The BestThing to Happen to Me Today!

(so far)

Although, perhaps this is the greatest thing to have happened to me all week, contending with the hour long nap I took in Madison Square Park during my lunch break, Giving Death Cab's Ben Gibbard directions, or watching this movie with some of my favorite people.
Published by Procter and Gamble ~ 1959
While walking through the streets of Brooklyn at 5:02 AM this morn - I looked at my watch - I happened upon one crazy stoop sale. After leafing around for a bit, my hand landed on a small spiral bound volume.

Now, here at She Sure is Sketchy we do our best to control our excitement. The problem is that our excitement is just so big sometimes.... As I pulled the book out of the box, I exhaled the only thing I could think to say,

"Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result she now has a pig…It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly."

As a kid (up through high school) my parents read aloud to us nightly. These classic snippets are ingrained deep in my subconscious. They pop up at the oddest times.
I'm a helping queen this morning. Here I'm helping out non-sketch blog followers and google!
Recipes upon this sacred page of awesome in which a girl and a cat think about a dougnut.
1. Clover Leaf Rolls 2. Fan Tan Rolls 3. Miss C's Easy Bread (again, awkward) 4. Sally Lunn 5. Cake Doughnuts

I was up all night drawing dogs. Seeing my light on, a friend texted this to me: "Amber, come safe my from myself." I donned a jacket at 3AM and clip clopped into the chilly Spring (yes!) air, concerned that my buddy (who worked in publishing as an editor prior to her maternity leave in May) had really lost it. Safe my from myself?! Sorry Nessa, it seems you've temporarily dropped that wordsmith ball. We carefully walked her baby, who'd wake and start screaming at the slightest deviation in stroller speed, along the streets of Brooklyn in to the wee hours. It was actually so much fun.

If being seen walking with a jogging stroller at dawn isn't trying to rid the world of injustice I don't pretend to know what is. As a result I now have a book that doesn't only fit into my vintage collection of cook books, but also highlights the use of Crisco! It's like finding an ad focusing on the health benefits of smoking! SCORE.

Yum. Tuna Chip Casserole. Heh. Heh.
1.Chop Suey ( don't cook this) 2. Tuna Chip Casserole 3. Veal Kabobs 4. Fish in the Skillet
Also, this book tells you how to cook Veal like it's going out of style. Awkward.

Ahem. Why don't I own an axe cookie cutter?
1. Cherry Pie 2. Berry Pie 3. Rhubarb Pie
Or a set of house twins that bring me pie?

As someone that lives and dies for a good pun I am so so excited by this find.
1. Dessert Pancakes 2. Fluffy Hard Sauce (what?) 3. Golden Sauce 4. Old Fashioned Sauce 5. Orange Sauce

Here's one of the best pages in this book. Golden Crispy Fries
It not only gives helpful tips to prevent scarring your kiddo's faces with boiling oil, making you a better mom than Betty Draper, but it gives you three, count them three, techniques for frying potatoes! Then it tells you how to strain and save your used Crisco for future cooking adventures!

Yay for Saturday!

Anyway, that's the best thing that happened to me today, so far. Since it's 7:45 in the AM I've feeling pretty AOK about the prospects of this blissful day. Let's start with a nap, shall we?

Today I Perfected My Patronus

At midnight on the release eve of every Harry Potter movie, I don a shirt for the special occasion and sneak through the night to the largest and best theater possible. I wear my HP pride with pride. This last week, Harry hit the U.S. with force. The weekend prior to his arrival I gathered with a few of my favorite friends, to watch the sixth movie in preparation for the seventh and to design this year's shirt.

During an obsessive conversation about patronus' that evening we decided to each take Facebook's long and antiquated 'what is your Patronus?' test. Mine turned out to be a hedgehog.

Bravery is your strong suit, and you are a kind creature to all, though your spiney exterior may make others think otherwise. You are proud of the strange parts of you that make you different!

I've been playing around with ideas for next movie's shirt. This won't make the cut, but I thought I should share the nerd power. Hedgehogs unite! We might not be the strongest member of Dumbledore's Army, but there's a chance we're the cutest.

Oh P to the S - This just reminder-ed me of one of my favorite films from Animation History in college, Hedgehog in the Fog. Can you handle the sweetness?

Christmas is Coming

The goose is getting fat.

I had the sublime fortune of watching 'Fly Away Home' the other day. While sketching these Christmas geese my friend suggested we get the movie. I went a bit crazy excited to see this. Surprisingly, it's still as feel good as when I watched it in the theater fourteen years ago. Yeah, that's right.


If you have not had this chance at pure happiness in a while, I suggest you go to your netflix queue post haste and get on that.

A Simple Indulgence

I'm terribly fond of the term "urban family". Here in New York, hodge-podged and thrown against millions of strangers, you're often thousands of miles away from your loved ones. Maybe it's the extremes of New York and the isolation it's so easy to feel here in this big city that allow you to create relationships, sometimes very quickly that truly feel like family. Granted, I'm closing in on a decade of Brooklyn living, but the people I've met here and the friendships I've found run so deep they span time. It's such a kick to have people who are not family, who haven't known you your whole life who just 'get' you. Case in point, a couple of weeks ago I was out with a group of such friends when I decided the lull in the conversation provided the perfect moment for me to whip out my new Crate and Barrel Glass Bowls. "Loook at theeeeeeese!!" I sing songed. Everyone oohed and awed at them with me. My BFF picked one up, turned it around, held it to the light and put it down on the table again.

"Amber, I think you were that kid who's cheap toys weren't all that great, but other kids were always jealous that their expensive toys weren't as fun as the toys you had."

Whatever. My toys were awesome!

Everyone chimed in, much like a loud family at a large dinner table, and said they'd run off to Crate and Barrel to buy the same bowls if having them would give them the kind of giddiness it gave me. I've been thinking about this a lot. I've never really noticed it about myself. Maybe you need people who have a family's kind of insight in your life to point certain things out to you. I am wildly happy. I have been known to pinch myself in the middle of a lazy afternoon in Central Park just to make sure I'm still me.

The thing is that I consciously take time to really enjoy as many moments as I can in my day. I don't fly through them without appreciating them. If you're not having the kind of moments in your life that you want, provide them for yourself. Maybe you don't need glass serving bowls with plastic lids in your life, but find out what you do need, and learn to be giddy about the things you already have. This is a skill I'm constantly honing. Three years ago I set this goal to be happy with what I have and to not make every moment a catastrophe.

Now I find myself pleased as punch. The fact is that I love my life I'm thankful I get to be me.

It hasn't been easy. Finding this bliss has been uphill work. I'm a creative and I know most of you are too. An artist's life was never viewed as a stable, balanced, blissful existence. I still fly into wild moments of frustration and I've been known to cry over spilled milk (literally and figuratively) but lately and for a long time I've been mostly happy.

If you need a shot in the arm or you don't know where to start, I strongly suggest you try my afternoon's simple indulgence, a hot cup of fancy herbal tea and a bit of dutch chocolate - then be glad that you did ;)

listening to right this second: "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" -- Cake