Hello,
I just had to share a couple pictures of Adèle, our french bulldog.
She is a small dog with a lot of personality!
Rambo doesn't quite know what to think of her....
I hope you all enjoy your weekend.
Take Care,
Maria
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Vintage French Linens.... Clare Elizabeth
Hello!
I hope you are all having a great week.
I finally was able to take some new product pictures over the weekend....
Here is a sneak peek of what I have been working on....
I have a post on vintage french linens coming up soon....
I also wanted to share an image my talented 15 year old niece Bernadette shot of her brother, Nicholas holding their new baby sister, Clare Elizabeth.....
I will be featuring some of Bernadette's photography next month!
I hope you enjoy your day!
Take Care,
Maria
Friday, March 23, 2012
A Special Contributor, Andrea of Faded Plains, Outdoor Movie Entertaining
Hello everyone.....this is Andrea from Faded Plains.
Maria invited me to do a little guest post on her beautiful blog today....thanks so much Maria....I'm honored!
The weather here in the midwest has been so beautiful lately....and it seems this weekend we'll be in the mid 70's....perfect for outdoor movies. We love having outdoor movie nights at my home.....we scatter quilts on the grass....comfy chairs with fluffy pillows around the fire and settle in for movies under the stars.
Another thing I love to do is dinner in a bowl. I gather up some of my old bowls and line them with parchment paper....then fill them up with the nights entree. It's such an easy way to serve everyone their meal with everything they'll need tucked inside.....
It's also makes for easy eating on your lap. Seems how drive-ins have become pretty much non-existent, this is my way of showing my boys what watching a movie under the stars feels like....and I have to tell you....they absolutely love it!
I wanted to thank Maria again for inviting me....it's been a blast!....and a big thank you to all of you for taking the time to read my little post.
Thank You Andrea!
I love Andrea's styling and photography.....
You can find so many more wonderful ideas on Andrea's Blog, Faded Plains!
Andrea also has a wonderful online shop, where you can find so many great farmhouse items!
I hope you all enjoy your weekend!
Upadate!
Andrea posted about where she got the recipe for her cheesecake in a jar.....
Take Care,
Maria
Thank You Andrea!
I love Andrea's styling and photography.....
You can find so many more wonderful ideas on Andrea's Blog, Faded Plains!
Andrea also has a wonderful online shop, where you can find so many great farmhouse items!
I hope you all enjoy your weekend!
Upadate!
Andrea posted about where she got the recipe for her cheesecake in a jar.....
Take Care,
Maria
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Lilacs.... and Souvenir Lifestyle Magazine
Hello!
I hope you are all enjoying your week!
I am so glad spring is finally here!
I can hardly wait for my lilacs to start blooming....
I might have posted one too many images of lilacs last year.....
I thought I would share an image I shot last year of lilacs in my french farmhouse fruit basket ....
I wrote about how to create a french farmhouse feel in a small area of your home...
If you would like to read more about it you can do so by clicking here....
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I also wanted to let you know that Souvenir Lifestyle Magazine is available for purchase....
The above image was shot by Heather Bullard, and is the cover of this beautiful lifestyle magazine.
I hope you get a chance to visit the Souvenir website and take a look at the generous free preview Heather has made available for the souvenir readers.
You will have the option to purchase a digital version and or a printed version of the magazine
on the Souvenir website.
It is a wonderful magazine filled with so many inspiring stories and beautiful images......
Thank you Heather Bullard for asking me to be a contributor to Souvenir.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Take Care,
Maria
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Our Easter Egg Dying Experiment~Making Our Own Easter Egg Dye Using Fruits and Vegetables
Hello!
I first want to say thank you to everyone who left such sweet comments about my sister expecting her 10th child....
I am excited to announce Monica delivered a healthy baby girl on Monday...
Clare Elizabeth....
I will be sharing pictures in the near future : )
..................
The kids and I did a little Easter egg dying experiment this week using mostly fruits and vegetables...
I had not heard of dying Easter eggs using fruits and vegetables until
I might be the only person that had not heard of this before : ) .....
The kids and I decided to experiment with making our own dye this year.....
We ended up loving how the eggs turned out.....
We decided that we will be dying our eggs this way from now on....
It was a lot funner then just using tablets and vinegar like we always have done in the past.
These lavender colored speckled eggs were a product of mixing grape juice and vinegar together.
We left the eggs in the solution overnight.
For some reason the eggs had a bubbly film over them in the morning, so the girls rinsed them off
and this is what we ended up with.
We all loved how these turned even if it was by accident.....
A few of the foods we used to create some of our favorite colors....
