I have been SO much inspiration from all the wonderful spaces shared over at Kate’s “Where Do You Blog” link party that I thought I would share my own little blogging corner! Now I’ve been known to blog right from the recliner, but by far I’m most productive in the tiny third bedroom of our home which I commandeered as my office/dressing room the day we moved in. This summer I did a makeover on the contemporary glass top desk I’d been using, and have done some furniture re-arranging in here as well. So far, it’s working out great!

First, here’s the corner of the room with the desk in it. By moving the desk here, I was able to make room for the barrister bookcase in the other corner.*

And here’s the other corner… that’s the wireless printer on the washstand, and the barrister bookcase in the corner.

And finally, a few of the treasures on my desktop that inspire me and are useful, including my fave floral folders from Dollar Tree :)

*The barrister bookcase is worth noting because I was needing a place to stash some dishes… I’ve been wanting to buy more, hubby thinks I don’t need them and have no place to put them even if I bought them. So I said, we have this bookcase coming over from the storage unit -  if I can make room for it in the office, that’s where I’ll store any new dishes. If I can’t make room, I’ll sell it and skip the dishes. In a weak moment, he said that sounded like a good idea. So I made SURE to make room for it :)  (Ah, victory!)

More soon!

Update: Goodness, I’m so embarrassed! Last week I added this recipe to the link-up party at Kaysi’s Keep It Simple blog, and then neglected to come back here and add the link! Be sure to visit last week’s Motivate Me Monday, and this week’s MMM too – SO many wonderful ideas!

Awhile back I was enjoying a tin of plain old “butter cookies” and wondered if they were easy to make. I did a little searching, and quickly came up with a recipe for sablé.

Sablé is a very basic recipe that can be amended in innumerable ways, but at its core it’s essentially a butter cookie with a very crumbly, “sandy” texture. (The word “sandy” in cookies refers to the degree to which they crumble in your mouth – if you do sablé right, when you press one against the roof of your mouth, it practically dissolves in fine-crumbed perfection.)

The recipe I have is based on proportion rather than measurement. For simplicity’s sake, I’ve decided that “one part” equals a half-cup. So, “two parts butter” is one cup of butter, “one part sugar” is a half-cup of sugar, and “four parts flour” is two cups of flour. This makes it easy to halve the recipe for a smaller batch: half-cup butter, quarter-cup sugar, 1 cup flour. For salt, a pinch is still a pinch. (And I always seem to forget the salt!)

Having made this recipe several times, I’ve been wanting to try some variations. Certainly you could mix in some cinnamon or nuts, but “dipped in chocolate” always seemed like a good idea too. And something lemony. So today I made a small test-batch, divided it into thirds, and then experimented with the lemon and chocolate variations.

For the lemon cookies, I added a couple teaspoons of lemon zest to one third of the dough and then made up a small batch of lemon cream-cheese frosting (recipe here – I quartered this recipe and still had some left over). Once my cookies were baked and cooled, I simply frosted them and let the frosting firm up a little.

For the chocolate version, I made up some “sort-of ganache” (recipe here – I quartered this recipe as well, but again only because I was making a test-batch). I spread some like frosting, and also tried drizzling it over some of the cookies. It does firm up, making a glossy chocolate coating.

Both of these – and also the plain sablé – are superbly wonderful. They would be lovely accompaniments with lemonade, coffee or tea.

Here are the plain sablé cookies, along with a couple peanut butter cookies just for my hubby:

Next we have the lemon-frosted – I also put lemon zest in the cookie dough. These were my favorites!

And finally, the “sort-of ganache”-covered Sablé – the ones that I merely frosted with the ganache were very good; the coated ones were a bit over-powered by the ganache. Probably chocolate “almond bark” would work as well for a milk-chocolate coating.

Sablé (Butter Cookies)

2 parts butter
1 part sugar
4 parts flour
Pinch salt

Combine butter, sugar, and pinch of salt in large bowl; add flour a little at a time, blending completely. When well-blended, form dough into a log about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap, and chill in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F. Remove chilled dough and cut into slices about 1/8 inch thick. Arrange on cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes, watching carefully for signs of over-browning. Remove to cooling rack.
More soon!



