Only in NY: subway ninja

strike a pose.

jared and i headed out with our total rock star photographer this past weekend for some engagement photos at storm king sculpture park.
i made a nerdy little slide show for your viewing pleasure. don't pay attention to the depressing lyrics of such an upbeat song (beck's always good for tricking you into thinking a song is happy when it is sad) we just wanted an upbeat tune to go with the upbeat photos.

hopefully the video worked...it's my first time making one of these things!

cheers to better health and crazy kittens.

ok, so here we are a mere seven months before getting hitched and i am sick. and not just flu or cold sorta sick.... i have lyme disease. and let me tell you it sucks. it sucks because i am not sick enough to stay at home and really rest and yet i have a hard time reading a long document and coming up with the right words to say in the middle of a sentence. it's really bad when you are explaining that you have a bunch of stuff that needs to be thrown out of that....that...what's the word --- oh yeah file cabinet. i mix things up and get tired really easily. last night i went to whole foods for coffee and totally forgot what i was there for -- ended up coming home with soy milk, tempeh and flowers.... and no coffee.

luckily i now have a reason why i have been so out of it and feeling so crappy. and it is definitely consoling to hear after multiple drs visits over at least the past year that i did not make up this stuff in my head. i am also lucky that wookie pushed me to find a new doctor and go in when my hands and feet were all pins and needles (read: called and made the appt for me). he takes that in sickness and in health thing very seriously!!

it's been two weeks of super duper antibiotics and all i have to show for it is a little more stamina, a lot less sleep and a growing addiction to probiotics. but i am on the mend!! one more week of antibiotics to go then a visit to the neurologist and infectious disease doc (i am that cool). i have my wookie and my little man, heathcliff (look at how cute and big he is!!) to keep me company and make sure i take my meds.

in the meantime, life goes on. work is totally picking up! i haven't been able to do much yoga but it's a good time to reflect and still teach. we also are still full steam ahead with the wedding planning. we even got to go to a sip and scan event at macy's where jared got lots of glutinous goodies while i scanned more items onto the registry. then when we were ready to leave, we got a gift of two nice wine glasses!

so.....cheers to better health.

Omg Diana Ross!

The golden blob in the foreground is her.

Two words: total diva.

The party.

They have people on fucking stilts juggling!!

bake fail.

the first time jared came to visit me in nj, i was waiting anxiously for him to arrive and decided to have a go at making what in my mind was a gluten free version of apple crisp. substituting quinoa for oats and wheat flour.

unfortunately, i decided that all the quinoa needed was some water and it would cook just fine. So he arrived and there was the smell of yummy apple crisp -- i looked like the perfect girlfriend who was cool and could bake!! we had awkward conversation, since this was our first time seeing each other after only meeting twice in chicago a month before and communicating with each other every single day via phone, chat, im, text and email.

i nervously checked the damn stuff about 50 times -- adding more and more water hoping for some magic change. the quinoa never popped. jared was really antsy to try it, and i thought it got sort of mushy so we ended up trying it. at first taste it was all yummy but it had a crunch that suspiciously resembled uncooked quinoa -- or in layman's terms uncooked rice -- and not in a good way.

jared brings this up whenever he says something about my cooking, as in, you always cook great stuff except for that time when i first came to visit and you made that apple stuff -- that sucked. and i laugh, because i totally agree -- it sucked.

regardless, there really hasn't been another time where i had a repeat of that failed attempt, except this sunday when i had a bake fail from a box mix. it happens, people. it usually happens when you don't follow directions (note: i don't really like to follow directions).

anyway, we were out of butter so i substituted smart balance in the betty crocker gluten free chocolate chip cookies box mix (which i might add, i got at the lackawana pathmark in montclair). the damn things wouldn't come off the cookie sheet and true to gf baked good form they were crumbly. BUT -- they tasted damn good. we scraped them off the sheets and ate the cookie crumble out of a plastic baggie.

my review -- follow the directions and you can be reminded of why chocolate chip cookies taste so good. it was easy and i am sure they will work with real butter. i did put some in a small loaf pan and they came out fine.

