kitchen love

Doing dishes never looked this good! Haha, not really. Doing dishes never looks good. But you can try to bring some joy to it by making cute dish towels.

I like to embroider stuff, as you probably know. And I think it's important to add a little homemade flourish to your life. Consequently, most of the gifts I give tend to be on the homemade side of things and tend towards wonky as most of the things I make end up slightly askew. I like to call it character. Or maybe style. Yes! That's it! Wonky is the style I intend every time I set out to make something... :)

Anyhow, I digress. Have I mentioned my lovely boyfriend before? And especially how lovely it is that he appreciates my penchant for things homemade? I made these as part of his Christmas gift and just got around to taking pictures yesterday.

The first one came out of my head. Or at least, I think it did. But chances are I saw it somewhere, cataloged it in the deepest region of my brain for future reference, forgot I saw it, and then produced it thinking it was solely mine. I imagine I should be attributing the idea to someone, somewhere, but who knows?

The second one is the kitchen gnome. Kitchen gnomes make doing dishes magical, didn't you know? He comes from Andrea Zuill's blog BadBirds. Every month she posts a free embroidery pattern and they are dripping with awesome! Check out her blog here and download the gnome here.


And for the record (and just for fun!)... Me: cookies, wasabi, coke and eggs. Dave: milk, sushi, rum and ham. :)

welcome to my kitchen

...home to green apples and cupcake cups.

a morning's contemplation

I don't know why I've had a hard time pinning myself down long enough to blog lately. My mind has been scattered and my heart has been pulled in many directions. Consequently, my focus has been a tad blurry, if not completely lacking these past few weeks (er... months).

The drama of life continues to unfold on a daily basis. The thoughts of, "have I chosen the correct path?" and "how am I going to make this work?" continue to poke holes in my normally determined and hopeful bubble of thoughts. I've been getting discouraged with my job-that-pays-the-bills and have been employing lame excuses for Not Getting Anything Done. (I have a headache. My room is too messy and is stifling my creative flow. And so on).

But this morning as I looked at the light falling on my delicious cream cheese brownie (made in celebration of a dear friend's birthday) sitting on its immaculate white plate, I felt something creep in and nestle in my heart. Was it the promise of spring? Was it a renewal of faith that everything will be OK and all is well? Was it the whispering of, "don't forget about the small things that really matter?" I don't know what it was, but it felt warm and good and my stomach felt fizzy with excitement.

It's so easy to get bogged down with the must-dos, should-have-dones and the don't-really-matter-details that I sometimes forget to broaden my mind to the bigger picture and those things that truly bring me joy. And sometimes all you need as a reminder is delicate light cast on a homemade brownie.

(These are easy and delicious. Click HERE for the recipe from Betty Crocker).

i love...

... baked goods. Especially tea biscuits. YUM!

A Happy Spot

I cleaned the dickens out of my kitchen today. No crumb stood a chance! There's something about cleaning that soothes the soul, don't you agree?

Some of my flowers needed to be re-arranged because they were wilting. Now I have a new happy spot that makes my heart swell whenever I look at it. :)

You know, I don't normally keep plants because I generally have zero success. I killed a cactus once. But I think I could get used to some greenery on my windowsills. Perhaps I'll give it a go!

I thought it might be a nice to save my roses.

Here they are hanging upside down.

My lovely PINK daisy and friends.

Happy New Year & Truffles!

Happy New Year! Resolutions don't officially start until tomorrow, riiiiight? >:)


Dennis and I spent a glorious day on the couch watching reruns of "So You Think You Can Dance" (Oh Nico, you make my heart go pitter-patter) and movies. The Other Boleyn Girl is a thumbs up; Hancock is a thumb side-ways. Dennis even braved the storm to bring me sushi! What a guy! xo.


I may be infamous in these parts for my cravings of 'baked goods.' Luckily I am handy in the kitchen. Tonight when the itch hit, I made the BEST EVER truffles. They're not actually a baked good per sey, but they do a most-excellent job of satisfying a sweet tooth.


I found my recipe here. When the recipe says EASY Oreo Truffles, they're not kidding! Including photo-ops, I had my tray of truffles done in less than 40 minutes (and I would say a solid 20 minutes of that was picture-taking time as I am still puttering away in manual).


Here's a simple walk through the process.


Gather your ingredients: one block of cream cheese, one bag of oreo cookies, one box of semi-sweet baker's chocolate.


Get a helpful boyfriend to remove all the cream from the middle of the oreos. At first all the middle bits sounds really exciting and you won't think you'll need a bowl to collect it. But after about 3 mouthfuls of middle, you'll get a belly ache. This is a guarentee. The compost is an excellent place to put the rest of the middles.


Take your collected oreo outsides and throw them in the food processor.

Within seconds you will have your very own bowl of oreo cookie sand.

Put your cream cheese and oreo crumbs in your mixer. Whirrrrrr.

Shape the "dough" into little balls.

Melt your box of chocolate in a microwave safe bowl. There is a little trick to this: don't microwave your chocolate for longer than 30 seconds at a time. IT WILL BURN. I learned this ages ago and nothing is more dissappointing than a bowl full of burnt chocolate. After 15-30 second intervals, stir it up. It will take about 6 rounds of nuke-stir-nuke to get the right consistency.

Drop your balls in the melted chocolate... carefully, one by one. Use a pair of tongs to hang onto your balls so you don't burn your fingers.

Hahaha! I had a hard time keeping a straight face writing that! >:)

Voila! Place your tray in the fridge...

And wait. This is the hardest part.

But an hour later, look what's staring you in the face when you open the fridge door. A whole tray of chocolaty oreo awesome! YUM!