Yes. I havent touched a bow or arrow, probably since I was a summer camp counselor, 12 years ago? And I didn’t shoot arrows as much as try to prevent my campers from shooting other campers in the face during their archery class. I didn’t learn much, so much as act like a bouncer for a group of 7 year olds, who made sure that noone ended up with an arrow through the face for 40 minutes twice a week. Before that my only experience with bows an arrows was when I was 7 or so, and a camper at a sports focused summer camp. During which I dont remember shooting tagets with arrows, but rather how I narrowly avoided shooting my archery instructor as well as my fellow campers. So yeah. I don’t really know what the hell to do when I pick up a bow and arrow, i mostly just know what not to do.

So, I walk past this carnival booth, where you get 6 arrows (probably dull and totally not straight) to try to break 4 balloons at a target 20 or 30 feet away. This sounded slightly dangerous, the regulations seemed really loose, and the girl working the booth seemed totally bored and uninterested in policing us goofing around, so Bam! a 30 by 30 adventure just popped into my life. Devon and I slap some euros down & I go first……

I have no clue what I’m doing…. I was aiming in the right direction at least….. But I think I originally(before this first picture was taken) had the bow turned around or something…It was a shit show. After some helpful pointers from Devon as well as the booth girl, I was good to go!

Elbow up looks way better…. And Honestly for it being a rigged carnival game, and the first time that I’ve actually shot a bow & arrow since I was 7, I think I did pretty well, and shot 1 out of the 4 balloons on the target. And no innocent bystanders, which I consider to be my greatest achievement…. And I got a stuffed tiger!!!!

Poor Devon, the boy from Vermont (who basically spent his entire youth filled with target practices of all types and styles) popped 3 out of 4 balloons, but didn’t do well enough to get his own stuffed animal… Bummer. Must be hard to deal with having such a talented wife who excels at everything and always wins the awesome prizes at carnival games.  (Thanks babe!)

Alrighty, 13 of 30 Completed!!!!

Luckily my big bro, Seth is a super awesome chef, who is totally experienced at this sort of thing. I provide a kitchen and raw ingredients, and he teaches me how to make magic happen. First things first. You gotta have a huge fricking hunk of meat. We went with a cut of brisket. Brisket is perfect for this type of cooking. Generally pretty tough, but breaks down nicely when braised. Lots of fat (FLAVOR!!!) and one of the most reasonably priced cuts of meat out there (without getting into the freaky-deaky offals).

Season liberally with salt and pepper. Then sear the meat on a super hot nonstick pan until crisp and golden brown on the outsides.

You’ll know that you’re doing it right when you smoke out your kitchen and make the smoke detector in your kitchen start screaching. (FYI: its at this point when your kitchen will start smelling like “OMFG beefy-delicious get-in-my-face-now!!!”)

After the meat is done being seared on both sides, take them off the heat to let them rest. In the same cooking pan start sauteeing a mixture of mirepoix. Then throw in some fresh chopped herbs, like rosemary, parsley, bay leaves, etc…

Then add some red wine and a bunch of of beef stock, and add back in the seared brisket. Pour yourself a glass of wine (because not only is it crucial to the cooking process, but also -hey!- you deserve it!) and pose for a picture.

Bring meat to a low simmer and then throw it in the oven for an hour or 2. Drink more wine. When you take it out of the oven it should look like this:

Take out about half of the liquid, and boil it down in a sauce pan (as shown). Try to reduce it by about half. Let the meat rest, but always keep it in the cooking liquid and veggies, because the beef will get dry out and get tough if its not kept happy in liquid. While you’re boiling down the sauce, you can roast an assortment of root veggies in the oven, and whip up some blue cheese mashed potatoes. You know, easy peasy. And slice up the brisket, slicing against the grain, and of course returning the meat to the cooking liquid to keep it moist and happy.

Put a pile of mashed ‘taters on a plate, top with a few sliced of the braised beef, throw on some roasted root veggies, and sauce liberally with some of the reduced juices, sprinkle some fresh herbs on top and BAM!!! The delicious, delicious result!

I ate so much that night, it was just obscene. But oh man, was this one of the best meals of my life, and now I (and you!) know how to recreate this magical meal of beefy goodness!

