphere, since that's not my strong suit, and I think I'm figuring it out!

Also: I'm obsessed with this color palette to such an extent that I maybe want to model my entire wardrobe around it. Navy is the new black? Maybe I just used this illustration as an excuse to post a dream outfit? THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW.

dress (sold out? CRYING) / hat / sunglasses / boots

extreme makeover

Wham bam! I finally gave my website a looooong deserved makeover. Things got simplified, new art was added, many faux curses (son of a biscuit!) were uttered under my breath trying to figure out various CSS things.

AND since the ol' bloggy hasn't had a makeover in awhile either I made a matching header! OMG twinsies, look how cute.

Here's one of the newer pieces I added to my website: a tiny garden adventurer!

spaced out

Happy Wednesday! I just polished off an ice cream mochi (mango flavor, my fave) and was reminded that I never posted this little illustration I worked on for a campaign Bright was doing... a celebration of the fact that last Sunday was National Ice Cream Day AND the 45th anniversary of the first moonwalk. 

What flavor do you think that ice cream is? Superman? Have you ever had Superman ice cream guys? IT IS SO GOOD IN MY MEMORY.

pictures of you

  

 More photos from around town, presented for your viewing pleasure.

 

4th of July requirements: babes, Peggy, Katie's dangerous mystery beverage, corn dogs & goth dance parties... in that order.

 

 

game on

Though I've been busy with working, learning my way around this new city, traveling (my brother's wedding is so close!) and eating my weight in pizza I've managed to make some time for video games here and there.

I thought it would be nice to do a round up of what I've been enjoying, because my taste in video games is weird and I want to know if there's anyone out there playing the same stuff as me... so they can recommend more things for me to play.

MOUNTAIN (iOS) | If you saw "Her" you'll probably remember the funny foul-mouthed alien video game Joaquin Phoenix plays in it, it's sort of hard to miss. David O'Reilly is the mastermind behind it, and now he has a real video game of his own! I'm sure some people will be a little hard pressed to call this a game, the bulk of it is staring at your procedurally based fancy space mountain, but those people are no fun anyway. Today a cup of coffee crashed into my mountain and as it spun it told me "I am one with this bright morning". DREAM GAME, NEVER WANT IT TO END.

Pokemon X (3DS) | Look, I just want to be the very best, like no one ever was. Also Pokemon is HARD and I am constantly losing and this one has five million more doodads than the last one I played when I was 10 years old. Don't judge, but Granny Emma is still figuring out how to work this dang thing. Maybe I'll go back to Animal Crossing.

DayZ (PC) | Open world multiplayer games really appeal to me, especially ones without much structure like DayZ. Basically you start out with only a flashlight in a quasi-Eastern European country infested with zombies, and it's your goal to survive and collect supplies until something (human or zombie) kills you... and you restart with only a flashlight again. It's still in alpha so it's kinda wonky, and also the zombies appear out of nowhere sometimes which scares the living daylights out of me. BUT people have being doing some crazy stuff with it!

Child of Light (PS4) | On the opposite end of the spectrum, this game is so charming and beautiful! It's done in a watercolor style, the dialogue is all in rhyming verse, and the RPG style combat is simple to pick up. 

A Dark Room (iOS) | Let's close out with another weird game I played on my phone. That's kind of my thing, I guess? This one is all text based, sort of like Ye Olde Computer Games, but is decidedly creepy and mysterious. I was glued to my phone until I finished it because the story was SO compelling. You can also play it on your desktop for freesies if you like that sort of thing.

Are you playing the video games? What are you playing, please say it's Mario Kart and that I can come over.

cornered in

Hello, internet buddies! I hope you're having a great 4th of July weekend... and so does this little guy! Eat a hot dog or some sort of pastry with fruit laid out in the pattern of the American flag. See you next week~!

flower power

I've been lucky enough to have a couple fun flower-y projects come my way as of late - the one above was actually just for fun though! Sometimes I like to pretend that I own a line of good smelling body products and that I get to choose the scents and design the packaging... and someone else does the rest of the work. Wouldn't that be ideal? Doesn't eucalyptus have the prettiest leaves? All answers point to yes.

Other floral things happening in my life currently:

On Saturday I took a quick jaunt out to the ocean to do a little boogie boarding (newest obsession) and Gwen Stefani ogling (she was RIGHT. THERE) and then headed back inland so I could be Katie's official floral crown-maker at the Bust Craftacular. The whole thing was MAJORLY fun, there were cute ladies and amazing goods everywhere. In case you want to drop some hard earned cash on something pretty and fun, here are some of the vendors I was crushing on:

Selvedge Dry Goods (for your fashion truck-y, watermelon shorts-y needs) | Sienne Josselin (for your earthy illustration needs) | Hannah Nance (for your Babe Alert print-y needs) | Paola Loves to Shop (for your dreamy jewelry needs) | Small Adventure (for your gorgeously illustrated cards-y needs)

And DUH, the Good Twin for your best letterpressed cards ever-y needs!

And here are two photos from my trip to Michigan - a gorgeous letter "B" made by my future sister-in-law's sister (what is that? is there a term for that?) and a happily full windowbox in my parent's backyard. If you ever wonder where my love for mint and teal comes from... well.. it's probably because I grew up in a perfect minty green house.