Ridiculous

I bet if I were to look back I probably have one or two past posts titled "Ridiculous." It is a word that is quite often appropriate and relevant in our daily lives. In this case it is appropriate because it accurately described the amount of information I need to relay in this post to get you caught up with what we have been doing. In a nut shell (one the size of Texas) we packed up and peeled out from Santa Fe, drove across the middle west to Illinois, our truck and trailer were both loaded to the gills with stupid amounts of stuff, we stayed a week with my family, stored the trailer and left my parents house with windows bulging under the stress of cookbooks, canvases and dog toys to head east to Massachusetts. We drove in a storm the whole way across, landed on the coast to visit with Billy's family for three days then drove on to the ferry for the 2 hour ride out to the island. Which island? THIS one. Nantucket. The scene of the original crime. This is where Billy and I met almost ten years ago. We are here for the summer to bake, paint and burn our bums on the beach as much as possible. It's one of our favorite places in the whole wide world and I am so stoked to be here again.

But! I'm going to take a few steps back to slap up a couple of shots from the visit in Illinois....

Being that we would only be in town for a few days we decided to host a brunch at my Mom's and invited just a few close friends over. People we wanted to be sure to spend a day hanging out with because we luuuuuurve them so much. One of my best friend's (Beth) came over with her two kids Oscar and Sully. Oscar made buddies with Rudy and they tore it up out in my Mom's enormous back yard.




Beth's youngest is Sully. And people.... let me tell you something about this baby. He is no normal baby. He is a V.I.P. Just take a gander and I think it comes across quite obviously.



We were handing him around like an action figure so that everyone could get in on the chubby baby lovin'.


Don't worry.... contrary to what it looks like no injuries were incurred during these proceedings.

It was such a joy to get to see both of these kids. They are some of my favorite people in the whole world. Also in that category is our long time friend Gordon (aka Cappy.) He cruised down from Milwaukee on his motorbike. And then he cruised all over the mid west on it after he left our party. He's cool like dat. The man packs Teddy Grahams and Glenlivet in his saddle bags. Who else do you know that does it? No one. Just our Cappy.



Our friends Art and Andrea and their kids Max and Gianna came as well but somehow I spaced getting a photo of them. I worked with Andrea when I was about 20 years old at a little Victorian revival jewelry shop in Illinois. We laughed at all the customers behind their backs and sometimes maybe even right in their face. Good times.

We had some beautiful weather while we were in IL and a nice spring full moon filled the sky with light. Until I snatched it down and made off with it.



I spent a full day hanging out with my Gram at her apartment. We chewed the fat and laughed and looked at old photos. She tells us constantly that she is our biggest fan and well, I have to say that it goes both ways as we are her biggest fans too. She is the one that gave me my start as a baker.... so there is that too.



I don't have any other family pics... we got lazy with the camera this time I guess. We did have a great time cooking our asses off with my Mom (and my Dad when he was off work) and ate good food every single night. One night my Dad and Billy ate four pounds of mussels and a whole loaf of bread between them which was getting a little bit gross I thought... but they seemed to be having a blast. My Mom stayed home with Rudy so we could head out dog free a few times. It was a great visit and we came away feeling happy as heck that we got to hang out for the week.

Thanks to Patty for my hair spa day and to Ralph and Susie for taking us out for a grand dinner and a night of belly laughs.

I'll post some pics from our stay at Gail's (Billy's Mom) next time along with tons of island pics.
I am about to be fed a big plate of some sort of fabulous dinner so I am going to leave you here for now. Well, I'll post a couple of Nantucket pics just to get the ball rolling for next time. The town harbor and Brant Point Lighthouse and a shot of our beach where we live out in Sconset.

First Days of Spring

One small dog in the street sassing off with a serious attitude.

Yesterday we had our first spring rain and even though it was crazy windy it was a gorgeous day. We went out walking and hoofed it up to Fort Marcy Park for sunset.

Time Flies When you're Nuttier than a Snickers Bar

Howdy y'all! It's me! Remember me? I know there are a few of ya out there feeling mighty sour toward me and my flimsy old neglected blog and you have every right to. I suck. I have sucked for almost a year... but guess why? Because I have been working and life has been repetitious and (kinda) boring. It was winter (BOOOO!) we did not travel (DOUBLE BOOOO!) and Rudy did not sustain any major injuries... sooooo, not much to talk about ya know? I got out of the habit of writing and was feeling uninspired for a good long while. But the times they are a-changin'.

I can report that Michelle had her baby... a little more than a month early. The little bugger gave her a real run for her money too.... she had a pretty rough go of it but she finally delivered a healthy boy after several days of crazy labor. Wyatt Hogan Mickelson is now the star of the show here in Santa Fe. Pretty damned cute.....