Food shopping just got a lot more fun.

I spotted these in my local Pathmark!! Gluten-free nerd that I am
just did a search a week or two ago to see when these bad boys would
be in a local super market -- it told me they were only at wegman's!!
They were wrong.

craft it forward.

ok, with all the wedding and crafting fun coming up.... i signed on to do this fun project. i signed up through bryna, who signed up through katie.

come on you know you wanna:

Here's how it works.... The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me, especially for you. I promise I'll make it worth your while!
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make but I hope you will.
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. They say I have a year to get it to you. But I promise it will NOT take that long!
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It’s a surprise to both of us at this point.
   

The catch? You must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. So the first five people who post, and are willing to pass it along,will get a handmade gift in the mail from me.

i know this gets routed through facebook, so please click to the blogger webpage and leave a comment there. xoxox.

ps: alpha if you are reading this and want to send me handmade alpha doll complete with hair, i am not opposed to it.

day trippin: lucy the elephant

a while ago jared and i decided we should do some day trips to really enjoy the weekends. since he hadn't lived in nj since 1990-ish, there were a lot of things to see -- even for myself, living in nj for a better part of my life, there were definitely things i haven't seen and places to go just within my home state. in the interest of saving some money to pay for the wedding, saving for a house and to just get by, we thought day trips would be fun and economical. a while ago we went to ringwood manor and then to paterson falls, which is now in the spotlight since it may be deemed a national park. i'll post some blogs about them later. (to the left, the view from lucy's haddock)

this weekend, while down visiting my family in little egg harbor we got to see one of the nj sights that i've been itching to go to for a while. i actually first heard about lucy the elephant on that weird and slightly disturbing show called life after people. it highlighted how we spend a lot of time maintaining things so they don't fall apart. funny enough the story of this gigantic elephant structure on the shore of margate, nj definitely needs a lot of maintaining. and this girl gets around. she's been moved a few times as you'll learn from her history. can you imagine moving something that is so big??

above is a weird nj video of lucy.

the price of admission was a bit steep ($6 for adults, $3 for children) but the experience was pretty cool -- plus you know the money is going to maintain the lovely lucy. first off you get to climb up into a freaking elephant... look out it's eyes and see the ocean... and did i mention that the elephant has windows on it's butt?? the best part is that you get to go out on the top of the elephant to its hassock and see the jersey shore in all it's glory. there is a tour guide who brings you up as well as a gift shop with lots of elephant themed items.

all in all i think it was a great little day trip. while we were there it was a hurricane warning so we steered clear of the beach. but our tour guide mentioned that you can get a pass for the beach. check the margate website for more info. the town itself was pretty cute. lots of old homes that were well kept. beach bars and restaurants -- very family friendly. we took my 9 year old cousin and he really had a great time. he loved the elephant butt windows (who doesn't?)!!

note, you do have to pay a $1.50 toll coming and going on the bridge.

going down the shore.

we have this weekend set aside to go visit family down the shore for a family bbq. it's our attempt at salvaging the family tradition of summer bbq's that my grandmother upheld for years. hopefully it didn't die with her.

it's interesting that the passing of your grandparents really shifts the shape of your family structure. there are certain things that always bring you together -- like grandmas -- and sometimes you have to really work at keeping those traditions alive.

it's been a rough year for the michaelsons, but as you can see we are freaking tough. the pic to the left is shows my dad, my uncle kevin and my uncle paulie. one of my faves. imagine my poor grandma with three boys so close in age wreaking havoc on their small town. poor woman had to get a job as a police officer to keep them in line!!

when i say 'down the shore', if you're from jersey you understand that's our terminology for going to the beach. sort of like 'going to the city'. you don't mistake that for any other city than nyc. ha! i love jersey for these sort of nuances.

luckily both my uncles and aunts have houses down in little egg harbor just a hop skip and a jump from AC. so it's road trip weekend!!!

not so lucky for us is the fact that there's a freaking hurricane making it's way up the coast as we speak that will pound the shore with wild waves. maybe this is my chance to learn how to surf???