Alizarine

Zombie Elizabeth Taylor Plus Madonna and Child

Can you beat Elizabeth Taylor? No. This morning I did an image search for her while listening to a sad song and just about burst into tears. When people tell me I look like her, it makes my day. Month. So even though Jeff and I had no Halloween plans beyond a little get-together with his daughter Melissa, I thought it would be fun to dress up as Elizabeth.

Then I saw the following awesomely creative video from Albee Franson, lead makeup artist for Mally (both of whom you may remember from this post). It looked like something I could pull off and inspired me to become Zombie Elizabeth Taylor.

 

I didn't have some of the supplies Albee used to make the look happen, but I figured I could improvise. Jeff helped me with some of the trickier parts, but this is a project most people could do by themselves if they wanted to.

Here are some of the earlier steps. First I tied back my hair's longer layers in an attempt to get it to look shorter and less huge. Then I did a full face of mostly Mally makeup and layered on pretty much every eye product I own, including some false eyelashes that I wear about once every five years.Then the craziness began.

I covered the right side of my mouth with black eye shadow, continuing into my cheek. Then I applied a major coat of false eyelash adhesive to just my lips. It became surprisingly sticky and easily held my pre-cut "teeth" (plastic fingernails I had cut down to size beforehand). The fake fingernails make fantastic teeth that catch the light in a disturbingly realistic fashion. Great idea, Albee!

To help me create that awful gaping cut, Jeff rolled a long section of toilet paper into a tight coil. He wrapped the coil in a few areas with self-adhesive medical tape to keep if from unwinding. He secured the coil to my face with more medical tape, more eyelash glue, and a little clear silicone caulk that he bought on Friday for a minor bathroom repair. I don't know if caulk is safe to use on a face, but I didn't experience any side effects. But looking back, I don't think it was all that necessary. Since I don't have any liquid foundation, we painted the entire area with some concealer I never use because it's too yellow. This created a look that was too yellow, as you can see (above).

That's when the acrylic paints came out.

I painted the entire rest of the zombie look using acrylic paint--it's easier for me to manipulate than makeup. Again, I don't know if this was safe or not, but it only stayed on my face for about thirty minutes. I set scraps of toilet paper into the gaping wound as I painted it red to create a gross roughness, and then I added four extra teeth to the black area.

The entire face took an hour and a half to create and was so much fun. Talking was difficult but not impossible. Mel cracked me up at one point, but everything stayed put. Success!

And now, our Christmas card:

During a snack break this morning, Jeff and I tried to come up with a costume idea for Bun. I floated two perfectly good ones:

"She could be Zombie Elizabeth Taylor's fancy little dog and I could carry her in a big purse! She could have a sparkly collar!"

and

"She could be the chocolate in a s'more! We could make cardboard look like graham crackers, and then we'll find some white stuff, and then we'll put Bun in there!"

(We were eating microwave s'mores at the time.)

After these ideas were given the bum's rush, I fired back with HOW ABOUT MADONNA AND CHILD.

The obvious winner!

Jeff got on board in a hurry, and we scurried around the house looking for blue material. I made Bun and Jeff halos, and Jeff fashioned a diaper for Bun. After my Zombie E.T. photo session, it was their turn to shine.

Bun hated her diaper and broke free, resulting in the following fantastic action shot:

...which reminded me of this internet favorite:

She calmed down long enough to hit this amazing pose:

At that point I was shrieking and doubled over with laughter. The little lord Jesus was lavishly fed and treated.

...And it's past 7:00 p.m. on Halloween night, and no kids have come knocking on our hard-to-find door, so once again the candy is ours.

PS: The eyes in the top photo were Photoshopped. My actual eyes are brown.

