Cinnamon Sugar Pull Apart Bread!

Cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread freshly baked and cooling on the stove top.

Just made this cinnamon pull-apart bread today, it's like a loaf of never ending cinnamon bun innards. SO GOODD! I want to put icing on it...

This was so fun to make! I probably haven't used a rolling pin since I was a child playing with the flour and water 'dough' my grandma and I used to make to 'play' with, so that alone was a bit nostalgic for me. I also love an excuse to get my hands dirty and rubbing cinnamon sugar all over dough covered in brown butter is a deliciously awesome way to do so.

The overall look of the loaf is a cross between whimsical french toast stack and a sugary Shar-Pei. I love it.

Blog I got the recipe from!

Cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread all stacked and ready to bake.

After removing the cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread from the loaf pan it maintained its shape quite well! 

Just look at that sexy Cinnamon sugar goodness!

My Lovely Little Loaf-let (of Challah Bread)

I finally found the perfect chewy eggy wonderful Challah bread recipe. The description of how to know when you are done kneading the dough indicates that it is finished when the dough feels like skin. This sounds like it could be very creepy, kneading a ball of elasticized skin, but it is actually one of the most pleasant things. Kneading the dough for 30 mins is like a light work out plus meditation exercise. I am so corny and like to imagine I am back in the olden days where life was slower and people had time to knead their dough for 30 mins and even bake their own breads on a regular basis. What a life.

unbaked, but so cute in its little braid. pre-second rising.

And baked!! I couldn't help myself from eating a giant chunk of it, i had to so it would fit in the plastic bag i had to store it in. It was soooo delicious and moist and wonderful!!!

Baby Strawberries From The Garden!

Almost too cute to eat, but I had to. In absurdly tiny bites of course.

Seal Baby Eggs!!!

I go completely nuts over baby seals. They seriously break my brain and turn me into a frothing puddle of horrible high pitched noises. The fatter the better. There isn't anything about them that isn't amazing. The sounds they make, their blorpy shape, their tiny faces and little whiskers, don't even get me started on the little flipper feets. 

I saw this photo of a baby harp seal and could not get over how perfectly ovular and eggily shaped he was. We had a large carton of eggs and nobody was home so I knew that this was my chance. With a paper towel I dried the condensation off the eggs and took a sharpie to them to create a carton full of wonderful sleepy Harp seal babies! I tucked them all back into their carton and wrote 'Shhhhhh!' on the outside and deployed them back to into the fridge and waited.

And waited.

It was rather difficult to keep my mouth shut about it and just wait for somebody to go looking for eggs and stumble upon these little treasures, but it was all worth it in the end! 

** Warning**

The only downside to this plan was that everyone was so instantly in love with these tiny seals that nobody wanted to crack one open just to make dinner.

Super cute fat blorpy baby Harp seal

Baby Harp seal egg

Me & my seal babies!

Adorable Baby Harp seal eggs nestled in their cozy little carton :D

oh the wonderful things a sharpie can do!!

Cover -reverse mermaid, Folding Chair

My record year for rainfall. Reverse mermaid

Folding Chair -Regina Spektor

Come and open up your folding chair next to me. My feet are buried in the sand and there's a breeze. There's a shadow, you can't see my eyes. And the sea is just a wetter version of the sky.

ink

Swirls, El Mar

Swirls done in colored pencil

el mar, the sea. collage, acrylic and ink

January Hymn

January Hymn -Decemberists
On a winter's Sunday I go to clear away the snow and green the ground below. April all an ocean away. Is this the better way to spend the day? Keeping the winter at bay. What were the words I meant to say before you left? When I could see your breath lead where you were going to. Maybe I should just let it be and maybe it will all come back to me.

Done in ink and acrylic

Reservoir shadows/ice

The reservoir in newark, DE. ink, acrylic and watercolor.

The little house in the middle of the Newark, DE reservoir. ink, acrylic and watercolor.

Squidbrellas

Squid + umbrellas = squidbrellas with lots of little bubbles. done in ink.

Scales/swirls/bubbles, R.I.P.

ink -I have no idea.. desperate attempt to fill space.

acrylic

Red, Blue

Whirling red waves and tumultuous blue. Acrylic.

AppleLauren, Heard The World -O.A.R.

Heard The World -O.A.R

I just heard the world is breaking down into bits again. Tell me what am I to do? And you just want me to stay, here. So I'm just gonna stay here. Home, the last resort. Build a castle with an iron door. Lock the windows, pull the shades, the hazed out sun won't help anyway. If the world is crumbling down, I don't want to be alone. No, locked up in this place. I heard the world up, late night. Holding my breath tight, trying to keep my head on right. There's a chill in the air, nobody could care how you're caught up in the fight of your life.

Lauren with an apple impaled on a pencil after throwing it at the wall. acrylic and ink

Cape Cod Beachy

Dancing on the sand during low tide while the sun was setting at a beach on Cape Cod. done in watercolor. 