Other than that big news.... I have my own big announcement to make.... NOOooooo I'm not pregnant. It's a different sort of big news. We are leaving Santa Fe in a little less than a month which I am a little sad about, I love it here and would have liked to have stayed around for a few more years to watch Wyatt grow... BUT! I have been hired for the coming summer season as a baker for a cafe and market in 'Sconset on the island of Nantucket. We have wanted to go back to ACK (call letters for Nantucket airport and common nickname for the island) for a long time but have been unable to get a foothold out there since we left about 7 years ago. It's a short tourist season on the island so my job will run from late May til the end of September. It's gonna be intense... 6 days a week with suuuper early hours in the height of the season... 4 a.m. til noon. True bakers hours for sure! It will hurt getting up that early but the most gorgeous beaches on the east coast lay waiting for us when I finish my shift each day so you'll find me napping under an umbrella on the sandy shoreline by 2 p.m. daily thank you very much. We are excited to see all of our old friends and since Nantucket is where Billy and I met it is a little like going home for us.

This last month in Santa Fe is flying by... we have to get packed to move and let me tell ya it's a-m-a-z-i-n-g how much crap we have accumulated in the 9 months we have been here. We have to fit everything back in the truck and trailer and head to Illinois where we will store everything we don't need for the summer. We will return to Chicago in October... and I will reveal the plan for the rest of the winter sometime soon.

And for those of you hankerin' for an ugly little dog fix....





Geez.... can you imagine that I allow that thing to lay in bed with me each morning? Whew.

I will do my best to keep more up to date now that I will have a bit more time on my hands for the next two months... and will be on the road a bit and doing more fun stuff. Check in on the comments and let me know who all is still around will ya?

Cheers!

Three!

Well howdy folks.... hope you are all enjoying this three day weekend which is only a two day weekend for me. I'm gettin' ready to head in to work here in a few. Since when does President's Day fall the day after Valentine's? I'm confused by that one.

So this was Rudy's birthday weekend. He turned 3. In years past we have had more of "a party" for him but this year we kept it more low key. We just took him out to a local dog boutique where you can buy cashmere sweaters for your mini-she-poo-shizzle-wizzle (new designer breed) or a $250 dog bed made of pure organic cotton candy and satin. We let Rudy loose in this wonderland of silliness and waited to see what he would go for.... "pick out" if you will. After a few minutes of frenzied sniffing and confusion it was clear we had a winner....




It's a platypus. What a fabulous choice right? I mean... it would have been between the platypus and the armadillo for me personally so I support his decision whole heartedly. We also let him pick out a dessert treat from the case full of weirdly real yet fake looking baked goods. Cakes for dogs. Why not?



The green cupcake was devoured after dinner and the platypus got it's ass kicked all night long. So all in all I think he had a fine birthday.

I decided to bake a brown butter raspberry tart for the VD holiday.... it sure was pretty but I can't say it is a recipe I would make again. I pulled it from an old Bon Appetit magazine. It was simple to make but turned out kind of bleh. I would have rather eaten those gorgeous berries straight outta the package.






Looks good huh? It's such a fake out. Maybe it will be better once it has had a chance to think about who it wants to be in this world over night. It needs to pull itself up by the boots straps and get a better attitude. Yeaaahhhhhh...... Who am I kiddin'? We will eat it even if it starts bad mouthing it's grandma and throwing rotten eggs at nuns. Even lack luster baked goods get fair treatment in this household. Sad but true.

OK. Gotta go polish up my chocolate stirring muscle and curl my eyelashes for work. Cheers all!

Boots and Babies

Happy weekend! I still have one more day off ahead of me so neener neener! I love three day weekends (DUH, WHO DOESN'T?) What's new around here? Well... yesterday I scored some vintage silver cowboy boots. A seen in both pics here. Now I'm like a rhinestone cowboy or some shit like that.... some people call me a space cowboy..... whatever.



Also... I have bangs now. And so does Rudy. We both have new hair-dos. He looks great don't you think? I look like a twelve year old with wrinkles. Which is just weird. But I'm trying to roll with it.

Today I shot pics of my best friend Michelle who is baking a baby which is due to arrive in April. It's a hard thing for the two of us to pull off.... serious, artsy pregnant pictures, mostly because we die laughing every time we try to act serious about it. The baby is probably laughing too... or crying. Crying because it's doomed to hang out with a couple of dorks like us.





I can barely stand it waiting around to get a load of this kid. It's a little more than two months away now.... until the person who I will corrupt with candy, baked goods and dirty secrets about their Mom's past will be born. Baby and I have a lot of work to do.

I Know.... I KNOW!

I'm just as sick of the damned Christmas Elf picture as you are. Here I am finally doin' something about it. Just don't get too excited because I don't have a whole heck of a lot to report. It's still winter. I just ate a piece of toast at 8:30 p.m. that I really did not need to eat. Billy's watching a video on a guy getting attacked by a shark on youtube and the next big thing on the schedule tonight is pajamas and bed. Hot!

Sooooooo.... yeah. We are plodding along through winter and making plans for the near future. If the plan we have on the table right now goes through it will be big news for real so stay tuned. Minds should be made up in the next week or so. It would involve some radical big changes up in here! Exciting! Maybe..... !?