Spiced Pumpkin Cookies

132 calories per cookie. 3 grams of fat. Seasonally appropriate. More like little moist cakes than cookies. Really good icing. Spiced pumpkin cookies are what you need to be making, people!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I'm trying out recipes from Pretty Delicious by pretty forgettable Top Chef contestant (9th place in season 1) Candice Kumai. It's a diet cookbook that's all, "This isn't a diet cookbook! I swear to god it's a sexy cookbook!" but it is kind of lying. It's a collection of reduced fat/calorie recipes that cleverly substitute something that's good for you, such as silken tofu, for something you want, such as cream. I haven't come close to making everything in the book, but right now it's batting about .250, and I've only found two recipes I'd want to make again. However, when this cookbook succeeds, it succeeds in a fabulous, mighty way. I am crazy about those two recipes. I think I've made the spinach and artichoke dip four times already. These cookies are going to become a staple as well.

Sisterly note: the other day Poof made pumpkin cupcakes using two ingredients (cake mix and pumpkin puree) and reports that they are terrific. Read about them here!

INGREDIENTS

for the cookies

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar <-- I used a mix of light and dark brown sugar; was running low
• 1/4 cup (half stick) butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup canned unsweetened pumpkin puree <-- not pumpkin pie mix or whatever they call it
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

for the glaze

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon canned unsweetened pumpkin puree
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1-2 tablespoons unsweetened almond milk <-- regular milk would work in a pinch

(makes 24 medium-large cookies)

DIRECTIONS

To make the cookies: preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk the four, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat the brown sugar and butter together on medium speed until light and creamy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the pumpkin, egg, and vanilla and beat to combine. Add the four mixture and beat on low speed until just combined. Chill the cookie dough for 15 minutes.

Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. I used Silpat. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the cookie batter and roll it between your palms into 1.5-inch balls. I formed 24 mounds of equal size (as close as I could manage) on my baking sheets. The dough is sticky, so I dampened my hands with water and rolled the mounds into balls. This probably is easier to do on Silpat rather than parchment paper.

Flatten the balls slightly and bake until the edges are firm and the center is still soft, about 15 minutes. When baking two pans of cookies at the same time, you might want to rotate the pans halfway through. Baking time is right-on here: my cookies took 14 minutes to bake.

Cool the cookies on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing: sift the powdered sugar into a medium bowl. Add the melted butter, pumpkin puree, vanilla, cinnamon, and almond milk. Whisk together until completely smooth. Drizzle the glaze over the cookies. Let the icing harden for at least 10 minutes before serving. Not necessary to wait, if you ask me.

You definitely want the cookies to be cool before you drizzle them. The glaze is delicious and the recipe makes a lot. Put a paper towl down beforehand to catch the cinnamon-y stalactites. Mmm, stalactites...

Obama Campaign Poster

Last week I painted a poster design for the Obama campaign (above), which I read about here. The slogan that appealed to me the most, and there were about a dozen of them from which to choose, was "Every child deserves a great school."

Since she's such a smart, adorable girl, and since she's brought me nothing but good luck in the past, I wanted my young friend Mabel to be the star of this poster. So what we have here is the sequel to a painting I created a year and a half ago!

Mabel is in kindergarten now, and I thought her contemplative pose (based on a photo taken by her mother Kate) was appropriate for this subject. Because Mabel's expression is slightly ambiguous here, I think you can read the poster two ways. Either she's happy at a good school, and the things you see around her are real, or she's unhappy at a failing school, and the things you see around her are imaginary. I painted Mabel realistically in watercolor, and in order to achieve a believable child art style for the background, I drew and painted the rest with my left hand, which as you can see operates at a shaky 3rd grade level at best. Here's a small, early plan I put together on graph paper before I started to work.

While I didn't change much in the final design, I added an extra child on the right side, and I turned one of the figures near the center into a kid version of Mabel's red-haired mother Melinda. (Mabel has two mothers, and they were granted a civil union last month--the whole family wore purple dresses on this great occasion. Genius Melinda wrote about the happy day here.)

As a  former art teacher who worked in Illinois' public schools for seventeen years, the theme of this poster is especially meaningful to me. I realize that I don't stand a chance at winning the contest, and the irony of designing a poster about creating jobs--for free!--is not lost on me. But for me this was more about having The Idea and wanting to see it through. And painting Mabel again filled me with joy.

Crab Apples

...At least I'm pretty sure they're crab apples.

