Cleaned up

Tattoo session 1

Took a break from soaping to get my tattoo started. The artist is Marie Wadman of Diving Swallow! (their site appears to be down right now)

The concept is a manzanita branch curving up my back, with a base of peonies, and a fairy lantern to the site. If I can afford it, we're going to add butterflies as well.


My great-grandmother, grandmother and mom all love peonies -- so to me, they symbolize NY. My mom grew them in a corner of the yard, called them "pine-ees" like her grandmother. The manzanita is from Mt Diablo -- representing California.


In this shot, the top flowers haven't been inked -- the rest is done. Outline took two and a half hours, next session is the undershading of the leaves and branches. After that we begin the color.


Check out the koi piece in the upper left. Marie said it wound all the way around her client's arm, then torso, finally ending curling around her belly button. INTENSE! I love it.

Dahi Chicken

I really wanted to recreate the "Monsoon Masala" Dahi Chicken at our favorite Indian restaurant -- while it didn't really come close (at all) it was a very tasty dish!

Trader Joe's was out of white onions, ugh, so we had to use purple. There is also garlic and ginger, red pepper paste (wicked hot) and dried chilies from the farmer's market. Added garam masala too.

Chilies I dried over a few weeks, don't you love the color!!

Cooking the spice paste



Added yogurt -- maybe too much. I was supposed to simmer, I accidently boiled it. It made the mixture separate but it was still tasty.

The nan looks perfect -- thanks Trader Joes!! I didn't make it :)


Finished with cilantro and tomatoes:

Fantastic Papercraft shop

Check out MonAmi! She's a wonderful Etsy seller who makes great papercrafts.

Here's her etsy store! Mon Ami Greetings

I've been featured!

Check out Sara's amazing blog, I am so honored to be featured there!

Here are some pictures I snapped while processing orders for the holiday season.

Cutting into a big, forty-pound tub of creamy vegetable soap:


Chop chop!

I can see some Hawaiian, Coffee, Orange Blossom, Chocolates, Aloe Vera in this shot:


Another angle, can see some Lime Chiffon, Peppermint Bark, Pomegranate,


I love the Lime!!

Some Papaya and some others:


Chocolate Milk, always a star seller!


Orders being processed:

Featured again!

Forgot to post since I was on vacation. Check out this feature the Soap Queen did of lil me!

Soap and the Finer Things in Life

Anne-Marie's got a lovely blog and makes great soaps!

Featured Seller!

Yay! Featured Seller on Daibe's awesome blog:

http://daibebeads.blogspot.com/2007/12/featured-weekly-seller-savor.html

And I just hit over 700 sales in less than two months!! Outstanding :) I'm so thrilled!

Got Soap?

Got Soap?
Originally uploaded by Jeremy Brooks

This is Jeremy Brooks' awesome shot of my new calendula oatmeal soap (it doesn't have a snappy name yet!)

He's rad! I think the pic rocks.

Here's Jeremy's flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/

Runnin

Back on the treadmill! Working off thanksgiving.

Monday Monday

"Black Friday" was a great day for my store. I've got 25 orders ready to go -- in the Costco bag, US priority and first class mail, and in front, International priority and first class.

This is going to be a heavy trip to work.

Runnin'

A nice, hilly run-walk on the treadmill today:

Not to Fifty!

Fans of Princess Bride might recall this line spoken by Count Rugen when Prince Humperdink shoves The Machine up to fifty, bringing a world of pain to Westley.

Well I hit fifty today: fifty miles! Hopefully not in as bad of shape as poor Westley.

Treadmill Runnin!

OK! Treadmill take two. I did an "aerobic" workout, where it varied the incline to change up the intensity. This one, the ipod did not eat:



This was my NEW personal best mile! Sweet! It was 10'11''!

Treadmill Runnin!

Got on my first treadmill today, at the gym. Work basically pays for membership (I pay income tax on it) so why not go -- sidewalk has been mucho rougho on my knees lately and I've been using that as an excuse/reason not to run.

Today was a walk/run for 30 min. Nike ate this workout so I can't find my little widget for it :(

Blogs

I've been scouring around to find some interesting blogs, here are some that caught my eye:

Chocolates:

http://www.boogaj.com/chocolate_blog/
http://www.chocolateobsession.com/

Dessert making:

http://www.chocolategourmand.com/blog/

Food:

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/
http://cookingwithamy.blogspot.com/

New Flickr Page

In the interests of self-promotion I've made a Flickr page, and then I had to go look at all the SF photos and found Jeremy's site (hi Jeremy!) and then I had to go look at all the FOOD PICTURES and now I am really hungry.

