The 2 Week Party is Finally Over

Love this! The 2nd week of my birthday festivities finally came to an end yesterday with a lunch at one of my favorite restaurants called Liberty Oak, here in Greensboro, NC. My good friend "M" planned the whole thing and there were about 11 of us enjoying, salads, wraps, salmon, and several Sgt. Pepper Sandwiches. (A Sgt. Pepper was turkey and sharp white Cheddar with red pepper jelly on a warm croissant...delicious!) There was more cake. This one was a rich Chocolate Chambord Cake with thick fudgy icing and fresh raspberries on the top. I have been eating cake...really good bakery cakes for about two weeks solid now. :) and :(. My other cake looked just like the one in the picture from my previous post. It was a Strawberry Butter Creme Cake with fresh strawberries inside the cake. Heavenly good! Anyway enough about cake....I have had my quota for all of 2009.



After lunch, three of us, M, J, and I decided to head over to Simple Kneads Bakery and pick up some fresh bread. This bakery is such a wonderful addition to Greensboro. It is right downtown but so worth the drive for real bread and pastries. I'll be posting about this great place one day soon. So after picking out our bread, J and to leave so M and I headed over to Mary Contrary which is a delightful boutique that had unique things for your house, jewelry, and clothing. (Click on the shop's name to visit their cute shop's website.) Under a display table that was set with colorful dishes I spotted the hand painted floor cloth in the photo above! It was painted by an artist who lives and works in Southern Pines which is right next to Pinehurst (for all you Golf fans) here in North Carlina. Her name is Gwen Dumas and if you click on her name you can view some more of her work on her blog site. I think you can guess where I am going to put my new floor cloth. Happy Birthday to Me! My Birthday is officially over....really!

I Am A Reluctant Foodie And I Don't Do Goat

Reluctant because I don't like the word. Who came up with the title of "Foodie" anyway? I really do not like it. Couldn't someone come up with a less "cutesy" word than that and something even a tad more clever??? I don't pretend to be a "gourmet" but that is a much better word that "Foodie". I don't know what to call myself.

I like to dine in restaurants and I like to shop in specialty markets. Shopping in the local Harris Teeter can be torture for me. I love to explore new cities and check out their bakeries. I love to look at everything in their display case and I love the way a bakery smells. I appreciate the decorative details in a decorated cake or the shape of a cleverly cut and decorated cookie. But...

I profess to love cheese and yet I don't do goat. I don't like goat cheese at all except I like feta. I am pretty much a cow's milk cheese kind of girl. I get squeamish thinking about cheese made from sheep's milk. I don't do veal. I only like white, flaky, and mild fish. I don't like to smell let alone eat "fishy" fish. If you caught it in a lake...I'll pass. Calamari gags me. But surprisingly, I like mussels. Game does not pass my lips. Venison or rabbit. I don't think so. Lamb never. Pate....and Fois Gras...not going to happen. I like red wine but do not care as much for white. And it is no secret that I wash the white goo off my cottage cheese and mmayonnaise is not allowed in my house. I like olives. I like most vegetables and fruits are good with me.

Give me real fresh artisan bread any day over the squishy pre-packaged stuff. I like my deli meats extremely thin. I usually order my coffee half and half. Half regular and half decaf. Mocha frappachino even better. I do not like full fat ice cream. I don't do turkey bacon. If you are going to eat bacon, eat the real thing. I don't do ground turkey as a substitute for beef....ever. Turkey Chili? No way. And I don't ever put cottage cheese in my Lasagna. Ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan Reggiano is the only way to go. Cream sauces gag me. A plate of Pasta Alfredo will make me run for cover.

So what kind of foodie am I? Not a very good one I guess. What kind are you?
And by the way, did you know that August is National Goat Cheese Month? Let's party.

TJ Maxx and My Dessert Plates

It was my lucky day at TJ Maxx which is unusual for me. I love a bargain but I am just not always the best at finding them but my luck changed last week when I found these plates! They are a beautiful yellow/gold and have a raised scroll edge with a raised medallion in the middle. They are the perfect size for my dessert stand and they only had three plates for which I paid $2.00 each. Worked out well for me. I placed two on the dessert stand and the third is in the single wall plate rack I found at Hobby Lobby and hung in my laundry room.