Booshie. I'll Never Let You Go -Third Eye Blind, VeniceLauren

I'll Never Let You Go -Third Eye Blind

I remember the stupid things, the mood rings, the bracelets and the beads, nickels and dimes, yours and mine, did you cash in all your dreams? You don't dream for me, no. You don't dream for me, no. But I still feel you pulsing like sonar from the days in the waves. That girl is like a sunburn I would like to save, that girl is like a sunburn, I would like to save, she's like a sunburn, she's like a sunburn. And all our friends are gone, are gone, and all the time moves on, and on, and all I know is it's wrong, it's wrong...

ink and watercolor

as i'm going through and posting these i'm noticing that a lot of the scans came out kind of weird. i have photos too i'm going to upload to my computer soon and see if those are any better, then i'll finish posting them.

Venomous Box Jellyfish

acrylic

All you can eat

Thrown hard -my back agains the wall

your hand trails unsteadily

through my hair, over my cheek

and I sink as you fix me in place;

threading your wires through my skin

in reckless uneven stitches.

You touch my lips and linger

to make these holes in my throat,

then taunt the voiceless

-listening only, as my lungs deflate,

to the sound of air that's no longer mine

igniting the sparks I strike behind my eyes...

In my quick-burning rage, I forget

my name, I feel no pain, feel no regret.

I tear your wires from my flesh and

watch the blood so bright and fresh.

Emboldened now by the coursing red

I turn your needle on you instead.

I bind you now with will and might

back against the wall -stitched up so tight.

With time I know my holes will heal

but you, I want to remain here.

...now the embers cool to return

me from fugue; to re-associate

my brain, the agony, the name.

Your hand presses hard

into the crook of my waist

and I watch as you savor the sharpness

of this curve with your dead

hungry grip gnawing into my ribs.

I've been all but resolved with plotted

precision -your strung up captive.

Too weak to fight back from all

the blood lost.

Watercolor and ink

Lamprey, Intolerance

Parasitic Sea Lamprey

The sea lamprey can grow up to 35.5 inches long. It uses it's suction cup-like mouth to attach to a host and bores through the host's flesh with its rasping teeth and bony tongue in order to feed on the host's blood and bodily fluids.

Ink and watercolor

 

Intolerance -Tool

I don't want to be hostile. I don't want to be dismal. But I don't want to rot in apathetic existence either. See I want to believe you, and I want to trust you and I want to have faith to put away the dagger. But you lie, cheat and steal. And yet I tolerate you. Veil of virtue hung to hide your method while I smile and laugh and dance and sing your praise and glory. Shroud of virtue hung to mask your stigma as I smile and laugh and dance and sing your glory while you lie, cheat and steal. How can I tolerate you. Our guilt, our blame, I've been far too sympathetic. Our blood, our fault. I've been far too sympathetic. I am not innocent. You are not innocent. No one is innocent. I will no longer tolerate you. Even if I must go down beside you. Because no one is innocent.

Ink

Girl2.1, Retrospective

Retrospective

I can feel my own brow tense
as I watch her glinting eyes
leaking life -living and being
onto the knee-scraping streets;
where her soles wear down, a pair
a day, leaving soul upon the ground.

Pressed down upon so heavily -
we both are the subjects of gravity
and her cold, it feels like mine
when her tributaries bleed;
converging together over desert
where no ships are ever seen.

Ink, watercolor and marker

Isopod

"The tongue-eating isopod enters it's host through the gills and attaches it's body at the base of the tongue. It uses it's front claws to extract blood until the host's tongue atrophies, at which point it latches it's body onto muscles remaining from the tongue and functionally replaces the host's tongue."

Ink and watercolor

Airline Collision

Acrylic and inkjet transfer

Leak night, Emptiness

Today is one of those days I want to just sit outside in the dark. To see all and be seen by none. The negative pressure of no eyes lets me expand and impinge upon the atmosphere,  push back the stars as they prick me like thorns, freckling my body with pores that leak night. The chill of the solid ground melds into me as I surrender, willingly, my enthalpy to this need to be not one, but all and none.

Acrylic and oil based paint

And now is when the lids get heavy and the emptiness sinks in. The cold glazes my eyes' gazes. And the pressure is so great, that I am infinitely small, remaining empty as a black hole unable to be sated. Stars dust and satellites lose their way in me never to be seen again. And this emptiness aches in every cold stiff joint -metallic robotic and dull. Sinking further still, I freeze at the core. Only my eyes feel the sting of all that they're missing.

Ink

Eyes, Lex III

Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.  -Sir Isaac Newton Law III: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.

Ink

Bridge, 37 Wall, All the love

The Brooklyn Bridge

Ink, watercolor and white colored pencil

this one didn't scan or photograph too well.

Acrylic, ink, watercolor

All The Love in the World -Nine Inch Nails

Watching all the insects march along, seem to know just where they belong. Smears of face reflecting in the chrome. Hiding in the crowd I'm all alone. No one's heard a single word I've said, they don't sound as good outside my head. It looks as though the past is here to stay, I've become a million miles a--. All the jagged edges disappear, colors all look brighter when you're near. The stars are all afire in the sky, sometimes I get so lonely I could... Why do you get all the love in the world? Why do you get all the love?

Ink and watercolor

My record year for rainfall

Perpetual rain machine

Ink and watercolor

Pom a grenade

the actual color is a cross between these two. for some reason this one scanned and photographed very awkwardly.

Acrylic, ink and watercolor