Merry Christmas!

Here's our 2012 Christmas Holiday Card!


I only have access to Photoshop Elements at this time in my life :)

Here are a few past cards in case you're new to us.

2011 - Our last Christmas in New York City.

I drew this myself.

2010. Bonnie could have photoshopped this herself!

Dog-Shaming doesn't scare her

Bonnie dog never sits patiently for a portrait. I have to sneak photos of her sleeping or being trapped in a car. Today she had a newfound pride when I trepidatiously approached her with a piece of paper no less, for her dog-shaming application photo. She actually sat there for me! And looked at the camera!

How did she know?! She's proud. She's laughing in the face of the dog-shaming site.




I think pooping in the elevator wass a rite of passage for her. Good job, lady! Thank goodness no one saw us! Please never do it again. 

Party Girls: Ciel Bike Shop Grand Opening Party

New York City is so much fun that even my dog, Bonnie, has had plans the last two Friday nights.
Last week she went across town to a house-party hang-out and this week she was my date to the Ciel Bike Shop grand opening party.

Photos from Bitch Cakes NY

Bitch Cakes/Sheryl was the model on the party flier. That's Sheryl, Amanda, Bonnie and Me.

Ciel Bike Shop is a very sleek and clean bicycle shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They are located on 65th street very close to 1st Ave. I told the owner of the shop and the guys of Biria bicycles that the location of this shop is fantastic since the bicycle lane running up 1st Avenue comes so near this shop. It's also not far from the East Side River Path. The Biria founders were there celebrating their 10 year anniversary of business.


I'm still kinda thinking about that cute yellow Biria. Birdie the Biria would be a great name for such a darling yellow bicycle.

The NYC Bike Share that's coming this summer is going to help people who are interested in biking NYC to realize or rule-out whether it's for them. Many people who find that biking is for them will want to invest in their own bicycles. Ciel has some pretty sexy bicycles in stock. 
This shop is smart to have so many great accessories stocked for those who want their own bikes, but also for those who just want to make their bike share experience more comfortable & customized. (With accessories they can wear or remove from the bike share bikes easily, like sleek helmets, bags, etc.)

Ciel has a great selection of my most-favorite bike helmets: Bern brand. I love a little visor.


They also have a Fyxation accessories wall! The hot pink was stocked. Kudos for that.



1. Bonnie & Friend, 2. ECO White Bike, 3. Sexy B&W Fyxation bike, 4. East Side Collage Bike

There are more photos of the party on the Urban Cyclist Worldwide website.

Pretty good Easter morning

1. Tulips on Park Avenue, 2. Bonnie stalking a bird, 3. Bonnie, 4. Shoes, 5. Delicious bagel, 6. Ricky G. 

My Valentine

First, let me wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day! 

I think I'm the best Lady Biker to win the Bobbin bicycle that Lovely Bike is giving away on her blog.  It's not a straight-up vote, but you can leave encouraging comments here.

If you enjoy this blog, you will only enjoy it more when I have a new foxy, red bicycle about which to write tales of adventures. The prize is a red Bobbin Birdie. I need it.

Bonnie was going to make Valentine's cards anyway... Here's my baby.


Here are some sketches when I was trying to figure it out.




Remember her Christmas Card?


That's my Baby! Encouraging comments can be left here. I wheely hope we win. 

Bonnie Dog Wildin' Out in her Boots

Whew! I've been real busy the past couple days but this is my pride and joy. My baby girl Bonnie running wild in her snow boots.


Wildin' out on her afternoon snow day dog walk in boots.

She's very agreeable about us putting these on her too!

PS - This snow happened overnight and I did take a really ambitious little bicycle ride this afternoon. I'm crazy! 

Calm, Delicious Christmas

Christmas morning I got crazy and made spiced pear french toast.
Recipe found at the end of this ramble.

Matt made chili and I had the brilliant idea to make it into Frito chili pies. Bonnie lost her mind trying to get into this. He loosely used this recipe. We love Jimmy.

The heart-shaped pans are filled with Cracker Barrel's Hashbrown Casserole knockoff recipe.
It's hard to resist eating a whole pan. 

My sweet babes.


Our massive live tree. I hope she can survive.

