Happy Thanksgiving~

Midtone Monday

I made it to both figure drawing classes this week! Sounds crazy, but that is a pretty big deal for me. I don't know why I don't make it more often—I feel so good when I've been to class, even if I don't end up with a good drawing, as was the case today. Oh, well, sometimes I have my off days. Monday, though, we had Jenny (see above) and I love this model. I especially love this silk hydrangea half-hat she's worn to class before that I don't think I would have the guts to wear, but still half hope to find during my 2nd-hand-store crawls. Anyways, this drawing didn't really photograph well. I don't think I know how to photograph ANY of my drawings—look how blue the white paper always ends up—but that's not to say the disappointing end results are not my own fault; I do the kind of drawings that have great detail and line up close...but are low on impact from far away. Still working on that. In the meantime, zoom in please. :]

Afternoon Tea

I went to afternoon tea yesterday with N, my bestie from high school, and of course yesterday was THE worst of the recent rainy days. Ugh, I knEw I should've worn my rainboots, but of course I wanted to wear my recently favorite outfit which required my mouse shoes. Which were completely soaked by the time I got home—I mean there were rivers in the streets. Well, as much as a city built on hills can, I guess.

So there are no pictures from the tea that I took personally, but the one above is from the official Crown & Crumpet website. How cute is that. I'd been to Lovejoy's before, but that one was like...musty Victorian dollhouse and fun to go to once...but maybe not again. Crown & Crumpet was lots more modern and less scary, and even though I've been wearing a lot of black and other grown-up colors lately, I'm still a girly girl at heart, so this Cath Kidston-themed tea room was totally my thing. Though I think I was the bigger fan of the two of us...In fact, I don't think N is even a tea person! We sat at the table where you can only see that one chair on the very far right. That was my chair. :]

We got the Tea for Two, which means we each got our own pot of whatever tea and then a three-tiered tray of sandwiches, scones, crumpets, etc. The teapots they have are custom-made clever little things: You can hoist the leaves out of the water when the tea is done brewing without having to look for somewhere to put the mesh ball. Why aren't there more teapots like this? They actually sell them in their little shop, but I got this instead:


Cat pencil not included! Ha, that is one of my childhood pencils that I recently rediscovered. So this is a Cath-Kidston print tea-and-saucer-slash-plate set. The picture was taken back at my house later that night—I had a private midnight tea as well—with the leftovers from that afternoon that N had kindly let me have. I really should wear a tiara on my head sometimes.

Like a close-up shot was necessary, but here you go anyways. The lighting makes everything look kind of weird, but it's been grey and dark out all weekend so a picture this morning would've been pointless anyways. I was sad because the fruit tart was soggy by the time I got around to it, and fruit tarts are my favorite. The Halloween cupcake was surprisingly good—hard icing! Soft frosting = bad. One thing that was kind of weird was that they called what we got "Tea for TWO," but some of the things came in odd numbers. Like there were THREE scones. And there was only one each of the more interesting finger sandwiches. And like that tart was the only one. Stuff like that. I felt like everything should've been divisible by two. Good thing N is not as needy an eater.

What else. I did not get a parking ticket even though we went over the 2-hour limit on the street. I mean they validate the first 1 and a half hours at the garage, but we always spend so long talking and eating and the garage is $2.50/20 minutes so it would've been expensive anyways. And I was going to show you a picture of the only other Cath Kidston thing I have, which is this recipe binder that's SO cute. But sadly yet unsurprisingly empty of any recipes at all. And it just would've been another incandescently-lit picture anyways, so I'll just leave this here for now.