Tuesday's inspiration

Today I am smitten with Lisa DeJohn's beautiful Gingerbread City, aren't you? Love. Love. Love!

Tuesday's inspiration ...3 days later

Nothing like a Pottery Barn catalog to get me into the Christmas mood. Their December issue arrived yesterday and my head is spinning excitedly with ideas for our Christmas tree this year. Allow me to share my 2009 tree 'n mantel inspiration board.

1. 2. 5. Pottery Barn, 3. Country Living, 4. Ormolu, 6. unknown

Skeleton Boy and Heat Blast

Halloween came; Halloween went. Boy, did my two little munchkins had fun! My 2.5-year-old was very into Halloween this year, he caught on to trick'o'treating really quickly. He was up there, excited at ringing door bells, and yelling (really yelling) "Trick or treat!" as the doors open, so cute! Hope you had a fun Halloween too!

Little dudes playing with glow sticks

Today's breakfast...

...fresh Genovese basil tossed with organic strawberries in a bowl of Silk chocolate soy milk and Post Selects Great Grains Raisins, Dates, & Pecans cereal. Instant perk-me-up!

This makes me smile: My bedroom style board

A little wish list I put together this past weekend for our master bedroom makeover. My hub and I are loving the soothing gray and white palette; now to turn cc points into West Elm giftcards! Oh, and the wall decals are on their way, yeah!

1. Bloom wall decals, Gray, 2. Chalkstripe and Pinstripe Pillowcases, 3. Cubby Organizer, 4. Grid Tufted Headboard, Charcoal Mélange, 5. Pin-Tuck Duvet Cover, Sea Spray, 6. Home Bed Skirt, Molten Lead, 7. Jondal Mirror, 8. Velvet Grommet Drape, Stone, 9. Alve Corner Workstation

Tuesday's inspiration

Look at these cute rag quilts by etsy store The Trunk Show! I love the fun colors and especially their soft frayed edges, makes me want to reach out and snuggle with them.

This makes me smile

Nothing like squeaky-clean white dishes dripping wet and drying on the rack at 7 in the morning.

Turkey taco pot pie

I was hankering for some cosy comfort food last night and was flipping through the Fall '09 edition of Kraft Foods Food & Family magazine when I came upon the recipes for chicken pot pie and taco sloppy joe. Light bulb moment! What if I kinda sorta combined the two! And so I did. The recipe follows:

* 1 small onion, chopped
* 1 lb ground turkey
* 1 can corn, drained
* 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
* frozen peas and carrots
* 1 jar mild peach-pineapple salsa (Safeway Select)
* 2 cups shredded Mexican style four cheese
* 1 can (8oz) refrigerated crescent dinner rolls, big and flaky variety

I browned the onion and ground turkey (seasoned with salt, pepper, and some dried Italian herbs) in a skillet, drained and added it to the bottom of a baking dish. In the same skillet, I added corn, black beans, frozen peas and carrots, and a three-quarter jar of mild peach-pineapple salsa. The salsa barely had any heat to it hence a favorite with my two little boys. After the contents in the skillet were heated through, I mixed in about 2 cups of cheese. Next, I poured the contents over the ground turkey in the baking dish and spread it out evenly. The final step - I unrolled the dough and placed it over the pot pie mixture, making sure the perforations were sealed. This was baked for 20 minutes in a 375'F oven.

Look at the golden flaky crust! Love, love, love!
This was a hit with the family and is easily one of my favorite dishes. I love being able to taste the salsa and I'm glad I skipped the taco seasoning mix or it would've overpowered the dish. It is definitely an easy-and-quick-to-make dish and suitable for young children. My 2-year-old and 5-year-old boys ate this so quickly, I was just grinning from ear to ear! Oh, this makes great leftovers too.

Tuesday's inspiration

It's the simple gather of pleats held together by a strip of linen that I'm drawn to and inspired by. See this and other beautiful pillows and burlap buckets at etsy store designs maya*made.

Snuggling with sweater weather oatmeal cookies

It's finally looking like Fall weather here in the San Francisco Bay Area, after oh what, only a steamy 95'F weekend! Tuesday was wonderful, it was blustery and cosy! I'm so ready for the cool season. And cool weather brings out the baker in moi.

Yesterday I baked some aptly named Sweater Weather Cookies, recipe by the one and only Oatmeal Cookie Guy. I loved biting into the cookie and being enveloped by the orange scent, the orange taste. My boys couldn't help themselves either, downing 3 and 4 at a go, and mind you these were jumbo sized cookies (I used a 2-inch scoop).

To quote my favorite Oatmeal Cookie Guy, "Orangey, spicy, bright, slightly smokey, and autumnal" ...all so very true! I'm definitely baking more of these orange gems this season.