I felt like I hit the jackpot when I also found the matching salad/dessert size plates for only $1.00 each! Oh Happy Day! So I bought all that they had which was 9 and now I am on a search to complete the set at 12 pieces. I travelled to another TJ Maxx location in my town but they only had 2 regular size plates at full price and one was chipped. No thanks. So my mission this week is to hit every TJ and Marshall's (because sometimes Marshalls has a lot of the same things) and see what I can find. I love a treasure hunt! I came across the same pattern plate in a beautiful aqua blue. They only had 1 plate but they had cups and sauces that were gorgeous. I just don't need more cups and saucers. (The bulletin board was 50% off at Hobby Lobby and so I got it for $10.00. The plate rack was also 50% off at the same place for $7.50. I love a deal!) :)

Collage Trio in the Laundry Room

I know, you thought I said the laundry room was done. But honestly, is anything ever really....... "done"? I worked on these three mini collages last night because I found some great papers for a mere 20 cents per sheet at Hobby Lobby today and couldn't wait to see what I was going to do with them.


I began by painting all of my canvases with regular acrylic craft paint in black. While they were drying I started playing around with the papers. I cut out my papers into squares and rectangles after setting them on top of the canvas and deciding which papers I wanted where and guessed at about how big I wanted them to be. After the papers were cut out, I arranged them to how I liked they way they looked together.



Now it was time to start decoupageing. I know a lot of you have had experience doing this. But for me, I just learned not to long ago so for those of you you do not know, this is what I did. Take your "Mod Podge" and paint on a coat of it directly onto your painted canvas where your first cut out piece of paper is going to be. (Do not start this step until your base coat is dry.) Then paint a layer of "Mod Podge" on the back of your cut out paper. Carefully place an edge of your paper on the canvas and start painting the "Mod Podge" on to the cut out paper slowly smoothing out air and bubbles as you completely attached the paper to your canvas. Then add your next piece in the same way till the whole piece is done. The "Mod Podge" dries clear. Make sure you completely seal each piece of paper. Then let them dry.




After your piece has dried, you can then decide if you want to add any embellishments like adding some other colors or maybe painting on some swirls or dots. I liked how "crisp" mine looked and decided not to add anything more But if I change my mind later, I can easily add whatever I want. So here is the finished product. I think I am going to keep them on the small wall space under the cabinet above the sink. Okay, now the Laundry Room is really, really done!

And Oh, I found the bulletin board at Hobby Lobby today at 50% off. I got it for $10.00! I also found the plate rack there at half off for $7.50 and that beautiful yellow plate came from TJ Maxx on clearance for only $1.00! I bought everyone one of those plates that I could find and I am still looking for more. Total: $18.50. Big Bargain!

(Special Thanks to Rhoda at Southern Hospitality Blog for her kind words and inspiration!)

Julie and Julia

This is a photo of the replica of Julia Child's kitchen used in the film Julie and Julia.

I have been waiting most of the summer for the movie Julie and Julia to come out and finally saw it today. My husband gets bonus brownie points for going with me and sitting in a theater of mostly women. But even he enjoyed it. And I absolutly loved it. Meryl Streep is amazing and she captured what Julia Child must have really been like. She had such joie de vive and the thing I remember most about her was not how incredibly tall she was but how her voice warbled. When I was a kid I was amazed that an adult really talked like that. I equate her strange voice with the extremeness of the voice of Truman Capote. Either of their voices alone would stop you in your tracks. I do remember Julia Child being on the Public TV station when I was growing up and watching her every now and then.

Last year I was on a kick of reading a lot of biographies and Julia Child's "My Life In France" was one of them. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her love for her husband Paul and the life they shared. (By the way, in the movie her husband Paul is played by Stanley Tucci and he was perfect for the part....you really believed they loved each other dearly.) Earlier this year I picked up Julie Powell's book "Julie & Julia" where she tells about her "project" to make every one of Julia's recipes in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook. Lots of duck, liver, beef, aspic, eggs cream and butter. No Thanks! Beef Bourginon...yes please! She blogged as she worked her way through 524 recipes in 365 day and turned it all into a book which is now the movie. Amazing. And, oh, Amy Adam's plays Julie Powell in the film and does a great job. She is really a great actress. (Did any of you see her in "June Bug"?)

