I Feel Like Chiggin Tonight

I had a glorious sleep in today, initially I woke up at 7:30am - but I dozed off and reawoke at 11:30am! I stuffed around on the computer for a little while and then I headed off to the Rose Cafe for some lunch. I bought the new Delicious magazine so I had some kind of companion for lunch and I ordered a spinach quiche with salad. It was extremely tasty. I love quiche, but if I make one - I have to eat it all myself in a couple of days. I headed off to the Argyle Book and Record Emporium and spent a while in there going through old records, CDs and books. I ended up coming out of there with a few CD's - two random ones of bands I'd never heard of and "No Quarter" by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. I stopped by Woolies and did a bit of a weekly shop. I wanted to get some cider at the bottle shop, but they only had Strongbow - so I picked up some Beez Neez. For those who don't know, it's a tasty honey and wheat beer.

I spent this afternoon drawing and listening to music. I had a hankering for chicken and chips by the time dinner rolled around, so I stuffed under the chickens skin with garlic and butter and roasted it. I made some chips too - I wasn't paying attention and they stuck to the bottom of the tray..still they were extremely tasty, despite the fact they are aesthetically unappealing. I will most definitely be eating a lot of chicken sandwiches for the next couple of days!



I'm hoping the extremely punchy garlic and the honey in my beer gets rid of this sore throat and headache. I think I'll go to bed early tonight.

Tomorrow, Goulburn Brewery Markets are on! I am definitely checking that out tomorrow!

I'm Bad At Picking Blog Titles

I've been a little lazy on the blog front this week. Mostly I've just been cold, and the lounge room heats up quicker than this room - so I've not been on the computer much. Last Friday Jess came and stayed for the weekend. We had a pretty freaking good time. I haven't laughed that hard in ages, it was exactly what we both needed I think. We consumed a lot of wine, watched a few movies, and talked A LOT. On Saturday we went and checked out this cafe that I had wanted to try for ages. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but when you go in, HOLY CRAP. So good, everything is home made and reasonably priced. I plan to go in there on Saturday with a book and have some tea and scones or something comparably delicious. Jess and I kind of have a Doritos obsession, and it's a ritual we must partake in whenever we catch up. It all started in Year 12, way back in 2001. We were studying for our HSC Maths exam, and we needed a meal that would sustain us. We made the largest nachos I've ever seen. Somehow we managed to eat it all, and we have never made them that big ever again. I was going to make this rack of lamb with veges, and I thought, "No, the nacho ritual must not die!!" I didn't get any photos from the weekend, or the food - we were hungry haha, no time for photos. Though I will show a picture of epic nachos from the beginning of last year at a Mexican place that is now closed.

On Saturday night Jess and I were drinking plenty of wine. When the movie we were watching finished we decided to go on this random trip to McDonalds. We'd had too much wine to drive, so we embarked on a walk at 10:30pm. I knew it would only take 30 minutes, but it felt like some kind of random adventure. Surprisingly it was still 12 degrees outside! Warm, for that time of night and Goulburn! It was fun!

Here we are a few years ago, I met up with everyone just after I'd been to my friend Sarah's wedding! I've got lots of photos of Louisa sticking her middle finger up at the camera, but here is a funny one of us smoking chips.

Now that I had to go through a million photos on my Photobucket, I came across some from about August last year. Here are my winter hand bag/satchel essentials, that for this winter have remained unchanged. I still have that set of stamps, I need to send some mail!

Does anyone remember my online Scrabble addiction of late 2006 when my hand was injured? Instead of drugs and alcohol, I turned to words.

From my blog from December 06,

ONLINE SCRABBLE CLUB!!
It is truly becoming a problem..what am I to do?? I can't stop. I'm thinking of words in my sleep. When I'm not online, I'm thinking about being online. It makes my day if I get me the 50 bonus points for using all my letters. What has become of me. I am all-consumed. I'm even playing right now. I can't wait until the little "thud" noise rings out so I can click back into the Scrabble window and place my tiles to form a high scoring word.
Is it possible that I am more enthused about this than dessert. No, but it's pretty damn close.
I juggle work and social life with this addiction. But maybe one day the balance will slip. Will words and letters be there when I hit rock bottom. When I'm on the train and I start ripping up newspapers and forming words on my lap. Laughing like a crazy biatch because I just got a seven letter, triple word score on my imaginary board.
Laugh at me all of you, but daren't laugh at the game. *choked up

A couple of days later.

