This past weekend was pretty much the best ever.

Friday was opening day at the brand spanking new Yankee Stadium, and I was there! Our family has eight seats this season: really good ones by third base and really frigging amazing ones behind home-plate, in a section that has nice squishy comfy seats and waiter service.

photo by Rob… obviously!

Rob’s sister and family took the really good seats and me, Rob, his brother and Carissa took the “merely awesome” seats, and during the second half of the game we snuck into the squishy seats because the stadium wasn’t full.

Saturday was Carissa’s birthday, and we went bowling (I got the worst score in the group of 11 that were playing: a 66. It’s time for some practice. I found, though, that I do better when I “granny bowl”, which is using both hands, swinging the ball a few times between your knees and then launching it gently down the lane. This is a technique I developed when I was little and my hand was too small for the bowling ball’s finger holes. Using this method on Saturday got me laughed at, but it made me a better bowler so I didn’t care.)

“happy face, sad face, scary face, surprised face!”

After bowling we went to a bar that had a taco truck in the back and a photobooth inside, and boy oh man, do I ever love tacos and photobooths.

Then we went to see Bishop Allen, which was so, so awesome.

I bought their new album called “Grrr” after the show; it is fantastic. Of course.

Sunday I went to Coney Island and interviewed the creative director of the museum for Hey Brooklyn.  Rob and I walked around after that, and I snapped a photos.  This is something I haven’t done in too long.  We had gone last week and it wasn’t open, so there were only a few people straggling around.  This week was the first open weekend, and everyone was out basking in the sun.  If you haven’t gone, you should.  It’s an experience.

Sunday night Stu! came over for tea and cheese. She sat while I cleaned the kitchen. Having her there to chat with while I bustled around made me WAY productive, and I managed to achieve what Rob and I call “Dish Zero”: a state in which all the dirty dishes are cleaned. That almost never happens around here.

Monday we went to opening day at the Oriole’s park in Baltimore with our friend Gavin.  He is Rob’s co-host for Put It In Your Ears, and I suggest you not listen if you are easily offended by immature humor.  We went to Hooters after, which was amusing to say the least.

The warm weather has given me “get up and go”ituide. Rob said it’s like he has his wife back, which made me sad. I know the winter was hard for him, because I went for days on end absolutely refusing to leave the apartment because of the cold, and that made us both miserable.

It’s good to be back.

Yahoo! It’s up! Go listen! Most exciting birthday ever! This might even beat my 9th birthday, when the weather was so freakishly warm that my parents took me and Gus out for hot dogs on the beach to celebrate AND my 11th, better known as the blizzard of ’93, which I spent watching TV all day combined.

edit: err… um… guess I should have posted a link. HeyBrooklyn.com

My grandmother gave me a card for my birthday with a $50 tucked inside, and this charmed me. I was never excited about cash for gifts when I was in my late teens and early twenties because I felt a Responsibility To Spend It Wisely, and it kind of bummed me out. There would be something I’d want, but I knew I had car insurance due, and it never occurred to run up a line of credit (thank God). I’ve never been in debt, and I’m proud of that, but I also never spent my birthday money on something fun. I did this year, though. I ordered the yellow Bayan Hippo bag that I blogged about two days ago, and I have fifteen dollars left. I put it towards this, which is a little more expensive than $15, but it’s something I really want.

You may recall it being mentioned in my 2008 gift guide, under the section “For the Ladies to Wear”. I described it as “Hands down… my favorite item of all of gift guides.” Since then I’ve mentioned it to Rob about four times a month. I’ve also sent him the link randomly over IM in the middle of the day, and once, in video chat room with our friends, I showed everyone the link and said, “This is a really great necklace and I really like it and I hope that Rob buys it for me.” I would often pull it up on my laptop while we were side-by-side on the couch, elbow him, and say, “This is gorgeous! I want it.” We even got into an argument once, where he said, “If you want something, you shouldn’t hint at it!  You should just say it!” and I was all, “Fine! FINE! I WANT YOU TO BUY ME THIS FUCKING NECKLACE!” He didn’t.

