Lamb-tastic Stew

Just because it's all about TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY right now, doesn't mean we can't throw a little love the lamb's way. What does the lamb say? Bah bah bbahhhb bu bah bah bah bahhhhhb bhahhh. (sorry, got a little distracted about what the lamb says!)

Make this when you are sick of turkey! It's yum yum yummy! And super easy.

Irish Lamb Stew

2 medium onions, chopped

1 T olive oil

2 1/2 lbs boneless leg of lamb, cut into 1 inch pieces

7 carrots, chopped

5 C chicken broth

1/4 C pearl barley

2 t dried thyme

1/2 C chopped italian parlsey

1 fresh herb medley for beef, tied. (bouquet garni)

1 bay leaf

12 medium-sized red potatoes

Salt and Pepper to taste

In a large, heavy saucepan, cook onions in oil over medium heat until translucent. Add lamb and brown. Add remaining ingredients except potatoes. Season with salt and pepper, stir to combine and bring to boil. Reduce to simmer, cover and cook for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Place potatoes on top of stew, cover and cook for 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender and meat is falling apart.

Serve it up!

Wreath hunting!

Saturday was wreath making day with my Mom. 

First order of business - get fixins! Kit and I walked around the farm and in the woods and collected supplies - tiny Alder cones, holly, mossy sticks, cedar boughs, Alder branches, etc. We also got cut to ribbons by millions of blackberry stickers and stung by nettles. Wow! Hard working getting a few little pretties.

My Mom came over around 12:30, then we had to make a pilgrimage to Michael's to see what we needed there. Note to self: have a super specific plan before entering a Michael's store for supplies. We ended up sort of aimlessly wandering around wondering what in the hell we were doing. I bought some tree forms and some wreath forms and some burlap and some fake berries. Oh, and extra glue gun glue - because - I'm sure that no matter what happens, I'll need lots of hot glue. 

So, finally, 2:30pm and we start the wreaths. Here's as far as we got in one afternoon. My mom's cedar bough wreath was beautiful. I made the tiny tree out of wrapping twigs with moss around the form. I'm going to do the two larger trees tonight - with different material - I'll post the results. I also finished this stick wreath, from young Alder branches and the fake red berries. This baby took a lot of hot glue, but it's pretty cute. I'm hanging it on the front door at our Seattle apartment - very minimal - and not too "Christmas-y", especially since our vestibule neighbors are Jewish - I thought it might be nice to put up non-denominational festive in that area.

Lot's more to come - stay tuned.

Alder cones

View of Liberty Bay from our woods

Found this on an old downed tree. Too pretty to take home.

Holly and berries from the tree out front - making Holly good for exactly one thing and
one thing only - Holiday decorations.

Alder cones.

Cedar boughs - lots of them.

Wreath and tree forms from Michaels.

Finished cedar bough wreath with Magnolia leaves, apples and balls.

Alder branch and berry wreath.

Sorry for the weak wreath pics. We didn't have a nice plain place to hang them - so we stuck them up on the cabinet just for pics. Better ones to come!

Tiny moss tree with Alder cones.

And here's what you do when you are done!

Merry wreath making!

This should make your day!

Thanks Jill for sharing this. 
Everyone else - this is all you need to make it through the Holiday season!
Pharrell Williams - 24hoursofhappy.com

Have a good weekend!

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree....

I know! It's not even Thanksgiving yet..... but I have Christmas on my mind...... which reminds me of a little story - that I shall tell you now so that you will understand that sometimes Christmas can turn you into a shitty and selfish ass! Yes, it happened to me. Learn from this and I will feel better... someday.

The first year Kit and I had a tree together, maybe 2007, I was pretty one track minded about how I wanted our tree to look. I thought I was going to decorate the prettiest tree EVER OF ALL TIME and he would just be in awe and angels would sing and he would forever look to me as the greatest thing he ever found. 

Well, not exactly. I worked and worked and worked on the tree and made it all perfect and every ornament was perfect and pretty and exactly right. Unfortunately, I ignored every single one of his ornaments, all of his childhood tree traditions and just about every single sentimental thing that made Christmas special for him. I also failed to include him in setting the tree up, or putting the lights on it, anything. It was pretty much a one track mind shut-out (which at the time I had no idea I was doing). So, after it was all done, and I was in Christmas euphoria basking in my own awesomeness, he was sort of moping around the house. Finally I drag out of him (because he is super super nice and didn't want to hurt my feelings) what a selfish ass I was being and that in one afternoon I managed to make him feel like he didn't even exist in our Christmas plans, and that basically I sucked the Christmas wind right out of him. 

I have felt so badly about that year that since then, I have hardly been able to decorate the tree without hearing this in my head: "What an ass you were!" Now we incorporate his ornaments too (even if some of them don't fit my "theme"). And lucky for me, Kit is nice so he doesn't hold it against me. 

