i feel like my sweet tooth is dominating my bloggity these days, but i think that's okay. today i made nerdy America-colored trifle: white cake, vanilla (and chocolate) pudding, whipped cream, fresh strawberries and fresh jersey blueberries. it's not quite as fourth grade as the amazing fourth-of-july mixed sprinklepack from last year, when i decorated the amazing cupcake-cones that i toted around the city on my bike, but it's close.
have a great night!
for those that don't already know, this weekend is the annual ice cream festival at penn's landing. oh yes. all you can eat ice cream, for $5. just don't accidentally throw away your spoon. it's amazing how cranky those volunteers can be when they have to give you a new one... i'll be there, along with some of the funnest etsy admin i know.
the girlscantell shop is inching closer to 600 each day, so if you want a lovely, marvelous trivet and some $1 shipping, hop on it. also, i happened to catch this beautiful print gracing the front page this afternoon, and i love it. so if you were itching to buy me somethin' pretty today, this may as well be it.
holiday weeks (especially when there is a birthday involved) are the best. last night we had tapas at amada, tonight is bowling (yay! bowling! i'm probably the most inconsistent bowler on the planet!), thursday is karaoke obscura and friday is the fourth of july. what could be better?
in other news, i had the absolute best etsy transaction last week - cute erik spied this amazing "bicycles are for lovers" shirt featuring a sweet little illustration of a tandem in marc from bminus's etsy shop. since i noticed he lives in philly, when i bought it, i asked if he would mind if i picked it up somewhere, instead of him having to mail it. sure enough, he said i could catch him working at a coffee house on 22nd that evening, which happened to be on my way to tree tenders class last week. so the whole thing could not have been more convenient, and marc couldn't have been any sweeter. the shirt was well wrapped and the package decorated when i received it, he included great hand-printed cards, and it's so, so much cuter in person than i was expecting - it's such a nice shirt! and the printing on it is fantastic! the colors are super fun and altogether, the whole thing may be my most favorite etsy buyer experience yet. amazing! so, if you love bikes, check out marc's shop, too!
so, in typical sara fashion, i *just now* noticed that i'm inching awfully close to 600 sales in my etsy shop, girlscantell. to celebrate, the next ten orders will have $1 priority shipping, and i'll be including a handprinted cork trivet (and likely other little goodies yet to be determined). so, numbers 592, 593, 594, 595, 596, 597, 598, 599, 600 and 601, you're in luck! about the trivets: i have no plans of selling these goodies - they're not available in any of the places i consign / wholesale, and i don't really plan on listing them in the shop, despite how much i love them. they're only really available when i do in-person shows, and for these special orders. awww. exclusivity. yay.
if you buy two items (ie, you're numbers 594 and 595), you'll get the trivet and something else amazing, like cork coasters! or pot holders! it's almost like i'm a public radio sponsorship drive, and the more you purchase, the more you get! (not just 'cause you paid more, but because you deserve more?) i'll probably just include extra goodies in the design you ordered, since that's a pretty good indication you like that particular design, usually... and shipping for your order will still be $1, priority mail (for domestic orders only, and the shipping difference will be refunded through paypal).
i just stocked up the shop (i realized this weekend how silly it was that i had gobs of printed goodies, sitting in girlscantell headquarters, some of it already photographed, and hardly any of it listed). so this is today's public service announcement: go shop girlscantell.
in other news, happy birthday, cute erik!
this weekend i was a total list-making machine, and i completed dominated. i got tons done, and i owe it all to the handy dry-erase board in my kitchen. tomorrow is cute erik's birthday, so this evening i'll be trying my hand at a recipe from the cake doctor cookbook (the cake doctor has a blog? who knew?) for the first time. i'm going to try the lemon - lime cake with pineapple icing / topping (she calls it a pineapple curd, but that sounds too hansel and gretal for me). it sounds summery and delicious (though full of corn syrup, now that i'm thinking about it), so we'll see.
one of the things i was able to cross off the list was a trip to the art store, to return some stuff, but also to check if they happened to have any emulsion in, and miraculously, they did. so cute erik and i coated some screens last night, and if all goes well (ie, i didn't muck up the screens *and* we don't get coerced into having a pint with neighbors at the tap room after the neighborhood meeting), we'll be burning some new screens this evening, and reclaiming old screens for new designs. yay!
i couldn't be more excited that it's friday. not only do we have a great afternoon in brooklyn planned, but i have very few plans for the rest of the weekend, and i'm looking forward to burning some new screens and doing a lot of printing and organizing.
hooray for summer days!
so, i've been getting a little more serious about this 'training to run a race longer than 3.2 miles for the first time in three years', and it feels good! i joined the freshly opened sweat gym (warning: their website makes weird noises) just on the other side of broad, and it's awesome. not only is it super convenient, but the space is great! it was a nursery school that had a fire, and the building sat vacant for a few years (to my knowledge, there were no injuries in the fire, and the nursery school just moved across the street to a different space) until the gym bought it and just did a brilliant job cleaning it out, removing a couple floors, and creating a really open, raw, well designed space there. (yes, i'm an architecture / space loving nerd even when it comes to choosing a gym - i mean, if it's not a space i want to be in, what's the point of paying a monthly fee to be a member, right?)
