falalalala

Decked this tree (a few years ago)

with family heirlooms and delightful

eBay goodies: lots of antique glass,

Russian spun cotton & little cardboard

houses from the 40's and 50's. Great fun.

This scene was in an airy passageway just

a step away from the main rooms of the

house ... it led directly to the most sumptuous

yard (with a garden that seemed to have

once been looked after by Thomas Church).

photo by norma lopez molina

quick study

Staged this home many years ago.

Best part? Incredible family lived

there ... and then another incredible

family moved in. A wonderful world!

Magnificent house. An all-time favorite.

photo by rick martin

birthdays wishes

December is a good month for birthdays.

A shout out to my wonderful sister and,

again, to our wonderful daughter. This

one's for you, Tinda. Thought you'd like it.

Marvelous marvelous shop on etsy

from the brilliant Farida Dowler. Here.

Dolls for Storytelling. Just perfect.

F. Scott and Eudora, Child Authors

There's a nice synopsis of St. Nicholas

here (as mentioned in previous post).

From it, we've gleaned our fun fact of the day:

"A number of children whose names would later be famous had their first publi-cations in the St. Nicholas League: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Faulkner, Ring Lardner, and Eudora Welty..."

Wishing a very merry birthday to our darling daughter, a book lover if ever there was one. Happy, happy day, dear Vivian Catherine! With great love. Always.

The Christmas Number

St. Nicholas

Illustrated Magazine

for Boys and Girls

[about St. Nicholas? here]

Bonedigger Bonedigger Dogs in the moonlight Far away my well-lit door

need a photo-opportunity?

Jen Bekman

Christine Berrie

Paul Simon

an ode to swimming pool

one of my very favorite stops,

swimming pool

has impeccable taste and

never fails to delight the eye

And a thank you to our hosts.

They were magnificent.

Couldn't have been better.

The most amazing hospitality!

Thank you, thank you.

With love.

Unexpectedly Fell in Love

With Arizona. A few weekends ago.

Look forward to going back. Soonish.

Stuffing (Hold the Bird)

Just in the nick of time.

Stuffing (original recipe ingredients):

1 1/2 cups soft bread cubes
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
1/2 chopped onion
1/2 cup sliced olives
1/2 cup chopped parsley (what? I don't think I've used this for years. yikes)
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup of chicken broth &/or wine (recipe says white, but I think I have been using red lately. really, just what's available and decent. don't use really cheap stuff. it'll ruin the stuffing.)
several cloves of garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon each oregano and basil
2 tablespoons butter
olive oil

Okay.

Here's what really happens.

I at least double all of the above ingredients. Sometimes even more than double.

And I usually get all OCD and decide I have to make the bread cubes myself.

Sometimes I buy them in bags, but they have to be good bread cubes.

I think Pepperidge Farms has come through at times, but it can be tricky. The nicest thing is to cube day-oldish (artisan, sourdough, something with a life) bread and put it in a skillet with olive oil (sort of a lot) and toss it around for awhile until it is fairly crisp and olive-oily. Here is another tricky part: don't eat it all. Don't let anyone else eat it all. Threaten them with wooden spoons if necessary.

Okay, so you have some bread cubes (you could plan ahead for this).

In skillet: heat butter (here, I add olive oil, also) add onion & garlic & cook until almost lightly browned. Add mushrooms and cook 'til soft-ish (but not too long). Add olives. Add parsley (if you want. I don't think I have for years) and bread cubes. Toss it all around well, but gently. Then add basil and oregano (usually more basil than oregano, I think) and toss gently some more. Then you add, carefully spreading it around and not on anything that's too hot, so that it doesn't congeal and look like fried egg, the egg mix. Toss it.

At some point (maybe even around the time of mushrooms and olives), I add wine. Starting with a little (maybe a quarter of a cup) and then adding whatever is necessary. It seems like some years the bread soaks it up and needs a few cups (never more than two but maybe a little bit more; it depends) and some years it just barely needs any.

The thing is that you don't want it to be mushy but you don't want it to be dry.

