It’s been such a mild Winter, my body is totally confused. I’ve been in the mood to BBQ, go to the beach and drink cucumber mint lemonade out on the patio. I’m not the only one who’s confused, though. Our plants think it’s spring and they’re starting to show it. The Camellia bush has a handful of flowers and hundreds of buds that will be blooming very soon. SO pretty!

So, back to that cucumber mint lemonade because I know your mouth puckered when I mentioned it the first time. I had this concoction the other day at a restaurant and loved it so much, I came straight home and started looking up recipes online. Ultimately I decided I would just play around with some mint, a neglected, slightly over-ripe cucumber way in the back of the veggie drawer and some Crystal Light lemonade mix. The results were DAMN DELISH! Recipe below:

Ingredients

2 quarts of prepared lemonade

1/2 medium cucumber – Mine may have been more potent in flavor because of how ripe it was, so just add more if it’s not “cucumbery” enough for your liking.

A fist-full of mint – excuse my lack of precise measurement here.

1/2 cup water

Make your pitcher of Lemonade and set aside. Peel the skin off the cucumber and tear the mint leaves off the stems. Place the cucumber, mint and 1/2 cup of water in a blender and puree the ingredients. Pour the puree through a metal sieve, making sure you press down on that pulp because there’s a lot of liquid gold hiding in there. Pour the strained cucumber/mint liquid into your lemonade, mix and serve. Garnish with more fresh mint and add vodka if you’re nasty.

ENJOY REFRESHING TIMES and gaze upon the tiny fragments of mint floating around in your glass while thinking to yourself, “Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.”

Are you kidding me? I WANTZ THEM ALL O_O

Oh yeah, and they come in different colors. Check them out here: www.switcheasy.com

Design by: Joachim Schmid

It’s a new year and things are slowly getting back to normal after a crazy holiday season. In fact, it was so crazy I didn’t get to hand-make a single xmas gift like I wanted to. FOR SHAME.

The holidays were spent hosting lots of family, drinking lots of egg nog and consuming lots of xmas cookies. Oh and in the middle of all that my sister introduced me to a little show called Portlandia – OBSESSED.

Wrapped up the year by going to see Tori Amos perform at the beautiful Orpheum theater in downtown L.A.  I was in a magical trance but was able to break out of it for a moment to capture the clip below. Tori paying homage to Kate Bush. How perfect is that?

Tori Amos from Cravelist on Vimeo.

This year will be all about self-improvement, home improvement and expanding my video editing reel with exciting new projects. A music video, perhaps???

Happy 2012!

While I, myself, am feeling quite festive this year, we’ve all had years where it seems we just can’t get excited about the holidays.  If this sounds like you, you’re not alone.

From the subtle lighting shifts and indoor snow, to the sleepless and indifferent expression on her face. This song is like a sweet “bah, humbug” lullaby and I dedicate it to anybody out there who’s feeling like a scrooge.

Special thanks to my bo’friend for turning me on to this song. It’s definitely getting added to the xmas playlist.

Love her or hate her, Kat Von D’s Adora lipstick is THE SHIZZ. Honestly, i’ve never gotten more compliments on a red lipstick than I have with this one. The color is a little hard to describe or even capture on camera. It’s as if red and gold fell into a vat of hot lava…MAGMA, if you will. Say it with me, “MAAAGMAAAA”. It feels like a matte lipstick so it won’t bleed and even after it comes off, it leaves a nice lip stain behind. If you have thin lips, it makes them appear a bit more plump because of the reflectives in it. Here is the truest image I could find online (I believe those are Miss VonD’s lips):

GO TO SEPHORA AND GET IT. Moving on to nails…

If you follow nail trends, you’ve noticed the chunky glitter action that’s been going around. I don’t normally go for glitter but since I’ve been obsessed with gold all year, I decided to give this one a try. It’s called Only Gold For Me  by OPI for Sephora and it looks amazing over pretty much any color but my favorite so far is black. It catches the light like crazy and I haven’t been able to stop staring at my nails since I put it on. Currently wearing it over a dark grey polish *staring at my nails one more time*

Photo by: VampyVarnish.com

This post was in no way sponsored by Sephora. I wish.

Happy Harlotdays!

