Friday night kicked off with craft night with a couple of friends. All of us worked on our own crafts while we ate snacks and drank wine. It was nice. I worked on my loom knitting (the only kind of knitting I can do!) while others worked on origami and felting. Here's little Nessie playing the piano and the beginning of my circle scarf.

I like how fast the loom knitting works up. I'm almost done now and I can't wait to show you guys the results. Saturday morning, I went to yoga class. It's one of my New Year's resolutions to do yoga at least once per week. I have been enjoying it, even though having a male instructor is a little strange. After yoga, I met up with a friend for lunch. I met this cute little girl (below) Saturday evening when I went to a housewarming party for a couple of friends. I came baring an antler for her (Copley) and we soon became fast friends. Have any of you played Cards Against Humanity? I'm one to hate card games and this one rocks. Highly recommended!
After early afternoon on Sunday was taken up by going to the dog park and dog snoozing, I headed to Cambridge to enjoy some vegan diner eats before a coupon expired. (Yeah, I love a good deal!) It was amazing and left me so full that I ended up taking the majority of it home for lunch the next day.


Doesn't that look amazing? The Kendall Square Burger (aka arugula with a mushroom and chickpea patty and onion rings), an arugula sandwich, potato salad and baked mac n cheese. All vegan. Om nom nom! I also wanted to show off a new pair of pants that I purchased on Thursday from a local shop. Aren't they awesome! I wore them today to work (since it's the first time in over a week that we haven't had subzero temps) and they are so comfortable. It's like having a bit of Spring in Winter.

Now that it's Monday, I actually feel pretty good. It was nice to have a weekend full of friends and different activities. Although it doesn't substitute for Ryan being gone, it was still a nice weekend to have.

made the autumnal hash

steaming veggies

apple pie filling

sprinkling on the sugar

making the pastry

pie, pre-baked

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am so pleased that Ryan is home and can spend time with Tater and I. We cooked together and had an amazing meal. I had to lay down afterwards because I was so full. Other than that, it's been a lazy day with playing with the dog and watching movies. I'm so thankful to have a few days off my day job.

On Saturday, you can:

in my shop. Don't forget!

Before all this hurricane stuff happened, I went in to Boston to experience the Vegetarian Food Festival put on by the Boston Vegetarian Society. It was CROWDED! I managed to talk myself through staying. There were so many amazing foods to sample. I could have made a meal just out of samples alone, but because my fave pizza place was there I had a slice of pizza too. Yum yum yum! I was definitely full on my way home.

 We spent a lot of time in the Mission District on our trip. Ryan wanted to check out a photography store and a Brewery while I wanted to look through a thrift shop and checkout some vegan eats (ok, so I wanted to go to the Brewery, too). These first couple of photos are from a mexican food place called Gracias Madre. It is EXCELLENT. I had the open face enchilada and until this point I had never had an open face enchilada. It did not disappoint!
 Another day, we headed to the 21st Amendment Brewery. We had a pack of their beers here in MA and liked them enough that we thought we would try out the brewery while on vacation. Below is Ryan's glass, the Back in Black. He also had wings that he enjoyed. I was able to devour a veggie burger and was quite pleased.
 At some point between Mission visits, my uncles began putting out tiki items around their home.

leis

punchbowl

Puffer fish

They have many tiki items for their home...in fact, we stayed in their Tiki Room during our stay. More photos will be shared soon (also featuring the Tiki Bar). I love flipping through all of these photos...they happily remind me of our vacation and how nice it was not to have to worry about a thing while we were gone. Stay tuned for further updates!

  I have had the melt-your-own-crayons-into-this-shape-diy pinned for quite a while. I especially loved the heart-shaped ones used for Valentine's Day.
 I began my search for cute-shaped silicone bakeware. After being faked out by a tiki face ice cube tray, I was more careful to make sure that the silicone could withstand baking. The princess castle was the winner. I set my oven to 250 degrees and baked the crayons for about 25 minutes. I let the crayons completely cool in the mould and then pushed them out. Perfect for little fingers!

We also made pizzas out of Italian bread. Spaghetti sauce, mushrooms, spinach, and daiya mozzarella. Yum!

What are you doing/did you do on your lazy Sunday? Monday is coming too soon, once again.

This week I made a vegan paella. It started with stir frying some garlic, red pepper and broccoli.

Added veggie stock, turmeric and other spices.

Brought to a boil.

Chopped olives. I never liked olives like these until now. I'm not sure why. I had them at a wine tasting the other week and I couldn't get enough olives.

Simmered rice and quinoa, let sit and wa-la! Vegan paella. From Vegetarian Times.

I also made the cauliflower mac 'n' cheeze again. So delicious. I needed some comfort food this week.

Yum!

This weekend I decided that I would try a new recipe. One of my favorite comfort foods is macaroni and cheese. Since I became vegan almost six years ago (I can't believe it's been that long!), mac 'n' cheese has definitely been altered so that I can still enjoy the creaminess without the dairy. There is another that I have been using from the Follow Your Heart recipe book. The one I used this weekend was very different, especially with using cauliflower instead of any type of noodles. Below is the recipe, altered from Vegetarian Times.

It's finally beginning to feel a little more like winter this week. I put some soup together to warm up one evening. The above soup includes veggies with gimme lean sausage and baby kale. Yum yum! I've also started to think about Valentine's Day for my home and the shop. A while ago, I had ordered some hearts and stars cut out from vintage dictionaries and music sheets. For months I have seen great paper garlands and decided to make some of my own with the hearts and stars I ordered. I finished a few strands of them. Unfortunately, my sewing machine decided to crap out on me again and until it is fixed, I am stranded (no pun intended) without a machine to complete them.



I am a fan of using free items whenever I can. I had picked up these black shelves from a free pile in our building a few months ago and just couldn't decide where to put them. This week I decided to add them to my collage above the dresser. This is how it turned out! The drawing in the blond frame was done by one of my friends for Ryan and I one year anniversary. I love the collection of all of these items.