weekend cooking

I have been wanting to actually use my cookbooks lately. I tend to make the same things or just make up stuff. I think I was inspired by this post on the Not Martha Blog. She and a group of friends have a cookbook club and the feast they had from the book they chose this time not only made me want to use my cookbooks, but also encouraged me to buy yet another cookbook. So, I thought I better start using all these recipes I have been collecting! Isn't a cookbook club a great idea? I loved that post and all the food looked so good!

Lat weekend I was invited to a brunch potluck. I decided to make the Cheddar and Black Pepper Biscuits I saw on the blog Joy the Baker a couple months ago. I made them smaller than regular biscuits since I knew there would be lots of food and people may not want a large biscuit.

They were really good, more like scones I thought. With butter, they were the best, but also good plain, too.


Last night I made something that was called Farmers Market Spinach Cannelloni from the cookbook Foods to Live By published by the people behind Earthbound Farms (they have lots of recipes on the website, but not this one). It had lots of steps, but was still pretty easy. I easily get intimidated by recipes, so if I did it you can bet it wasn't too complicated.

The recipe didn't call for cannelloni shells, but just rolled up lasagna noodles. It was quite tasty and something you can easily make in advance or freeze for later.



It was fun to put together while the mister and I watched a old movie. I am excited to make some more new things. Do you use your cookbooks or just collect them. They are entrancing aren't they?

welcome spring

When was a bout 6 or so, a man who worked with my father making educational films gave me two books, A Child's Garden of Verses and A Child's Book of Poems. Both were illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa.

These books had a big impact on me, although I didn't notice it till many years later. The illustrations were so beautiful. Many of the poems dealt with seasonal things. There were lots of winter poems about the joys of skating and snow and cold and coming in from the cold. The images with them were so enchanting and charming.

But, they confused me a bit and made it clear to me that I was missing out on a lot of neat stuff living in Southern California. January didn't mean snowmen to me. I never needed to bundle up to do anything. And except for a few vacations, I wore my scarves and gloves mainly to go to the ice skating parties at the indoor rinks.

I also noted that there was supposed to be lots of rain in April, winds in March and other people had lots of leaves to rake up and burn in fall. The whole seasons thing captivated me and that has never really gone away.

I think these illustrations were the first thing that really affected my desire to move North and have more weather. I love that in Portland we have true seasons without it getting too out of control.



Gyo Fujikawa was a American born Japanese woman. She was born in Berkeley, California and she did some work for Disney in the early years. She was one of the first illustrators to get royalties from books instead of just a flat fee.

She was interned with her family during World War II where she continued to do advertising layouts. She never married or had children. She died at 90 in 1998.

A lot of the prettiest pages in the books I have are on both pages. I scanned these two to share with you in honor of yesterday being the first day of spring. Click through to the flickr page to see the bigger size.

a great find on the coast

While I was at the coast a couple weeks ago I got to visit a place recommended by my beach house roomies, a recycle center called Cart'm.

Cart'm is like Scrap in Portland, if you are familiar with it. It is a place to recycle all kinds of things and they have a resale store with some great stuff in it.


Outside is a little garden with neat outdoor art made from recycled products. It was fun to see all the neat stuff they had come up with.

A substantial stash of a vintage magazine were found in the store. The magazine is called Ideals. It is a strange magazine that was in print for 50 years. It was filled with all kinds of illustration art, mostly poetry and no ads. It was Christian and there are lots of Christian images and poems, but for example, the Easter issues still had lots of easter Bunny stuff, too. It used lots of reader contributions.


The illustrations are amazing. The colors are great, so saturated and rich and the styles are great, they remind me a lot of stuff I saw as a kid. They are awesome for collage. It is hard to cut into them, but I will, when I finally get the focus and space to do those collages I keep talking about.

Anyway, Ideals Magazine seem to be pretty available on Ebay. The issues came out with themes. I got a bunch of Christmas ones that are great. Here are some images from the Easter ones.

More images on my flickr account.

I also got these awesome slide storage cases while I was there. I love the style of these. The compartments flip out to access the slides. I don't know if I ill actually use these for slides, but I might. I certainly have inherited enough of them.



So, yeah, check out Ideals magazines if you come across them and Cart'm when you are near Manzanita, Oregon. Good stuff.

march is a great month for...