Red Cabbage, Boiling Water, & Vinegar ~ Robin's Egg Blue
Blueberries & Water ~ Bluish-Gray Eggs
Tumeric, Boiling Water, and Vinegar~ Mustard Yellow Eggs
Brewed Coffee ~ Golden Brown Eggs
Beets, Boiling Water, & Vinegar ~ Pale Pink Eggs
The kids dyed a lot of eggs!
The eggs turned out a really pretty blue, that were almost the same color as my vintage french zinc pitcher that is in the first image....
Austin and Dustan experimented with their own recipe.....
It was an interesting one.
They combined avocado skins, potato skins, and onion skins.
We added boiling water to their mixture of skins, and let it simmer for five minutes.
We then added vinegar....
They ended up with really nice peach colored eggs : )
They are mixed amongst this pile of eggs somewhere....
We only had one dye that didn't turn out.....
That was the jade green color....
You peel red onion skins and simmer them in water and then add white vinegar,
and this is supposed to produce jade green eggs, instead we ended up with
orange eggs.
I am not sure what we did wrong.....
I also shot the eggs in one of my favorite french farmhouse finds...
I will be adding this vintage french farmhouse egg basket to my shop soon....
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On another note....
Be sure and check out Jennifer Rizzo's beautiful spring collection....
Jennifer is also hosting a generous Sparrow and Blossom Giveaway that is worth $500.00 on her blog as well...
There is still time to enter...
You can also view Jennifer's inspiring lookbook here....
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On a final note...
I wanted to share a sneak peek of the Souvenir Lifestyle Magazine.....
I can hardly wait to see the entire issue!
The launch date is March 20th....
If you haven't already subscribed and are interested in subscribing
you can do so by visiting the Souvenir Website....
You can also read more about the Souvenir contributors on
Souvenir's Facebook Page....
I hope you get a chance to check it out!
Thank you Heather Bullard!
I am honored to be apart of Souvenir!
I hope you all enjoy your weekend!!!
Take Care,
Maria
I wanted to share a sneak peek of the Souvenir Lifestyle Magazine.....
I can hardly wait to see the entire issue!
The launch date is March 20th....
If you haven't already subscribed and are interested in subscribing
you can do so by visiting the Souvenir Website....
You can also read more about the Souvenir contributors on
Souvenir's Facebook Page....
I hope you get a chance to check it out!
Thank you Heather Bullard!
I am honored to be apart of Souvenir!
I hope you all enjoy your weekend!!!
Take Care,
Maria
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Living on a Horse Ranch
Hello!
I hope you are all enjoying your weekend!
My husband is a horse trainer and we have moved over 20 times our married life....
We have even lived in beautiful Japan, where my daughter Nicole was born....
We have lived in many different types of homes.... even in a barn....
Each home we lived in we tried to make the best of it no matter what type of house it was.
We have been fortunate to have lived on this beautiful 50 acre horse ranch for over eight years now,
it is the longest we have ever stayed in one place....
We couldn't feel more blessed to be able to raise our kids here....
(We do not own the ranch, my husband is the horse trainer and breeding manager for the ranch.)
I wanted to share a few images I shot of babies that were born on the ranch this past week....
This foal is only two days old in the above images.....
They are so darn cute....
My husband and I raise a small number of show cattle.
My kids show cattle, and so we decided to start raising our own.
My husband also grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana, his family raises registered simmental cattle.
This is a picture of our calf that was born this last week....
The cow is a registered Maine-Anjou....
My husband didn't choose this breed for that reason though : )
On another note....
My amazing sister is expecting her 10th child, and her due date was on the 8th....
We are all anxiously waiting for her little one to arrive!
Enjoy your weekend!
Take Care,
Maria
Saturday, March 3, 2012
The Paint Color and Formula for my Living Room~Martha Stewart Gray Pearl
Hello!
I often get asked what color of paint I used for our living room...
It is a Martha Stewart color from Lowes, called Gray Pearl. Unfortunately you can no longer get the Martha Stewart colors at Lowes. I was able to get the formula from our Lowes as they still had the color in their system.
The paint formula is...
101-13.5, 107-19, 109-1
This formula is for a one gallon can of paint...
I used the Valspar Signature Satin Finish at Lowes.
Just a warning if the room you are painting doesn't have a lot of natural light coming in this color can appear very "muddy". I actually painted our other living room that is now my work studio this color and it didn't work, the walls ended up looking muddy instead of gray....
I also painted my kitchen cupboards last summer the Gray Pearl color.....
You can see the kitchen cupboards in the background.
