So I’ve been baking a lot. You may not know it from this blog, but I have. I did briefly touch on how last summer/fall were nuts with the weddings and stuff, but there are birthdays and christmas and all sorts of stuff that needs baked goods. And when there are baked goods, I pass out my luscious little cards with tasty baked goods on them. And then you lovely people come to my website with almost no pictures of gorgeous cakes. I’m the worst marketing person ever.

I keep meaning to make a logo for the Hot Buns Bakery but get sidetracked, so here’s a placeholder. Once I get my awesome website guru friend to make it clicky there at the bottom, it shall be so – but until then I’m going to have it here. whew. Baby steps.

That being said, I do appreciate the date, the changing of calendars, all those ones – as a fresh start. I realize it’s entirely in my head but it works. It’s a chance to forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made over the past twelve months, and renew your commitment to yourself as a better, stronger person. Your ideal may be sexier, more toned, more well fed, well read, maybe even a better friend/parent/sibling/child.  The beauty of the new year, I think, is a chance to allow yourself that new beginning and give you that bit of motivation you might need. Even if it only lasts till January 10.

My resolutions for this year are simple and attainable. In addition to my daily wishes of being more toned and svelte, classy and chic, intelligent and witty, I have resolved for 2010 to be more realistic about time. If you are a friend of mine, I hereby sincerely apologise for all the times I’ve been late to anything involving you – and this blanket apology is necessary because I am nearly always late. I come from a family that has historically been, let’s say, less than exactly *punctual* – but I believe I’m pretty much the slowest one. It stems, I think, from a strange sort of optimism that I will find the perfect shirt that camouflages my muffin top AND can style my bangs effortlessly in exactly ten seconds AND I have gas in the car AND there is no traffic on the freeway. Or, perhaps, teleportation is being approved by NASA right at the very moment I am making whatever plans these are, and it will be instantly available to everyone, everywhere, by the time I have tried on the fifteenth shirt and gone back to the first one, given up and bobby pinned the bangs back, and have five minutes to get across town, and I can just wish my way there.

I know, it’s ridiculous. It’s flaky, and it’s rude, and it’s just not classy. So I resolve to be realistic. And hopefully reduce to near zero the occurrences that anyone has to wait for me for more than six minutes.

My second resolution is recycled from a year or two ago – I want to buy a new book every paycheck. There are a lot of books I love – coffee table books about architecture and design and art, books about the histories of cities and churches and islands and etymology, and I am especially coveting the gorgeous fabric covered penguin classics just issued a few months ago. I have a lot of books, and I love having a lot of books (except when moving house), but strangely I don’t make it a priority to get new ones unless I am in Portland at Powell’s. I love them as tactile objects. I reread books endless times, and I love getting used ones – previously enjoyed ones – and especially look for ones that have notes on the front page (though never underlining or highlighting in the text). It’s a bit of history in itself, reading where the book has been. I am bringing this love back to the forefront by adding to my collection. To kick things off, today I purchased Piano: Renzo Piano Building Workshop 1966 to today. It was published in 2008 so it’s quite recent, and has gorgeous photos and sketches. I love it.

I hope you all had lovely holidays, and I wish you the best in 2010.

Cheers,

Abby

pumpkin praline cheesecake

Thanksgiving dinner, I made this. Yum.

Love, Abby

Two weekends later, I went camping down by Mt. Rainier with my cousins and my brother. It’s an annual event so we can all get together, since my cousins all live in Oregon. We had a really chill time. There weren’t that many cousins available this summer but we still had fun. Two words: cake s’mores. YESSSSS.

This street is about half a mile from where I grew up in Wallingford, and it’s full of really fun creative arty young couples and families, and I miss it a ton. Wallingford, some day I’ll come back to you. I promise.

When I first heard about you over a year ago, it was because a friend of mine was working day and night on developing it. You sounded pretty cool but I never really got the chance to actually hang out with you. A while later you sent me an email, asking me if I’d be interested, and I said yes, but I didn’t hear back from you so I kind of forgot about you.

Recently you sent me another email – apparently you hadn’t forgotten about me. You said you were going to be in the neighborhood and maybe we could hang out. I was busy so I put it aside, but then my best friend said you might be cool, and I checked out your profile and liked what I saw. Also I had just busted my driving foot - so I set up a date.

Getting ready for our first date was pretty exciting. Organic grass fed beef for under $5 a pound! Bananas at whatever ripeness my little heart desired! A huge selection of beer and wine! You even offered to bring me sewing books with my groceries. All that, and you let me pick the date, time, and place, and said I could change my mind up to 7 hours before our date.

Our first date was amazing. Your driver was really friendly and brought all my groceries up and put them in my kitchen for me. You even gave me flowers, which I didn’t expect. The grapes I ordered were sweet and crunchy, the flowers were pretty, and everything was fresh, fresh, fresh and exactly as I ordered. I was smitten.

Today we had our second date. Yesterday I called you and asked if you could come over, and bring me some things, and you obligingly agreed. Then when I changed my mind in the middle of the night and asked you to bring even more stuff, you didn’t bat an eye. You even waived the $5 delivery fee! You showed up on time, again, and the delivery guy was super nice, again. After he unloaded you and we were alone, you gave me a priceless gift. You may not have even done it on purpose, but my 12 pack of Cherry Coke Zero was already ice cold. I am in love. I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but it feels so right. I know we can have a really great life together. Will you marry me?

With all my heart,

Abby

Due to my knife fight in a bar parking lot, I haven’t been crafting so much, but I still managed to rock our family’s 4th of July party. My parents have a great house in Wallingford with a killer view of the Lake Union fireworks, so we usually throw a giant bbq and make a bunch of pie. This is our 8th? 10th? year  and we always have a grand time.

My mom is the pie maven – I help (I cut all the shortening into the flour for the crusts, and mixed up the fillings) but Mom makes a way better pie crust than I do, and she does the lion’s share of the work. My dad helps too - this year he learned how to roll out pie crusts! He is cute.

I parked myself on the back porch and made people grill me steak and bring me beer and pie, and draw on my cast. It seemed to work out pretty well for me.

I’m slowly listing all the baby quilts I’ve been finishing during my unemployment at www.dbcquilts.com – you should probably check ‘em out and pass it on. Mama needs a Wii.

xoxo,

at