Today is the day before my birthday. It’s early in the afternoon, and I’ve stayed home from work. I decided to gift myself with something rare these days: time alone. Time to breathe in familiar ways: through baking, Jane Austen and a pocket of the universe in which I can write. I got up early this morning and baked some cookies and brownies by myself. With Pride & Prejudice playing in the back, and now a little bit of time to write like I used to, I’m very, very happy.

I’m getting married soon. As in two-shakes-of-a-lamb’s-tail soon. This is why I haven’t had the chance to blog at all since Thanksgiving. In December of last year, on a trip up the California coast, Eric proposed to me at a lighthouse. It was the best, biggest surprise of my life.

“A wedding will consume you,” an officemate warned me when the news broke at work that I was engaged. I had just gotten back to the office after the holidays, it was a new year, and someone had just asked me to marry him. I was in that fuzzy world you find yourself in when the axis of your life shifts a little bit, and I didn’t believe her.

I didn’t believe her even when Mama, after seeing the elaborate wedding timeline I set up on spreadsheets, told me, “You’re a little bit nuts.” (This was my mother after all, and it takes one to know one.)

I still even didn’t believe that warning when, a couple of weeks after that, I collapsed on the couch after eight hours on my feet, exhausted and drained. Eric and I had just spent eight hours–EIGHT HOURS–registering for gifts, and all I could see when I shut my eyes were cutlery twirling around with china, and table napkins waltzing in the wind.

And even when, about four months in, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that they served fried grasshoppers at the reception, I STILL didn’t believe that the my life had been given over to the wedding.

But today, the first time in 10 months that I’ve had the time to write anything for my blog, I’m no longer in denial. The wedding has won. It has taken me hostage with seating charts, tulle and pearls.

Maybe the battle hasn’t been fierce because I’ve been a willing captive. When people ask me why I’m hand-making so many things (and I don’t exaggerate when I say many) for the wedding, my automatic answer is, “Because I’m crazy.” But the real answer is that I’ve been waiting for this all my life. I can write that out in other ways to try and bend the truth a little to give in to the closet feminist in me, but this is the only way to say it. There were many times in the many stories written for me by an unseen hand that I didn’t think it would happen, but I always quietly hoped it would. I’ve been blessed with a chance to craft the life I’ve prepared for all these years. With the best crafter-in-crime my curls and I could hope for.

So you’ll forgive me if I haven’t been in touch lately. There’s been a lot to do. There’s still a lot to do. But that only means there will be lots to write about.

This morning, in the quiet of my new kitchen, my hair full of flour and my hands full of cookie dough, my apron smeared with chocolate and the smell of vanilla wafting from my warm oven, I was overcome with joy. I was where I’m meant to be. It’s been a long time coming, but here I am.

Wish us luck for the rest of the journey. All the crafting is even more chaotic as the wedding draws near. But I’ll be back. There’s a whole life ahead to cook and craft for. The Girl With A Curl will see you on the other side.

Thanksgiving was a blur for me. I cooked like a madwoman, which oftentimes is really the only way to cook. Early in the week, I plotted out a strategy of what to prepare each day, so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed on the day itself. I know this is borderline obsessive but, trust me, it preserved my sanity. And we all want me to hold on to my marbles for quite a while!

The best thing I made for Thanksgiving dinner were these brownie pops, dipped in chocolate and decorated with sprinkles. Cute, huh?

These were made with Wilton’s Brownie Pops pans. Really fun silicone molds–can’t wait to use them again!

And these brownies were a new discovery! They’re from Ina Garten’s Outrageous Brownies recipe and are little pieces of chocolate heaven. I think the addition of a little coffee to the brownie batter makes a huge difference in how rich these taste.

I made the actual brownies two days before Thanksgiving Day and stored them in an airtight container in the fridge. E. helped me in a big way to decorate them on the day of, conveyor-belt style. I  stuck the lollipop handles in them, dipped them in chocolate and handed them to E. He sprinkled the edible decor on them and stuck them to a block of styrofoam to dry.

So much fun! I found the pumpkin-shaped basket at Michael’s for cheap (in the Clearance bin!) and used that to hold the treats with some more styrofoam in the base. We used candy corn and fall-colored Hershey’s kisses to cover the foam. (You must “hide your hardware!”! I learned this from floral arrangement classes in grade school!)

This Thanksgiving, I was thankful for many things: the chance to spend time with family, the ongoing health of my parents, the fact that I’m able to cook for the people I love. But mostly, I was thankful for E., who kept me on an even keel during a crazy week at work and of cooking and entertaining. I’ve never really allowed anyone to help me in the kitchen—a habit I took from my grandmother—but he has proven to be an awesome sous chef! So now, when he says he can help with whatever it is I’m cooking, I’ve learned to hand over the spatula.

The Holidays are here—I hope yours are wonderful!

Happy birthday to the second pair of intrepid feet in these pictures!