Latest craving: Pantone ornaments by Seletti

When the blogosphere rumored that the release date for these ornaments would be xmas 2012, I was super annoyed and thought, “How dare the interwebz dangle these awesome balls in front of me like that.” It’s kinda like when you see pics of a badass car and you find out it’s just a concept car that you’ll never have the opportunity to drool on.

Fast fwd to a few weeks later when I get an email from CharlesAndMarie.com announcing that they’d be the first to carry them just in time for xmas 2011, I immediately jumped online and grabbed a couple. SCORE.

I think they’re gonna look perfect on the Snovita ornament stand from IKEA.

Design geeks, get yours here.

New bedding in shades of charcoal and purple. Upped the thread count on our pillow cases and REALLY wish we had done that sooner. SOFTNESSSS.

Instead of eating a turkey, I went to Animal Acres for the annual feeding of the turkeys. Also got to pet a giant, adorable pig. *sigh* (click on da pig to visit them)

Had my parents over for a very low-key Thanksgiving. I know, I didn't iron the dang table linens - don't judge me. Oh, and I found the most delicious recipe for caramelized brussels sprouts. OBSSESED.

My dad made what is, quite possibly, the most decadent apple pie I've ever had in my life. I've started calling him Pancho Crocker. I can't even get the recipe from him because he free-styled the darn thing.

Witnessed Black Friday insanity. This image of a packed mall was taken at 2:30 am. Lucky for me I was only there to capture footage for a show that I edit. Zero trampling involved.

Celebrated the Bear's birthday and tried an Irish Car Bomb for the first time. My chugging skills are SO lacking. Bear looked adorable as always, especially with her bear badge from Pygmy Hippo Shoppe (click image below to visit them)

Took advantage of the long holiday weekend to festoon the chicken coop with Christmassy goodness. I am totally into the holiday spirit this year. I even went out and acquired an ugly Christmas sweater at Iguana Vintage Shop! This thing is hideous. Perhaps I'll wear it in a future post.

Seriously, if it weren’t for Instagram, November would be nothing but a blur.

I can’t believe 2011 is already coming to a close. I am going to attempt to hand-make as many X-mas gifts as possible this year. We’ll see how that goes…

]]> http://cravelist.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/november/feed/ 0 by: Agent D bf60026413b011e19896123138142014_7 25f788a413d311e1abb01231381b65e3_7 e59d6bc413d311e1a87612313804ec91_7 d9200ca816da11e1abb01231381b65e3_7 7afd3a5016fe11e180c9123138016265_7 e87615c6173411e1a87612313804ec91_7 9ecf2e1e18e011e19e4a12313813ffc0_7 33bf715a18dc11e180c9123138016265_7 fe13937a199811e1abb01231381b65e3_7 7db36428189711e19896123138142014_7 http://cravelist.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/top-o-the-napkin-to-ya/ http://cravelist.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/top-o-the-napkin-to-ya/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:44:53 +0000 by: Agent D http://cravelist.wordpress.com/?p=1123 Continue reading »

Excuse the title of this post. I don’t know what happened there.

Soooooo, last night I was going through our table linens and felt inspired to set the Thanksgiving table early. It made me realize that we didn’t have a single napkin ring in the house – something my mother always has on her dining table during special dinners. I needed a way to pretty-up the napkin situation but rather than run out and buy napkin rings,  I started looking online to see I could pull off some napkin origami on each place setting. Well, after a few failed attempts at some elaborate shapes, I found a nice and simple one that you can use with any kind of stemware. It’s called the Fleur de Lis goblet fold.

It needs a little work but I think it exudes a certain disheveled kind of classiness, don’t you think? I snapped off this pic with my phone as I ran out the door this morning so I could share this with the rest of you classy broads/dudes. Go grab some napkins and get to foldin. Instructions (and other configurations) can be found here: www.napkinfoldingguide.com

There really is a website for everything.

]]>

I don’t know about you, but my favorite part of any pie is THE CRUST. Not Martha  shows us how to top our mugs of hot apple cider with these delicate, lattice pie crust cookies. MMMMM! I actually made these and they’re a little time consuming but totally worth it.

Speaking of apple cider, this Apple Cider Cream Pie looks so light and dreamy, I’m practically drooling just looking at these pictures. Get the recipe over at A Sweet Spoonful.

Hope you all have a delicious  and bountiful Thanksgiving!