You can tell from my hair color (that has changed about 4 times since these pictures), that this all took place a few months ago.  But it’s still winter, and a fantastic time to make a great warm filling meal like this. Thanks to my big bro for just being awesome in general, and also, for being a really super chef, and sharing a few tricks of the trade with me.

12 of 30 completed!

From a very young age I was super particular about the clothing that I wanted to wear, much to the chagrin of my mom-dukes. Mini-skirts, faux fur jackets and anything with sequins is my idea of a dream outfit. I’m wicked into the costume aspect of clothing. I’m not really a huge fan of Lady Gaga, but I’m all about the idea of wearing costumes for daily wear. In the past my friends have enjoyed shopping in my closet for Halloween costumes. For a hot minute I was a fashion major during my time at Mass College of Art.

I’ve never really had a huge classic designer fashion affinity, but, I always dig watching runways shows and whatnot. I’ve always thought that it would be totally awesome to be a runway model.  People cheering as you prance in the limelight? That sounds pretty cool, right? I mean, I’m not particularly proud of that, but whatever. And then one day stuff randomly started falling into place. Through Facebook, I came across an open casting for a fashion show called Catwalk for a Cure that would be taking place at the State Room.  I figured at the very least, it would be fun and get me out of my comfort zone. I arrive and there’s about 200 other ladies auditioning. I turn in my application and head shot, get my photo and measurements taken, meet the Catwalk for a Cure  organizers and do a little runway strut for them. They say they’ll call me if they’re interested. Ok….. After about a month, I figure that they’ve passed on me, and almost a month later, I get an email on  my 29th birthday saying that they’ve chosen me along with about 20 other women.. Holy crap! Out of 200! What an ego boost when I was bumming about entering my last year of my wild and crazy 20s. Some time goes by, and I do a fitting with my designer, which is cool to meet her and some other models. See what I’ll be wearing and what one of the collections look like.

On October 13th (I know, I’m still really behind in updating!!!) I show up for hair and makeup before the show and am assigned to a hair team from Dellaria Salons. My team was the alterna team or something because they had the most tattoos and piercings and were rocking the skinny jeans, and they were psyched to be doing hair for “the pink haired chick”. They were awesome and made me look like a million bucks! Thanks guys!! (The picture on the right was taken by fellow model Jill, who was super nice & friendly! Click on the pic to make it bigger.)

The  venue, The State Room in Boston was absolutely gorgeous. The venue is huge. 2 Stories of open space on the 33rd floor of a building in the middle of downtown. The windows are floor to ceiling and you have an amazing view of the city and the harbor. Big space. Lots of people….

Luckily all my immediate family had come out, as well as a bunch of my close friends, so I was feeling the madd love which made me less nervous. The models were able to practice a run-through, which also helped, but I was still a pretty jittery… The fashion show go-ers were seated after a delicious sounding cocktail hour. The models lined up, and then the music started and after a few moments I standing on the platform, making my way down the runway. It’s weird. I was super nervous before hand. But as soon as the spotlight hit, I had to do my thing. Fight or flight, baby. And then I heard my people cheering me on, and that was totally awesome and amazing and I love them so much for that. They always know how to make a scene. I had to do them proud, so I worked it as best as I knew how, lol. Here’s my “blue steel”.

I made it to the end of the runway, did my spiffy model turn, and then walked back to the start and stepped off… And then I had to do that 2 more times. So yeah. It was pretty awesome. A bunch of fun. A huge burst of adrenaline. And the event was a benefit for a great charity: The Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer education and research group. No wonder they didn’t ask me to change my hair color.

My friends and family had a great time, I was super happy to be part of such a great event! Although I am bummed to have missed out on the free samples from Pinkberry, one of the sponsors for the event.

Hopefully I’ll get the chance to work with Catwalk for a Cure again!

11 of 30 Completed!

This year my parents totally spoiled us & decided to take us to South Africa for our family vacation as our Birthday and Christmas presents for the next 127 years.. . I guess the nomadic thing kinda runs in the family. My parents visited the country last year, had a totally amazing time and thought that we would love it as well. Luckily I’m related to these awesome generous people so I was in for the trip of a lifetime!

