Aunt Peaches

Main navigation

Uncategorized

Leopard House Envy

by 30 Comments

You think your neighborhood is cool? 

I live scarcely more than a mile from a leopard house.  Now that is cool. 

To describe me as jealous would be to describe the ocean as moist. 

Question is; would two leopard houses in close proximity be too much to handle? Would it be seen as copy cat (no pun intended)?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

And perhaps this is why God gave us zebra stripes.

Second Birthday

by 78 Comments

Painfully Obvious Inner Monologue: What the…is her piece bigger than mine?
I talk about things on this blog a lot. 
Lists of things. Favorite things. Things I want to do before I kick the bucket…

If you were to ask me to list my five things I would take to a deserted island, four of the five would appear in the photo above, which is weird because that photo was taken on my second birthday at a time when I had virtually no control over my surroundings. Isn’t it funny how things come full circle? How we subliminally gravitate toward what is most familiar.
Apparently I had another second birthday on July 1stand I missed it. Honestly, the nerve of me.
As of last Sunday, I, or, the blog I should say, is now two years old. Two years. If someone had told me two years ago that this undertaking would be as stimulating, fulfilling, and generally-all-around-wonderful as this…well, perhaps I would have started a lot sooner. 
I know some times bloggers use their anniversary to host giveaways or surveys (and maybe if I had my act together I would too), but I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for stopping by to read. Thank you for lending me your thoughts. Thank you for putting up with my weirdness. And thank you for sharing a corner of my life, and maybe, just maybe, even letting me share on a corner of yours. 
It is shameful that I don’t know each one of you by face or name, but if I did, I would like to think I would use this occasion to invite you over for margaritas and armadillo dip on the porch. You would bring dessert, perhaps a pie or plate of brownies, and we would talk for hours about nothing in particular.
I suppose that’s what this blog is, nothing in particular. But it is my nothing and I particularly love it, and I love each one of you for helping it grow little by little each week.
I don’t say it nearly often enough: Thank You.
~Aunt Peaches

 

Fireworks Cake (Accidently Gluten free)

by 7 Comments

Pop Rocks + Bittersweet Flourless Chocolate Cake = Your brains will fall out.
Actually, it’s like your brains will fall out, then explode into a shimmering waterfall of fireworks, then regroup in a solid mass just long enough to salute the flag, then split apart again into a hundred individual pieces decked out in majorette costumes, then prance off with the marching band singing “Yankee Doodle.”
It is that good.   
And really, when was the last time you had Pop Rocks candy? 
They bust in your mouth like itty bitty fireworks, which makes them perfect for the fourth of July. I know most people associate sweet things on July fourth with light stuff like lemon ice and watermelon, but I like chocolate. Hell, let’s be honest, I always like chocolate. Always will. I’m pretty sure the founding fathers liked chocolate too. And if they didn’t they should have. Lord knows, if I ever found a country, I would want people to celebrate my efforts with chocolate and not some mushy watermelon sprayed with hot dog water. 
Did I mention I have gone gluten free?
I know. Annoying right?
I hate it when people jump on diet trends, especially when “people” is me, and double especially when the dang thing works. Not only have I lost a few pounds, more important, it has calmed down my allergies, which in my book is nothing less than a miracle. I swear, this year, when the pollen count kept hiccuping higher and higher and higher, I was willing to try anything. And this thing worked. Dangnabbit!
So when I went to a foofy fusion restaurant a few weeks ago and they offered a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and pop rocks, well, I had to steal their idea. I never would have thought of supplementing frosting with pop rocks, but it works. The sour-sweet of the candy pairs so nicely with the dark and fudgy. It’s an odd couple but it works. And with a dense cake, it’s easy to go gluten-free. Who knew?
I could provide a flourless chocolate cake recipe here but I won’t because there are ten thousand food bloggers who can do it better than me. This is the recipe I followed and recommend with all my tiny heart.
Happy Fourth!
PS: If you like the idea of pairing slightly weird stuff with chocolate, you need to see these potato chip brownies. 
PPS: On the crafty side, you need to see the patriotic wreath Geri made using my bottle flower tutorial. I am already working on one for next year!