Christmas Eve Times

We were Domestic as Heck this Christmas Eve. We quickly picked-out some recipes and got groceries on Friday night since I had zero plans for us this Christmas weekend. It's really nice to not have any plans sometimes as that's not our norm. We also couldn't agree on a restaurant to make a reservation. We forget we can fix food ourselves. 

Getting groceries meant the fridge couldn't hold it all and some beer went out on the terrace. We don't have a fully-normal sized refrigerator in our tiny apartment.

Matt made the first 2 meals of Christmas Eve. He started it off with some steel-cut oats with cherries then for lunch he made grilled cheese with apples. I made a tortilla soup for dinner. I also made my old family recipe Jell-o salad - It's a strawberry/pear/cool-whip/cream cheese/marshmallow dessert.

When we walked Bonnie this afternoon we stopped to get Kahlua to make Soy Milk White Russians. Me and Bonnie waited out on the sidewalk.

We watched Jackass3 and Pecker and now it's time for bed.

Our soy milk white russians were great and I found a recipe online to use equal parts soy milk, kahlua and vodka. We like Tito's handmade vodka. I love how much ad space they buy in BUST magazine.

I used a Martha tortilla soup recipe.

Matt freestyled his oats and grilled cheeses. Though not dairy-free, it happened to be a meat-free day.
Tomorrow is going to be a different story of the wild game variety. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from New York City!
This is our Christmas Card that we mailed out this year.  I really don't like when people show the photo of the card you're going to get on their blog or facebook before they mail it. If you are going to use postage, I think you need to give your mailing list a surprise. Otherwise, it's like Oh, thanks for mailing me this picture I already saw online.

Back in August on that night me and Bonnie walked around the Met and saw the Red Tailed Hawk, I saw the sidewalk portrait artists and I knew Bonnie's card had to be one of those portraits.

My first sketch-


I took her to Times Square and I had two different street artists draw her.


They were Chinese dudes who were uncertain of "Christmas Man" and I had to perform Google image searches on my phone. That was a red flag. 

I went home with these 2 funny, but disappointing drawings.


I knew I had to draw this myself. 

I sketched out how I wanted Bonnie to look but ran out of paper so I just pieced these scrap pieces together.


I scanned-in the 3 parts then stitched it together in Photoshop. Then I turned the levels/curves way up/down to make it really black and contrasty.


Passion for the project helped me prepare the whole thing and upload to WinkFlash with cards ordered in about 2 hours.


Even though we didn't use the street artists drawings, we had fun going to Times Square and checking out the windows on the way!

Here's her card from last year


And yes, someday I will photoshop my human baby.  :)
When I have one.

The Good Kinds of Appointments

Sometimes, I swear my days have a magical air about them. Yesterday was one of those days.

I had the appointment at the FIT Museum where I turned over that vintage, Made in U.S.A. Betsey Johnson swimsuit from 1983 that I was recently gifted. I'm thrilled they are reviewing it to be accepted as a donation to the FIT Museum.

I got there and the registrar came to greet me. She exceeded my wildest fantasies of what an Fashion Institute of Technology Museum staff person would look like. She was wearing the perfect outfit. She was very sweet and took me to a room where I laid the swimsuit out on a table covered in a cloth that looked like muslin. I filled out a form kind-of like a release form. She was enthusiastic about the item and said other people on staff were happy to see it too- They will meet in October to decide its future.

I could see racks labeled "Daphne Guinness" as there is an upcoming exhibition of her things. I told her that I'm excited for it since the McQueen exhibit is over, and I'm glad I'll have a good fashion exhibit to scare my family for all my visitors this fall.

She told me how great and helpful Daphne was being and I felt special getting a little behind-the-scenes scoop.

Next up, I found out my cousins have a cabin upstate. Our originally scheduled Labor Day Vacation resort had to cancel on us due to Hurricane Irene damage, so my cousins are saving our vacation-needing lives. We are beyond thrilled to:

A. See my cool cousins
B. Escape the city and get into nature
C. Not have to pay the previously booked nightly rate we were bracing for

So our vacation posse is absolutely elated that our vacation has not only been saved, it's sounding awesomer by the minute.