The Getty Villa, Malibu

Roadtrip along U.S. Highway 1

At the edge of a cliff, Big Sur, CA

Braving the snow to see fall colors, Eastern Sierras, CA

On a platform around a pine tree 100+ feet above the air, zip-lining gear attached

Waiting in line for the iPad, Century City Apple store, Los Angeles

Morton Peak, San Bernardino Mountains

For the craftiest, coolest geek I know, who walks the world with me one adventurous step at a time, may all you wish for in the universe come true. Happy, happy birthday!

You guys, remember my friend Sara’s wedding in Santa Barbara that we went to in the summer? It’s been featured on the wedding blog Style Me Pretty! All the beautiful details that Sara planned for came together with help from their wedding planner Joie de Vivre. And all these lovely photos by Ian Grant make my heart sing. That cake! I still dream about how pretty it was.

I know for a fact that Sara put a lot into making her big day a wonderful experience for us, too, down to the votive candleholder favors made by her dad. Yes, as in MADE, because he’s an actual potter in Hawaii, with a kiln and all. He even made me the cake stand I used in this post, and I only use it for very special occasions.

And, one last story. That beautiful cake in the first photo? Well, that sugar peony on the second tier had had ENOUGH of being ignored off to the side and decided to fall. I was actually walking toward it to take a closer look when it slid down the side of the cake. HORRORS! There was chocolate cake under the frosting, so you could see brown cake through a small gash that the fallen flower had made. I grabbed the closest butter knife and fixed it ever so gingerly, repositioning the flower and working the buttercream in strokes as close to how the cake was originally decorated. I have to say, I didn’t do a bad job retouching! Sara sent me this photo today of me working the buttercream, and it made me laugh. The camera caught my “Gently…gentlyyyyyy…” face.

Congratulations again, Sara! For the beautiful wedding that we’re now re-living through these lovely photos, and for the kick-a** mention on SMP.

This sugary guilty pleasure comes once a year for me at Halloween. I pay no attention to all the other candy that floods the shelves at supermarkets. I only have eyes for Brach’s Autumn Mix! It only comes out during this season and, frankly, I think I’m one of a handful of people who actually likes this. It tastes like compressed plastic sugar, to be honest! When I picked a small bag of the treats from the drugstore shelf today, one of my friends said, “HOW can you EAT that stuff?” I guess it’s more a tradition for me—eating this means it’s definitely Halloween, and we’ll soon be on our way to Christmas. I don’t eat candy corn any other time of the year, for the same reason.

I remember how Halloween was such an alien concept to me growing up in the Philippines. Our “Halloween” traditions fell on All Saint’s Day (November 1) and All Soul’s Day (November 2). This meant gathering as a family in cemeteries, cleaning the family plots, picnicking among the tombstones and several rounds of mah-jong and poker well into the night. The cemetery would be full of people; I remember bumping into friends from school throughout the day as my cousins and I played all over the graveyard (kind of morbidly awesome, now that I think about it). There were food vendors who hawked their wares, selling everything from freshly made sugar-coated peanuts to sticky-sweet cotton candy that melted in the wind and on your tongue.

I guess all traditions, be they old or new, are always sweet.

Hope you have a happy Halloween!

One of the most awesome things about having a brother in art school is gaining insight on something I used to be blind to: color. All these years, I’ve been ignorant to what color is capable of in the things I craft.

Through many conversations with my Manong (big brother), I’ve come to realize that most of what I know about color relationships is based on memory: If I’ve seen a combination of colors used in a pleasing way, then I know those colors go together. Which is why, for many years, I knew pink and gray worked, but only because the curtains in my aunt’s office were a soft dove gray with a pink sash. My aunt was our guidance counselor in high school, and I would sit in her office to wait to walk home with her and my cousins, and stare at those curtains, loving the way they looked in the open window.

All I really knew were standard, utilitarian color combos. Like yellow and blue, because in grade school we wore navy blue culottes and schoolbus-yellow t-shirts in P.E. class, which I always thought looked kind of retro-athletic chic (except I was never athletic and always sat on the sidelines with the water jugs).

In the same token, if I’ve never seen a color combination in use before, it will never occur to me. A gifted eye, of course, will not just see color relationships, but will also understand them. How one hue makes the other either more stark or muted, how a palette’s visual weight lacks one color or two to make it truly appeal to the senses. My brother has this gift. I ask him his color opinions with almost every craft project I do. He’ll look at what I’m working with, do this squinty thing with his eyes, and tell me what he thinks. It’s never what I expect, and his suggestions always work.

I’m fascinated by the way Manong understands color, and after many questions about what works with what and arguments like my old dislike of the color purple (His words: “You should be color agnostic.”), I got this as a Christmas gift from him last year: a pocket color wheel.

He explained to me how it works, and I nodded along. I felt kind of silly about it at first, because the only time I ever studied a color wheel was in art class in grade school. So, honestly, that’s what I thought about this new toy—elementary. How could I need and use a thing I learned about in finger-painting class? In my arrogance, I didn’t use that thing for months.

