American Cupcake

Recently my best friend, Lizard, pointed me toward American Cupcake through an article posted on Urban Daddy about the newest item on their menu; Red Velvet Fried Chicken. Red Velvet is one of my favorite cakes and interesting food combinations like this intrigue me to no end, so of course I had to try it.

Myles and I drove up to Sausalito in the afternoon to spend some time walking around the town.

Outfit Breakdown:

• Tights: Henry Holland for Pretty Polly Super Suspender
• Boots: Forever21
• Skirt: Forever21
• Shirt: Target
• Puffy Heart Necklace: Tilly's

American Cupcake is an adorable on the inside. The interior is almost completely white, but is bathed in a soft pastel glow from the lights on the ceiling which change color regularly.

American Cupcake has a cute selection of cocktails like the Drunken Ballerina (sparking wine and sprinkles with a little toy ballerina floating around in the glass), the Hot Guy (fresh lime, hot sauce, lone star and salt) and the Spiked Milkshake of the day. I asked our waitress for a recommendation and decided upon the Incorrigible; raspberry puree, rosewater, mint and sparkling wine.

the Incorrigible

And it comes with a cute little raspberry star gummi!

I had come for the Red Velvet Fried Chicken but in addition to that Myles and I also ordered the waffle fries, pulled pork sliders and a PBA (peanut butter with apple slices).

The waffle fries come with vinegar, lemon aioli and regular ketchup. They were pretty delicious, though they had no seasoning on their own.

Light color changes

The peanut butter sandwiches come with dainty little espresso cups of milk!

I don't actually have any photos of the Red Velvet Fried Chicken that make it look appetizing in the slightest. But I can tell you that it was lovely and moist on the inside. The red velvet cake breading on the outside has a very subtle flavor, making it just slightly sweet. The cream cheese mashed potatoes were delicious, and the cream cheese flavor was also quite subtle.

 

 

Dinner was delicious and by the end I was a little tipsy.. but I did manage to end the night with their Cotton Candy Cupcake which was as adorable as it was delicious. No fancy flavors or anything, but definitely tasty.

♥ le petit kiwii

A Fish Called Inky

This past January forsook the snowy climate of Upstate New York and fled to the more temperate shores of Northern California to live with my wonderful boyfriend/fiancé, Myles. I can't describe in words how surreal it is for someone who has lived on the East Coast for the past five years or so to step outside in mid-February to gorgeous 78 degree weather and throw flip flops on. I actually thought it was hot today. I'm turning into a big West Coast softy already.

 

 outside the NY apartment

 

During my cross country move I lost something very dear to me; my lucky bamboo plant. It was a gift from my dad and was often the only other living thing in my apartment bedroom besides me. I decided it wouldn't travel well, so I got rid of it

 outside the california apartment

In my desire to have a living thing in the room (to fill the bamboo shaped hole in my heart) I suggested to Myles that we get a betta fish, which I'd been wanting to do for a while. So today, in addition to acquiring bubble tea and sushi, we visited Seascapes Fish & Pets downtown. Their betta selection was smaller than what you would probably see in a chain like PetSmart, but there were a few really lovely specimens to choose from.

I always thought if I got a betta I'd get one that was bright colored; red or possibly blue.. but when I saw this gorgeous black betta I had to have him.

 Inky with my lego Helvetica "a" behind him

I have dubbed him Inkwell Quill, or Inky... a name which only came about after I decided to start calling him Inky while obsessing over him in the store. He does look quite like someone dropped a spot of ink in a glass of water. He also has a lovely subtle blue-ish sheen on parts of him which I love. 

At any rate, he's a really elegant little guy and it's nice to have a pet again for the first time in many years.


♥ le petit kiwii

Let Them Eat Cake - WiP

Currently in Drawing our out of class drawing assignment is a historical self-portrait. I drew myself in a Georgian outfit, inspired heavily by the 2006 Sofia Coppola film "Marie Antoinette".

