Apple Hill

I was just sitting at my desk, munching on a delicious apple and thinking, mmm, this apple is perfect. My mind wandered from thought to thought as it tends to do, meandering from crisp apple to lovely fall weather to the impending Thanksgiving holiday and finally stopping with, Hello! It is time to go to Apple Hill! And that is the most wonderful thought of all.

Do you know what is at Apple Hill? That's right, a whole lot of apples. But! Also! There are apple donuts and apple wine and apple butter and apple cider(cold and hot) and apple streusel and apple buns and apple tart and apple chips and fudge and honey and salt water taffy and tchotkes and a fishing pond and about a million different kinds of apple pie. A million I tell you! And, if it isn't raining, there may be a whole pig roasting on a spit.
Apple Hill is, of course, a horrible and tacky tourist trap, but it is also completely amazing and in some of the most beautiful country in the world, the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. More to the point, it is in Camino, CA, which is about an hour north of Sacramento on Highway 50. And actually, it is quite easy to avoid the more touristy parts, if that's what you're after. Apple Hill is an association of 56 farms, and they are all more or less located on a loop (Apple Hill Scenic Drive) and there are many of those that are just orchards where you can fill a box with apples you pick yourself and stroll around and enjoy the quiet. As much as I love that, I do really love the touristy spots as well. This year, my two wishes for my Apple Hill trip are 1. It doesn't rain, and 2. I get to try apple pie with cheddar cheese. I can't wait!

mel

if you'd like to visit Apple Hill yourself, you can get directions and read more about the farms here: Apple Hill Growers Association.

Tinkering

I'm thinking about changing the look of this blog. I like the gray, but I'm not sure about the other colors. And I'd really like a more lovely header up there for the title. What I have now is so blah and kind of low budge, right? So, I'll be adding that to my long long list of things to do. Yay! Actually, I did get a good piece of work done last night, I cut a whole slew of covers and now they are just waiting to be made into notebooks. My hopeful schedule for completion is construction Saturday night, then photo taking on Sunday, provided it doesn't rain. I've been thinking for a while that I would love to try taking some product pictures outdoors, so I'll try to work that in too. Chances are there will be lots of new notebooks popping up in the shop next week! Fancy that, it's been a long time since there was any fresh blood in there.

Well, scratch that, I believe it was just last week that I listed my latest drawing, Nesting. It's been seen here before; I've had it kicking around for quite some time, but for some reason only just got the impetus to list it. So, it's for sale now over at Etsy. I like it a lot, I hope you will too.

mel

Living In Real (Slow) Time

I am the worst business woman in the world, I reckon. There are about a million things that I would really really love to get done to promote myself for The Holiday Season. But I haven't done any of them. I'm hoping that now that I'm pretty much over my sickness I'll be getting back in the swing of things, but I think it might already be too late, at least too late to do every single little thing. (I find this to always be the case with the holidays, I have a list a mile long of Awesome Things to Do that I don't get too because the season goes by sooooo fast. Well, this year I'm going ice skating!) One thing I did manage to do is be included in the current paper n stitch exhibition. It's so exciting that I'm included in this collection of amazing shops because paper n stitch is one of my favorite favorite blogs in the whole world and Brittni, paper n stitch purveyor, is a super sweet gal with impeccable taste. Unfortunately, the site is down right now, but as soon as it's back up I'll be posting links to point you over to my shop as well as some of my peers'.
mel

Update - Here's that link for y'all! paper n stitch and a link to my little shop here. yay! mr

A Whirlwind of Emotion

Kir Royal, originally uploaded by savor_soaps.

The title pretty much says it all. That's kind of how it's been since my last post. I was elated then sad then sick sick sick. I'm finally starting to get better, yay! Just in time for the weekend! I'm going to make sure I won't (ahem) overindulge again this weekend and weaken my immune system making me susceptible to stupid germs. And I don't want to talk about this too much, mostly because it makes me a little teary, but guys, I am really really sad about the passage of prop 8. There are rallies all over the country tomorrow to speak out against it, and I'm hoping that there can be some increased positive awareness of the cause so that the next time around, we can switch up the 52 to 48 ratio.

One thing that did make me very happy this week was the arrival of a package from savor. I've thought about writing a blog post on savor for a long time, but for some reason am only getting around to it now. So if you're just now learning about this amazing shop, I'm sorry for procrastinating because I know you will want to snap up everything in stock. Savor is Lisa Salamida, and she makes the most amazing soaps known to man. Seriously. They are so delicious smelling and looking. In fact, Steve once almost ate one of her soaps because he thought it was a cookie, but he stopped himself (good thinking Steve). When I received my package this week the delicious fragrance of creme brulee wafting out of the cardboard was making me salivate. I was burying my nose in the packing peanuts! Yes, embarrassing but true.

I was wary to shop Savor at first, partly because her product photos are so gorgeous, I was worried I would be let down. Well, I had no reason to worry, everything is as good as it looks. If you want a mega pick me up for your morning shower, head to savor. I can recommend from experience Kir Royal (pictured above), tropical style Hawaiian black sea salt, sex appeal and creme brulee sugar scrub. I was trying to decide what my next savor purchase would be, I had it narrowed down to a choice between raspberry walnut creme fraiche and caramel apple creme fraiche, but when I was checking out the savor shop before writing this post, I had a total impulse moment and snatched up a pound of soap bits. I love these kinds of variety packs, miscast or weird colored pieces of soap, ends or messups. So, the creme fraiches will have to wait. At least, for as long as I can, which probably won't be that long.

mel

why I will not be signing up for google ads.

It's something I've considered in the past, but today was the clincher for me. Why? Today several of my favorite blogs featured Yes on Prop 8 ads in their sidebars. (like this one) No thanks google.
PS - If you don't know about Prop 8, you can read up here