I better go running tomorrow, this is getting silly. I gotta hit 50 miles total, I am so close! I am feeling discouraged because running on the sidewalk is really hurting my knees now. I am going to have to get up early and hit the trails, or run at work (which is still basically sidewalk). UGH.

Whew, soap makin!

I opened my Etsy store today! Only a handful of items up, as it does take a bit of work to get organized. Now I really really really want a nice SLR to take some great product photos with. I think that'll be the Salamida christmas gift this year.

My store is called "savor" -- soaps based on food, basically. Yeah I'm a bit one-dimensional sometimes :)

Check it out: savor !

Runnin

Runnin

Runnin

Tough run today -- planned 3 mi but only made 2.66

Runnin

Longest run yet!!

Back to runnin!

Did my first post-flu run today, in the pouring rain. It sucked.

I've been sick and I got a new kitty

This is Neva, the stray that we just adopted. Unfortunately she's FIV+ but we are going to keep her anyway. The only real alternative is putting her to sleep and we just can't do that. Here she is on our first night. Poor girl was so dirty, she had been living in our parking lot for at least several months, since we moved in in March.

Neva means snow-covered, in Spanish.


Here she's a bit more cleaned up, much nicer! And not smelling so much like a dog.


I've had the flu for the past couple days so I have not done any running or weights. I'm gonna pick it up tomorrow where I left off. Still mangaged to lose two pounds, just keeping my food consumption in check.

Today, we decided to introduce her to our other three cats (Zad, Coco and Miki). Coco and Zad have been spending all day outside her door, talking to her, etc. Miki is a momma's boy and he's been downstairs sulking, so he hasn't had as much interaction. Coco and Zad came into her room, Coco immediately ate her food, and Zad jumped in her litter box. Weird cats!! Then they finally noticed her, and while there was a little bit of hissing, there was mostly some yowls, but nothing physical at all. I am really struck by how much bigger our housecats are compared to Neva! She might weigh five pounds and they're around 12-15. They're too fat, really. Neva was pretty nervous, but Coco and Zad we're mostly ho-hum about the whole thing. I took Neva downstairs to meet Miki, I sat her on my lap and he just stared and stared at her. Miki hates Coco, but grew up with Zad and likes him, so I was nervous about how he'd react to her. Honestly, he was huffy, making snorting noises, but otherwise he didn't really care! Neva gave me this look like "How many freaking cats do you guys have???" but she was OK. I fed them all some wet food but Neva was too nervous to eat near them, so we just took her back to her room to chill.

Neva still needs a good bath so we'll probably do that today. I gave her a bath the first day with a very gentle, fragrance free bar soap (for humans) because I figured that was better than the parking lot grease and oil she had on her, and we did get her a leave-in soap foam for cats, but I think she needs a good scrubbing. She is absolutely docile and such a sweet cat.

Coco, chillin in Mike's old apartment:


Zad, when we lived in the Mission:


Miki, also when we lived in the Mission:

Dinner

We had Margot and Joanna over for dinner, and I made chicken adobo, rice, pumpkin fritters, no-need bread, chapatis for the adobo, a cheese plate and lemon mousse pie. We played a lot of Nintendo Wii and watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. Mike and I had a double TKO in Wii boxing, it was amazing. Margot and Joanna each scored a run and tied in Wii Baseball.

Fritters:

Bread:

Ooh gourmet!

English blue cheese, brie, honecomb, quince paste. We also had white truffle porcini mushroom oil and hawaiian black sea salt for the no-knead bread.

New placemats cause the old ones were getting grungy.

Fight!

Swing batta!

Keep your fork, there's pie!

Lemon Mousse Pie

I had another batch of the yummy lemony crust from the lemon tart last week, so I thawed it and made it into a lemon mousse pie.

Weighting down the crust to prebake it. The rice helps keep the dough from puffing up.

Dissolving gelatin in lemon juice, mixed with rind. I then creamed together confectioners sugar and cream cheese, then added to the lemon gelatin. I next whipped heavy cream, and folded the two batters together after the gelatin had set for 15 minutes in the fridge. The pie had to sit for 2 hours after assembling.

Pie crust cookies are always a good leftover (and they make good garnishes!)