This is a 10.5"x13.5" watercolor of whatever that tree is near our garage. The fruit is very small--smaller than cherries--and it sticks around long after the leaves have fallen and turns a lovely peachy color. I've found recipes for crab apple jam and the like, but I don't want to pick them because they're so cheerful on the tree and a much-loved pop of color during the winter months. I'm also pretty sure robins eat them when they return in the spring but the ground's still frozen and no worms are about.

The painting took about a week to complete.  I painted the crab apples first because let's face it, they're adorable.

The blurry areas in the background were created using the wet-into-wet technique: I wet down each blurry section with water and dropped paint onto the wet surface, letting the colors run together. The branches and fruit in the foreground are a little tighter. To make them I put down some wet-into-wet preliminary colors, and let those sections dry before glazing over the top with deeper colors and details and adding textures with a mostly dry brush.

Here's the painting nearly finished. I still had to work on some of the branches and pump up some of the background areas with a little more color.

I thought about selling this, but it looks so great in our kitchen.

Jeff and I painted it a couple of weekends ago and added some fabulous succulents. The paint color: "barrel," which is apparently a name somebody came up with by flipping and pointing randomly in a dictionary. I think of it as "M*A*S*H," a show I can't watch because I find it visually depressing and ugly. But the paint totally works in our kitchen and dining room, and I am crazy about it. It's only when I look at "barrel" as a color swatch that I start hearing this:

 

(I couldn't find anything better than a "guy taping his television while somebody says 'Roberta' in the background" version, sorry.)

Things I like about the opening credits:

• the truck with the red cross on it moving from right to left
• the babes running toward the camera seem pretty badass
• that camo-net stuff at around 0:25

Things I don't like about the opening credits:

• depressing overhead shot of the tents or whatever they are at 0:12
• the ugly M*A*S*H font
• the guys running upstairs that just make me tired
• TOTAL POOR POSTURE between 0:30 and 0:34--I realize it's necessary but it is unappealing to watch, and Alan Alda seems especially ape-ish
• Alan Alda's shirt and hat
• the close-up of Alan Alda as seen from the patient's point of view
• super ugly Jeep ending
• the rest of it

In animal news, our backyard foxes have been especially active last week. Two of them, possibly a male and female, whom we normally see at dusk or before dawn, were playing on the deck and lounging in the leaves in broad daylight. Whenever Jeff and I spot one, we call out "FOX" to alert each other--all work stops--and we start taking pictures. These three are from Jeff.

If they've taken over last year's woodchuck den, as foxes are wont to do, an entrance is under our back porch.

Sorry about the blurriness, but they were chasing each other and they're really fast.

I hope they stay! We've noticed a decrease in the number of mice we see in the house, and it's got to be because of the foxes.

In indoor animal news, I took photos of our cats posing with Julie Klausner's book, I Don't Care About Your Band, which is hilarious. I love Julie's podcast, and last week she asked her listeners to send in photos of their cats with her book. She ended up making a slide show of listener cats, which she played during her recent live show in New York on Thursday. Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin was the soundtrack for the slide show. So please play this while you peruse the following cat photos.

 

It's been sure nice talkin' to you, Bun.

Halloween Cookie Solutions

Jeff and I are going to visit our friends Chris and Jenny this afternoon. They have two little girls, and elder daugther Myra likes my cut-out sugar cookies. She specifically requested that I bring some. Of course!

I knew I had some fall cookie cutters, such as pumpkins, leaves, and acorns, but no Halloween monsters or scary things. Not wanting to make a special trip "into town" (which is kind of a hassle at 6 miles away, and yes I am living in pioneer days), I decided to put my master's degree to good use and actually be creative. When I first started getting into cut-out cookies a few years ago, I bought one of those big plastic canisters that contain around twenty cutters. If you buy one, prepare to be mildly disappointed by the handful of generic shapes that often lurk near the bottom, like ovals, circles, and squares. What to do with these?

As you can see, you turn the oval into a mummy face, the circle into a spider web, and the square into a Frankenstein head. Here they are, adding a note of pure terror to my other fall cookies.

The cookies that took the most time and effort were the spider webs.

