Under a Blue Moon

Angels

1. Anjo Guardião, 2. Angels Instead (reloaded), 3. Victoriana, 4. The Child who ate Turkish Delight, 5. version1, 6. And the Days Are Not Full Enough, 7. Angel, 8. Garden Angel, 9. Untitled, 10. Amorek_090605_kpjas, 11. Highgate1, 12. Cupid and Psyche, 13. "Central park", 14. Crocker angel, 15. Angel in the Graveyard, 16. …

So many melancholy angels.

I do love Flickr. More of my favorites. I forget what I was looking for but the next thing I knew I was claiming images of angel statues as my favorites.

I especially love Psyche Revived (number 12). The original by Antonio Canova is at the Louvre. Antonio is a handsome bloke, don’t you think? I have my own Three Graces. Not quite as grand as Randolph’s copy but I like it nonetheless.

I liked my gratuitous pretty photo in my previous post so much I made it my new banner. Let me know if looks wonky on your end. Or if it’s not showing up.

Pear Custard (alternative title: The importance of measuring properly)

First a gratuitous pretty photo. I’ve been meaning to do a food related post forever but I cannot take an appetizing food photo to save my life. Why is that? I know it’s not just me because I’ve seen plenty of other not very appealing food pictures out there. I think when you don’t have the aroma of whatever the dish is it loses part of its appeal.

One thinks of food as being something that just needs to taste good but really food needs to appeal to all our senses. Smell, appearance, textures, and even sound – (crackling bacon anyone?) along with taste. I think that’s why food stylists really have it cut out for themselves. My hat is off to those of you that do it well.

My mother found this pear custard recipe sometime during the mid 80’s. So I can’t properly credit the original creator of the dish. Let me tell you though – it makes your house smell like heaven while it’s baking.

I’m pampering Rick because he had surgery on his hand Friday. One of his favorite desserts is this pear custard. I have made this over a dozen times and for some reason I never saved the recipe. It wasn’t ever a problem though – I would just call my Mom and she would read it off to me. Again.

It was bittersweet to call my Dad’s house looking for it this afternoon. My sister Mary is visiting from Wisconsin and I made her go to my Mom’s recipe journal and look for it. My mother had great intentions with this journal – but really what ended up happening is instead of copying recipes to it she just shoved clippings in between the pages. Mary looked through all the clippings three times, while we discussed the proper pruning method for lilacs, and couldn’t find the recipe. After the third time she flipped to the front of the book and wouldn’t you know it ~ the pear custard recipe was one of two that were actually written into the journal.

Pear Custard

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

8 ripe pears, peeled and quartered
1 1/2 cups milk
2/3 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
4 eggs
2/3 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbls. butter

Arrange pears in a baking dish. In a blender mix the rest of the ingredients, except for the butter, until blended. Pour over pears and dot with butter. Sprinkle a tablespoon or two of sugar over it all. Bake for 50 minutes.

I have a very bad habit of not measuring vanilla. I just grab the bottle and pour an approximate amount in. This afternoon I grabbed the bottle and as I was pouring it into the blender I realized I had grabbed almond extract instead. Oops. If I had used a measuring spoon I would have noticed and could have caught myself before adding it to the other ingredients. I just added a swig of vanilla – we’ll see how it tastes.

And I have the recipe copied down now.

Magical

The pictures in this post are all screen captures from the movie Practical Magic. I was watching it on Saturday night and realized that my dream house is the house from the movie. I must have subconsciously stored it all away.

I’m not so enamored with the actual style of the house (Victorian) (although I wouldn’t turn it down, if someone wanted to give it to me) but I do love the interiors and especially the garden. A few posts back I was talking about my fantasy rose garden that would have been swept away in the great flood of 2005 if it had been a reality ~ this is exactly how I envisioned it.

Just about that size with white picket fence. I just had some archways going on over the gate in my little fantasy garden.

Oh there is it.

There are certain movies that I can watch over and over again just for the sets. Stepmom is another good one (Susan Sarandon’s house). So is that movie with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton – Somethings Gotta Give – I love the beach house in that movie. Or the apartment in Green Card with Andie McDowell’s rooftop garden.

When I watch a movie with a good house set I keep trying to peer around the actors so I can see the details of the house.

You there! Aidan ~ get out of the way!

Hmm – my next house might need a conservatory.

I used to tear out pictures in magazines of decorating styles I liked. Particularly kitchens. One of the pictures I ripped out was from a scene in a movie with Barbara Hershey in it because I loved the leaded glass in the kitchen cupboards. Now I can just watch movies on my laptop and do screen captures instead. My new decorating wishlist file.

Oh. I guess I need the ocean just a couple hundred feet off of my front porch. I could live with that.