So in September (I know I’m WAY behind in updating this blog) after about 36 hours of air travel, layovers in multiple countries, and car travel, we ended up in a swanky guest house in Marloth Park on the Southern edge of Kruger National Park, and Northeast-ish region of the country.We stayed in an awesome house/lodge? called Kahya Umdami that was owned by some super friendly people from Cape Town. There was a ton of wildlife that roamed the area & could come around looking for handouts. Guinea fowl (who looked like they would make delicious hot wings!), kudu (only try to feed the young ones, fyi) ,warthogs (omg, so cute!!!), giraffes, bushbabies (the itty-bitty tweaked-out speed freaks of the animal kingdom), hoards of banded mongeese, and tons of crazy looking colorful birds were just some of our regular visitors.

Luckily we had brought a huge crate of fresh papaya or papaw, so the critters loved us, and we got to hand feed a ton of warthogs and kudu. I actually ended up with the nickname Angelina Jolie for threatening to smuggle/adopt half of the visiting warthogs.

In the mornings we’d wake up pre-dawn, so we could begin our game drives in Kruger around sunrise and hopefully check out animals while they were at their most active and looking for breakfast. We did 2 game drives that basically last from 6am to 4pm with a few stops for breakfast and lunch. But you’re basically spending a super long day in big open air jeep scanning the horizon and trees and brush for small as well as large animals that are generally some perfectly camouflaged  shade of  brown. Your eyes start to play tricks on you after a while. Sometimes it takes you a while to realize that there are HUGE critter only a couple of yards from you. Many times it took me a while to spot giraffes, because they were literally the size of trees. In a concrete zoo in the states these animals look super bright, colorful and huge. In the African bush the same animals blend into the landscape perfectly.

We were very lucky during our game drives and saw so many different types of wildlife, including “the Big Five“. Some visitors to Kruger stay for a week and never see all of the big 5, but we were lucky to see tons of elephants, a bunch of white rhinos and a handful of black ones, tons of cape buffalo, lots of female lions, and two leopards.

We also saw lots of critter families, including a nervous white rhino mama and her super cute baby who wanted to cross the road and finally got the chance, 2 boy cheetahs just chillin on a park sign for a brief rest. A family of baboons. Many dazzles of zebra, lots of monkeys of various types and sizes, crocodiles and hippos sunning themselves next to one another at the watering hole, lots of various deer-like critters who are at the lower end of the food chain such as: kudu, impala, water bucks, dik-dik, etc….

We also went on a walking safari where they drive you out deep into the bush. The park rangers give you a super intense speech about how dangerous it is when you leave the jeep, how everything can and will kill you. How you should not speak at all, and to follow their instructions to the letter when they tell you to do something, and failure to do so will result in getting torn apart by a black rhino. Then you get out of the truck & walk out into the wilderness. We tromped around for about 3 hours until we tracked down a rhino, took some pictures until it noticed us and then we got the hell outta there. That was pretty awesome….

I had spend the morning all jazzed up that I would be eaten by something huge and didn’t really realize until the next day that there are boatloads of super poisonous snakes that I probably should have been keeping an eye out for as well… My favorite poisonous South African snake would have to be the Puff Adder, which I kept calling the Steven Adler. They are cute little buggers. So cute & little that they look like harmless little strips of plastic when they are babies. Luckily when we came across one on our final morning, our host was in-the-know and pointed it out to us, allowing us to give it a VERY wide berth, as well as made us paranoid for the rest of the trip.

Check out all of the pictures from my trip: HERE.

What a totally amazing trip! I would love to go back to South Africa some day and experience more of that beautiful country. I’d love to check out the Zef flow coming out of Cape Town. Travel down to Durban and check out the surf (and shark!) situation. Follow my roots back to the Cradle of Humankind. I’mma keep my fingers crossed, and hope for something to pop up that will allow me to return someday.

10 of 30 Completed!

We layed on the beach a TON. We also checked out El Murro in old San Juan, hiked through El Yunque to swim in La Mina waterfall, and I took a surf lesson in water warm enough so I didn’t have to wear a full wetsuit.

Click on the pic to check out the entire photo gallery.