Hearts and Laserbeams

I ain’t gonna lie, our dogs are pretty cute.

Yesterday Josh walks into our office and says what no chicken owner wants to hear:

“We’re missing a chicken.”

Ummmm WHAT?!?! How are we missing a chicken?! I mean, last fall I saw a hawk hanging around our backyard cuz he was looking for a chicken dinner, but that was because our dog was in the other room and couldn’t tell us something was up. And none of the neighborhood cats messes with our chickens! Where could Judy Plume have gone?!?!

Josh went back out to the yard and searched for another 20 minutes. And then he noticed the box under our lemon tree.

The sturdy one that sits on its side as an option for places for our chickens to lay their eggs.

The one that was now sitting overturned.

“Nooooo….,” he thought, “she’s not under there.”

But oh yes. Yes she was. With 2 eggs, which leads us to believe she’d been stuck under there for 2 days. Josh let her out and she hightailed it for the water bowls, where she spent the next 10 minutes drinking, poor girl!

Moral of the story? A chicken in the hand is worth 2 eggs in the cardboard box you find her in 2 days after she’s gone missing.

So exciting to start thinking about things like maternity leave – our little guy gets here so soon! This morning I put our Etsy shop into vacation mode. It feels like there’s still so much left to do before the boy makes his arrival in September, but this will be one less thing to have on the plate which will be good! Now we just need to finish licensing style guides and all of our art projects are set! And in less than three weeks, I go on leave from my day job, too!

Then it’s on to the fun stuff – setting up the boy’s room, getting lots of rest, waiting for my balloon feet to explode… EXCITING!

Or it feels like it, anyways! Between getting to baby classes and finishing up projects before going on maternity leave, it seems I’ve fallen a little behind in my updates for you fine folks.

Last night I finished one of my last projects that needs to be done before leave happens! I was commissioned to create a custom 3D wedding cake topper featuring my robots done up with details to reflect the bride and groom, and it turned out really cute! I got to bust open my stash of vintage 50s plastic flower beads for the headpiece on the bride, and all of the 3D elements came together better than I could have imagined. Click on the pic to see more images of this cake topper, and make sure to like the Hearts and Laserbeams Facebook page while you’re there!

Did y’all see the Etsy Storque Blog today? Amy Zurcher from ShopScad, a boutique with locations in Savannah, Atlanta, France and online was a guest curator for a post. In her piece, she featured some of the great work by Scad students, alumni and faculty that are carried in the shop that are also available on Etsy. Click here to read the piece, and as you get near the end… You may recognize our panties!

I went to Savannah College of Art and Design from 1995 – 1999, graduating with a BFA in Computer Art (with a concentration in 2d hand-drawn animation – something that is probably pretty easy to see in a lot of my cartoony looking artwork!). If you happen to visit ShopScad at one of their shops or online, don’t forget to look for Hearts and Laserbeams goodies while you’re there!

I got some really exciting news this weekend! Hearts and Laserbeams has been working with a licensing agent for the last few months to try and get some deals going, and get our characters out there in stores. It looks like we may have a deal with a tee company in the near future! If all goes well there may be shirts with Hearts and Laserbeams  characters on them in actual major stores by the end of this year! If all goes not well, there may be a Hearts and Laserbeams employee (me) crying in the dark with a bottle of wine… er… apple juice (until our little boy is born. then bring on the vino!).

I’ve been taking a break working on the licensing stuff for the past couple of weeks because it’s been ungodly long work days for the last few months, but now that a deal is pending I gotta make like Devo and crack that whip and finish up what this company’s gonna need art-wise so all goes smoothly when/if a deal gets signed… I just wanted to share the excitement – keep them fingers crossed that this thing goes through! Hooray!

I just wanted to share the progress on a wedding cake topper I’ve been commissioned to paint for an upcoming wedding! I love working collaboratively on projects like this, it really turns out a unique result. The bride has all kinds of quirky, eclectic and handmade elements she’s incorporating into her wedding, including a bouquet made of vintage brooches and earrings. It was such happy kismet when I poked through my collection of vintage plastic flower beads for the girlBot’s headpiece and found one random sparkly flowery vintage clip-on earring that looked perfect to use as a bouquet!

I can’t wait to show you guys more progress on this piece – I’ll be continuing work on it this weekend!

A few weeks ago we started getting tons of tomatoes from the dozen or so plants we have growing in the back and front yards – to the point where I got all Martha Stewart and tried my hand at canning em so they wouldn’t go bad before we ate em!

