53 | Goodbye TwoThousand&Ten, Hello TwentyEleven!

Happy Birthday Blog! Since New Year's 2008, the L&A Blog has featured my latest paper/food/design creations, and this year will be no different.

New Year's Eve was a chance to combine all of those creations with a dinner hosted for Bay Area friends, the first of what I hope to become an annual tradition.

The food and decorations were simple - a handmade paper garland connected the kitchen to the living room, and labels made from black paper, leftover from the year, framed each of the dishes.

Post-NYE festivities, LOTUS&ASH welcomed in the new year with its annual calendar. This year's is a small matchbook, and a fun tribute to my font-loving ways. Each month is set in a different face, and the last page lists them altogether, making for a handy-dandy font reference, my version of a polly pocket.

: The 2011 L&A Calendar :

L&A wishes you a very healthy, happy, and delicious new year, filled to the brim with good design and hand-written correspondence.

lotusandash(dot)com

44 | Palindromes are Good Luck

Today, I was told that palindromes were good luck. I'd like to think this is true since during my palindrome age, there have been some nice celebrations and surprises... like: getting a job! graduating! and defining love, friendship, and family in entirely different ways.

speaking of friendship, here is a recent set of stationery I designed for a guy, and his best mate:

| TOM & WILL correspondence letters . designed 06.2010 |

and what's an envelopes' best mate? a liner, of course.

| TOM . lined envelope stationery set . designed 06.2010 |

In between paper and design projects, L&A has had plenty of time for culinary exploits to prepare herself for apartment living in a month or so...

| wannabe ^ chef |

some keepers

| GLUTEN FREE RASPBERRY CHOCOLATE CITRUS CAKE |

take your favorite gluten free muffin recipe (i love this one!) replace any fruity ingredients with fresh raspberries, dark chocolate, and a cup of orange juice with some orange zest... and you have yourself a delicious any-time-of-day treat!

| FARMERS MARKET ARUGULA SALAD |

Arugula and Spinach make a great green couple - the butteriness of the spinach is the perfect complement to the spicy bite of the arugula. Paired with some avocado, roma tomatoes, and fresh squeezed lemon + 1/2 cup of olive oil.. and you have yourself an easy, and delicious summer salad!

and when you're done with this gluten-free, farmer's market fresh business... head to FREEBIRDS in Santa Barbara for some custom-made nachos.

{ and as everyone knows...LOTUS&ASH loves speaking the custom-made language. }

| FREEBIRDS NACHOS |

43 | Celebrate Creativity & Beans

| SPREAD CREATIVITY . designed 06.2010 |

By far, the best class I ever took at Stanford was CREATIVITY&INNOVATION. Besides the amazing teachers, my enthusiastic peers, and the awesome Stanford d.school building, one of the assignments was to design a line of greeting cards for "national creativity day" - the brainchild of neuroscientist, creativextraordinaire, and one of my personal heroes - Tina Seelig.

After a class-long brainstorm, prototyping and presentation of the new line of greeting cards, I threatened to make a line of LOTUS&ASH greeting cards inspired by the class. That threat has become a reality with a set of 4 greeting cards that are intended to ignite creativity between two people, or an entire group of people...

| SENTENCE STRUCTURE . designed 06.2010 |

| ODE TO CREATIVITY (fold it poem exercise) . designed 06.2010 |

| CREATIVE NOTE . designed 06.2010 |

~

the life of L&A:

Graduation celebrations continued last night at AXE restaurant in Venice.

I highly recommend the Vegetable Pistou - even on a hot summer night, the soup was a delight. WARNING: Do not order it if you do not intend to soak up the garlicy broth with the chunks of rustic bread accompanying.

The night was a double celebration for myself and a very good friend, who got into a very good grad school. To commemorate her achievements, nothing less than a semi-inappropriate greeting card was in order:

| BRA*VO . designed 04.2009 |

~

Graduation celebrations, part 1002030:

Congrats to Erica & Teddy on their beautiful new home.

{ taking a page out of erica's book }

celebration made easy

add one part prosecco, two parts sweet lady jane cake, and good company, and you have yourself the perfect post-dinner plans.

| CUSTOM DESIGNED hanging MANTEL PIECES by ERICA . 06.2010 |