I just added another dog to the mix of posters I will have hanging in my office. I bought this Derek Deal piece today to go along with my Puggy Love print. Derek is one of the designers we have for Pyknic. He did the ever so popular Lucky Cat and the medusa tee too! This is a realllly dope poster and Derek is an amazing artist so if you want to pick one up or see what else he has to offer check him out over at www.derekdeal.com

Your boyeee,
The Chef

Check out the Magic Kingdom. I love this park, really essential and classic rides here such as Peter Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, and many more. Plus they’ve added some other awesome rides like Buzz Lightyear! Right now they’re doing a lot of construction on FantasyLand where they plan on having a Beauty and the Beast ride as well as restaurant besides a Little Mermaid ride.

Here’s inside the castle archway. No details are missed!

Here are my sisters Melissa (arms up and representing Flip Flip Flipadelphia) and Lauren sitting across from my mom and dad. It was great to be all on a family vacation again, we haven’t all gone to Disney in 10 years. A lot of memories were reminded as well as a lot of new ones made.

Here’s me and the girlfren. Hmm what kind of shirt does she have on?

I love Epcot! I love visiting all the different countries. I actually ran into a customer of Pyknic, Dan from Endwell, NY, in “China”. I thought that was awesome, maybe we should all get a Disney meet-up sometime?

I was so bummed I missed out on Trade City USA that happens in the park (and the Toy Story Vinylmation Release) both of which occur on August 27th… we left the 26th. If you don’t know what “Vinylmation” is, look it up!

Had to stop in the UK and take a photo of the different candies for my dude Richy. I grabbed a mint Aero and my favorite candy, Turkish Delights!

In Mexico there’s a rad Aztec Temple that when you go inside…

You step outside! It’s really cool how it feels like your outside while inside the temple. There were street vendors, shops, the Three Caballeros ride, and a nice Mexican restaurant, all of which overlooks a volcano!

I actually really enjoyed going to Animal Kingdom this year. We saw some really cool live animals while on safari such as lions, HIPPOS, and even a baby rhino.

We also went to a Lion King show that incorporated animatronics, dance, and gymnastics.

At the Hollywood Studios we got to get inside the animators studio and check out some preliminary sketches for characters in the new movie, “Tangled”.

These guys have pretty sweet offices!

Somehow got Martha to hop on some roller coasters with me. Totally dug the Aerosmith roller coaster.

The last night we went to O’Hana’s at the Polynesian. My mom really was stoked on her pineapple drink!

I really miss vacation and had an amazing time. I already look forward to the next one.

xx,
thebutcher.

I went on holiday with my family and Martha last week. We all flew down to Orlando for a week of Disney World and a day at the brand new Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I’ll be honest, I have seen a few movies and haven’t picked up a book (or any book for that matter) but I was really enthusiastic to see what they had come up with for this magical tale.

I thought they did a real awesome job recreating Hogwarts. Inside there was a ride inside called the “Forbidden Journey” that combines video and real scenes… you even get caught up in a Quidditch match!

Nothing like cooling off with a Butter Beer… it was like a creme soda with a frothy butterscotch soft serve on top. So refreshing, I’m sure the little Wizard rage off this stuff!

You really get caught up on the surroundings! There were trick, candy, and wand shoppes that lined the streets.

We actually had to wait for 30-something minutes to get into this small wand shop. It was pretty cool, they had a demo where a wizard tried to find two Muggles the propper wand.

Overall, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was really sweet. Keep posted on the blog for future posts of the rest of my trip!

xx,
thebutcher.

God I love Honest Tea. You can’t go wrong, it’s organic, refreshing and delicious. Put down the Pepsi or Coke and pick up some honest tea. You’ll feel better about yourself immediately.

-The Chef

We just created a Pyknic Facebook Fanpage. Make sure to friend us so we can keep you up-to-date and chit chat like little giddy school girls. We love you, our food fiends!!

the chef & thebutcher.