I found inspiring examples of the green and purple web design here, but I wanted my spiders to be more realistic. So I chopped the tip off a chocolate chip--I know, alliteration makes my skin crawl too--and sank it mangled-side-down into the wet icing. For the legs, I used tweezers to apply those chocolate sprinkles that resemble tiny logs. The tweezers are for accuracy and because I am a lunatic. "Jeff, I think I should make eyes," I told my husband.

"Hmm, maybe," he said. "Try doing one and see how it looks."

So using a toothpick, I put two specks of icing on one of the chocolate chips, and then I tweezed a single white sprinkle onto each speck.

"Yeah, that's really cute. You need to do that with all of them."

So I did that with all of them.

Here's how you make the webs: flood a circular cookie with black icing. Then pipe on two or three circles of purple and green icing (or whatever colors you like) target-style, over the black, leaving some black in between. While everything's nice and wet, drag a toothpick from the center of the target to the cookie's perimeter, and go all the way around like this. Instant awesome web.

Spider placement tip: put the beheaded chocolate chip over any problem areas. No one needs to know!

Recipe for these time-consuming (but still worth it) cookies is here.

Variety Dogs

For the past couple of weeks, I've been dealing with dogs, specifically painting them and turning them into logos.

An example of the former is above. My cousin Jamie asked me to paint his girlfriend's dog Gator as a surprise for her upcoming birthday. While dog portraiture is not something I hope to specialize in, this ol' boy was too cute to resist, and hey, a commission's a commission. Gator's painting is small (8"x10") and took me about a day and a half to complete. On the extremely off chance that Jamie's girlfriend is reading this--and I do not even know what her name is!--please act surprised when he gives this painting to you next month, okay?

And then there were the dog logos. A friend of mine specializes in website upgrades, and she asked me to come up with a logo for the Wilmette Pet Center, whose website header used to look like this:

My assignment: come up with a better dog in the shape of a W. Client's request: keep the dog a Scottie. My friend's request: give the dog a green bow. This was all I had to go by, but...no problem!

Feeling very much like Don Draper, I came up with two logos one morning (because I'm all about options, and also because I am nice). The first one was something of my own invention, and the second one was a remake of the original dog, whose back legs and tail formed a W. Here's the first Scottie:

Cute and oddly Wu-Tang Clannish, no? The client loved it, and my pal loved it. She made an adorable header with it. (Note: the paint texture was smoothed out in the final version.)

But a few days later, the client had second thoughts, saying that my logo seemed "too high end" and "too boutique-y" for the store. He wanted something that looked more hand-drawn and kid-friendly, information that would have come in handy when I initially designed the W dogs. Luckily he seemed to like my backup logo, a scruffier dog.

Now, Jeff thought this dog's eyes looked creepy, which I can kind of see, but everybody knows that half-moon eyes mean glee. Right? Right. But the eyes were modified to make them look even more gleeful, and the green bow was changed to red, as the client decided he didn't want it to be green anymore. My tireless pal created a second new header for the website...

...which apparently the client liked for a while but has currently decided to go with a series of random animal photos in the header. My scruffy Scottie logo is on the site's sidebar for the time being. He may or may not change his mind about the sidebar. FUN!

Doesn't matter--still got paid!

So now I have two Scottie dogs, each in the convenient shape of a W, that are in need of good homes. Well, the first Wu Tang dog definitely needs a home. The scruffy one is more like a neighborhood dog that eats food somebody leaves out on a doorstep, and maybe that person will keep leaving it there, and maybe he won't.

So those were my recent adventures in dog art.

I plan to pick up the pace in terms of posting things over the next few days. Thanks for your patience and cooperation!

Cowboy Cookies

Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito is my hands-down favorite cookbook this year. Every recipe I've made is not just a winner, it's an event. Matt and Renato's recipes are downright cinematic: the half-page descriptions preceding each recipe might as well be great trailers, there's usually plenty of build-up during the shopping-for and baking process followed by some kind of waiting period that only increases my anticipation, and finally the big, satisfying payoff.