so, for those who'd like to follow along at home, here are my mileage goals for each week between now and the run on september 22. they're based on the mileage i did when training for a full marathon with team in training:
in other news, i finally listed these napkins in the shop, by the way. one of my goals for the week is to sort my 'sewing' room by what is currently listed and what should be listed on etsy, so look for more goodies (fresh stuff! at last!) coming soon to girlscantell shop. yay.
ps. it's thursday! three things to remember on thursdays: spt, workshop, csa!
the storque published an article and the video of my presentation at ignite, so in case you missed it, it's my 5 minutes, and a little context about where it came from (and how much i'm the hugest nerd ever?)
okay, so, the bolt bus is probably my favoritest thing of the week. (last week, not quite so much, as i missed the 4:30 bus home, and had to take nj transit / septa without so much as a copy of the shitty metro to keep me occupied...) for those that don't know, the bolt bus is run by greyhound, but is remarkably awesome. it has wireless internet, for starters (well, unless it has one really long wire that stretches up and down the east coast). much like the chinatown bus, it runs a little network between northeast cities - DC, philly, new york and boston, for about $10 each way. cheaper if you buy tickets in advance. which, especially with all the suckers who own cars paying way more than that to drive the same distance, is pretty effing amazing.
but, did i mention it has internet? oh yes. it's like riding a bus into the distant future. like, the year 2000. george jetson sat in the seat ahead of me on the way home yesterday. and it's clean! (you think george jetson would ride a dirty bus?) and i've yet to catch it more than half full. which is nice and comfy, but! tell your friends! we want the bolt bus to be busy enough to schedule trips more frequently! (this business of having to pick between 7:30 and 9:30 to go to NYC in the morning is killing me - come on, bolt bus - 8:30 would be perfect... i can't be the only one...)
now for good reads. in book world, i'm almost through the omnivore's dilemma. i was really into the beginning and middle of it, now i just want to wrap it up. on deck for me in the wide world of books is freakonomics. yay.
in blog world, i've been actually pretty dutiful in keeping my number of unread posts in the my google reader at a minimum lately (okay, admittedly this might be because i just became slightly obsessed with the "mark as read" button there - that tool has been saving my gmail inbox for sometime now, and it's amazing how i feel such a sense of accomplishment in my reader when i use it...) however, lately, i've been big into marveling at how amazing crafty mama jcasa is, i'm always a big fan of stereoette, and i was shocked but totally pleased when i peaked at the front page this week to find the lovely noelle from pinkbathtub (aka jetsetpaper) as the featured seller. woohoo! noelle rules, so send her some love.
i couldn't get over how much the smell of beets reminds me of my grandmother as i was peeling and chopping the bunch i'd gotten from my CSA today. beets are totally the kind of food i forget i love til the're in my face, and then i remember that they're pretty much the best thing ever. i'm hoping i manage to do them justice in preparing them, and crossing my fingers there will be more in next week's share.
this weekend was, for the most part, pretty great. we snuck down to DC for the weekend, where a lot of relaxing, napping and drinking of wine commenced. we also managed to get to the fdr memorial (the best presidential memorial - a narrative in landscape architecture - totally awesome), the national gallery, the washington monument (erik claimed he'd never been there), and we caught a sousa festival at the jefferson monument. awesome. sadly, the portrait gallery (which i've never visted but is high on my list for next time) was temporarily closed, along with the museum of american history (which is my favorite smithsonian for two easy reasons: ice cream parlor, dorothy's ruby slippers). walking along king street in old town after dinner, we happened upon a funny little independently owned theatre showing "get smart", that served wine and ice cream (okay, so maybe normal people don't pair these things, but they're both delicious and you know it). so our movie-going experience was unexpectedly fun, even if the movie was a little disappointing (sorry, steve carrell, but i really enjoyed the get smart of my nick-at-night days more).
things to be excited about this week?
tree tenders leadership training, a brooklyn cyclone's game, a revival of the philadelphia bloggers meetup group, and a wheat beer festival at the south philly tap room, for starters... yay.
so, i remembered how etsy's third birthday was yesterday, and totally forgot that june 18th is also the anniversary of when i officially started working for etsy. my other etsy anniversary! (i suppose my true etsy-versary is january 3, since i joined the site on the third day of the year in 2006). it's been quite a year, working for a company as dynamic as etsy and learning to work from home (while also commuting quite often to brooklyn) has been an experience. but i'm happy with the progress the teams program has made in the past year (there are well over 13,000 people on etsy teams now, up from maybe 1,500 when i was hired? i wish i had more solid stats on where things were a year ago...) sometimes my job feels a little overwhelming, but then i go to one of the workshops i've been running each week since last july in the virtual labs, and i talk to team leaders and members one on one, and hear their ideas and answer questions, and it's all so personal and everything is put back into perspective.
to celebrate one year of rarely leaving my house, i decided to post the nerdiest self portrait thursday ever. enjoy.
