If Only All Of Our Clients Were This Easy To Please!

Show a kid who loves dinosaurs a birthday invitation shaped like a dinosaur and he is as happy as a pig in mud!

Please forgive (as always) my horrendous photos... a DSLR may be in my future...

These were drawn with ink and painted in watercolor, then printed on real watercolor paper. 

These Lovelies Are Off...

Full reveal after they reach their destinations :)

(LOVE those envelopes!!)

FT Job Distraction... err... I mean, Social Media...

Love me some social media. And now that I'm trying to get better at it it was awesome to go to #smdayBuf - Buffalo's social media networking event at Templeton Landing's rooftop patio last Tuesday.

Ironic that it took me almost a week to blog about it, and that this it the only picture I have of the event, but Meg and I had a great time, met some great Buffalonians, and we're excited for the next one!

Surround Yourself With Talent

I think I've said it before but I'm a lucky lady. Today, I'm telling you how lucky I am to have amazingly talented friends. One of whom has decided to collaborate with RBL on some greeting card and invitation illustrations. I'd like to introduce Monique D'Urso, incredibly talented artist, with illustrations that will just melt your little heart. This is her latest independent project, an engagement party postcard for her sister...

 (who is almost a full foot shorter than her fiance!)

Little lovebird, big lovebird!

If you'd like something with a little "mo love" - just drop us a line. And look for more Mo in our Etsy shop with a whole line of birthday, baby, and greeting cards for every occasion, coming this Fall. 

Sneak Peak

Autumnal wedding invite...

So excited for this one! I can't wait for the unveiling... but we must wait, as always, until they have reached their pretty little destinations...

Daring Month Three

Okay, maybe I'm a Negative Nancy, but to be entirely honest, I haven't really LOVED any the recipes I've been making with Daring Kitchen. (You can find how this mess adventure started here...) Until now, that is – I really really liked this one! Even though it's more what I consider to be Pammy-Food, I definitely liked – AND as an added bonus – the husband actually liked!!

The mandatories:

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Ok, so maybe I'm the dumb kid, but I never really thought of making your own peanut butter being this easy! I started  up a small tin of salted, roasted peanuts, threw in the food processor for 2-3 minutes, after which it was still a little dry.

SO I added a tad of Canola oil.

Mmmm much better...

Taste-tester approved.

Really, really approved... (he kinda LOVES peanut butter...)

After washing my hands we get to making the sauce...

...tons and tons of garlic...

... my fav: vinegar...

... soy sauce, ginger, chili oil (instead of sesame oil, oh well), sugar, some water and in good Buffalo style, a healthy dose of Franks...

And because I'm a glutton for punishment and/or just overambitious...

we have chicken aaaaand...

ugh... I hate, hate, hate peeling and depooping uncooked shrimp... but I have a flashback, at the grocery store, when I'm about to buy them, of being in my mom's kitchen a few years ago... 

me: why are the shrimp grey?

mom: because they aren't cooked, Al...

me: oh... so why didn't you just buy the pink ones?

She pulls one out of the chicken broth she's boiling them in and gives it to me.

The taste is amazing.

me: ..... oooh

So half an hour later... here we are...

Some more slicing and dicing and we have:

bean thread noodles (oh yeah, already cooked those, forgot...), english cucumber, red pepper, flat leaf parsley (instead of basil, because I didn't have any, but it was from the CSA and the most fragrant, delicious parsley I've ever had)...

[a beer], cabbage and green onion (both also from the CSA, mmmmm)..

Add the peanut sauce, mix it all together, top with shrimp and/or chicken aaaaaaand:

Voila! With some lime... and it's amazing. I so heart. And definitely recommend. You can find the real recipe here.

Picky Eater Variation Note: For kids (or a husband with very picky tastes!) you can make linguine instead of bean thread noodles and keep all the accoutrements separate for them to decide which to add. Then toss in a bowl with the sauce and top with chicken and/or shrimp just the same. 

Hooray Daring Kitchen, you've got me hooked for another month!

Monday Happiness

Possibly the most adorable wedding favor I've seen in a long time. Although donations as favors are my favorite, my feeling on favors is usually – if I can't eat it or drink it, I don't really want it... but this may be the exception...

From Unveiled Bridal via one of, if not the best, wedding blogs on the interweb, Style Me Pretty. 

Smitten!

Seriously, Thank You

For those who don't know me that well, the house my husband and I bought last year is a bit of a fixer-upper. To say the least. We spent most of the winter tearing the place apart, and we have had immense amounts of help from friends, family, and neighbors. So to express my immense gratitude, I sent out little thank you notes designed by moi.

And, as per usual, they were extremely late... but better late than never, right?

We are lucky little ducks.

Show Some Love

Welcome to my new feature called Buffalove. (I'm not sure if this word is trademarked... so I'm gonna use it until someone tells me not to :).) This is where I'll be showing love for local talents and things that I love around the Rust Belt... and today's belongs to local artist Derek Pershyn...

Derek is a friend of ours, and besides working for New Era has incredible talent designing Munnys... which are self described by their maker, Kid Robot, as "Art Toys." Artists buy blank forms, and use them as a sort of 3D blank canvas! Derek made us a Mini Munny for our wedding, and we so totally heart it...





(Photo by Nickel City Studios)


SO - June is Munny Munth, and right now Kid Robot is having a customizing contest - and Derek has entered with his "Munny in the Moon." Show some Buffalove and head over to vote for some local talent!

(And it's not like some of those other contests that make you sign up and create an account before voting, it's hooked up to Facebook, so it's as simple as clicking "LIKE!" This guy is about halfway down the first page.)

Daring Chef month two

Okay this may be a brief post as I am writing this on my husband's iphone on our way to New York City... WITH my one and only West Coast Parallel! It must have been fate that our yearly get-together-ridiculousathon fell on Daring Chef post weekend, because it meant we got to cook together!!

(yeah, so, i can't figure out how to post pictures in this app, so i'll have to add them later...)

So as daring as we were trying to be, when we couldn't track down any liver on a (last minute) Sunday, we were pretty okay with it.

Since I am working with inferior technology, please visit the parrallel's blog; omgdinnerwasyum.blogspot.

Since I am working with inferior technology, please visit the parrallel's blog; omgdinnerwasyum.blogspot.com

Recipes and photos to follow.

The mandatory part:our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook's challenge! They've provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.