Lighting Up My Life

I love lamps and interior lighting. When we remodeled our home last fall, we were able to replace all of our lighting and lamps. We went for a simple, clean line and found a lot of what we liked in the George Kovacs line. Very minimalist, very functional and very reasonably priced (for lighting). Here are a few photos from around the house.

George Kovacs in the Dining Room. The stainless steel bar slides up and down allowing for different heights of the line of lights.

George Kovacs in the Master Bathroom. He's everywhere.

George Kovacs at our bedside...great reading lights, too. This style light is sometimes called a "marriage-saver".

From Ikea--love the pattern it throws on the wall of the family room

This paper shade lamp on the master bedroom dresser is an Isamu Noguchi tower. I love the delicate little feet and the soft glow from the pleated rice paper shade.

Steal this Recipe (I Did!)

I made these stuffed jalapenos today and they are delicious! I didn't think I would be that crazy about them, but knew the Mister would eat them. I was half right. He loved them and I ate about 20. I ate so many this afternoon that they were basically my dinner. I wasn't hungry again until dessert! They really aren't that hot and spicy--rather mild and sweet when the jalapeno roasts in the oven. And what can be wrong with anything that's wrapped in bacon?

The recipe couldn't be easier. I found the recipe (along with a ton of other excellent ones) at The Pioneer Woman Cooks blog. The PW blogged a few days ago how she made hundreds of these for a big 4th of July bash (and how she ate a zillion of them, too).

If we were fifteen years old, you would be text messaging this after you tried these:

OMG these R 2 die 4. U R my BFF! TTFN.

Stuffed Jalapenos

Cut jalapenos in half and seed. Smear softened cream cheese in the jalapenos. Wrap snugly with half slice of bacon. Cook on rack (so bacon grease drains) on a cookie sheet for 30-35 mins at 400 degrees. That's it!

I Sea Glass

I love sea glass (sometimes called beach glass) and have been collecting it for years. When kept in water, the little bits sparkle like jewels and when dried off, the soft matte colors are frosty and beautiful. Sea glass is created when littered glass bottles are broken and the pieces are then "polished" by being tossed about in the waves against the sandy beach. Nature's own recycling turns trash into quite a treasure.

The most common colors of sea glass just happen (!) to correspond with the most common colors of beer bottles. Go figure. Brown, green and clear. Blue, yellow and pink glass makes gorgeous sea glass and red is a rare find. The rarest color of all sea glass? Orange. It's only found in about one out of every 10,000 pieces of sea glass. That sounds about right. In all of the tens of thousands of times I have bent over to pick up sea glass, I think I have only found 2 or 3 pieces of orange glass.

What to do with sea glass? I like just the bottled displays on a sunny windowsill. Beautiful jewelry can be made and here's a unique idea of fitting pieces together to make unique art.

The North American Sea Glass Association holds an annual exhibit (coming up this Fall in Delaware) that looks like it would be fun to visit. Check out the "Shard of the Year" contest!

33 Years Ago

I always loved Joni Mitchell's music. I still do. I came across this video featuring "A Case of You" (love the map of Canada line). There are quite a few videos of Joni on You Tube and they all make me smile, cry and remember.


In the slideshow is a photo of Joni that sparked a photographic memory and sent me on a mission to find a certain photo of me. Me doing my best Joni Mitchell impersonation (cuz I sure can't sing or play any instruments!). In a meadow on Block Island during the summer of '75.

Pride and Cake

I am very proud of my daughter. Wudgie's mother has had some life-changing experiences lately and she is handling them so well. She has grown from a darling and adorable little girl into a strong and beautiful young woman. Yup, just a little proud.





While growing up, she was never really interested in the "domestic arts" and it just thrills me now that she is starting to express a genuine interest in cooking, baking and other housekeeping skills. So when she asked if she could bake a cake at my house yesterday, I was all over it. And she didn't want a mix cake, it was to be a real cake...from scratch.





We searched through recipes and looked on ingredient boxes at the grocery store. She came up with this chocolate cake from the Hershey's cocoa powder box. And although the recipe includes their own chocolate icing, she has already exhibited the fine art of "tweaking" recipes and decided on the buttercream on the Domino's 10X sugar box.





Out came the trusty Kitchen Aid mixer, a variety of spoons, spatulas, bowls, racks and pans. She measured carefully, fretted over the consistency of the batter (this recipe makes a VERY thin batter- but they tell you that!), paced during the cooking and hurried the cooling time. The results? Absolute perfection. On her first try. A very moist chocolatey cake and a creamy sweet frosting. Classic and delicious.

I won't talk about who did the clean up.

UPDATE :

Me on phone: Hi Honey, you coming over soon?

Daughter: Maybe later. I'm busy right now.

Me: Watcha doin?

Daughter: Baking muffins from scratch to take to work tomorrow.

A Sad Aftermath

Our neighbors across the street---the ones with the 3 rowdy (but good) adolescent boys and a darling little girl---have had one heck of a 4th of July celebration for the past 10 years or so. Complete with probably several thousand dollars worth of fireworks, kegs in the front yard, cars parked all over the place and a huge fire pit in our very residential neighborhood. Sometimes it was annoying but it was over in a short time and during the rest of the year things are fairly quiet around here. So we have always been "good neighbors" and just enjoyed their revelry. And hoped that our house wouldn't catch on fire.

Another thing about these neighbors. The parents are "yellers". Not mean screamers, but yellers. I suppose thats the way they best think they can motivate 3 very rambunctious boys. And I guess it works for them. Anyway, the 5th of July always meant the dad would be out in the street early with his clean-up crew (the 3 boys) "directing" them to clean up the giant mess of shrapnel (well, paper) in the street and in our yards.

Earlier this year, tragedy struck their family. The dad was killed in a motorcycle accident just a mile or so from our neighborhood. I am not sure how the mom is doing it but the little family is strong and the boys seem to help out a lot.


The Mr. and I wondered if the 4th of July celebrations would continue without the dad. Last night we found out. More people than ever showed up across the street and more fireworks than ever, too. A tribute I am sure. And then this.


This morning as I was sitting here at my computer I heard a whirring sound out in the street. I grabbed my camera and went out front. The boys cleaning the street and our yards. No yelling. No bickering. Not even talking. Just dutiful clean up. And I love the arrow on his shirt pointing up to heaven.


Their dad would be proud.

Happy July 4th