It's definitely still a work in progress, especially on the bustle part of the dress as well as the flowers in the hair (that you can barely tell are there), and the giant ostrich feather in my hair. I'm still debating what to put in the background. It's currently a toss up between a lovely topiary garden or the inside of the Chapel Royal.

Double, non-fat, cinnamon dolce, latté. No Foam.

These cold, dreary Rochester days often call for a hot drink. Whether you like your coffee straight up, or like me, with all sorts of foofy flavorings and milk and sugar.. they both taste lovely on a cold morning.

The subject of my Computer and Imaging assignment lately has been this coffee cup. Here it is in all its glory, painted from scratch in photoshop. I'm quite pleased with the results.

Drink up, everyone!

-le petit kiwii

Back in Rochester

First week back at school, and this is what I have to come back to. Lovely, no?

Before I went on break I completed this project:

It's a color wheel I personally designed for my 2D Design class. It's made with coloraid paper and pasted onto a grey illustration board. It's really pretty, but cutting out all those tiny little pieces of paper was annoying, to say the very least.

Highlights from Sunday's Photoshoot

This past Sunday myself and a few friends went back into the woods beside the quarter mile at RIT to shoot for my final Intro to New Media project. The assignment was to create mood/style boards for opening credits to a movie or TV show or really any other cohesive idea, so as you can imagine we're all doing really different things. However for some reason almost all the projects contain a dark aspect to them. Our initial mid-way critique went well and I'm excited to see everyone's final project.

Mechanical Butterfly Layout

My third project for Intro to New Media was to design a 404 error page for whatever kind of website we wanted. I chose a steampunk theme for a personal website. It started out with a pretty simple sketch.

My first draft was well received in the half-way stage. And I was pretty pleased with the direction it was heading.


My final draft looked a lot more refined and actually got a really positive critique from the rest of my class and my professor.


I'm actually expecting a fairly high grade for this project. I'm excited.

-le petit kiwii

Shape Project Critique Assessment

Unfortunately the best photo I could get of my second 2D Design project was with my camera phone just before I turned it in the be graded. Not the best picture. I assure you it looks better in person.

This project was a shape-based project. We had to pick two adjectives and create a triptych based on the merging on those two adjectives. We started out with a list of something like 10 adjectives which we narrowed down over a few classes to the two we ended up working with. My final words were violent and wavy.

For my written critique (from other students) I got:

Good: flow & shape of design
Bad: transition kind of weird, look good separately.
Change: less negative space in 1st 2.

I'm supposed to critique my critique. Allow me to mention that we had something like 15 minutes to write these things. I think whoever did mine was feeling lazy. I by no means think my piece is perfect. There are a few things I'd change, like:

01. Adding another white bit at the bottom of the middle one.
02. Adding a few more knife-shaped bits on the first panel.

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with my transition. It was ridiculously hard to do considering it was made of cut paper. I mean, how do you think I got all my pieces to fit together so perfectly? Let me tell you, it wasn't by magic. And as far as the comment on the white space; triptychs aren't supposed to be viewed one panel at a time. I purposely placed everything the way I did for an overall aesthetically pleasing wave shape.

Here is the sketch of my original idea and some of my other ideas for the project.

A little RED

Part one of my second assignment for New Media is done! It's mostly a composite of stock images from several different sources. This is where I started.


The final image:



Part two is to remix with the same elements. I'm still not sure what direction I want to go in.

-le petit kiwii

With all my HURTS

My first REAL New Media assignment dealt with pairing text with an image. The text is taken from Kaya's "Rose Jail" and the concept is dealing with me as a human doll. I wanted to create something beautiful and also slightly melancholy. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. (I HIGHLY suggest you full view)



This image was at least 20 hours of hard work.. I painted/overlayed doll ball-joints over my skin, airbrushed everything and manipulated color, etc. My darling friend Tiff shot all the photos in this shoot, lending me her apartment and her time for which I am exceedingly grateful.

The original image is hideous and embarrassing, but it really shows how far I came from the original photo.

My next New Media project revolves around a Little Red Riding Hood theme! I'm simultaneously looking forward to and dreading it.

-le petit kiwii