March is already underway and I have not posted the list for this month yet. If you are wondering what this is you can see this entry. All so far can be found here.

I never knew March 17th was pea planting day! I hope your March is nice. Maybe you can fit in some grasshopper pie.

back from the beach

For most of last week I was at the Oregon Coast. It was sublime. I was with a couple friends in a neat historic house built in 1912. My time there mostly consisted of staring at the ocean. You would think a few days would be enough of that, but it wasn't. Here are some pics for you:

little things

My life is not very exciting. But, I like it. I find beauty and comfort in everyday things, domestic pursuits, good tv shows, music, the way the bare tree branches look against the blue sky and making things.

I have not been doing too much of the latter, but like I have said before, I am percolating lots of ideas. I hope that I can do a few of them. I have a really hard time focusing lately. I blame the internet and the concept of multi-tasking, which I know is often not beneficial, but I do anyway, because there is only so much time in the day.

I am heading out to the coast for a few days. I will be in a house with a couple of friends and there will be now internet access and no TV. I am a little nervous about having some sort of internet withdrawals, but I am mostly looking forward to it. I need some time to unplug and read and watch the ocean.

Before I leave I wanted to leave a couple images for you. Just a little document of the last week:


Above is a Valentine I made for the best guy ever. I used vintage wallpaper, did a simple stitch on it to bind it and hand wrote the entries. This is the closest to a craft I have done in a while. I borrowed the idea from someone on Etsy who was selling them. I am sorry, but I can't recall where I saw it.


It is that weird time of between winter and spring around here. It is even stranger because it is pretty early this year. Our winter, unlike most of the country has been mild.

This unflattering picture of my garden box shows that in between state. Most of the box is winter, including the hanging pots down because of the high winds we had for a few weeks. But, then there are pretty little bulbs coming up and my strawberry plant is starting to come back to life.


Right now I'm listening to a British pop rock group from 1970 that I have never heard of before. The name is Barclay James Harvest and it's that mystical Brit style music from that time. I heard them on the UK show Life on Mars. Here is a nice song to sum up this entry. The refrain is: "When we are sitting on the banks of the sunshine". It will be soon.

Hope you all have a great week!

Brother Thrush - Barclay James...

beautiful free backgrounds

Here are some gorgeous backgrounds for you from Totally Severe. I found these via one of my favorite blogs, How About Orange.

I used one for my twitter account. I have now finally graduated from the twitter templates. You could also use them for your blog. Just make sure you have the tile repeat option on if you are uploading the image.

I really liked some of the desktopwallpapers, too, but I need more blank space than those. I find it hard to find what I'm looking for when the wallpaper is too busy. Yeah, I am one of those people who shortcuts everything.

Okay, just a pop in let you in on that great website. Now it is back to the Olympics and Men's Figure Skating. I am really enjoying the Olympics this year. What's your favorite Winter Olympic sport to watch?

i am very fond of this

by Amy Karol. She has prints for sale in her shop.

february is a great month for

I forgot to post this at the beginning of the month. Here are some thoughts about your February from 1977. Not sure what this is? Past posts here.

valentines day is around the corner

I really like Valentines Day. I think one of the reasons I like it so much is because the focus is on cards more than gifts and handmade is encouraged.

So, now it is a week away and it is time to get started on your project/card if you haven't already. Here are some ideas to inspire you.



I'll begin with the Valentine Match Boxes I made last year. You can always make your own version. The exact size is in the original post or you can use the free download from that post.

Printables are great, especially for people who put things off.


Valentines Labels Free Printable (above) from Mer Mag
Valentines Card Printables from Valentina Design
Valentine Printable Freebie from The Black Apple
Valentines Card Printables from Three Wheels Design



Printable Valentine Wheel (above) from Martha Stewart



If you wanna put a little extra time in there are 2 awesome looking paper cut Squirrel Valentines (above) on the Little Acorn blog. The tutorials are listed on the side.

If decorating the house is something you wanna do, a Valentine banner is a fun idea. I made one last year. You can find lots of ideas on Etsy for banners.

Another fun idea would be to place Valentines all over the house, in drawers and cars. If you want some sweet vintage valentine images for that, you can find some here and on a vintage Valentines Flickr page or on this page here.

There are also some interesting Valentines projects on this Flickr group. And of course, there is always Martha.

Okay, now I need to get to my Valentines project. Have fun!