We did take a quick trip up to Taos with a visit from family last week so here are a couple of random nice shots from the day... We visited The Fechin Museum, the gorge bridge (which forever reminds me of the movie Natural Born Killers) and just poked around town....

Gorgeous leather work on an antique chair at Fechin...

Carved wood vigas in the museum house...

The Rio Grande as seen from the gorge bridge...

Bridge shadow and mountains...

A little jumpin' action on the bridge....

This has been the sorriest 6 months ever for this poor blog. Trust me when I tell ya that I wish I had the oomph to get her up and rollin again.... maybe when Spring hits and our new plan takes hold I will blow her right outta the water. We shall see! Until then keep the ice of yer bum and hold tight!

Post Christmas

Christmas Eve at work... dressed as elves and throwin' down with some X-mas cacao for the people.

Howdy Y'all! Hope everyone had a great holiday. Ours was pretty low key. We stayed home, opened presents, made lasagna, ate cookies, nursed our colds (yup, we both got sick right in Christmas) and spent the better part of the day on the phone with family. The rest of the weekend is not worth talkin' about unless you are interested in stories of coughing til you nearly puke in the night or what sort of cough drop is most effective when invisible needles are stabbing the most tender part of the back of your throat.

On Christmas Eve we did make a very cold run up and down Canyon Rd to see the farolito lights. It was super pretty.... but Lordie was it coooold. I snapped a few pics and then we hoofed it right back home.










We are still snowy and cold here. Rudy hates it. I hate it. But we get by....

Snow dog!

Doing my best scary Hillbilly face(s)....

Rudy practicing his Wolf Man look for the Blue Moon on New Years Eve...

Happy New Years Peeps!

Buried Alive

I'm not sure how to start this post.... "I'm sorry" seems appropriate as does "Time flies when your ass is stuck working too many hours to the point of exhaustion." I guess a combo will do... I'm sorry for disappearing for a few weeks from writing while I got my ass carved like a turkey at work. Yeah! That about sums it up. I wish I had more eloquent ways of saying it but reality dictates that I just lay it out there clean and simple. So the holiday season for a chocolatier turns out to be not so much fun! The people of the world need sea salt caramels and toffee almond bark. They demand it.

Not much has been going on around here for the past few weeks worth reporting on... it's been cold outside, snowy. We are just kinda plodding along waiting for the quiet season to descend upon us to allow for more fun and photo taking like back in the day. "Back in the day" referring to the time before I started workin' for the man. That's right Jeff Keenan I am talkin' about you.

We are staying put in Santa Fe for Christmas. I am actually pretty excited to finally be here for the big Canyon Rd Christmas Eve celebration. We have never spent Christmas here and it is a really gorgeous place to be for the holidays. I will be sure to take and post loads of photos from the Canyon Rd walk (supposedly thousands of people show up for it to go caroling, drink hot cider and dip in and out of the galleries for goodies and cheer.... and all this will be going on two blocks down the road from our apartment.) The whole road is already lit up with ga-zillions of lights. My favorite display is this one.... Hooray for these people. They are doin' it right!





That is all in one yard. Hot tamale! I love it. I get so excited when I drive by that house at night that I usually end up punching my window. That may make no sense to you at all.... but just know it is a good thing... coming out of a place of pure happiness. It's the purest window punching happiness there is. Also know that I basically stole like a thieve in the night through the gate of this place to creep around the yard to take these pictures. I'm cool like that.

Last night was our holiday party for The Chocolatesmith. I can tell you that I have felt mildly nauseous all day because of it. Why? Two glasses of wine and three of champagne that's why. It's the most alcohol I have consumed in years. We hooked up at The Rio Chama Steakhouse downtown and ate til we were stuffed and then crashed the party of our work neighbors (The Axis Salon) who happened to be having their own soiree in the wine cellar of the restaurant. This was where things got a little rough around the edges (but in a fun way.)

Here I am drunk as a skunk and loving up on Victor who does hair at the salon and is a gem of a fun person. Please note the aura of cruise ship romance in this photo. Funny no?




Here's the boss lady and I laughing ourselves sick over back waxing stories and Victor's wacky dance moves.



And the whole group... making asses of ourselves after dinner. It was of course my big idea to make everybody do the hands face. What do you call that hands face thing? Does it have a name?



Four more days of crazy at work and then we get a little respite until Valentines Day rolls in like a Mac Truck full of ass whippin'. How many times have I referred to asses being kicked, whipped or carved up in this post? So telling.

I have been baking cookies all day today.... I took a break to sit down and bust out this post. Our tiny kitchen is overflowing with baked goods and I still have about 4 more things I want to make. I am baking with fresh local eggs I bought from the farmer's market on Saturday.... and oodles of supplies came in a huge box from my Mom. She sent me just about everything you need to bake yourself in to a coma. The first cookies in and out of the oven were molasses crinkles.





Billy and Rudy are doin' just fine for those of you who keep tabs. Especially now that the house is full of cookies. Word.

Have a great holiday week peeps! Cheers!