Another Collage

My latest creation is done and not too bad for a beginner. Here is the piece I worked on this week and it is finally finished and hanging in our master bathroom. I tried to somewhat copy the collage that my friend the "First Grade Teacher" made with the word "RELAX" on it but I had a terrible time trying to find large letters to add. So I am still looking for them for future projects. These collages have been so much fun to make. I have been using the pre-stretched canvas frames that you can get at any craft supply store and painting them with a background color that I know I want to be a part of the finished collage. For example, in the piece above, I simply used leftover wall paint that I had from when we painted that bathroom a few months ago. In my laundry room, I used some of the acrylic paints that I used in that collage. For the piece I worked on at "A Fine Mess" in Ottawa, I colored the background black. It is totally up to you.

I then looked for decorative papers in the scrap booking section of the store in patterns and colors that I liked and then cut them into different sized squares, rectangles and a few triangles. I even tore some of them to get a jagged edge. I layed the pieces out on the canvas after the base coat paint dried and played with the pieces till I liked the way it looked. I then used "Mod Podge" and started to decoupage each piece onto the canvas. After all the pieces are decoupaged on and have dried, I looked at the colors in the papers and decided on which paint colors I would start to layer on some color. A stencil brush worked best for this. And I learned to "dry brush" the paint by dabbing it on a paper towel till almost no paint seems like it is left on the brush and that is when you start to dab the paint colors onto the collage around the edges of all the paper pieces you added. The paint softens the edges and it all starts to blend together. The key word is "layers".

You cannot do this wrong. You just keep adding layers...if you add a color you decide you do not like, simply add another layer of a different color over top. Just keep adding as little or as much as you want. But make sure each layer is dry before you add another one or they will blend into a mixed color that you might not like as well and the colors will be less distinct. I like the look of some of the paper peeking out of a heavy area of smeared paint. I might try smearing some plaster on a piece in the future. It can have a wild look or a cleaner look by using more or less paint and layers. Play with it and have fun. The last thing I added in the collage above were the swirls and some dots. These are a little "thicker" than I had wanted but I like them now. I'll have to get a thinner brush for the next time. The dots are so easy....just dip the top end of the brush handle in the paint and bring it down on the canvas. Come down straight and not on an angle and you will have a perfect "dot". I finished it all off with a coat of matte sealer. It is very "matte" and next time I might try one with more of a "gloss" to it. I am very happy with the end result and plan to make more. Oh my poor family and friends.

More Flowers. I know!

I picked up another beautiful arrangement from Ellen Ashley from Ellen's Flowers . I took my blue jug vase to her and exchanged it for this new arrangement in a duplicate blue jug vase. It is gorgeous. She grows all her own flowers in her many gardens. Saturday mornings you can find her gorgeous arrangements at the new mini Farmer's Market in Summerfield, NC. You can reach her at ellen_Ashley@bellsouth.net.


It is actually called the "Hillsdale Farmer's Market" and is open on Saturday mornings from 8 till noon and I love stopping by there to get my tomatoes now that my own personal garden was leveled by the deer. They have vegetables, breads, pound cakes, watermelons, and plants and Greek food like spanokopita and baklava. One week we found some nut butters that were so unusual and delicious. Fresh brown eggs and honey and last week organic red and white wines were sampled from Oregon.

Then there is the shop "Dwelling" that this all takes place in front of. It is kind of a "shabby chic" shop with lamps, things for your walls, and architectural pieces. The owner likes the idea of re-using and recyling and organic. It is such an unusual shop and it is lots of fun to browse. This is the market where I was going to sell my pickles. The owner wants to make sure that all the products sold there are grown or made from ingredients from this area, I guess with the exception of the organic wine from Oregon :) or made from organic or recyled material. This helps keep it unique and I hope it continues to grow. It is worth stopping by if you are in the area. (It's at the corner of NC 150 and Lake Brandt Road in Summerfield 336-298-4401