There is a seedy undertow to be found on the Online Scrabble Club. I had some dirty old man asking me if I was "sexy". So I quit the game and made a complaint, but I was the one who lost the points. Sexual discrimination exists in the world of Scrabble. Now I'm playing some dude who keeps drawing me pictures made out of letters. First there was an angel, then a couple kissing and now a pic of Homer. All constructed with "/" and "*" etc. Dear me. He just sent me Bart and Lisa too. Perhaps I should shake this flu off and run around outside where freaks can approach me in real life. On second thoughts, there isn't much difference! Oh my, just got Marge and Maggie. I gotta kick this sad dude's ass.
Yay, I won. Sucker.
Hmmm...now back to the design portfolio!

As my birthday kind of nears, I always think of probably the best birthday cake I ever had made for me. My sister Ashleigh tried really hard with this one. It collapsed in the middle and we ended up patching it with cream and we covered it with icing. Lachlan, Ashleigh, Richo and I had this for my birthday back in '05.

I've been very well distracted from being lonely this past month. I've been very lucky to have people come and visit 4 weekends in a row. This weekend I just have to keep myself busy. The Goulburn Brewery Markets are on Saturday, and I've keep forgetting about them - so it'll be nice to finally go. I haven't been to the Friday Fresh Markets in a while either, I should go and buy some fresh apples!

In other news, The Temper Trap finally released their album. I saw them when they supported the Howling Bells back in 2006, at my favourite venue, The Metro. I can't stop listening to this song.

I made a little pie on Sunday afternoon, it was inspired by Jude's pot pie! I'm greedy, I like pastry! It had a cute little union jack puff pastry decoration, and went well with mashed potato.

You should all go and buy this t-shirt for your brother, lover or mother!

Daniel Newman aka Quakerninja is always very supportive of other designers. He recently got extremely screwed on 2 other designs with very poor screenprinting. Hopefully he's getting his money back as we speak, but here's one tee that is currently for sale. It's a complete bargain at $19.99. I took this photo of a large mens, so the print is a lot bigger on the smaller options!!

I'll leave you with another old photobucket file.

I still need to get some Limoge. I'm certain it makes the tea taste even better!

Sunday Arting

I did this watercolour a while ago on some leftover cardboard.I finally scanned it, brought it into Photoshop and messed with some layer styles, colours, levels and lighting. Not too sure what to call it.

Noble Beast

I cleaned up this site a bit, freshened it up with a sans serif font and adjusted some colours. Nothing too major, just a long time coming.

I've been working on a new website layout for this www.ameeee.com - my other portfolio site is just not doing it for me. So this site would function as an all in one website. I'm going to stick with the Ameeee part and ditch the Amy Brown. Well for the internetz at least. Makes much more sense to me. The new header you see above is the logo I think I'll be sticking with for a bit. It represents the style I'm interested in developing far better than my last one. It's all still a work in progress though. I came up with a new website layout I'm happy with. I'm tossing up between trying to put it all back together in Dreamweaver or whether I should get the folks at Double Dragon Studios to code it. I'll wait and see.

I'm looking for graphic designers opinions on my proposed logo - no matter how harsh it may be. Bearing in mind that this is going to represent the more off beat, weirdo illustration and graphic design side of me. Cheers!

Today I'm listen to Andrew Bird's Noble Beast, and can't be bothered cooking anything involved today. This weekend has been all about toasted sandwiches. Baked bean and cheese or cheese, tomato and ham. When Elissa came to stay she got me entirely addicted to Juice of Orange. It is the thickest, pulpiest orange juice I've ever had. That'll teach me to not judge juice by it's packaging!

Satdee

I had a fun visitor in Sarah Dyer yesterday. Well she's a Cater now, but I'm just going to keep calling her SD. We had yummy pizza for dinner and we also bought long neck raspberry Vodka Cruisers. It was the total novelty of them being twice as big as you can normally get them! Sarah brought "He's Just Not That Into You" and "Bio Dome" over for us to watch. We mostly were just nattering away, so many stories from school to gossip about. We went and visited the Big Merino this morning and then Sarah headed back to Sydney town to watch some football with some friends.

I suppose I should promote my latest design, the response has been underwhelming - but I need to put myself out there more. So it's all good anyway! Ray Frenden (http://www.frenden.com) gave me some good advice on it, so I'm going to work some more on it when the voting period is over. Just to make it more organically shaped and a lot less boxy. I've been wanting to use that colour combination for a while, so I think I might have a play around with that this weekend.


Here's a close up of the texture on top -



You can vote for it here if you like VOTE :)

I found some ultra cute pics of the dogs on my computer the other day. Oh Monty, he always looks so depressed. Love that dog. Dougal is funny too! I miss them a lot.



Not too sure what I'm going to cook today. Jude got me thinking about chicken and vegetable soup - I think I'll probably make that happen tomorrow. I'm a little cold and lazy today.

Aziz is a talented man.