Top example: cowboy cookies. This recipe stayed under my radar for a long time simply because no photo was included, which is unfair to the cookies because the photos in this book are stunning. But as far as the baking experience is concerned, they're every bit as satisfying and suspenseful as Baked Explorations' pies and tarts. And I'm going to give this recipe a butter rating of PG-13. I feel like two sticks deserves a hard R, and Baked's whoopie pies are downright pornographic at four+ sticks.

I've seen cowboy cookies at a nearby supermarket bakery before, and they were oatmeal cookies containing things like M&Ms and coconut. What we have here is an oatmeal cookie with chocolate chunks and two surprise ingredients: pretzels and a small amount of espresso powder. The espresso isn't all that noticeable, but it gives the cookie dough a subtle complexity. The pretzel pieces provide a hit of salt and a nice crunch, particularly the ones placed on top.

This recipe, which I followed exactly, produces a dough that is especially delicious, and as I set the bowl in the refrigerator for its prescribed (and outrageous) four hour chill-out, I told Jeff, "If this dough is any indication of how good the cookies will taste later...WOW." Naturally Jeff had to have some too and was also impressed. Other oatmeal cookies I've made in the past have required similar wait times before baking. This must have something to do with the oatmeal, I'm guessing. Does it need to soften and soak up some of the moisture in the dough while it chills? I'm not sure.

Anyway, when it was finally time to bake, I formed eight mounds of cookie dough on my baking sheet and popped them into the oven for about 12 minutes. I formed around 3-dozen similar mounds and put them in the freezer to save for later. When I took the cookies out of the oven, they were a little flat. Make no mistake: they were ridiculously tasty, but a few of them were not as cute as I would have liked. Wondering if I'd have an easier time with the frozen dough, I waited until the next morning to bake some more. I put them into the oven, still about 75% frozen, and cut down the baking time by about a minute (but I probably should have baked them a bit longer). Once again I had a similar result, including one siamese-twin megacookie.

The only clue the recipe gave me regarding spreading involved the temperature of the butter during the mixing stage. Cool (not cold, not room temperature) butter yields a less-flat cookie. I followed Matt and Renato's "what we mean by cool butter" instructions, but maybe my butter wasn't quite cool enough. Otherwise, these chewy cookies were still right-on in terms of taste, even the siamese twin one, which I had no problem eating. Here's my new policy: if I get a siamese (or if you prefer, conjoined) twin cookie, I'm eating it. Immediately. No one needs to know.

As far as Baked Explorations' authors could tell, these cookies have nothing to do with actual cowboys, but there is something kind of macho about them.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 14 tablespoons unsalted butter, cool but not cold, cut into 1-inch cubes*
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup firmly-packed dark brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks (about 12 oz)
• 3/4 c. thin salty pretzels (about 1 1/2 oz), broken into tiny pieces but not crushed into dust <-- I broke mine by hand, one at a time, because wanted these to be perfect, man.
• *About the "cool but not cold butter," the authors recommend removing the butter from the refrigerator, cutting it up into 1-inch cubes, and using it within 15-20 minutes.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the oats and stir to combine.

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together until smooth and creamy. Add the egg and egg yolk, beating until the mixture looks light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, add the vanilla, and beat for 5 seconds. Dissolve the espresso powder in 1/4 c. hot water and add it to the bowl, mixing until combined.

Add half of the dry ingredients and mix for 15 seconds. Add the remaining dry ingredients and beat until just incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and fold in the chocolate chunks and 1/2 cup of the pretzel pieces.

Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate the dough for at least 4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Use a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism to scoop out dough in 2-tablespoon-size balls (or use a tablespoon measure, which is what I did) and place the dough balls onto the prepared baking sheet about 1 inch apart. I was able to fit 8 cookies on a standard baking sheet. Sprinkle the remaining pretzel pieces over the dough balls. Use the palm of your hand to press the dough down lightly; don't smash the cookie--you just want to slightly flatten the ball and push the pretzel pieces into the dough.

Bake for 11-13 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until the edges of the cookies are golden brown or just start to darken.

Set the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes to cool. Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the rack to cool completely. They can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days. 

Makes about 36 cookies.