Missing: Yolanda the Sassy Unicorn

by 10 Comments

What did I come across duct taped to a tree on my walk home yesterday?

A flier* for a missing unicorn named Yolanda. Apparently she is a sassy thing with a love of room-temperature pigs in a blanket.

Guys, it isn’t everyday that a community loses a unicorn; let us unite together in this time of crisis. 

If you see Yolanda, call the number above!

* I could not make this up if I tried.

Badass Embroidery

by 9 Comments

What ever happened to the days when women were praised for possessing things like wide hips and a wicked embroidery sampler?

Ladies, we need to unite and bring these virtues back in vogue!

Who is with me?
     Yesss!

Who is too lazy to learn embroidery and is fine with buying badass samplers online?
     Double yesss!

Let’s see what is new in  the world embroidery:

 Kayne West Tweet | Sarah Palin | Sam the Eagle |  I’ll see you in Hell | Laser Cats Greeting Card

Don’t you just love it when old trends come full circle?

Tummy Dance

by 5 Comments

gif maker

Miss Lolabelle is doing her tummy dance all day long — a sure sign of hot weather. Poor thing spends the winter clinging to warm spots, then summer comes and she struggles to let go of her heat under all that fur. Golly, it must be hard to be that beautiful.

Lola isn’t the only one of the floor this weekend. I’m going to be down on my knees scraping the paint off the back porch. Wish me luck!

Happy weekend 🙂

Welcome to the Jungle

by 8 Comments

Once in a while I’ll get an email from someone asking where I put all the stuff I use to make the craft projects that appear on this blog. And since I openly admit to being a slob with some serious hoarding tendencies, I can’t blame folks for being curious to see what things look like off camera. Perhaps they suspect I am secretly collecting newspapers in the bathtub or stacking jars of expired pickle products along the stairs.

My friends, let me assure you; the pickle situation is under control. And there are no newspapers in the bathtub. There is massive collection of cardboard tubes under the bathroom sink, but that’s different. (You’ll see why in a second).
No doubt I am a serious pack rat, but when it comes to collecting things that others consider garbage, I limit it to a single cupboard in the kitchen. Talk about self-discipline!

Kiki calls it my junk yard. I call it The Jungle.

Kiki says I am crazy for keeping all of this crap, but then I reply by itemizing all the cool stuff I will do with each item. I always expect her to understand, but instead, her eyes roll back in her head like I’m trying to sell her magic beans.
Pffff. Beans. Ha!
Well the cupboard was getting full last weekend, and since I have restricted myself to just this space, I thought I would pull it all out, separate the wheat from the chaff, and identify exactly what I intend on doing with this stuff.

LET’S SEE WHO IS CRAZY NOW, KIKI.

1. & 2.  Shallow Boxes and Lids: I use them to coral supplies and contain messy projects. They make it easy to move a project to another space while it dries or I do something else. Not very interesting, but it’s a good tip!
6. #6 Clear Styrene boxes: home made shrinky dinks
8. Green Plastic Strawberry Baskets: excellent base for a chandelier light
9.  Plastic Cookie trays: These make the best paint pallets – the little dividers keep everything separate and easy to wash or toss when you are done
11. Mini Soda Cans:  candle votives
12. Deli Containers: candy lights, and I’m thinking about using them as shadow boxes (stay tuned)
13. Expired Wheat Pasta: faux rococo frames, jewelry
15: Cardboard Tubes (PS there are 100 more under the sink): pincushions, Chinese lantern style flowers, snowflakes, nini wreath, big wreath or wall hanging,
16: Narrow Food Wrap Box: Perfect for giving away small batches of holiday baked goods.

17. Lightweight Cardboard Boxes: polyhedron decorations, notebooks,  a stampede

Now what do we have here….


Looks to me like someone has room for growth. Woot!

Quick, give me more ideas on stuff to make. Or better yet, stuff to collect.


Evening of Roses

by 10 Comments

There was a fire under the train tracks yesterday. No one was hurt, thank goodness, but my commute from downtown to Evanston went from 50ish minutes to 4ish hours. As you might imagine, the train car was packed, sweltering hot, and smelled of body odor and fried chicken. And not the good kind of friend chicken, either. 

