The last unpainted room in this house was the upstairs bathroom. We had friends coming over on a Tuesday, and we finished painting this room at about midnight on Monday. If it weren’t for this show offy streak in me,…
Sweet and Crunchy Chicken Salad
We’ve reached a point in the summer when trying to come up with dinner is my most detested chore. I don’t want to do anything that would bring heat in my general direction. Salads are a great solution to this,…
Mondrian Quilt Top
Piet Mondrian. Composition: Light Color Planes with Grey Contours. 1919. As a comparison, here’s the original piece. I made a to scale replica of this painting in quilt form, and I am just so dang impressed with myself. I made…
How to hang a row of pictures.
So I had this long narrow section of wall in between a window in the back door. But I also had a set of three wooden panels that used to sit in three wall cutouts in the last house, so…
Roasted artichokes with Remoulade
Whenever I get together with my cousin Karen, we often end up devouring our weight in artichokes. She is maybe the one person on the planet who loves them as much as I do. A couple of years ago we…
Major score!
What you see up there cost me $50 at the Goodwill down the street. $50. 2 jackets, a skirt, 5 pairs of pants, a dress, and 7 tops. For $50! I gave up thrifting all together in San Diego, but…
Strawberry Balsamic Granita
For once I’m actually on top of things, and in time for all your 4th of July celebrations, I wanted to share my recipe for my favorite cold treat. A granita is a little bit like a shaved ice, but…
Personalized KitchenTowels
When you work with teenage girls as long as I have, you get a whole lot of graduation and wedding announcements in the mail. The timing worked out just right so that in moving back here, we were able to…
Bear’s Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins
Bear has been like a kid in a candy store with all this fresh fruit around, and the thing he keeps coming back to is fresh blueberry muffins. It’s easy to see why. Talk about the biggest reward for the…
Canning, Round 1
I made a lot of mistakes this first time around, but overall, I’m pretty dang proud of myself. Over four days I managed to can: 6 pints of strawberry lemonade concentrate1 pint of limeade concentrate2 pints of nectarineade concentrate3 qts…