Today, I gave up and started to buy it myself, and as I was clicking, Rob wandered down from his lair office to take a break from editing audio.

“Look!” I said, all sassy “I’m buying this for my damn self!”

He squinted at the screen. “What is it?”

“The necklace.” I figured that was all the explanation he needed sledgehammering him with hints for so long.

“Which necklace?” he asked. “Can I see?”

He clicked to the bigger picture and shrugged. “Hmm.  I’ve never seen this before.  It’s nice.”

He’s dead now.

“Total eye candy.”
Bake it Pretty has a fantastic assortment of cupcake papers, vintage toppers and birthday candles, and a huge variety of sprinkles, sugars and “jimmies”.  I’m really like the photography, too. It’s professional looking and I can imagine that all of the tiny-scale photo shoots were a really fun time. It makes the store fun to browse.  The best part about this online shop, though, is the prices.  I’ve been noticing a lot of these specialty baking stores popping up around the interwebs (the designer cupcake papers are getting huge!) and decided to do some comparison shopping.  Trust me, if you want something special, buy it here.

This quirky cake topper was my favorite cake out of the bunch, so I bought it.  I’m excited to have it peddling around the top of my birthday cake!  Woo hoo!

Visit her on etsy or at bakeitpretty.com

{p.s. If you call after you’ve placed your order in a bit of a panic because you’re spacey and forgot to change your address with PayPal, so your package is going to be sent to the WRONG address, she’s REALLY nice about changing it for you. Ahem.}

Shortly after Halloween, Rob and I were in Target. We swung by the clearance section to see if there was anything worth scooping up, and boy oh man, was there ever. I scored eleven boxes of Halloween funfetti cake mix for 40 cents a box. Coolness upon cool, the sprinkles, or “funfetti”, are packaged in their own little foil container, and the main package is plain white cake mix, so if you’re making cupcakes for something other than Halloween, you can have plain.

I used that mix and some vanilla frosting to make Jen’s birthday cupcakes. Since the cupcakes I made for her birthday last year were so chocolaty and rich, I made these light, airy and sweet. The bears are Teddy Grams from 100-Calorie packages. Normal Teddy Grams are bigger and thicker, and would work well on a cake, but these are tiny and cute, about 3/4 of an inch tall, and just right for posing on cupcakes.

The hearts are purple Necco conversation hearts stuck on backwards. Grandma and I ripped open a bunch of little boxes and picked out all of the purple ones. I made the sign earlier in the day out of a cut-out square of poster board, with a strand of uncooked spaghetti taped to the back of it for the stick. Silver candles completed the look.

So fun!

I had been working on a marketing project for a while, but it was all back end stuff. When the time came to actually contact people, I had to figure out what email address to use. My personal one is personal. My blog one would be pretty inappropriate (I use the “eff werd” too much). And anyway, who wants to work with some girl who is emailing out of blue? So I started a company.

If you click on the picture you can see the site.

The copy isn’t exactly the way I want it, because I wrote it rather quickly. Najla, copywriter extraordinaire, is working on that for me.

I call it Pink Moose because I really, really like the word “Moose” (MOOOOOOOSE!) and I figured the logo would be great. Pink can be saccharine, but when it’s a pink moose, it’s less Pretty Pretty Princess and more whimsical and funny and not too serious.

I’m not sure if this is the permanent logo, but it’s what Rob came up with in a pinch, and it’ll do. I’m NOT paying someone to design a logo, and my attempts at drawing a moose have left me regretting skipping most of the second semester of my illustration class in college. (I got a B anyway, a fact that my then-boyfriend found deplorable, because I was literally never there.)

I’ve done marketing like this for another company. I enjoyed it (even though the pay was poo) because I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and I also got an abundance of tiny secrets on “going the extra mile”. For instance, she insisted that any paperclip that was not red (to match her logo) was to be banished from the office! Sounds weird, but made all of our outgoing, paper-clipped packages look SO special. All of my paperclips are going to be pink! I also learned a lot of what I would do if the firm was MINE: things like handwritten labels (we HAD to have typed in her office, and I always wanted to hand write them) and recycled material packaging and paper.

