Dishwashers, food porn, and a giveway

Hello darlins!

Today is going to be a VERY loaded post. If you are feeling the least bit tired please do yourself a favor and grab a cup of coffee. I don't want anyone falling asleep at their computer on account of me!

In order to keep this post under control I'm going to utilize a common organization method used with great success in hundreds of thousands of classrooms across the globe. I'm going to organize this mini book of a post into chapters.

Refer to the following table of contents should you desire to read the post selectively. Or just ignore it and scroll down to the good part.

1. Cruel Fate
2. Curly Land Happenings
3. Jess Likes it Hot
4. Food Porn
5. Chew Review
6. Another Redesign Giveaway

Alright. Here goes.

1. Cruel Fate

Lady luck must not be overly fond of my dishwasher because I ended up having to swallow my pride Friday night after I realized that I had piled the bowls so high the door could not close. Had I been so inclined, I probably could have washed 20 or so bowls by hand and still won the bet... but hand washing dishes beats out emptying the dishwasher on the scale of menial labor and so I caved. Needless to say, Little E is more than pleased this morning.

2. Happenings in Curly Land



The last few weeks have featured many beach trips with my girlies. No worries! I've been applying all of my sunscreen myself. ;P

I've also been working on my final for photography class. We were assigned to shoot a narrative depicting a pursuit (a gloriously open-ended assignment if you ask me!). Being an enormous fan of the Disney Dream series shot by Annie Leibovitz so I decided to turn the equation upside down. My series is titled "The Pursuit of Happily Never After". It features different fairy tale characters personifying different mental and physical addictions. The pursuit of perfection rarely has a happy ending girls...



Alice in Wonderland appears to have a taste for the drink.




and Sleeping Beauty? Well, it's safe to say those pills ensured she is headed into the land of eternal rest from which no prince's kiss will awaken her.

I can't begin to describe the laughs on set as we shot these. Telling a giggling 19-year-old to channel her inner supermodel and pose as an overdosed Disney princess can be a rather humorous process, but, in all seriousness, I really love the way these came out. They really captured the mood and message I wanted to convey.

I used a 17mm wide-angle lens I checked out from the school for this project and I'm not overly happy with the way it worked. I wanted a bit of the distortion that comes with such a wide angle, but I wasn't counting on the amount of blur that came with it... Oh well. That's what re-shoots are for right?

3. Jess Likes it Hot



Remember my blog redesign giveaway? Well after lots of hard work and four redesigns I came up with an idea that we both love. Head on over to Jess Likes it Hot to see the result in action sometime in the next few days and then let me know what you think below.

3. I realized I had tons and tons of built up pictures stored up on my camera. I thought I'd unburden myself and my hard drive and throw them all up in no particular order.



(One of this week's edible containers: butternut squash stuffed with a homemade black bean burger and chopped bell peppers and served with avocado toast.)



(Kashi Waffles with stevia sweetened syrup,egg whites, and a peach.)



(Tofu pudding, sweet potato, and a spinach salad topped with kiwi, strawberries, and balsamic vinegar.)


4. Chew Review

I am currently working on a new website, Chew Review, that will offer reviews of products, blogger recipes, and restaurants. It's still under construction, but you can get a pretty good idea of what's going on here. I'd like to eventually have a huge searchable database of blogger written reviews and recipes. Each post will link directly back to your blog and should generate a good bit of new traffic once we get going.

One of the really cool things it will offer is the ability to post a recipe and have other bloggers add notes and reviews of that recipe in the comments (similar to allrecipes). I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten where I saw that delicious looking recipe when I was blog-reading or wanted to let people know that I subbed agave for the stevia in a recipe and it turned out AMAZING. With this searchable site it will hopefully make everyone's lives a whole heck of a lot easier and yummier!

The product reviews will be really nice as well. Take Amazing Grass for example--sure it's great to read the reviews of one person, but what if that review was linked to 10 OTHER people's reviews + comments for non-bloggers? Suddenly you can get more than one opinion at once.


Being a staff member of Chew Review should take little to no time. One of the best parts of the site is that it's designed to be a really easy way for you to draw traffic to your own blog. Anytime you write a review for your own blog, go ahead and add it to CR as well. Anytime you think up a brilliant new recipe add it to CR. You deserve 2x the recognition for all of your hard work! If any of you are interested, please let me know or simply submit a recipe or review on the site.

5. Giveaway

In light of the new addition to the Curly Top family, my next blog redesign giveaway (New to Curly Top? Check out the redesign I did for Shelby of La Belle Vegan) will be run through Chew Review. To be eligible for this month's giveaway you have two options:

Option A.

Sign up to be a follower of the Chew Review site to receive a daily dose of the very best recipes and reviews from all of blogland. Just let me know you've done so here in the comments section. (1 pt)

Option B.

Submit a recipe or review of your own to Chew Review. I'll award 1 pt for every review or recipe uploaded.

At the end of two weeks I'll tally up the points and announce a winner!

6. The Future of Curly Top

This is where the not so fun part of the post comes in. I've been getting some really nasty anonymous e-mails in the last few days that have stung quite a bit. I started Curly Top as a way to share my love of food and art with anyone who wants to enjoy it and the personal attacks are really, very hurtful. I really try to put on a happy face with each and every post, but I am a real person, with real feelings, and it makes me very sad that anyone would feel the need to share their great dislike of Curly Top and my personage with me in such a mean way...

In addition, with a mere 50 days until I head almost 3000 miles across the country to commence my RISD education, life in Curlyland is getting more and more hectic. Between finals, working at Barnes and Noble, planning for RISD, shopping for RISD, packing for RISD, worrying about RISD, and consoling Curly Mama over the upcoming loss of her firstborn child, I'm finding less and less time to devote to blogging.

After a long, heart to heart with the folks, I've decided to keep Curly Top to one or two HUGE posts a week to free up a bit more time to enjoy my last few weeks at home. I could never stop blogging completely, but I really need to spend some quality time with my friends and family right now. It's a pretty big move for this little curly personage and I don't want to cheat myself out of anything right now.

I wish I could say this is going to change once I get to school, but with classes from 8am-5/6pm + HOURS of homework every night, the schedule will probably remain the same.

If you maintained your sanity throughout this entire post you deserve an amazing attentiveness award.

I love you all and I hope you understand.

With Love,

Emily