A Collection Suited to the Summer Sun

My smiling sun necklace is included in this really lovely collection on Artfire. I know it brightened up my day!

Here Comes the Sun

  Curated By: WindysDesigns

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

Lavender Crafts!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am not so great with gardening. So I'm very lucky to have a husband with a green thumb who indulges me when I say things like "I wonder if lavender would grow in our yard?" in a offhand way. He planted two of them last year, one on either side of the entrance to our shed. And then other than watering, we both just kinda let them do their thing. They've bloomed pretty well and make that little spot smell lovely.

Yesterday he came into the kitchen with an armful of cut flowers after deciding it was time to prune them. So now I have a great deal of yummy smelling flowers to make something crafty out of!

For my first trick I sorted all the stems (and picked out the bits of grass and other random plants) and bundled them up for drying.

Any of the ones that were too short or broken off I snipped right at the blooms and scattered them on a paper towel so those will dry out too and I can use them for sachets or potpourri.

I'll definitely be putting together a few sachets and giving them to friends (My sister-in-law's baby shower is coming up soon and I can certainly toss one in with her gifts for an nice little extra handmade touch) I'm also thinking of making myself a nice lavender eye pillow, they sound pretty darn simple from the online tutorials I've come across like this one from Make It Do

Anyone else have lavender crafts they suggest I try? Even if I don't get to all of them with this batch of flowers I do hope to have blooms in our yard for years to come.

A Baby Bird Update

Just wanted to post a quick update on the little cardinal chick that was such an adventure for me yesterday morning. He seems happy and healthy back home in his nest. Here's a new photo, almost as blurry as the last one but easier to decipher (And don't go judging my photo skills! You try taking a picture blind with your hand up a tree :)

And just to show I can in fact take less blurry photos of pretty birds... here is the proud papa cardinal who has been flitting about our yard all season.

UPDATE part two:

So, the little cardinal chick I've been helping out seems to be a little bit of a daredevil. This morning my dogs again discovered him sitting on the ground, tho' this time being hovered over by the mama bird. (He may have been down there for a while in the early morning hours.) Of course, Frankie went lunging after the protective, frantically flapping mama bird and he ended up with the little chick in his mouth... but he's got such an overbite that he doesn't seem to have done any real damage other than slobbering all over it.

I once again put on my trusty garden gloves and deposited the little fella back into the nest. And a few hours later he seems to be back to his old tricks... he's now hopping up onto the branches outside the nest probably thinking he's ready for another attempt at learning to fly. I hope he gets that part figured out soon!

Back to the nest with you little bird!

This morning when I let my dogs out into the yard, they found a little baby bird that had fallen from a nest. It was alive and didn't seem to be injured (it was just still way too little and un-fully-featherd so there was no way it was going to fly on its own yet, so I hurried the dogs away from it and got them back inside to see if hopefully the mama bird would come rescue it.

But after a short time I checked again. It was still there and I got too worried to just do nothing. When I was a kid, there were all kinds of stories about how if you touch a baby bird the mama bird won't take care of it anymore because it somehow smells like a human... But a quick google search pretty much debunked that story for me so I decided to take action and at least try to save this chick the best way I could, by getting it back where it belonged.

Luckily for me (and for the bird too) the nest it fell from was in a large bush, not a tall tree. I was able to find it pretty easily (located quite logically pretty close to "right above where the bird ended up on the ground") and it didn't seem too far if I stood on my tiptoes. So after putting on my heavy gardening gloves I gingerly picked the little one up and was thankfully able to reach in far enough to get it back into the nest. I went back in the house for my camera and got a kinda blurry shot of its head barely peeking out of the top edge of the little nest.

And guess what? He (or she) is going to grow up to be a cardinal! I know because now the mama cardinal has come back and is sitting on the nest protecting him (or her) from the rain that has started to fall this afternoon. Don't you just love a happy ending?

Broadway Baby!

I am thrilled that Spider Man Bring in the Dark finally had its official opening last night. Not just because I'm a theater geek, or because the saga of the technical problems the show was facing made it a fabulous train-wreck story to follow in the media... I am most excited because one of my close friends worked on the show and also designed the opening night gown for one of the producers. As such, she was able to design her own incredible outfit for the red carpet and asked me to design jewelry to go with it.

She built an amazing red dress and then hand-beaded a spider's web across it. She even made a masquerade mask to go with it. (And honestly, you'd be shocked at how quickly she was able to do it all... this woman has amazed me with her costuming talents and utterly shocked me more than once with her ability to invent beautiful clothes practically at the drop of a hat. But I digress.) So we talked through some design ideas and eventually settled on a Y shaped red-and-black design with gold accents that complemented the plunging neckline of her gown.

And she's just let me know that a photo of her wearing my necklace at the after party for the show is the FRONT PAGE IMAGE of Broadway.com's Spider Man coverage!! Click on the screenshot below to go to the site and see it full size, along with all the other great pics of what looks like a really fun evening of celebration.

I mean seriously, how cool is she? I'm really lucky to have such lovely and talented friends.