So you just mess around with this and taste it some along the way and when it's done put it in a covered casserole (or uncovered, if it's a bit on the too-moist side) and let it sit quietly in the oven for maybe 20 minutes to a half hour. At 350 degrees. I think.

Goes without saying that you don't stuff the bird, these days. (I just put carrots and onions and garlic cloves and maybe some celery and a few sprigs of herbs in where the stuffing used to go. And maybe half a meyer lemon goes in, too, because they grow in the front yard.)

If the stuffing's done done early in the day, pop it in the fridge and then cook it just before dinner.

Gobble gobble.

A Moment of Adoration: BibliOdyssey Presents Fuggerorum et Fuggerarum

Yes. I am supposed to be getting ready for Thanksgiving and that doesn't include being on my tiny laptop posting illustrious Augsburgians, but I. Can't. Help. Myself.

I have the coolest little sister, and we spent a good bit of time in Augsburg (along with my marvelous parents) when we were younger. So, when I saw these guys (above) pop up this morning (BiblioOdyssey is, truly, one of the greatest blogs in the entire Milky Way) I had to stop and send them to her (yep, I am supposed to be sending Thanksgiving recipes ... so I send random ancient portraits of people with ruffs and wimples ... let's pretend that's unusual for me).

Well, anyway, I have some recipes to jot down and about a few thousand books to move (or there won't be anywhere to eat at the Thanksgiving table).

P.S.

The brilliant Peacay has linked to a wonderful article which ran in the WSJ a few months back. It was another of my all-time favorites: a bit about how the family Fugger hasn't raised the rent in a village since 1520. Seriously.

P.P.S.

Tinda Binda Alte Kinder: I love you. Truly and always. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and I swear to God I am going to go write those recipes down. Now.

have a seat

little sofa idea

fancy that, II

love sf

fancy that, I

nm

sf

window shopping, SF

oh, Winston! (the truth is incontrovertible)

Yes, folks, it's the Winston Churchill

coffee mug. (Or, in my case, tea mug.)

What a mug. What a guy. What a way

he had with words. Couldn't be better.

Here's a quote from the t-shirt

that is advertised along with it:

"The truth is incontrovertible,

malice may attack it,

ignorance may deride it,

but in the end;

there it is."

creative grief

"That wanting is ever the crux of the matter."

Sister Wendy

While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

Thankful

(here)

[via M. Belt]

Veterans Day

Photos:

The Hot War

The Star-Spangled Banner

a kitchen begins to come together

Having recently completed the design of a kitchen with a good friend (we have, in the last several months, tackled several small projects together), it's lovely to begin to see the results.

My involvement began mid-summer when I saw the original layout. Rather than turning two rooms (a kitchen and living room) into a great room partitioned by a small wall, it seemed it might be better to place an anchor mid-room (hence the design for the pantry pictured above). It will become, I believe, a true heart for the space, it's comforting size acting as a foil to the nearby island that will host so much of the daily lives of the occupants.

The pantry (now installed) is backed by an alcove that will function as a bookshelf (original intent) or become snug harbor for a small-ish sofa (walking into the house several days ago, said alcove begged to be a place to perch). This area could very well accommodate both methods of relaxation; an elegant seat with mirror above, narrow shelves on either side, would be delicious.

My other design suggestions included stones and tile that echo our California (day and night) skies, simplification of the kitchen island (wood replacing limestone) and the creation of a streamlined flue above the oven (echoing the trim of the cabinets).

And there's a good bit more to tell you about . . . a buffet created beneath a bank of windows, a selection of yummy Farrow and Ball colors for walls and cabinetry, the simplest of shades chosen to grace wide-open windows facing sweet green lawns.

I'm hoping, soon, to be able to post some of the original drawings. There's a verve that comes when an idea is fresh in your mind and flows right from the pencil to the paper (but our scanner doesn't love the tracing paper on which I drew).

In design, lots of little decisions are made along the way.

It all adds up to a much greater whole, if done well.

I believe that any vision -- the real story, the one you live with and love -- sees it's proof in the details, and that every detail (from the start and in the finish) counts.