Miserable

Wednesday night I came home from work and immediately started throwing up, non-stop, until 5 am. At one point, I thought Mike was going to have to take me to the emergency room it was so bad. I spent all day in bed yesterday, every muscle in my body hurt from getting sick so may times. Mike thinks I had food poisoning, I'm pretty sure he is right. I'm at work today but still not feeling 100%. After not eating anything for 24 hours my stomach is not liking anything I give it! Hopefully I can recover this weekend and get back to normal. Have a great weekend everyone!

Destash

So yesterday I opened a new shop on Etsy for my destash. I came to the sad realization that I tend to overbuy and have waaaay to many supplies. I will be adding more to the destash shop over the weekend

I have sort of been all over the place with my focus for Kopah. I tend to get really excited about a new recipe or a new product I want to try out and buy all the supplies for it and then never get around to making it or I change my mind and decide I don't want to sell that anymore so for now I am going to focus on soaps. I have a show coming up in April and I just applied for Renegade (fingers crossed!) so I want to re-direct my focus and will slowly introduce new bath and body products over time. Over the next few weeks/months you will see some slight changes to the appearance of the shop. I am going to go in a different direction with photos and try to give my shop a more cohesive look. I will also be adding a much greater selection of cold process soaps. I am really excited about this new direction and can't wait to show you what I come up with!

Lavender Bread

Over the weekend I tried a new recipe that I found at Sympathy for the Kettle, my favorite tea shop in the E. Village. It was so yummy and goes perfectly with tea. I have been eating it for breakfast every morning. Mike wasn't a fan, he said it tasted like my soap! I'm not sure what bothered me more, the fact that he didn't like it or that he has secretly been taste testing my soaps!! If you aren't a fan of lavender in your food (which my boyfriend obviously isn't!), it's a great, sweet batter so you could substitute the lavender for strawberries or whatever else would taste good in a dessert bread. Enjoy!

Tea and knitting...

So this is the extent of my weekend...



I love this picture but sorry about the horrible background, you can take great pictures from my kitchen because of the light coming through the window but unfortunately the background is less then perfect! That purple mug is my favorite, I drink tea out of it every day. It was a clearance item at Target years ago and I love it so much that I often think about what will happen when it inevitably breaks (because that's just my luck!). I have scoured the internet looking for more but have never had any luck.

I was running through my blog roll Friday and stumbled upon this awesome find at Apartment Therapy...what a genius idea. So now I have been searching everywhere for one to buy for myself. I actually found one on ebay over the weekend that was available for pick up in NJ but I didn't know if it was worth the added cost of renting a car to pick it up?! The auction has since ended and I'm regretting that I didn't just suck it up and buy it. I'm feeling the same way about this vintage Catherineholm dutch oven that I found last week in perfect condition...

Snow

So I woke up this morning to snow everywhere!! The city is so beautiful when it snows, and then it quickly turns into a slushy disgusting mess but there is nothing better than waking up to a beautiful snowfall outside your window. Of course this is bittersweet because as beautiful as it is, it's killed my hope that spring might be just around the corner :(

Fierce...

I managed to get home just in time to watch the Project Runway reunion show and in the words of Christian, it was "fierce!" My cable kept messing up though so there were whole parts that would just freeze up and then it would skip ahead to the commercials. Hopefully I didn't miss anything important! Is it me or did it seem like Victoria was very bitter? I was never a big fan of her anyway but she seemed to have some kind of chip on her shoulder...everyone was laughing and having a good time and then Tim would ask her a question and she would barely respond! I can't wait to see what everyone showed at Fashion Week, I have been good and stayed away from the spoilers because I want to be surprised!

Did anyone see the lunar eclipse last night? I noticed it when I was walking home from my knitting class last night. It was amazing, I wish I could have gotten a picture of it. Soule Mama's blog has some great photos of it. Well I'm off to grab lunch, thanks for reading!

Happy Tuesday!

Hey everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts lately, we had a long weekend so I didn't get a chance to blog. Mike and I kind of become hermits in the winter so we didn't do anything too exciting over the weekend. We slept in, drank tea, had brunch, made some really good meals, ran some errands, watched movies and basically just relaxed! Friday night we watched Eagle vs. Shark which was hilarious. It's not really mainstream comedy but we loved it and were quoting the movie with our best New Zealand accents all weekend!

Mike's mom's bday was a few weeks ago and we still hadn't gotten her a present so I worked on her gift all last night (Christine if you are reading this, please stop reading now!). Here are the pics. The pattern is from the Lotta Jansdotter book. Sorry the pics aren't great...I was trying to work with the little amount of natural light that was left! It's a tote bag if you can't tell from the photos, I think it came out pretty well! We are filling it with a bunch of goodies and will hopefully get it in the mail this week.

Happy V-Day!

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I spent all day yesterday waiting for our new bed to be delivered. Luckily the weather was terrible so it wasn't too bad hanging out on the couch and watching tv while waiting. I was also able to work on some more whipped shea butters for the shop. I hope to get all these new products up for sale by next week. I have been talking about them for ever but I keep dragging my feet to get the packaging designed so I can put them up for sale! I also started my knitting class last night. It was awesome! We learned how to cast on and do the knit stitch. Next week we are going to learn the purl stitch. I can see how knitting can quickly become an addicting hobby! The coolest thing about last night is that when I walked into Purl for the class, who was there but Joelle Hoverson, the owner of the shop and the amazing author of Last Minue Patchwork & Quilted Gifts! I blogged about her a while back. I think she is an amazing crafter so it was awesome to meet her, she actually helped me pick out my yarn for the class!