Mint Cake with Lemon Icing

I'm not much of a gardener. But one thing I've found I can grow really well is mint. I know, I know, it has nothing to do with me, mint is a hardy weed that pretty much seems to thrive anywhere. Well the patch behind our backyard shed (where the lawnmower can't quite fit easily) seemed the perfect spot to put some in last year and now it has exploded in three kinds of delicious smelling minty goodness!

I wanted to make a dessert for the BBQ at my mother-in-law's house this weekend, and I knew we'd be having grilled shrimp and lobster salad in addition to the usual burgers and such. So I raced to the internets searching for recipes that would be sweet but light and made with fresh mint... and I found lost of things using a few sprigs of mint for a garnish, and a TON of chocolate-mint desserts. (I don't know about you, but I really don't want chocolate after seafood.) But then I stumbled across this amazingly simple recipe for candied mint leaves, and that got me thinking.

So I took a classic white cake recipe and tweaked it slightly to include both some fresh mint and some mint extract (and a tiny touch of green food coloring) and then I was off and running.

Here's the adapted recipe for anyone else out there looking for a really lovely sweet minty dessert perfect for serving after those lighter summer meals:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 large egg whites
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon mint extract
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint leaves
3 or more drops of green food coloring (optional)

2 (9-inch) diameter cake pans, buttered and bottoms lined with parchment or waxed paper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Wash the mint leaves thoroughly and dry them off with a paper towel I used about 8 medium sized leaves for this part, and used more to make candied mint as a garnish. Chop them up very finely with a knife. Because I don't own a food processor, I just put the chopped up mint into a blender with the sugar and pulsed it on high a few times to grind up and mix the mint in completely.

2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and the minty sugar together for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.

3. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

4. In a small bowl Combine egg whites, milk, vanilla extract and mint extract. If you want to add a few drops of green food coloring, mix it in here.

5. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to butter mixture then add half the milk mixture. Continue to alternate adding to the mix, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Scrape the bowl and beaters often.

6. Pour the batter into prepared pans and smooth the top with a metal spatula.

7. Bake the cakes in the middle rack of your oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

8. Cool in the pans on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then turn out onto the rack, remove paper and let cool completely before frosting.

You can finish your mint cake with simple white frosting, or chocolate if you don't have the "will this go with seafood" dilemma that I was facing. But I frosted it with delicious lemon buttercream frosting and it was perfect, like having summer lemonade with mint sprigs in it. Adding the candied mint as a cute and tasty garnish also helped disguise the fact that I am SO not talented at making pretty frosting.

A lovely Easter.

I spent this lovely Easter Sunday mostly in a car.  I do wish I could have had a bit more relaxation time on my only day off this week, but such is life these days.  Too much to do and never enough time to fit it all in.

My hubby and I went with his parents up to New Hampshire for the annual Easter brunch with his Nannie and a collection of the extended family.  It was nice to see many of the aunts, uncles, and cousins we rarely get together with.  And it was definitely great fun to get to meet the newest addition to the group, a six month old girl with the biggest blue eyes on the planet.

And as a nice end to the day, I've had one of my necklaces included in this beautiful collection on Artfire.

Violets in Bloom

  Curated By: VirtuallyYours

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

I hope you all have had a beautiful weekend filled with family, love, and of course, easter candy!

Valentine Cookies!

I know, I'm terrible about blogging.  I have a few too many things going on in life so even when I have an idea and think "That would make a great blog post!" it often ends up sliding out of my brain before it becomes a post.

But today is February 13th and while I'm not a hopeless romantic (I think of myself much more as a hopeFUL romantic, thank you very much) and I don't need a Hallmark holiday to remind me that I'm lucky in love with an awesome hubby... but regardless I do LOVE a good excuse to bake.

And if anything screams out for the sweetness of cookies, it is absolutely Valentine's Day.  So I picked up some heart shaped cookie cutters and made up some traditional sugar cookies.

I uses a slight modification of the cookie recipe in my well worn copy of the Betty Crocker Cookie Book.  I also made my first effort at royal icing (inspired by having seen many pretty pictures of the nifty decorations people were doing on valentine cookies all over the internets this week.)  I must say I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

                                                                            

Valentine Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 1 1/2 cups superfine sugar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk

1. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light a fluffy. Add the vanilla extract, egg and egg yolk and continue beating until creamy.
2. Sift the flour and salt together and blend into the butter mixture. Mix together until the mixture forms a smooth dough, but don't overmix.
3. Remove the dough from bowl and knead lightly until it forms a ball.  Wrap in cling wrap and chill in the refrigerator for about an hour (or up to 2 days).
4. When ready to roll out and cut your cookies, pre-heat the oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with baking or parchment paper.
5. Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and divide into smaller portions. On a lightly floured board roll out the dough until 1/4 inch thick. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter cut out the cookies.
6. Place the cookies onto the baking trays, spacing them about 1 inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until they turn a light golden color.
7. Remove from the oven and leave on the trays for two minutes to cool slightly, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
8. When completely cooled, ice and decorate however you wish.