As most of you now know, I was in Las Vegas this past weekend for my cousin Brandy’s wedding. You really can’t beat going to Sin City for a wedding, as expected it was truly a trip not to forget! It was my first time in Vegas so I didn’t exactly know what to expect when we got there. I flew over with my girl friendddd Andrea and we got in around 2 o’clock which gave us ample time to seize the day and jump into the Vegas weekend. Our family stayed at the Paris hotel which is as you’d expect a replica of Paris inside and out. The Eiffel tower stands towering in front of the hotel along with a ginormous air balloon with the Paris font written across the side of it. The hotel was extraordinary doing it’s best to replicate French restaurants and cafe’s inside. Even the floor was looking like cobblestone and the ceiling was sky blue with clouds aligned in it so you never would know it wasn’t the middle of the day. I can’t imagine the amount of time and attention to detail is took to create such a hotel as they did their best to make you feel as you were in Paris. Aside from all of the gambling and slot machines they did a pretty good job haha. We did our fare share of gambling but it was cool to just hotel hop and see what each place had to offer. We really enjoyed the Venetian hotel which was replica of Venice. They even had a gondola ride inside which was pretty neat. This besides Paris was my favorite hotel. It was a little too big because you can easily become lost with the amount of floors and shops they have inside it. All in all it was a great hotel with some sweeeet italian restaurants inside. Here’s some photos from the trip, there’s a lot of pics because there’s too much cool ish in vegas not to put up!

This picture sums up the trip, ha!

My pops told us that all of the big time gamblers in Vegas always go to Cesar’s Palace and rub Cesar’s head before they gamble for good luck. This didn’t prove to be a good theory as we all lost most our of money quite quickly haha. Fun to do nonetheless, what’s the deal Cesar??

Here’s a little skyline view of Vegas showing off New York New York. This hotel has a roller coaster ride on the outside of it, pretty wild.

Pool view, not bad lounging and staring at the Eiffel tower.

Here’s a day pic of the Bellagio and it’s fountains. There were a lot of Bellagio jokes thrown around because of The Hangover (movie incase you didn’t catch it) so we had to play craps there the first night. We actually had a little incident on the table as our group was becoming too rowdy surprisingly enough. We were starting to get a lot of free drinks in us because we were on the table for about an hour. My brother accidentally grabbed the wrong chips which were in fact the casino’s haha (they typically don’t like this) so we were scolded and after that ordeal the buzz was gone and we had to move out. We had a good run at the Bellagio though, until next time.

Here’s a post Bellagio pic with my bro and cousins Rich and Greg checkin out the fountains. It’s awesome seeing the show at night, the fountains always make everyone stop and watch.

We were fortunate enough to have our parents treat us to the Cirque Du Soleil Love show which is a Beatles inspired show featuring all of their songs from their album Love. This show was truly something special and I would recommend it to anyone who has a chance to see it. I usually am not a fan of musicals or productions but the act they put on is here indescribable going from the performance all the way to the wardrobe. The detail in the routines was extraordinary and it was a spectacular show. This is the hot ticket right now and is sold out every night for good reason. If you like the Beatles this really is a must see! Here’s a picture of the crew before we went to the show my brother Matt, Andrea, myself and Lauren.

Hallway leading into the show, pretty rad.

Here’s the love smart car they have in the casino, you can win it if you hit the jackpot at the slots.

Saturday was the wedding, is was great ceremony held at the Four Seasons hotel. It was first class and such a beautiful wedding! My family loves to party and this was a great one, we had such an awesome time. Here’s the lovely couple Brandon and Brandy.

Here’s a pic of the Marshall clan, we had a pretty sweet table and did the party up right.

Pretty classic picture of the brothers and our cousin Greg during the reception. Didn’t leave the dance floor once I don’t think haha.

A nice picture of the marshall boy’s ladies. They bonded a lot this past weekend as they both went to my cousin’s bachelorette party and saw the Thunder from Down Under haha. Heard it was quite the scene there.

Post wedding pic of my cousin Rich puffin on stogie. I had one myself, can’t go wrong with a smoke to end your night in Vegas.

On our last day on Sunday Andrea and myself decided to venture down to FatBurger and see why all the locals hang out there. This burger place is legit and you can definitely have your hunger satisfied with these mouth watering burgers. I had the works on mine plus cheese, chilli and a fried egg. Sounds a bit disgusting but it tasted delicious. Andrea missed out and went for the more healthy route of the veggie burger haha. She said it was quite tasty though.

