What Katie Ate : I absolutely love the pictures this lady takes and not just because they are mouth watering-ly amazing .... which they are! Ok maybe this vegan thing has really gone to my head but I mean just look at that chocolate! yum yum!

I got this great idea a couple of days ago that I was going to paint my room! So I went online and found these paper lantern stencils that I really liked, but of course I didn't want to pay the 50 euros for the stencil, so naturally I took it upon my self to make my own! Here is how it turned out: 

The stencils!

Stencils ready for the paint!

   Not the final work, but getting there!

                                                           Yes I DID actually paint!                                      

Microwave Thai

We found these amazing little takeout boxes of Thai food at the german grocery store here! Pretty much all you have to do is open the pack of noodles then add the sauce from the package and put it in the microwave for 2-3 min.- easy as that! Now its not the best Thai food in the world but its pretty much the only Thai food we can get here so we're gonna stock up! And they come with fortune cookies now who doesn't like that!

A vegan Way of Life

Recently ( two weeks ago) I joined the ways of the vegan lifestyle! I have often been curious about being vegan and what that would entail. I must admit that from time to time I had thought it to be a totally wasted effort, I mean why would you knowingly (and with full control of your brain) not eat anything that comes from animals... just think of life without cheese. Yet here I am two weeks into it, no meat,cheese,milk,yogurt, eggs...etc! Its been quite a healthy trip so far! I've been eating lots of vegetables and fruit and finding out about the amazing powers of quinoa and other funky beans and roots! Not to mention eating a good dose of PB&J's. It's a little tricky doing the vegan thing here in Italy with the Italians not able to grasp their minds around the idea of vegetarian let alone vegan seeing as most of there diet in based on meat and dairy. Who knows how long I'll stick with it or if I'll become vegetarian or just go back to being a carnivore! But for now I'm still inspired to eat healthy plant-based meals!

Look out for the Lost Ducks in NY

I saw these signs while I was looking at the blog Global Graphica, I went to go look them up and found out that apparently these funny 'Lost Duck' posters have been put up all over new york  by a mystery person!

Than I found this hilarious site called Duck Show featuring the many rubber ducks of the world dressed up and showing off on the streets in New York.

Popovers with Raspberry butter and the Beach

Ever had one of those days when you wake up and you’re sitting down in front of the computer with a cup of coffee and then you get this great idea from heaven itself to bake something. But half way through your baking process you realize that there isn’t actually time to finish, so you rush around only to realize that you can't actually do anything except turn the oven up and hope that it will finish in time! Until finally you can’t wait any longer and you just pull out whatever is in the oven and throw it a bag then run out! – Well in case you hadn’t figured out from the immense details of the last couple lines this is the exact scenario that happened to me this morning while I was trying to make popovers and raspberry butter!
After the excitements of my morning we went to spend the day with Amory and Kate at the beach. We went snorkeling around then went and had a wonderful lunch while looking out at the sea!

 Popovers + Raspberry Butter!
I got the recipe from cupcakes and cashmere and Orangette - I had to change the strawberry butter to Raspberry (because of course strawberries are out of season!!) and add powder sugar for some sweetness!

Travel books and Smoothies and long hot days!

Yesterday spent the majority of the day finalizing plans for our trip! We could finally sit back with a smoothie in hand and actually read about the places that we'll be visiting and figure out what we want to see and do there ... hence the many Rick Steve and other travel books lying around in the pictures below! There are so many things to see my brain is spinning with all the sites to see and things to remember! thank god for rick steves!!!