Update 8/26 – I’m linking this project up to “Frugal Friday” at The Shabby Nest because, well, it just doesn’t get much more frugal than FREE! :)

I noticed that Cindy over at My Romantic Home is giving away her beautiful hand-made seashell wreath (which of course I entered to win – you should too!) and I got to thinking about some shells I have had ever since I was a kid… yes, I’ve carted them around with me, rescued them from my parents’ house and TWO floods, for about 40 years.

I wondered how I could use them and as I wandered around the house, looking for a container that would be fittingly beachy, I found this gathering dust:

This was my prize in the white elephant gift exchange at work last Christmas. I actually really like the shape and the candle, though I’ve never been too crazy about the potpourri. Perfect!

I had to ask my husband where the shells were – I knew only that we’d probably brought them to the new house after the most recent flood (2008), but he seemed to know exactly where they were and produced them immediately.

After a thorough cleaning of all the shells, the container, the scrolly rack (I could paint it white!) and the candle, I loaded it up and produced this:

Which looks great sitting on our glass coffee table, next to our postcard of the Caribbean and the large conch shell we got in St. Thomas many years ago:

I think it makes a very happy little beach scene!

More soon!

This week I’m dealing with the loss of my mother-in-law, Betty Green. Betty was a delightful person – outgoing, out-spoken but never mean, giving, generous. She was also a thrift-store junkie and a crafter, like me.

Betty and I rarely shopped together, but we had a lot of fun showing each other our many wonderful “finds.” One day when Betty and Art stopped by for a visit, I had a whole box of goodies to show her – I knew she’d get a kick, as always, out of my bargains, and hearing the circumstances of each particular item.

As I went through the box, I pulled out this pretty blue ceramic vase. I had spotted this vase at a thrift shop and really liked the bird motif and the pretty blue color. But I almost didn’t buy it, simply because it was so small at about 6 inches high – and seemed, due to its size, to be lacking in real utility. In fact, I set it back on the shelf and walked away from it. I passed by it a few more times while wandering around the shop, and ultimately I couldn’t resist its charms.

As I was showing it to Betty and telling her its story, Art said to her, “That looks like that vase you painted for Clara a long time ago.” (Clara, Betty’s sister, had passed away a year or so prior to this.) And Betty said, “Well if it’s the one I painted it would have my initials on the bottom.”

We turned it over and sure enough, on the bottom, were the initials “B.G.” and the number “87” – a year which fell smack-dab in the middle of Betty’s ceramics-class phase.

We all marveled at this incredible coincidence. What were the odds that I would be the person who purchased an item made by my own mother-in-law, more than a decade ago, from a thrift store where the inventory changes daily?

Of all the objects in our home that remind us of Betty, this is the one that I have cherished the most since that day. I daresay it’s not likely to end up in a thrift store again, any time soon.

Love and miss you, Betty, more than I can say.

More soon!

My little home office/dressing room has presented some very good opportunities to begin displaying some of the treasures I have saved from my grandmother’s and parents’ estates, as well as a few things I’ve kept of my own over the years.

So these days, when I find that I’m in need of a particular type of container, I try to think first about whether I have something vintage that might work. (If I don’t, then I’m simply forced to pay another visit to my favorite round of thrift stores – ah well!)

This week I was looking for a way to keep my new dollar-store notecards corraled on my desktop, along with a pen and stamps, to make using the notecards less of a hassle.

A little digging through my treasure trove of family items turned up Grandma’s vintage cedar jewelery box, which works perfectly for this purpose – it’s just the right size to hold all my supplies, and of course it smells wonderful!

A few of the extras in the top photo include: a picture of hubby, and the pencil cup he recently made for me on his lathe – he is teaching himself wood-turning, and is creating some really lovely-looking pieces. And, the 3D teacup wall pocket hanging above – it’s filled with one of Great-Grandma’s hand-crocheted doilies.

More soon!