But then one day a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to make some jewelry and was tired of all the usual things I put together. You know, like yellow and pink (from a copy of this Degas painting that hung—and is still there—in my bedroom when I was growing up)….

…red and black (from this snapshot in my head of Audrey Hepburn wearing a black dress and hat, holding a bunch of red balloons in the movie Funny Face)….

and green and pink (from some Amy Butler fabric I really liked).

I had suddenly run out of memories to get color ideas from. I needed inspiration, and I spied my color wheel tucked in between random stuff next to my sewing machine. I fished it out and decided I would see if the thing really worked. Manong had explained that the wheel can pick out triads of colors (among other combos) that worked pleasingly together. I decided to see if it would work on my gems.

The wheel said if I worked with purple, green and golden yellow that they would complement each other as they were split complimentary colors. Ew, I thought, that sounds wrong! Ignoring the haughty voice in my head, I scanned my gem trays, pulled together the three colors suggested by the color wheel and set to work.

After I tightened the last knot on the second piece and hung it with its pair, I was nothing short of amazed. Look how cute!

I mean, honestly, I would’ve NEVER used those colors together if not for the color wheel. Separately, they’re nothing to write home about, but together, they play off against each other and show each other up. They just WORK. I was floored. The color wheel does not lie!

Manong once told me that color is a language. And like any language, you have to learn enough words in to convey something understandable. The more you know about it, the better you’re able to express yourself with it. I know I don’t fully understand color, and I doubt I ever will to the level that he does, but now at least I’m curious and interested and excited about learning more. And I think for my brother, that’s all that really matters.

I sent him a picture of what I made and told him, “I wouldn’t have picked those three colors out! They don’t make sense!”

“What do you mean?” he said. “Violet and yellow and green? They make TOTAL sense.”

Right, Manong, and thank you.

By the way, a pocket color wheel only costs $3 bucks. Worth its weight in gold (and red, and blue, and pink….)

—————–

This post isn’t just about encouraging you to be open to new things, or to try truly exploring color in your crafting pursuits. It’s also a tribute to my brother, to congratulate him for his biggest art installation yet. Last week six of his large-scale pieces went up in the lobby of the Theater Arts building of Santa Monica College. He didn’t get enough (or at all?) sleep to do this, and I hear his girlfriend Anajay was right there in the trenches with him, with input of varying degrees from my mother on the virtues of fusible interfacing. Congratulations, Manong. You are awesome. Commence world domination!

…this quilt for baby was sealed with a kiss!”

I made a quilt for my niece Thérèse when she turned two a little before I left for my vacation. I was sewing furiously to try and get it to her by her birthday party, crawling around on the floor of our apartment for most of the process because I simply don’t have a sewing table big enough to lay all the pieces out. My ankle, which I had sprained over a month ago, started to complain during my quilting/basting contortions and I pulled an inner thigh muscle smoothing out my quilt layers. What a workout!

But, like any crafter will tell you, it’s always worth it. I know there are lots of beautiful quilts out there that I can buy, but nothing beats handcrafted ones. And to be able to put pieces like these together, no matter how simple the assembly may be, and to step back in the end and say, “I made that for you!” is what the crafter in me lives for.

This quilt started with a printed Maisy panel that I found over at my new online love, The Fat Quarter Shop. They have an excellent collection of fabric that made my wallet cower in fear. Plus, they got my order to me in two shakes of a lamb’s tail (which, as far as tail shakes go, is pretty darn fast). Many of my online hours have been devoted to going through all their stuff, which is dangerous territory, really; I need more fabric like I need a whole in my head.

Thérèse is learning words and numbers, and I love how the panel has both, with bright colors and pictures.

And what’s not to love about a number-counting, word-saying, elephant-balancing mouse? Maisy is the beloved character from British illustrator Lucy Cousins. This intrepid mouse is also the star of her own animated series and a gabajillion (which, as far as jillions go, is a LOT!) books and DVDs.

When I packaged this up to send to the little girl, I included other Maisy things for her to enjoy. Something for Thérèse to read or watch as she snuggles up to her new quilt.

Like this! (Check at the furrowed brows. Reading is serious business!)

After finishing the quilt around 10 p.m. I thought I was done with it. But then again, I knew I wasn’t. I’ve always wanted to do a personal label on a quilt. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t at least try (crazy much?). So with needle and embroidery floss in hand, I sat down with some Friends reruns on TV and stitched the final touch.

The appliqued heart is blue because that’s Thérèse’s favorite color. (And “Tita,” to those who are wondering, is “Auntie” in Filipino.) The red letters are done in split stitches, so they would have a bit of weight to them. The next morning, I looked at the embroidery in the daylight and laughed. “Look,” I told E., “the kerning’s all off.” Haha. I was copyediting my own stitched words.

I went to work that day in a daze. I had finished stitching the whole thing around 1 a.m. and was still recovering from sewing every night after work to beat the birthday deadline. I was tired and my aching muscles reminded me I wasn’t as spring chicken-y as I remembered.

Was it worth it?

You can absolutely bet.