all things girls can tell

close to home

 

my neighbor and friend, leslianna, has decided to embark on a pretty fun project for this month - for all of january, she's attempting to only eat food that she's purchased in our neighborhood. it's an effort to not only support the countless corner stores and several new restaurants throughout our neighborhood, but also a method of really getting to know all the resources available where we live. it's kind of amazing the wide range of things you can pick up here.

our neighborhood, newbold, is in philadelphia, of course, between broad and 18th st., south of washington avenue and north of snyder. you can read all about her culinary adventures in newbold here!

(the photo above i swiped from another neighbor, pineapplepalace on flickr, is our friends, sam + andrew, enjoying the best indonesian food ever, which happens to be one block from my house, at hardena)

the funnest bottle openers on earth

it's no secret that i love craft beer. one might even say i like craft beer as much as i like... crafts. what exactly is "craft beer" and where does it come from?

well, according to beertown.org, here's what constitutes a craft brewery and craft beer:

An independent brewery with an annual beer production of between 15,000 and 2,000,000 barrels who has either an all malt flagship or has at least 50% of it's volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor.

Craft beer is made using a traditional process of blending the sugars from malted grains (such as barley or wheat), with hop flowers and water. The skill of the Masterbrewer brings out the desired aroma, color, mouth feel, foam and flavor qualities of the hops and malt through formulation of recipes and the fermentation of sugars into alcohol, carbon dioxide gas and other characters. After careful aging at just the right temperatures the beer is packaged and delivered to the consumer.

anyway. beer geekery aside (note i didn't say snobbery -i thought about it, but went with geekery instead), most of the beer i love comes in bottles, and many of those bottles are not twist off caps. for a while now, i've thought it would be super fun to have a diagrammy bottle opener and so i finally made it happen. and now i will probably use one of these superfun bottle openers to open even twist offs, and you should, too.

right now, they're available in five fun designs! (doesn't that make you want to collect all five?). look for them with the:

• pinball machine
• cheeseburger
• barbeque grill
• bicycle
• anatomical brain

buy one for yourself or your favorite bottled beverage loving friends!

introducing: cream and sugar kitchen

chris blow torches a smores cupcake. photo by tracey carullo.

a few weeks ago, my friend (and newbold neighbor) jaime invited me to join her for lunch in west philly to discuss an idea she had. since jaime's been one half of the burger-loving duo over a fries with that shake for the past year, i wasn't surprised that the great new idea was one related to deliciousness and blogging. but i also love that her idea is one that's about more than food - it's the stories of some of the best small businesses in our area and their roots.

jaime describes it as:

It's time for me to take my imaginary food business to the next level:  from coulda woulda to what can be.  With little business education or culinary training, I'm setting out to conduct extensive field research, including interviews with food entrepreneurs.

even if you don't live in philly or don't particularly care for reading about food, her new project creamandsugarkitchen is one to watch because it's about the careful, thoughtful start of pursuing a dream she's had for years, with the added bonus of collecting nuggets of wisdom from some of the wisest small business people around.

so go pay a visit to creamandsugarkitchen, plug it into your google reader and pass the link on to a friend. enjoy!

congratulations and congratulations!

congratulations to jennifer kellas for a super delicious sounding namesake burger and winning the double-double diagram goodies from fries with that shake! jennifer's namesake burger is as follows:

Mine would have to be a slightly sweet bun, bbq sauce, fried onions, lettuce, tomato, and a salty, big organic burger patty mixed with blue cheese. And you know what? Throw some bacon on there as well, organic, of course.

sounds so, so good. come make me a burger whenever you'd like.

and congratulations to kittie of zombieirish for winning the etsystalker coaster set!

and a big thanks to everyone who participated in each of these giveaways!  they're really so much fun - keep your eyes peeled for more goodies from me between now and the holidays. i'll always post here when there are superfun girlscantell giveaways around the blogiverse, so check back often! xoxo!

new diagrams: burgers!

it's been a while since i've posted a new diagram design here, but that doesn't mean i haven't been doodling away!

my friends over at fries with that shake (my favorite philly food blog, and homebase for the philly burger club) are totally awesome and have been asking for a couple food diagrams for the longest time. jaime wants a banana split / sundae diagram (which, for some reason, is totally intimidating to me! i sit down to draw and am convinced i'll never like my illustrations as much as i like banana splits!) and jess, the burger baroness, wanted a burger, of course.
so for their one year blogiversary, i finally drew a burger diagram. you can win some of my burger diagram goodies on their blog, or you can find them in my etsy shop. either way, you get awesome home goods with burgers drawn on them, so really you win. 

a little more background on this diagram: it's an in-n-out burger double double. what's a double double?
well, it's 2 100% pure beef patties, 2 slices american cheese, hand leafed lettuce, tomato, onions (or no onions) and spread, on a sesame seeded roll. i've never been to an in-n-out burger (boo!) but i aspire to go, as i've heard nothing but good things. 

enjoy!

philadelphia: second street | popped festival: saturday!

philadelphia! i have just one more awesome event for you to attend (and then you're off the hook, but only until the holidays).