I’m pretty excited, although I’m overwhelmed because my home office is not up to par. That is tonight’s task, along with making cupcakes for Jen’s birthday tomorrow. These are the ones I made for her last year:

This year I have something pretty special planned, too!

1. Keep steadfast in your hunt for the perfect purse. It will be worth it in the end.

2. If you don’t read the paper, cancel your subscription.

3. Irish car bombs are fun! But only once.

4. Meeting people in real life from flickr is fun and not creepy! (Happy anniversary, G!)

5. You have to let bread rise twice, or it won’t be as pretty. If you can’t wait, though, it’ll still taste good having risen only once. Also, if you need it to keep for several days, undercook it a little bit. When you’re ready for a slice, cut off your slightly doughy portion and finish it in the toaster over. Fresh bread for days! Make sure you keep it wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, though, or it will mold.

6. Tow truck drivers really do say “ten four!”

7. Seriously, don’t buy hard to register cars, like, say, vintage Volkswagons you can’t drive. Really. Really. Just don’t.

8. I build pretty snazzy shelves!

9. It’s fun to get up the day after Thanksgiving if you have fun guys to hang out with. And totally worth it if you want to score a Wii.

10. Speaking of Wii’s, you really do need to respect that they are “physical activity”.

11. I don’t need an expensive bed.

12. I don’t need two Thanksgiving dinners.

13. Photography is not too hard to learn. You should get a book, though, to help.

14. To clean vomited calamari out of your car: 1. Make your husband do it. 2. Be smug in the fact that you have something with which to mock certain friends with for a good long while.

15. There are a lot of REALLY amazing people in Puerto Rico who will help you should you find a dirty hurt dog and want to adopt them.

16. Dogs > diamonds.

17. 50mm lenses are AWESOME!

18. The iPhone is NOT over-hyped. It is awesome.

19. The only marriage anyone should ever have an opinion on is their own.

20. Rainbow Christmas > White Christmas.

21. Bringing your own shopping bags to the grocery store isn’t too hard once you get into the habit, and so much nicer than lugging gross, bad-for-the-earth plastic bags that cut into your hands.

22. When you are too sick to decorate your Christmas tree, it is wonderful to have friends come over and do it for you.

23. When you are part of a family, you can make up silly phrases, words, and songs and then use them on a regular basis. (In our family, some of them are, “Happy Dog Face”, “Happy Dog Foot”, “Uncertain Foot”, “Kind Words”, “Furminating”, “Snearaly”, “Sweetie Ears” and “Puppy Pile”. Also, the “Mountain Laurel Song” and the Song for Chubby Dogs.)

24. Rob and I have nearly the same political views. I honestly didn’t check before I married him, but I’m glad that worked out.

25. Bring your camera everywhere.

26. You can’t split a White Castle Crave Case three ways without risking a horrible stomach ache.

27. I learned a lot about the real estate and geography of western Brooklyn. In fact, I’m pretty much an expert on western Brooklyn neighborhoods.

28. Keep your eye on Tino. He’ll escape.

29. Ask tons of “stupid” questions if you’re confused about your health insurance. It will save you hundreds of dollars.

30. Dogs get colds! Who knew?!

31. Peeps are fun!

32. The dogs like goldfish, and so do I.

33. My husband makes breakfast in bed for me on my birthday. SCORE!

34. Good photography comes from the heart and soul and eyes. It does not come from the camera.

35. If you’re feeling blue, throw a dinner party with true friends who don’t care that you threw it together last minute. It will be good for your soul.

36. Margarine is the devil.

37. It’s ok to make $350,000 impulse purchases for sentimental reasons. Wait, hang on, this one I’m not sure about yet.

38. Ehhhhhh, you can cut your own hair. Well, I can.

39. If you have no dishwasher, you need to just buckle down and handwash on a regular basis, otherwise you will be stuck with Mount Dishmore.

40. Podcamp people are cool.

41. Living in Brooklyn suits me.