Tuesday's inspiration

ute drop cap, isn't it! Ha, for some reason it reminds me of my favorite Halloween candy, Reese's peanut butter cup! Check out Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische for new illustrative initial every day. Beautiful designs!

Tuesday's inspiration

How cute is this ruler print fabric from etsy store Chalinn*s! Love, love, love!

Crafty sneak peek ~ Happiness layout

Here's a layout that I had completed on Sunday. I remember these moments at La Jolla Cove back in 1996 vividly; happy to be at the cliffs and coves by the ocean, but especially happy to share it with my husband ~ boyfriend at the time ~ *smile*.

One of my favorite elements on this layout is the white fuzzy rub-ons (Heidi Swapp) on the stripey ribbon; I love the texture on texture look!


The tags are another element that I love. I had a lot of fun stamping them; first I stamped some doily images, then inked the dots using Heidi Swapp's dots mask, and finally aged the tags with Distress Inks using the blending technique.

For more texture, I added red leather flowers (Making Memories) and glued metal embellishments onto them. And to finish it off, I tucked in short strips of antique trim here and there. I must say I really like the end result!

Figs on my pizza

We had homemade pizza last night, but for me it was no ordinary pizza. For my quarter portion on the rectagular pizza dough, I'd added slices of fresh figs atop a sliced heirloom tomato and blanketed it under my favorite prosciutto. An experimentation using figs, no less. The result? Delish! I loved the intense sweetness of figs and tomato with the salty prosciutto. Simply. loved. it.

Grilled chipotle cheese with fig sandwich

I enjoy figs but after a few attempts at eating them raw by themselves, I've come to the conclusion that I much prefer to eat them accompanied with something else, be it with cold cereal, in pasta, or in a sandwich.

Last Friday I received a small box of figs in my CSA box, and I'm now down to the last couple of figs. I was inspired by the Fig and Brie Panini with Prosciutto blog post over at Closet Cooking, so this morning I did a version of it since I had no brie nor delicious prosciutto. I did have chipotle cheddar cheese and smoked deli turkey in the refrigerator. With that, I build me a grilled chipotle cheese with fig sandwich (on whole wheat bread). I truly enjoyed the sweet from the figs followed by the heat from the chipotle cheese. Yummy!!

Tuesday's inspiration ...a day later

This is a collage by Donna Downey...


...and this is by Folk Art Vision.

These two mixed media collages caught my eye today. I find them simple yet bold. There's something about each that makes me want to stare at them all day.

Countdown to National S’mores Day

The boys are counting down to National S’mores Day on August 10. They have never had a s'mores experience and have only seen the process of building one on tv. So when I announced the special day was coming up, my eldest was especially excited.

Earlier this week, he suggested we practice making s'mores everyday so that come Sunday, we'd be ready at making the perfect ones! And that's exactly what we did.

I took the boys shopping for graham crackers, large marshmallows, and Hershey's milk chocolate bars. The boys were thrilled to build their very own s'mores which I broiled in the oven for about a minute. My eldest loved it, my youngest though not so much. I think he found it too sweet because I certainly did.

I found the milk chocolate/marshmallow combo overwhelmingly sweet, so this afternoon I decided to swap the choc for Ghirardelli's Intense Dark 72% cacao chocolate. Holy s'mores, it turned out perfect! Not too sweet and full of intense chocolate flavor for this Momma. Needless to say, I'm all set for this Sunday with my adult s'mores version!

Crafty sneak peek ~ Love layout

Remember this little project back in February? I played with it and put it aside quite a few times, and I'm thrilled to say it's finally done!

One of my favorite elements on the layout are the tags. I simply followed Heidi Swapp's blending technique with Distress Inks. It was easy, and I liked being able to control how dark or light I wanted to shade the tags. Distress Inks used in this layout were Vintage Linen for the tags, and Walnut Stain for the round calendar element.


For fun, I edged the circular calendar with Martha Stewart's Doily Lace Edge punch; loved the distressed effect! The final touch was a bling brad on the red arrow book turn.

Lettered Cottage Home

Layla over at The Lettered Cottage has teamed up with her friend Sarah and started a new venture called, Lettered Cottage Home. This store has some cute vintage treasures! Quick, go check 'em out!
So guess what I just bought from them as a little birthday (next week!) gift to myself? These fabulous nesting herb crates! I've been admiring them at Layla's blog, and I'm thrilled to be hanging these babies in my house very soon!

Tuesday's inspiration

I am a fan of Jillibean Soup, especially their kraft line, and I can't wait to get my hands on their new Alphabean - Corrugated Kraft! There are 51 letters plus punctuation and numbers. Am thrilled that these alphas are textured!