By the time my feet hit solid ground, I was just about ready to explode.

…Lucky for me, my walk home included a stroll through a public rose garden. It’s always a pretty little swath of park, but last night must have been the peak of the season. I’m telling you, no lie, there must have been thousands of roses in bloom, each of them beautiful than the next, each of them smelling so much better than fried chicken.

I always try my best to always appreciate whatever nuggets of beauty I can find in the course of my day, but yesterday, of all days, I have never been more grateful for those roses. 

The park has every color rose you can imagine, but I have a fondness for big fat pink roses!

It’s Friday

by 11 Comments

I was busy making a Friday Flower project last night when it took a turn for the worse. I am still hoping to resurrect it from the bowels of craft failure, but until then, the best I can give you is a sneak peek:

The extra large letters makes it seem purposeful, no? 
It’s orange. Almost Muppet-like. That’s as much as I will tell you right now.
You will have to forgive me for running behind. It’s been an odd week around here…

The NATO summit takes place in Chicago this weekend and protesters have been pouring in for days. It’s weird. Sometimes I see them clustered in sleeping bags under the train tracks. Sometimes I see pictures on the news of the riots that took place at previous NATO summits and think, How could these people in sleeping bags be preparing to set fires and loot and throw bags of poo? They just want to get their point across. They just need their voice to be heard. We should be saluting them for their determination to speak out for the little guy. Where is our tolerance?

Then yesterday on the train I looked down at one of the clusters of sleeping bags and saw a guy going to the bathroom into a bag.  
And there goes my tolerance. 
Will the contents of that bag end up smeared across some corporate bank office window? Or thrown at a policeman’s riot shield? Or peacefully into a garbage can (most of which have been removed to ward off small bomb threats)? I don’t know. But holy cats, I’m glad I don’t live anywhere near the summit location this weekend.
Even just working downtown is eerie right now. Helicopters everywhere. Trains are half-empty today. Not a suit in sight. Everyone, including my boss, instructed workers to “dress down” this week and work from home on Monday.  Some glass-front buildings are boarded up. The jewelers and high-end retailers have emptied their windows. It’s spooky.
My office overlooks a plaza in the center of the business district, which apparently is some sort of target. I’m not sure if that is because of the central location, or because it is the front yard of a giant bank headquarters, or because the plaza is owned by a much-despised energy corporation, or because it is the only open square downtown not located on government land*…but it is currently under guard something fierce.
*Something they don’t teach you in Kindergarten:  If you are going to commit a crime, like defacing property etc., avoid doing it on government property because, if/when you are arrested, the sentencing will likely be harsher than if you committed the same crime on private property. At least that is what my Anarchist lawyer friend informed me on Facebook last week. And yes, there are Anarchist lawyers. Weird, right?
One of the nicest things about my office is that the view includes The Four Seasons, a giant mosaic by Marc Chagall. I like to come out here at lunch to read a book, or chat with co-workers, or eat my salad and people watch. It’s my special place. I share its specialness with hundreds of other people, though. This is how nice I am.  I share and such.
But today the plaza is blocked off, so I am eating inside, writing this blog post, and mad as a box of frogs just thinking about how they had to board up my beloved mosaic. Just look: 

I know it is just a precaution, but still… it’s a sad day when a 20-ton work of art has to be protected from the public. Just looking at it puts me on edge.  Between this, the police presence and the non-stop drone of helicopters, I am anxious to start the weekend. At home. Away from Crazytown. With the cat. Busy beavering away at another art project.
What are you doing this weekend?
Looking for something fun to do or read? Here are some of my random favorites this week:

Dear People Who Used To Live Here

by 9 Comments

Dear People Who Used To Live Here,
Thank you for planting the giant patch of purple zebra striped iris bulbs out back by the garage. Wow. I realize you did not plant them with me in mind, but I feel as though they were put here especially for me, seeing as very few people on the planet could, or would, appreciate them as much as I do. Let’s face it: this is destiny. I don’t know where you live now, but if I did, I would secretly dig up your yard in the middle of the night and plant you something pretty just to repay the favor. Except that would be creepy. And possibly illegal.
Maybe I can make them into a hat and send your way instead?
Let me know,
Peaches