But then, as we got more and more tomatoes and I canned most of ‘em for later use, I started thinking… what if, as a newbie canner, I didn’t quite do it right and they tasted bad? I better crack open a jar and use it just to make sure, seeing as there was another big ol’ bowl of tomatoes sitting on the counter waiting to be processed. So last night I made up a chicken recipe using a jar of our tomatoes – it turned out so freaking delicious that I’m gonna share! (The recipe. Sorry, the tomatoes are much to delicious to hand out, especially since it takes a few hours for each batch of canning to get done!)

Caprese-inspired Chicken Dinner!
Serves 2, takes about 20 minutes in the kitchen to prepare.

You’ll need:

2 defrosted chicken breasts

1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 pint jar of tomatoes (or a 14.5 oz can of crushed tomatoes)

5 cloves garlic, minced

olive oil

salt and pepper

red pepper flakes

We served it up with:

some frozen asparagus

frozen garlic bread

***

1) Start up the frozen garlic bread, which takes about 15-20 minutes to cook. (We like that texas toast in the white and green box. You know the one. Delicious.)

2) Heat up the ol’ George Foreman grill. What? You don’t have a George Foreman grill? Hmmm… then I guess heat up whatever cooking implement you’re gonna use on your chicken? While the grill’s heating up, go ahead and generously brush some olive oil on each side of your chicken breasts, and give em a little shake of salt and pepper.

3) Throw em on the grill when it’s all heated up, and let em cook til they’re not pink in the middle anymore.

4) While that’s going, heat up a medium skillet with some olive oil in it. (Over medium heat is good.) Throw your minced garlic and some red pepper flakes in, and sautee those for about 2-3 minutes. Then add your jar of tomatoes, liquid and all. (Be careful, though – one of the two kitchen fires I’ve started in the past was caused by pouring a can of tomatoes and liquid into a pan of heated olive oil… remove the pan from the heat, add the can carefully, put the pan back on the heat if you’re super cautious like I am. Fire will do that to ya.) Add chopped basil (but save a little for a fancy garnish at the end!).

5) Let  the tomato mixture get all nice and hot – soon your chicken and garlic bread’ll be done cooking. Get the garlic bread out of the oven, and do whatever you like to do to keep it warm til serving. You could get fancy and wrap it in a towel and put it in a bowl, or you could have your husband sit on it for a while. Turn up your oven to the broiler setting. Put your chicken breasts in a little pan, and give em each a good smattering of mozzarella cheese. Put em in the broiler for 2-3 minutes.

6) Incidentally, that’s about how long it takes for frozen asparagus to heat in the microwave. So cook that goodness up while your cheese is getting all good and melty on top of the chicken!

7) Take the chicken outta the broiler and put it on yer dinner plates. Put some of the tomato-basil mixture on top, sprinkle a little fresh basil on top of that… serve it up with the asparagus and garlic bread! Marvel in your culinary amazingness!

I wish I had gotten a picture of this dinner cuz it’s probably one of the first times I sorta winged it making something up in the kitchen, and it was so effing tasty! Instead, you get this hastily-drawn representation of the final product! The end!

About a year ago when I was commuting 40 miles south to Mission Viejo every day to a job that was in a less than positive environment, I started doing Fancy Coffee Friday. Instead of drinking the free coffee at work, I’d detour to the Starbucks on the way to the office, get a medium mocha with no whip cream on top, sigh, and pat myself on the back for making it through another week.

Now, a year later, I’ve kept that little ritual going. Except now I’m doing a job I love with zero commute (except for the occasional drive to L.A. for a meeting), and with the prego-ness I’ve made the temporary switch to Fancy Hot Chocolate Friday. It’s nice that the ritual has a happier tone to it now, a more “YAY it’s the weekend!!!” and less “Good god how am I going to do this again next week” feeling.

Do you have little weekly rituals like that, and what are they? Happy weekending everyone!

I sat down to get a couple of things done before work this morning, and I turned the news on as background noise. And thanks to CNN, every news show now has that scrolly bar of headlines that goes across the bottom of the screen.

One of the headlines caught my eye this morning – it was something to the effect of a scientific study finding that alcohol consumption has been found to lessen pain caused by rheumetoid arthritis. And it just really made me laugh, because uhhh… the pain is probably still there, but if the test subject is wasted then the arthritis pain is the last thing on their minds. They’re more interested in where the hookers at.

So basically, if science has taught us one thing, it’s this: have some wine, you’ll be fine.