if you're in and about the city this weekend, be sure to stop by the second street festival in northern liberties. they just posted the world's most tiniest vendor map. after a lot of squinting, it seems you'll find my booth on the 700 block of north second st., about a half block north of the 700 club, on the opposite side of the street. from what i can make out (am i the only one having trouble reading this thing?), the vendor list looks great and there are like a bazillion things going on and associated with the festival. and i hear there will be not just one but multiple beer gardens. who doesn't like that? i'll be there all day, from 11-8pm, so there's no good excuse not to be there. yep.

so. fingers crossed that the rain finishes up before the weekend, and i look forward to saying hi to each and every one of you on saturday. yay!

how i spent my summer vegetables

my apologies to anyone who stumbled over here in the past day or so looking for my usual thoughts on handmade business and screenprinting and whatnot who accidentally found themselves face to face with a new little endeavor of mine. i didn't realize i'd made something of a snafu in setting things up, but it's now all squared away and back to normal.

but since it's already out there, i figure i may as well properly introduce this new little sideline of mine. please meet "how i spent my summer vegetables" - it's something of a food / cooking blog, with a focus on how to prepare and enjoy locally grown, seasonally appropriate produce. mind you, i'm not saying i know best how to cook or eat all of these vegetables - that's where you come in! i'm going to be relying largely on the help of lovely readers supplying their hints, recipes, links and know-how and hope the new blog will be a nice little community of people celebrating slow food and deliciousness.

the premise, basically is this: we're part of a CSA, and so each week veggies show up in our fridge, whether we want them or not (we want them, though, usually!). but some of them not super familiar (to me, at least) but i'm intent on experimenting, being braver about trying new cooking methods, expanding our palates and using every last bit of the produce we get this year. please do bookmark this other little blog, and pass the link along to any friends or family who loves fresh produce, cooking, eating or all three!

enjoy!

how much do you love...

in honor of the sweet (albeit fake) holiday that's approaching, here are some of my favorite little romantic notions from (you guessed it) etsy.

these are so sweet and simple, yet elegant and totally wonderful. let's face it, it's the kind of thing i really, really wish i'd thought of myself. from gentlearts, of melbourne.

i'm totally looking forward to making something as sugary and delightful as these sweetheart cookies for cute erik in a few weeks (even if wii fit will be totally mad at me for it). you can scoop some up at sweetiepiesdelights.

this little handmade heart stamper from norajane makes me want to break out the construction paper and glitter and make fabulous valentines for all my fantastic ladyfriends. i love it. because isn't elmer's glue and doilies what valentines day is really all about, anyway? 

i'm not usually so into pink, but this guy just defines "cuddlemonster", so i kind of super love him. he's made by blackbirdfashion.

hello, little lamb card full of kitsch. i want to send you to my sweet former coworkers, because, oh holy moly, would they love you. earthakitsch's little shop is just full of cards that will make you (and danielle, michelle and mary) squeal with delight.

for more great mushy goodies (and local ones at that, if you live in or near the great state of pennsyltucky), check out the handmadeinpa holiday gift guide! and if you love this selection of sweet gifts and prizes, do pass the link along to a friend!

dentists, drawing and other stuff

so, in the grand tradition of squeezing in as many doctor's appointments as possible before good health insurance comes to an end, i've been making the rounds to all the offices i've successfully avoided (or told myself i was too busy to go to) for some time now. this, needless to say, is about the least fun thing to do, ever. but, it's the grown up thing to do, and i really don't have good excuses for avoiding it much longer. on the bright side, how cute are these good tooth / bad tooth plushies from sappymoosetree? they almost make the thought of how many hours i've spent under that dentist light thing seem pleasant. 

but i haven't been all boring with my new-found free time, though. i started drawing lots of new things, and it feels amazing. it took a while to really feel like putting pen to paper, but things have been great since i got over it. i'm all set to burn some new designs onto a screen, and i'm really excited about new stuff for the shop. yay! i also have new news that i'll probably share with you all on friday (there's some anticipation building for you...)

in other fun news, i'm now slightly addicted to both wii fit and making dinner in the crock pot (slow cooker? are they synonymous?). we have the not your mother's slow cooker cookbook, and it's so easy yet yields such fantastic results. how did i not discover the joys of slow cooking sooner?

printing napkins, building walls and baking apple pie.

this weekend was completely wonderful. i worked on three projects that i've been excited about for some time now. the first is a custom order - the SLR camera diagram, hand printed onto napkins for the 90th birthday party of a professional photographer. i was a little hesitant about printing on paper napkins, since i usually print cloth napkins, and it took me a while to find the right ink and materials (i ended up finding perfect ink - USDA approved, food safe, permanent ink, yay!).  i'm really pleased with the results. and i can't wait to incorporate this mini-camera diagram into more items!

i also made my first from-scratch apple pie of the season, from apples we picked on saturday, which was wonderful. we ate it with "philadelphia style" ice cream (i've lived here for three years, and didn't know anything about "philadelphia style" ice cream, but it was super good, so i like it...) and watched mad men. so perfect. (although, wasn't last night's episode... odd? no betty, sterling cooper's selling out, don's going by dick again... i'm so confused and just dying in anticipation of next week...)

and, the biggest project of the weekend, we worked on my requisite concrete block alley wall in my backyard a bit yesterday. my backyard's been an ongoing project,  so i'm happy whenever we make a bit of progress on it. who knew laying brick and building cinderblock walls was so time consuming?