Birthday Week: Confetti Cake + Salt Bagels + Soap

over past two years i've been doing a lot of self reflection, figuring out who i am as a person, doing a lot of discovery and exploration - now the time has finally come where i will be at the end of an era. since i will be turning 24 on wednesday, it will be the last year where i can be considered a young adult, and next year will reluctantly be added to the 25-30 age group. i'm not ready for this, time moves too fast.  no longer will i be a care free college student, but rather a working class/student loan debtor/starving artist who has other responsibilities. these i am ready for, and thank my parents for raising me to be responsible and independent, but it i think it is the age itself that scares me, and all the experiences i feel i missed out on. instead of feeling sad about what i missed so far, i decided to start working towards those experiences and opportunities, do what i always wanted to do, and work on my character and my flaws from here on out. not only do i want to catch up, but i want to work on being a better person.

so having said all that i have decided that since this is my week, i am going to spend it the best way i know how, striving for daily goals, and spending any minute i can savoring and enjoying the day. i am calling it my week of discovery and expanding my horizons. each day i will explore the things that i love : food and crafts. my goal for the entire week is to have a very fulfilling birthday before my 25th birthday...so why not start a year ahead?!

monday december 5:

 first of all gorgeous, warm day!

food that made me think of this in the first place: 

strolled into South Street Philly Bagels, while going to drop off a rent check on this gorgeous day. ordered the turkey club on a salt bagel....thought i died and went to heaven. i almost didn't want to eat anything for the rest of the day to not loose the taste in my mouth, but realized that was kinda gross and got some gum....nonetheless it was this huge bagel sandwhich -while drooling over it - made me come the conclusion that i started my birthday week off the right way and should do this for the rest of the week (that is eating at all the places where i've always wanted to, or discovering a new spot for awesome food).

for dinner i stopped at Grindcore House, (mainly because i had no food in the house) and decided to keep my birthday week alive my treating myself to a big mug filled with a chai latte and ordered a new sandwhich that i had not tried there yet. the treehugger salad on sourdough bread (mixed greens, olives, cucumber, avocado, tomato, and shitake vinagrette) was great. to top it all off, i got a big slice of vegan confetti cake.

the craft: 

i finally made a curtain to hide my messy clothes in my closet! this is fabric i had designed junior year in print class, hand screen printed by yours truly. :)

my work space, my painting, my fabric....my closet :)

i also made a test batch of soap tonight! i decided for christmas to make everyone handmade soap. every year i make people gifts for the holidays, however this year i am broke even more and decided to make a big gift and give a little of it to everyone i care enough to share it with. this year i decided to make handmade soap. it has been a "quite" passion of mine for years, and it something i find really fascinating and enjoyable. i got my supplies in the mail today so i made a test batch with ingredients i had ready...

Eucalyptus + Clove+Coffee Soap

since i do not have the luxury of spending time with hand processed soaps from scratch (which i have done before and is quite a process) i decided to just got with microwavable soap bases :\ i know i know, not the most ideal, but they do the trick. it was super easy and only took me about 15 minutes tops! i bought shea butter and goat's milk bases to try and experiment with.

combine equal parts of shea butter + goat's milk base. 

microwave until fully melted (for the amount i used, about 3-4 mins)

add desired amount of avocado oil, ground cloves, eucalyptus essential oil and hazelnut ground coffee

stir and pour into mold

let sit for about an hour or less depending on how much

remove from mold and cut

 soap!

it smells like oatmeal surprisingly....

the team at work will be happy to be my first testers i'm sure!

that wraps it up for monday of my awesome birthday week. i'd say it was pretty successful, wouldn't you?

Thread Love: 365 Lucky Days

i was searching through my daily dose of blogs and i stumbled upon A Beautiful Mess newest post which featured 365 Lucky Days, a creative project by Lucky Jackson an embroidery artist, to create an embroidery piece everyday for a year. she stitched the owner of a beautiful mess, elsie along with other bloggers, experiences, famous people, etc. i love that each week she does a theme, one of my favorite being "i think i love you but i'm a preteen and my mom says it's just hormones," which holds the likeness of a matt dillon, rob lowe, charlie sheen, and emilio estavez along with some others. here are a few amazing examples of her work.

amy sedaris 

Miss Modish

Miss James of Bleubird Vintage

Horse Encounter

 in iceland there are a lot of horses and a lot of sheep. the one thing i noticed about the wild horses is that they seemed to be a lot more static than i had anticipated and seemed almost fake because they barely moved. these were the closest horses to the road, so we had to capture them... if it wasn't so cold we would have gotten out and moved closer!

Inspiring Iceland

whew! i have made it back home from iceland (sadly, as i wish i didn't want to) and let me just say it was beyond inspiring. iceland had been my #1 on my travel "wish list" for a very long time. this actually means a lot, because i tend to have "travel ADD" and quickly get distracted when i find an amazing destination that i want to add to the top of my list. but no, not with iceland. i had applied for a travel fellowship to go there through my school and being a poor college student, could never find the means to go. luckily, i was able to go now that i graduated from such an institution, and made my way over to the island of fire and ice after several years (and months of more detailed road planning). my boyfriend and i rented a car and drove around the entire country, taking a total of 5 very long, yet very very very visually stimulating - to say the least - days. driving through mountains, under fjords, past waterfalls and over moss-covered lava fields our brains took in every detail and our camera batteries wore out. the last 5 days  we stayed in reykjavik and explored the capital by eating traditional icelandic food, including puffin and whale, spending a day trip to the westman islands and climbing a volcano that was still warm and meeting icelanders who are perhaps the most genuine people i've met so far.

of course i took about 1,900 pictures and tons of video which i will be posting more of. these are some of my favorite/most inspiring ones. i would say that iceland has far surpassed my expectations and both of us want to go back already! such an incredible amazing country...

I'M FINALLY GOING TO ICELAND

so i am finally trekking to iceland, after years of longing i am finally with an actual plan ticket, hotel reservations, and a booked rental car. and it's 3 weeks away! i will be traveling with my boyfriend dan, (who at first thought my i wanted to go to iceland because he thought i was part icelandic) and we will be there from october 21st - 31st...so it will be in the 40s, windy and rainy. but hey! it's the trip of my dreams so nothing can get in my way! i made a map of our road trip (still in editing phase) of our 10 day travels in the land of fire and ice. more details soon to come as we get closer and closer... and don't worry, we'll be taking lots of videos and photos!

above is a photo of kirkjufell, which means "church rock" and yes, we will in fact be waking up to a view of this across the harbor from grundarfjordur where we will be staying one night :)


View Iceland Roadtrip in a larger map

tote bags online now

get them while they're hot! here is the link to buy my tote bags online.

my tote bags are here!

each year moore college of art & design chooses a piece from the recent senior show to represent the school on their annual tote bags, and they chose mine! they went with the west philadelphia print that i did this past april and they just came out. you can buy them at the art shop at moore on 20th & the parkway, or on their online shop. 

so show your support and get yo' callahan schwag!