All Things Ami

All Things Ami, one of my daily reads, is chock full of amazing photographs, delicious recipes and skillfully written posts that captivate me. Allyn has the ability to make me hungry - even immediately after eating a big meal. She is an extraordinary photographer, especially of mushrooms (which I super heart) - by the way, can we all convince her to use her photographs and design a calendar or something? I would proudly be her first customer and display it in my kitchen! Make yourself a cup of coffee (or tea, if that's what you prefer) and head on over to All Things Ami. Yes. Right this second.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Alt Summit silliness with Piper and Lillian
...these pictures make my heart burst <3 size="2">(photo booth from getpicturethis.com)

Off to Alt...

I'm super excited to be off to Alt {Altitude Design Summit} today. The schedule and speakers look inspirational and I'm also really psyched to meet up with Brandi, Erin, and finally get to meet Piper, Rachel and Lillian. We're starting off the summit with dinner tonight at a farm to table restaurant, Pago - a highly anticipated feast (at least by me) because the menu looks amazing and I simply cant wait to meet and catch up with these wonderful ladies!

Now please keep your fingers crossed for me... hopefully my flight out of NYC won't be delayed so that I make my connecting flight and arrive on SLC on time and in one piece. Happy Wednesday, friends!

Cold Hands, Warm Hearts Swap

Sandy and Ilene kindly paired me up with:

Jennifer of

I was delighted when I received my package from Jennifer. I mean come on, who doesn't love opening mail and finding handmade lovelies? In addition to the wonderfully decorated gloves that Jennifer sent, there was fabric rosette earrings and a fun luggage tag! Thanks, Jennifer!!!

ALSO:

We Heart Paper + Janie Liu Jewelry

raspberri cupcakes

*squeal* I heart macarons but I super heart piggies! Love 'em!

In a nutshell, I was born in the year of the pig (chinese zodiac) and have basically been collecting piggie trinkets and such since birth, mostly gifted to me by my mom...

So stumbling across these photos via stephcookie's flickr must have been kismet. I feel this sort of special kinship with steph, even though I'm fairly certain she has no idea who I am. But how can you not feel a bond with someone who makes something you utterly adore?

What's could be more wonderful than these pictures? The recipe (and more pictures) for these darling delights is on steph's blog, raspberri cupcakes. Now, I'll be honest, I haven't even attempted normal, faceless macarons so I probably won't be trying the recipe any time soon, however, I swear that I will at some point in my life. Maybe she'll be my new best friend... though my birthday just passed. *sigh* A girl can dream right?

(all images by stephcookie)

soup dumplings + stand mixer fun

Sandy and I reconnected recently via the blogosphere after meeting each other in Taiwan in the summer of 2002. We finally met up again (after 8 years) for some delicious soup dumplings in Chinatown. Sandy is super sweet and very crafty, she makes me want to take on more projects! It was also great to finally meet her husband after seeing all of their beautiful engagement/wedding/anniversary pictures! She was kind enough to bring me lovely handmade hairpins!!





This past weekend, I broke out the stand mixer for the very first time and went to town. Now I don't claim to be a professional baker... in fact I insist I'm not. If there was anything less amateur than amateur, well, that would be me. Everything aside from the chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies were recipes that I hadn't tried, so it was kind of intimidating. Of course, no one was forcing me to bake so I don't have anyone to blame but myself. Nothing turned out perfectly but everything was good. The brownies tasted more like a flourless chocolate cake and the chocolate chocolate chip meringue cookies weren't as light as I had expected but I've never had meringue cookies before so I really didn't have much to compare it to. I was really proud of the bread, though we'll probably be eating it for the next few days... whats pictured is only a third of what was baked...

A huge huge huge thank you to my loving husband who washed the mixer bowl and all of the dishes over and over again until my baking spree ended. *xoxo*