I was going to take pictures of the progress I made in class but forgot to and last night before bed I wripped it all out so I could start over again. So instead I will leave you with these pics from the snow storm we had Tuesday.



PeeWee was not happy about having to go out in the snow!



Ooh! I just found out that my new soap gift set is being featured in the gift guides! What a great surprise!! If you haven't checked out the gift guides, I highly recommend doing so...I have found some awesome stuff browsing through them!

Annoyed

We had to order a new bed for our apartment because the bed we had was too big for our new bedroom. Bigger apartment, smaller bedroom...go figure! So we sold our old bed this weekend and ordered this new bed from West Elm (sans the headboard)



The only problem is it's being shipped via UPS and they are the most impossible company to deal with, they told me today they would call prior to delivering the bed so I could run home and meet the guy and of course they didn't so now I have to take a personal day tomorrow to deal with this. I suppose it's a good thing because I have a ton of things to do at home (like work on the puzzle!) but it's annoying to have to waste a vacation day on stupid furniture!

On a brighter note, I am starting a knitting class tomorrow night at Purl. I am really looking forward to learning how to knit and it's been something that I have wanted to learn for a while. I bought a book over Christmas but quickly realized this was one of those things that would be better taught in person.

Puzzled

I had such a relaxing weekend, I was home sick on Friday...I succumbed to the bug that has been going around, luckily no vomiting, just achiness and sore throat! So PeeWee and I layed on the couch all day and watched 80's movies. I was feeling much better by Saturday so Mike and I ran some errands and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and working on a 1000 piece puzzle. It is so addicting, we can't stop working on it!



We were able to get some photos taken yesterday too so there are a couple of new items in the shop today! Much more will hopefully be added next week. I made some lip balms that turned out really well but I had some problems sweetening them so they smell great but don't really taste like anything so I am going to try again this week.

Soap Gift Set


Sandalwood Vanilla


Happy Monday everyone!

random stuff for Wednesday

So I'm really getting into this screen printing thing. Yesterday I came up with this really cute idea for tea towels but I am a terrible artist so I told Mike what I wanted and he is designing it. If it goes well I might put them up for sale in the shop! Speaking of the shop, I was hoping to get some new stuff posted this week but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. We are still dealing with odds and ends from our move and I can't seem to find any spare time to sit down with Kopah stuff. Hopefully I can find some free time this weekend because my supply orders just came in so I am anxious to make some new things!

All Settled In

So we are all moved into our new place. I absolutely love it, it is a million times better than our old apartment and I am even starting to come to terms with the fact that we no longer have a washer and dryer. It is so quiet, we are off the street which makes a huge difference and the woman above us hardly makes any noise. Such a big change from the babies!

Aside from moving we had a great weekend. The Super Bowl party was a huge success, the food was awesome, the game was great (unless you were a Patriot's fan!). It was so nice to be able to entertain again, our last apartment was so small it was hard to do anything.

The screen printing class was so much fun! We had such a great time, I highly recommend the class to anyone who lives in the NY area and can make it to the Etsy labs. Here are pics of our creations. I printed the Kopah logo on a hoodie and Mike came up with this cool city skyline design.




The Etsy labs were very cool! It's a huge space with tons of supplies and equipment to use and there were lots of air conditioners all over the floor in the screen printing room, not really sure what that was all about but it was very cool to see the labs!

In the midst of everything going on this weekend, I was able to sneak away to Bliss for a 2 hour massage, one of my favorite indulgences. My best friend, Melissa is coming up in March and I can't wait to take her to Bliss, it's such an amazing spa!

Let the Moving Commence...

We got the keys to the new place last night, we started moving immediately!! We got the entire kitchen moved. With every pot and pan we put into it's place we silently thanked the landlord gods for allowing us to move because the marathon running babies were horrible last night!!! They were screaming and running and falling on the floor and screaming some more. I am so grateful to not have to listen to that anymore! The other great thing about this new place is that it is significantly bigger than our old place. The first and only time we saw the apartment was when the people moving out of it were gracious enough to let us look at it even though it was filled with moving boxes so we weren't really able to get a feel for how big (or small) it really was. Wow!! I mean it's no mansion and it's probably not even big for Manhattan standards but for us, who have been living (smooshed) in 300 square feet it feels like we just moved in to Heff's mansion!

We hope to get the rest of the apartment moved tonight because we have the cable guy coming tomorrow morning and then we have a screenprinting class (my Xmas gift to Mike) at the Etsy Labs tomorrow from 1-6. I am so excited and I can't wait to see the labs!

We are having people over for the Super Bowl so I have been scowering the internet looking for recipes. If you haven't ever visited the blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, I insist you check it out immediately!! She has some awesome Super Bowl recipes posted. I will warn you though, if you are health conscious or wish to keep your cholestrol levels in check, don't even bother! Her bacon wrapped jalapeno things look delicious! Happy Friday everyone!