Saturdays~ Clean & Sweet

It is Saturday and time to bake! There are few better ways to spend a morning (or afternoon) than mixing dry ingredients, spooning out cookies....smelling the sweet aroma while you...clean?



Yes, do something "good" while the cookies are in the oven and the guilt floats away~ organize your recycling or dust the living room and then you feel great~ for two reasons: you can sit down with a warm cookie and hot tea or cocoa and look at your dust-free credenza~ yay!


You can get the recipes for the cookies above at cookinglight.com (the Black & White Cake Cookies and the Cocoa Fudge Cookies) and thanks, as always, to MarthaStewart.com for the super great organized cleaning bucket~ in case your ready to get started!

Sweet Summer Shuffle

Sometimes just hearing the right song can take you into the heart of summer. If you are looking for some sunshine in your music shuffle, try a little bit of Tristan Prettyman. Her album twentythree is just the fix you might need to get you off the lounge chair and onto the sand (even if it's just in your mind...). It does help that she is a native San Diego girl, too, but that's just a coincidence...really~

Classic Taste

This place setting from Crate and Barrel's reproduction of the Classic Century line of porcelain is just wonderful~ it makes you want to go back and re-do your wedding registry from 6 years ago (hypothetically, of course!).... Below are the teapot and sauce bowl from the collection...so sweet.

.

Why not finish it off with the perfect around-the-whole-house apron, from Lotta Jansdotter....Her work is always so beautiful. And she has a great blog on her website, too, that shows you all sorts of fun things that are going on in her design life~ it is inspiring...take a look at jansdotter.com.

Coffee & Marshmallows

This is a little follow-up to the ideal breakfast (of hot chocolate & a cupcake) posted below. Bialetti has come out with a super addition to its stove-top espresso maker collection. The beautiful little espresso maker above also has a compartment to steam your milk at the same time, giving you a beautiful capuccino with so little effort- grazie! You can find them online at sites like surlatable.com.




Top off your cappucino with these yummy handmade marshmallows from a local company, Little Flower Candy Co., which have been favorites around here for awhile! You can buy them online at littleflowercandyco.com. Hope this helps to give your day a happy kickstart.....caffeine & sugar have been known to do that I guess.

Cold Comfort...

Well, today it is 93 degrees....in March. Some people are happy about that, some not so much. Either way, here is a vision of comfort for those of you are are too hot, too!


If, on the other coast, you are too cold.....here is some comfort for you. It seems like Macaroni & Cheese can just warm you right up from the inside out! enjoy....

Spring Cleaning...

This time of the year is when it really seems like things are ready to be shaken out, scrubbed and either trucked off to Goodwill or tucked back into their appointed places....In the midst of this frenzy of organization and tidyness, here is a fun way to stay clean this spring. Thanks (again) to Martha Stewart for the fun homemade soap recipes on the website~ add your own flavor, color, exfoliant (if you dare!) and celebrate the spring with your own crafty hands!

This is breakfast...

This is a breakfast option that is offered at Sprinkles Cupcakes here in Los Angeles.....It just seems so yummy and the fact that it is, in fact, on the breakfast menu means that you should feel little or no guilt when consuming it. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right?