My hairdresser Stanley wrote a cookbook. Yes, he does hair AND food. I’ve had the cookbook for a year but this is the first recipe I got around to trying. It turned out super moist, but like he says in the book, it is better to serve one day after making for texture and taste. Well I actually think even 2 days is best.

The recipe was simple, I only had two obstacles! The first was my zesting! I don’t know my own zesting strength and always over-zest. But it tastes perfect in the cheesecake.
Um, thats WAY too much zest right?! OOPS.

The second was measuring 12 ounces of cream cheese. Ok, so the packs come in 8. This means I buy two 8-ounce packs. Then I cut one in half.
But is that half?! Which one is more half?! I had to Sophie’s Choice this one.

Lime Cheesecake
(adapted from Completely Delicious by Stanley Penner)

first layer:
1 graham cracker crust pie shell (9 inch)
12 ounces of cream cheese (he recommended for easier blending, warming in the oven for 5 minutes)
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of one lime
2 tb fresh lime juice
dash of sea salt

second layer:
12 ounces sour cream
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325°. Blend the warmed cream cheese and sugar in a bowl with a fork. Add one egg and blend. Add second egg and blend again. Blend until smooth.

Add vanilla, lime zest, lime juice, and salt. Blend with a spoon.

Pour mixture into the pie shell and bake in the center rack for 30-35 minutes. When the outer edge of the cheesecake starts to split, it’s done.

While that’s baking, prepare the second layer. Blend sour cream, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and set aside.

Remove cream cheese pie from oven and pour the sour cream layer on top. Start pouring in the center and spread about in a circular motion with a spatula.

Continue to bake for 10 minutes more. Remove from oven, let cool, and then cover before refrigerating. Definitely wait a day or two for eating.

What’d you do today? Spray paint all of your office supplies? Yeah, me neither. Yes I did.

How dare these objects be so useful and take up so much space on our desks but usually look so ugly! In theory, I’d like to buy some nice vintage ones like this, but there are like 5,000 other things I’d like to buy on etsy, so spray paint works. I wanted to mix things up and spray some white, some gold, but Gideon refused the gold as usual. So I decided my tape dispenser would be the lone gold.

Jeez! Taping these things up is a pain in the assssss.

The real show-stopper.

OMG White.

And VOILA. Our desks are 20% nicer to look at now!

My best friend started redecorated her bedroom and abruptly stopped after she painted the walls and thought she made a mistake with the color (which I recommended – oops!). Here is my plan for what she can do to spruce up her room and love it again.
1. “what’s up tiger lily” vintage movie poster / 2. hemnes dresser / 3. venetian mirror / 4. vintage floor lamp / 5. ruffle duvet cover / 6. ikat silk pillow / 7. flamingos throw pillow / paint : solitude by behr

When we first moved in, the office was definitely the afterthought. As you can see from the before picture. It was a mess. And quite yellow!

Since then, we replaced our huge eyesore expedit shelf (the first thing you saw when you walked in was a huge black thing. Ugh.) with another… expedit, we switched rugs, got 2 matching pillows, hung a Confetti System garland (christmas gift from boyfriend slash me winning the fight for it), and the worst task of all… cleaned up. A little. The room came out super colorful, unlike the rest of our house. Gideon wanted to get the rug in the baby blue color instead of grey. It arrived way more saturated than photographed on the site. I tried bleaching it twice, but it didn’t really fade it anymore. I think grey would have been a better choice.

We also organized the hell out of the closet. That right there is prior to shelving being put up.

Woo! ORGANIZED! Just don’t look up or down.

Here’s the wall next to my side of desks. Yes, we have tandem desks. Hanging are mementos of trips (The Parker Palm Springs map, a Luau photo, the menu from our dinner from Chez Panisse, AND my beautiful love art from age 6!)

And our little sitting nook. Yes, we always keep those blinds closed. We live in the streets of Hollywood.

What’s that? You don’t have huge oversized fawns hanging in your house? How weird!

So it’s probably not the first thing I’d hang in our office, basically taking up the entire wall, but look how it is underneath!

This tapestry from Urban Outfitters was our cheapest and easiest option for now but it’s not really working for me. No idea why you wouldn’t want a wall sized photograph of fawns. We’re trying to figure out our options for covering the door and we don’t want to spend much doing it. 

chalkboard. We could buy a large piece of plywood and paint it with chalkboard paint. But then we have to buy some kind of huge frame and yada yada.

a memo board. We could buy Homasote and cover in fabric… Gideon thinks this is too girly.

vintage american flag. Since Photoshop doesn’t make things to size for me, I have no idea if and where you can buy a huge vintage flag, but I’m guessing ebay.

oversized antiqued mirror. I found this tutorial on how to do it with mirror panels, which given the size would probably be the easiest way to handle DIYing this bad boy.

UGH!

See how we covered the door in our living room.

Have you been to Supper in the East Village in NYC? Well then, have you tried their lemon pasta? It’s incredible. We’ve been missing it and dreaming of a future trip to New York for some. A few weeks ago, I tried making a meyer lemon pasta and maybe the meyer lemons in our fridge were too old and bitter or maybe I just screwed it up, but it was SOUR. And gross.

Then I found this recipe from Made by Michelle. It totally satisfied our craving!

It looks like just a simple pasta dish and makes me appreciate the subtle elegance of Supper’s version even more. We ate it straight up, and roasted some brussels sprouts and broccolini for our side.

We tossed the vegetables (individually) in oil, kosher salt, cracked pepper, and greek seasoning. Roasted them at 400° for 20 minutes, tossing halfway through.

Really doesn’t look like much, huh? I was a little worried it came out too creamy. It probably did, but it was delicious regardless.

Spaghetti al Limone
Salt
1 pound fresh spaghetti
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
1 medium shallot, minced (about 3 tablespoons)
¼ cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest and ¼ cup of fresh lemon juice
½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil leaves.

Bring salted water to boil in a Dutch oven over high heat. Add the pasta, stirring frequently, until al dente. Reserve 1 ¾ cups cooking water, drain pasta into colander and set aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in the empty Dutch oven over medium heat until simmering. Add shallot and ½ teaspoon salt; cook until shallot is softened, about 2 minutes. Whisk in 1 ½ cups of the reserved pasta cooking water and cream into pot; bring to a simmer and cook for 2 minutes. Remove pot from heat, return pasta and stir until coated. Stir in remaining 3 tablespoons of oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, cheese, and ½ teaspoon pepper. I used a ton more pepper (as I tend to do).

Cover and let pasta stand for 2 minutes, tossing frequestly and adjusting consistency with remaining ¼ cup reserved pasta water if necessary. It wasn’t for me. Stir in basil and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

One of the many quirks of our house was the doorway going from the main room to the second bedroom, which we use for an office.

We really didn’t have another option of where to set up our living room besides putting the sofa right in front of the door. Therefore, we had the pleasure of having to tackle covering up a large door (with gnarly molding). Twice!

Our door in the living room sat awkwardly behind our small-scale sofa. We spent weeks brainstorming and finally decided to get a large scale stretched canvas (70x. We removed the molding and stored it in the garage (we rent.)

Had we used an unstretched canvas like this, I think we would have had an easier time driving it home.

via

Yuck. We hung the canvas and left it white for months before finding the time to do a collaborative painting.

It only took us a day to throw the painting together. I did the sky, my boyfriend Gideon did the iceberg.

And the door is gone! Well, the first door we had to worry about.