We spent a lot of our last day lounging at the pool. Here’s some pina coladas we decided to do up. Can’t go wrong with one of these in the desert heat, I think it was only 105 degrees on our last day.

On our last cruise down the strip, we ran into this fellow in front of our hotel. His name is the Stone Man. These guys spend all day frozen in one position. It’s crazy to stand still that long and in that heat it’s just nuts. I thought he was pretty cool so I thew him a dollar in the bucket he had laid out. He then pulled a robotic move that kind of took me off guard because he wasn’t moving for a long while and handed me a business card thanking me for my support and his business details on the back. Apparently he does entertaining at parties and what not. Here’s one for the stone man, keep doing what you’re doing man!

All in all it was an awesome trip to Vegas and I can’t wait to get back out there. I had unbelievable time with my family that I don’t get to see often because they live in Ohio. It was great spending time with you guys and I can’t wait for the Holidays to be together again. Sin Cittttttay baby, out.

Your boyeee,
The Chef

It’s funny how the directions on the back of the chop sticks packaging always makes it seem so simple and easy to use them. I think the last step sums it up right though, “open the tips of the chopsticks and try to pick up food with them”, try being the key world. It takes a lot of practice to hone in this skill to be able to actually eat with them, atleast for me it took awhile. A lot of embarrassing moments at sushi places with me mangling the pieces of sushi lol. After awhile though, I am finally mastering the skill. I thought it was kind of cool that on this particular packaging it gave a little background story on how the usage of chopsticks began with the Shang Dynasty in 1766 BC. Put down your forks and give these bad boyeees a try sometime. You just may find that will will use them to eat more than just Chinese Food. Spaghetti?

Your boyeee,
The Chef

Up at my parent’s lake house in PA, every year there is a Lake Day weekend to bring everyone together who has a house on the lake and to enoy a picnic with long time friends. As I mentioned before in a prior post, the lake has been in my family for 102 years now and this tradition has been around almost that long as well. It’s great to be able to see my friends that I grew up with at the lake once a year and catch up with everything that is going on in one another’s lives. It’s sad that we only get to see each other once but it’s great that there’s a weekend that everyone will drop what they’re are doing and shoot up to the Lake! There was a lot of boating and a lot of indulging in alcoholic beverages so that’s always an equation for a great time. This year was another saweeeeet time and I can’t wait to get back up there before summer is over. The weather was beautiful as well, here’s some pics from the weekend!

The annual sail boat race going down. My brother and Pops both compete in this event, my brother beat out my dad and finished 4th this year. He was pretty happy considering he was rocking in the small little sun fish up against some bigger and faster boats.

Taking a dip in the center of the lake during a booze cruiseeee, why not? lol

Coming on in from taking one of the guests wakeboaring. They call me Captain at the lake lol.

My brother was feeling like he had his taste buds in order this past weekend and decided to challenge that he could taste and recognize 7 different kinds of beer. It was actually realllllly hard and no one really fared to well other than my gal friend Andrea who got 5 out of 7 right. I only managed to get 1 out of 7 and my bro got 2 out of 7 right. We also had to pick our favorite of the bunch and before that I was trashing the taste of coors light and of course I had picked that as my favorite and so did my brother haha. I’m pretty sure the butcher managed to make out that he hated the coors light but didn’t fare to well in the tasting challenge either lol.

Here’s a look at our beer cooler for the weekend. It had 11 different kinds of beer in it and was big enough to fit a body inside haha. We just about polished off the whole cooler, it was quite the weekend!

It wouldn’t be fitting to end the weekend without a group pic shot. My mom has been doing a group pic of us and our friends who come up for lake for around 8 years now. It’s cool to see who was up and what everyone was looking like then and has all of the pictures framed and in our bedroom upstairs. Here’s the latest, quite the collection of characters here.

Another great Lake Day in the books, can’t already wait for next year!

Your boyeee,
The Chef

We certainly have some cool customers. I was looking through past orders last night and came across Danny Worsnop. I thought, “could it be?” and after some google searching it turns out the UK hardcore unit, Asking Alexandria, frontman has been repping so many different Pyknic shirts on stage. I’m like blown away especially since I’m a fan of the band! Check Danny Worsnop out in all his Pyknic glory!

xx
thebutcher.