As I was leaving work headed to the East Village, one of my favorite delivery boys was also heading downtown/home on his bike. We didn't know that each other rode bicycles so it was exciting and we had a social ride. I think riding together with another biker makes you more visible so it was nice all-around. Here is is on his bike:

It's nice to ride with a friend.

I put on lipstick for the next event-

This lipstick is MAC Full Fuchsia

I went to the East Village to do my BikeGirlsTV interview. I think I did a pretty good job.
I hope the show gets picked-up or just sees the light of day in some way so I can share it.

I ran into a very sweet former co-worker and we had a nice little quick chat. We keep in touch online, but it's great to see people's actual face sometimes. How was my day working out so perfectly!? 

I used 1st Avenue to ride all the way uptown home. The temps are cool lately, so it felt great. I think I made it home in record time because I just made it into the pet-food store for Bonnie.

Me and Bonnie walked across town and across the Park. I was a little scared that we would get in trouble for being in the park after dark but we walked up on the very loud, police-attended protest of the Boat House. There were all these drums and hecklers. I had the Bonnie dog, so I felt safe. Not like she's fierce, but I knew we were not alone.

We hung out with our cute friends on the West Side. One of them had some new dresses and we checked 'em out and Bonnie made herself right at home in their apartment and put herself to bed in their bed while we caught up on some trash TV.

By the time Bonnie and I were ready to head home it must have been shift-change time for taxi's so we could not get a cab and not because one of us is a dog- We gave up pretty fast. We walked back through the park and enjoyed the nighttime views and the peacefulness.

When I got home Amy Sedaris was on Jimmy Fallon. I love both of them a lot.

How we survived Hurricane Irene

Surviving Irene was really fun, actually. Our best-friend couple lives in a 'hood that wasn't a Flood Zone at all, so they hosted us Hurricane Shelter style.

I went to K-Mart at Penn Station Friday afternoon to gather some provisions and gauge the hysteria.

That's the Empire State Buliding in the background.
The weather on Friday was uhh-mazing, but it's like they say- Calm. Before. The. Storm.

Friday I knew I had to hang & steam the new line at work so I dressed accordingly.
I worked really hard on Friday and all my co-workers were frrreaking out.

Friday night was chill. We had a pizza and went to bed early.

Saturday Matt put my bike, Kate Middleton the Bicycle, in the kitchen since the bike room in our building is basement and could flood.


We had the Go Bag ready!

American beer & junk food.

While we were prepared to walk across town, we easily got a cab, which was on zone fares.
I was happy the ASPCA put out tons of announcements that taxis were required to take pets.


Matt and Allie got their head-lamps, flashlights and multi-tools ready.

We really just sat there glued to the news and drinking and eating and drinking and eating and making fun of the news when it go real local. Funny call-ins and such.

We utilized Google Hangout, which is awesome, with friends in Boston.

I slept great all through the night. We woke up and it was just twigs and stuff everywhere.


We saw people and cars so we got brave and walked around to find a brunch spot.
We had a really posh Hurricane experience in retrospect.

This umbrella was obviously not surviving along with the rest of us.

We got giant awesome breakfasts around noon or so, and we headed to our home around 2pm.

Valentine's Day Thankfulness

Today was awesome and I'm thankful for these great gifts...

I have an adorable, old lady dog.


I got to ride my bike to work and wear this thrifted heart-print button-up shirt.


I wore MAC Ruby Woo lipstick and kept it on so well all-day I got asked a few times what my secret is. (Concealer, powder, liner, lipstick.)


We decided to get a heart-shaped pizza and sit on our new sofa as a family and watch The Bachelor (and Jersey Shore and Big Love to catch up!)


But the most amazing news is this -

THERE IS DAYLIGHT WHEN I'M BICYCLING HOME FROM WORK! THE DAYS ARE MOVING TOWARD MORE DAYLIGHT!!! THIS REALIZATION IS THE MOST TREMENDOUS GIFT MOTHER NATURE OR ANYONE COULD GIVE ME THIS VALENTINE'S DAY!

-To emphasize what a huge gift this sign of spring is to me, I also found out today that I don't have to work on President's Day. Longer hours or daylight is the BIG BIG BIG news & gift!