I made a pineapple upside-down cake.

It was really delicious. I used this recipe. The only changes I made were to eliminate the cherries, which would have been prettier, but I don't love them and didn't want to buy a whole jar knowing I would never use the rest. I also added a teaspoon of vanilla to the batter because vanilla is good, and I was surprised that it didn't call for it.

Sorry about that jumble below, I will have to fix that tonight for you so you can see the movie. Apparently, you can’t do any fancy HTML stuff from the phone.

In the meantime, how about some pretty new wallpaper for your desktop? I love changing my wallpaper regularly, and Smashing magazine is one of my favorite sources for fun and creative wallpapers. I also love the new monthly wallpapers at Design*Sponge, and just downloaded this month’s version in blue with the calendar. What about you? Do you have a favorite?

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/09/ds-desktop-wallpaper-for-september-lena-corwin.html

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/31/desktop-wallpaper-calendars-for-september-2009/

I’m on a mini blog vacation, but I’ll pop in now and then with the occasional picture or other item to share, starting with this little tilt-shift movie. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Helpless from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

You know what I love to eat? Appetizers! Not like the giant appetizer sampler plates with the fried cheese, buffalo wings, fried zucchini, fried mushrooms and a big, ole fried onion blossom. I like little tidbits of this and that. Tapas is (are?) one of my favorite ways to eat. I love Café Seville in the Gaslamp district of San Diego, but I don't get to go there often enough.

Last week, Mr. HeyLucy brought home the food section of the paper, because he liked the looks of some recipes in an article about skillet suppers (from this cookbook, which I now think I might need to get). I made the baked ziti, and it was, indeed, quite tasty. When I saw the recipe for Spanish-style garlic shrimp, I knew I had to try making some tapas this weekend.

My extensive research consisted of googling "tapas", which led me to this site. I decided to try this, this, and this.

It might look like a lot of work, but it wasn't too bad, really. I boiled half a dozen eggs while cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast, and then made the stuffed tomatoes. They were a little labor-intensive, since you have to peel and hollow out the tomatoes, but not difficult. I think I'd like to find a different stuffing recipe, because this was just a very plain egg salad. Not too exciting, but not bad.

Next was the potato salad, and I saved time by using teeny tiny potatoes that I've been buying from Trader Joe's lately. I think they're Yukon Gold potatoes, and they really are tiny, at about an inch in diameter, and they are so delicious. They are almost creamy when you cook them, and don't need any butter at all. For the salad, I just cut them in half to cook. I'm not crazy about anchovies, so I skipped the anchovy-stuffed olives and just used some big green olives. I also forgot that we were out of Dijon mustard, so I used some hot-sweet mustard instead. It was so delicious, I may have to use this as my standard potato salad recipe from now on. Not only delicious, it was so pretty too:

The mushrooms on toast was just about the easiest thing ever, and I just used store-bought mayonaise. I'd love to try it with homemade aioli sometime. Either way, I think you should make some this week. I already feel a craving coming on.

I'm having some leftover potato salad for lunch.

Yesterday I spent the day at the home of my friends Naz and Adam. Cary was there too, taking a much needed break from working hard on the road. Naz took Cary and I to her favorite massage place and we had a little pampering. I went for a little swim, and we cooked a delicious dinner. I hope you have a friend like Naz in your life. Everyone needs one.

Tonight I'm making sorrel soup, for the second time. It's going to be especially nice because I harvested a few Yukon Gold potatoes from my garden.

I think one of my little hens might have laid her first egg. There was a small, pretty grey-green egg in the coop today.

Is it silly to make accessories for my iPhone? I really will stop talking about it soon, but I thought I'd share one more little project. I may be teased for this, but it's really quite handy and also cute, so I will subject myself to the possibility of mockery. Say you want to watch something longer than your typical youtube video on your iPhone, like The Swell Season Tiny Desk Concert on NPR, for example. It isn't always very practical to have to hold onto your phone for 20 or 30 minutes. Especially if you are eating your lunch or knitting while enjoying the show.  I am not the first person to want a stand, and there are dozens of great ideas out there. I decided to coordinate with the pouch I made for my cords, and made a little beanbag chair for my phone:

It works just about anywhere, and took all of maybe five minutes to make. I used fabric I already had and half a bag of split peas from the cupboard, so even the cost was negligible.

Here's the quick how-to, should you realize that you, too, need a beanbag for your phone. Which I'm pretty sure you do.

Cut a 10" x 5" rectangle of fabric. Fold the fabric in half (right sides together), and sew the short edges. Sew one of the adjacent edges. For bonus cuteness, sew a little ribbon tab into one of the seams. You should have one open edge. Mark the middle of that edge, and bring the short edge seam to meet it. Sew, leaving a couple inches open for turnng and stuffing. Turn right side out, and press as best you can. Use a paper funnel, fill with beans or peas or rice. I used around half a one pound bag. It should be about 2/3 full. Stitch shut the rest of the opening sturdily by hand, and there you are!

I've been trying out some camera apps on my phone. I used one called Polarize for the picture above. Here's a nice list of free photography apps. I can't carry my big camera around with me every day, so I really want to be able to take some decent shots with my phone. It's fun to be able to upload them almost instantly, and now that I've got some fun apps for editing them, I'll be taking more and more.

It seems that every year around this time I get a little lackadaisical about blogging. I guess we all need a break now and then. It was a bit of a stressful week, since I had to spend a few days with my mother-in-law, but yesterday I engaged in a little fabric therapy, and worked on one of my current quilt projects. I feel much better now.

I thought I had made 204 three-piece triangles (200 and 4! that's a lot of triangles!), but I seem to be short a few. My wall is not quite big enough for the entire quilt, so the bottom three rows are on the floor. By the end of the day I was getting a little confused, so I decided to take a little break, and I think I'll start sewing rows together next weekend.

Meanwhile, it was time for a little iPhone accessorizing. I needed a small pouch for my charger and earphones, so I whipped up this little number, and I think it will be quite useful. The one complaint I have about my phone is that the battery charge doesn't last long at all, so I feel like I need to keep the charger with me at all times. Oh, wait, two complaints, the earphones are terribly uncomfortable, I need to get a new pair, preferably with a microphone.  Especially since I downloaded a couple sleep apps (SleepStream, Ambiance, and Sleep Machine Lite). I have the free versions, so when I decide which one I like best, I might just splurge for the paid version. It saved my from having to listen to a basset hound barking all night last week, which probably also saved the basset hound's life. Instead I listened to Tea Garden windchimes layered with a light rainfall, and drifted right off. Lovely!Do you iPhone users out there have any favorite apps to recommend? I'd love to hear about them!

Back to the pouch. I got the little clasp from the jewelry section of the craft store. I think it's for making a key ring. I would have preferred that the round hook be a small D-ring, but it works well enough as is. I made the lining a tiny bit longer so it was like a bit of piping around the edge. Of course I had to do a little applique on the back, just for fun.

Despite the fact that I may be blogging less this month, I am starting to get the hang of this twitter thing, so feel free to follow me, if you'd like. I'm not super interesting, but I'm working on it. That's another thing I love about my iPhone, I can tweet anytime, from anywhere! Blogging is a little harder, I am working on my phone camera skills and my phone typing skills.