Because the modular home we live in has a very open floor plan, the living room, dining room, and kitchen are all open to each other. I wasn't sure if it would be weird to have the walls the same color as the cupboards... By painting the cupboards the same color as the walls I think it helped tie the kitchen into the rest of the room.....
I will eventually show more images of the kitchen in the future.
On another note....
I had to share this image I found on my cell phone yesterday....
My daughter, Bethany had a little photo shoot with her lop eared bunnies using my phone....
We added a vintage florabella action to Bethany's image.....
Enjoy your weekend!
Take Care,
Maria
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Mantle Free For Now.... and My Mom's Cinnamon Roll Recipe
Hello!
I hope you are all enjoying your week....
I haven't had much time to blog the past couple of weeks....
Hopefully I can get back into it.....
I wanted to share a few images of my living room today.
The above image is an image I shot of my living room last summer....
Last month I decided to take the mantle and the clock down.....
I decided it was time for a change....
I am going to sand the mantle down and repaint it.
I actually never painted it properly in the first place, I want to sand all the old paint off and give it a fresh coat of white paint, then I will put it back to use....
That mantle is probably the only piece of furniture that has stayed in one place for so long.....
The clock will go in my son's room....
I decided to put the framed chalkboard in our living room for right now....
I was trying to achieve a french farmhouse/schoolhouse vibe.....
I actually have other plans for this area, however it might end up being a year before we complete that project : )
It is fun to see what a large chalkboard will do for your kids' creativity.....
My kids can spend hours drawing on the chalkboard....
We also now love to do school in this room since we moved it into the living room....
The chalkboard is made from reclaimed molding from an old Victorian House in San Francisco.
A favorite find!
We wrote my favorite French Bread Recipe on the chalkboard....
Bethany came up with the idea to put the chalk in this vintage french apothecary jar.....
I love that you can see all the pastel colors through the jar....
The nice part about chalk art.... It is so easy to clean up....
I stacked some of my favorite books in a pile....
One of my favorite homes featured in the Domino Magazine had stacks and stacks of books on the floor....
I didn't want to use antique books, instead I wanted to use my favorite collection of decorating books as well as cookbooks that have some color....
I topped the pile of books with my favorite vintage french alarm clock....
I will take some more pictures of the wall with the blue door in the near future....
These apple green vintage french bistro chairs are my favorite chairs....
They help add a splash of color to the room....
I am hoping to find more of these....
This pillar gets moved around the house a little too often....
For right now it sits in this corner of the living room.
This is also one of the rooms my husband added antique tin to a section of the ceiling....
I hung my favorite vintage oil painting from the 1920's....
I have had it for quite a few years.
It originally came with a frame, I took the frame off and discovered that it was a painting of a school in California.
I am hoping to finish photographing the rest of the house soon.....
On another note......
I wanted to share my mom's cinnamon roll recipe....
My mom is known for her homemade rolls....
This recipe truly is a family favorite....
Keep in mind this recipe is for a family of 12, you might want to reduce the recipe according to your needs.
I always make the entire batch and freeze some of the cinnamon rolls...
1 cup of shortening
1 cup of sugar
2TBL salt
4 C. of scalded milk
2 cups of warm water
6 cups of flour
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups of warm water
4 1/2 TBL yeast
15 cups of flour
Filling
Brown Sugar
Butter
Cinnamon
Mix yeast and sugar. Add luke warm water and let stand for 5 minutes until yeast is frothy.
In a saucepan scald milk. Remove from heat and add Crisco to the scalded milk. Let cool to same temperature as yeast water.
Mix together scalded milk mixture and yeast mixture.
Add 2 cups of flour and whisk well.
Add eggs and whisk well.
Add salt to 2 cups flour and then mix into dough mixture.
Add remaining flour one cup at a time mixing and kneading well as necessary.
Dough should be sticky at the end of the process.
Cover dough and let rise for one hour.
Once dough has risen, roll out into rectangular form on a floured surface.
Spread melted or softened butter generously over the form.
Spread brown sugar generously over the butter.
Sprinkle generously with cinnamon.
Roll the rectangular form of dough lengthwise and pinch seam along the edge and ends.
Using a piece of sewing thread, cut the roll into sections.
Place the cinnamon rolls into a greased jelly roll pan.
Let rise for 15 minutes.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes
I used my favorite Emile Henry pie dishes to bake my cinnamon rolls in....
These work great for baking more then just pies in.....
I used my favorite Emile Henry pie dishes to bake my cinnamon rolls in....
These work great for baking more then just pies in.....
Also thank you to everyone who entered my Raw Materials Design Apron Giveaway!
Congratulations Laura!
Thank you Janna Lufkin of Raw Materials Design for sponsoring a generous giveaway!
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Take Care,
Maria