New Holiday Rules:

1. When you are single or when you are an old lady and all alone, feel free to have your tree EXACTLY the way you want it, with not a thing out of place. Ahh, enjoy.

2. When you have a boyfriend, or husband, or wife, or kids, or cats..... get over it. Your tree is not ALL ABOUT YOU - it's everyone's tree. So get with the program, drink a big glass of eggnog and let it go.

Here are a few ornaments I saw online that I think are beautiful - for my tree, or for a gift. 

 Icicles - by Breanna Daughtridge at Custom Made

Candy Cane inside glass - from Etsy - find it here!

Scalloped Glass Ornament - also from Etsy - find it here!

All the fruit ornaments came from Thames Glass.
I found them in a search for ornaments, and they are super charming!
They also have shells, and snowmen and other neat little things.

StoryCorps

I look forward to Friday mornings because on the drive into work I get to listen to the StoryCorp segment at 7:20am on our local NPR station KUOW. I love StoryCorp! It restores my faith in humanity. And all it is is recorded segments that ordinary people have made in an audio booth - little snippets about people and their ordinary lives and their interactions with others. It's completely heart-warming and will make you cry almost every time.

Today at lunch there was a larger segment on the radio about this being the 10th anniversary of StoryCorp. Scott Simon and the StoryCorp founder Dave Isay were chatting about the program and its start and they were sharing some of the stories from the past 10 years! I spent the whole lunch in the car bawling. It was great.

Apparently there are StoryCorp Audio campers that go around the country gathering stories from people who care to sit down and record something. And apparently Dave Isay has written a book, Ties that Bind, which is a collection of interviews from over the 10 years. Completely awesome and worthwhile - and maybe a good stocking stuffer this year. I think if you go online to KUOW or your own NPR station you can listen to todays story, but definitely listen to the Friday segments - they are so great! Plus, it seems like this time of year being so close to Thanksgiving, wouldn't it be such a nice time to interview your own parents, siblings, grandparents - and get things recorded! It would be fun to do while everyone is socializing and getting ready to eat. I think I'm going to try to set up my own little recording booth from now on and get all the good nuggets from everyone - before it's too late. We're not getting any younger people!!! Thanks StoryCorp - you're the best!

No brainer or Cheap-ass?

I want this chair. This is it, the perfect chair for the corner of the apartment by the window. Kit can sit in it, sipping his cocktail, watching the ferries go back and forth to Bainbridge. Ahhh, so nice. Reading, relaxing, feet up on this good looking lounge chair. Can you see my dream here? Drawback, this little beauty is approximately $6000. Eames, I love you, but you have got to be kidding. I can't afford you.

$5,999 - crap!This was Design within Reach, but it's available in lots of stores like Room and Board, etc.

So, here's the alternative I found. Seems like a pretty good reproduction, but....is it too good to be true? The photo doesn't reflect this, but yes, it is available in the same walnut veneer - so I can get it exactly like the original, but at a fraction of the price. $1,599 seems a lot better than $6000. 

$1,595 - thank you Baby Jesus!This company is called Rove Concepts. I hadn't heard of them, but with this price, I'm liking them so far.

Anyone know anything about this company or this chair, cuz I think it looks pretty good, and for a reproduction, this this looks exactly the same, no changes to the style or anything. Maybe I could pretend I'm super high-end and just went ahead and spent the big bucks, but you know if I get it, I wont be able to keep my mouth shut about how awesome the deal was. 

Thoughts?

Big Souv!

We bought an oil painting while we were in Croatia, our big souvenir of the trip. We stopped in a little gallery on Vis and found this painting and after getting everyone's opinion and discussing it - we went back the next day and bought it for the apartment. I took it in to be framed right after we got back in September and we  got the call to come and get it this week. 

Yes, it cost about as much to frame as it was to buy the painting - but that was sort of our expectation. This is a really large piece, so it needed a pretty substantial frame, and we didn't want to cheap out. 

The frame shop was nice enough to attach a bar across the back too, so that we could hang it on a french cleat - which again, with a piece this big, really matters. It's heavy and needs a solid wall mount. I tried to take a few pics of the process, we got it up really easily and have been admiring it ever since. Things are starting to look good around here!

Before pic. I took down some sailing prints I had here. They weren't really big enough for the space - but made a good place holder.

This is the painting. It's meant to look like a city from the air at night - or whatever you want it to be.

 Backside. They framed it so that we could hang it from the top bar.

This is the detached piece of wood that came with the painting that we attach to our wall. This is how the french cleat works. Attach your piece of wood to the wall, with the angled edge at the top and toward the wall.

Make sure it's level!

Really level!

Hang painting over the attached wood. It also has an angled cleat that just sits right into the top groove of your wood piece. No additional nails or screws. Just hangs there in the same spot, super secure, and wont fall on your friends heads! See from a distance, looks like a cityscape, right? Sort of? Anything?

We really love it. And now that it's up, it's motivated me to get on with the other stuff. Next stop, pillows to match the drapes from the other day.