As it turns out this movie was filmed near the San Juan Islands in Washington and they actually built the house just for the film and then TORE IT DOWN. Can you even imagine.

The Kitchen

Now that you have made it in the front door you might as well come on into the kitchen. First a couple of disclaimers. The kitchen is still a work in progress. Tile backsplash isn’t in yet, not all of the baseboards are attached. Crown molding hasn’t been caulked and painted. And for some reason my camera is making the colors a little wonky.

The floors are natural Brazilian cherry with a low gloss finish. The cabinets are painted the perfect creamy white – Dunne Edward’s Swiss Coffee (as will be the trim work when we get around to it). The walls are Dunne Edward’s Winter Light (or Lite, I can’t quite remember) which is a French vanilla color. The counters are a slightly greyed green. There ~ you should have your color reference now and can make mental adjustments when you look at the pictures.

This is standing in the doorway and looking towards the eating area (that’s the laundry room back there too). And my laptop at the table. If I’m not sitting there then I’m sitting on one of the loveseats by the fireplace. I love wireless. See the big gaps between the ceiling and the crown molding? We have quite the wavy ceiling.

This is standing in the opposite corner looking towards the entrance way. Look out the window – don’t we have the world’s ugliest front door? It’s on our to do list. We also would like to put a pair of double hung windows there (like we have over the sink). That’s my April quilted table topper on the table – made by my lovely sister Nicole.

Okay this next picture isn’t all that interesting but you can get a better idea of the counter color. I really like how the counters turned out. I was so afraid they were going to be a bluish green.

You can also just get a teeny peak into the dining room. Let’s head on in there now.

Here the pictures really stink because I have light coming in from two sides. But here is the dining room. I just realized how dorky my curtains look. A bit short, wouldn’t you say? The walls in here are painted a very soothing green. Also Dunne Edwards paint (our painter loves Dunne Edwards and will only use their paint) but I don’t remember the name of the color. We really monkeyed with it to get the shade just so anyway.

Looking back towards the kitchen. That big white spot on the wall behind the green chest is where we had to hack a big hole to get at some electrical wiring.

Well there you have it – if you want to see the befores you can look here and here. Just keep in mind that the pictures were taken before we bought the house. Lest anyone think I picked out that wallpaper.

And if you want to see inside my refrigerator head on over The Wine Maker’s Wife.

From my heart to yours (or is it the other way around?)

Before we go any further I need you to go HERE and check out the pretty sachet hearts. Go on. I’ll wait here. Take your time.

I didn’t think you were going to come back. Jill has a beautiful blog, doesn’t she? Aren’t those hearts just adorable? I’m a sucker for anything lavender. I just love it. I read an article, in the dearly departed and much lamented Victoria Magazine, a few years back about a family that moved to Oregon or maybe it was Washington because they couldn’t stand their corporate, city life anymore and they started growing lavender. As a business – fields and fields of it. When the workers are harvesting it they have to take frequent breaks because it made them woozy, being out there in all that lovely lavenderness. Its sedative, calming properties are very real.

Well I just had to have one of those hearts and looky here ~ now I do!!

It makes me feel a little woozy to go to Jill’s blog and etsy shop and see the heart and then to look down and see it in my very own hands. A little surreal. It is packed tight with lavender and it smells like heaven. There are going to be very sweet dreams at our house tonight.

For the birds

It’s hard to take a picture of crystal and have it turn out like it really looks. I actually knocked that little bird feeder off its shelf and scattered eight million teeny little Swarovski crystals all over the carpet. I spent hours picking them up. That’s probably why the crystals don’t photograph as sparkly as they should – they are covered in carpet fuzz.

One of the things I vowed to be more diligent about was feeding our avian friends. The real ones, not the Swarovski crystal eating ones. I’ve been keeping the feeders full at our house and the hummingbird feeder full at my Dad’s.

Hummingbirds are funny – they look all sweet and innocent but you should see the turf wars that go on in my Dad’s back yard. There is one hummingbird that feels like the feeder is his and he is determined to keep all other hummingbirds away from it. I don’t know when he sleeps. As soon as another bird approaches the feeder he comes swooping out of the trees and chases them off.

I actually gave up having a hummingbird feeder up on my deck because the hummingbirds were dive bombing me when I walked out there. Like I could be mistaken for a hummingbird. Those advertisements for hummingbird feeders where there are eight hummingbirds happily eating out of the feeder have to be photo-shopped. There’s no way. They are not that cooperative.

I have wanted a bird feeder like this one for ever. There is a great, overpriced nursery by our house and they had a version of this feeder and they want $200 for it. So for now the birds in my garden eat out of a $30 feeder just fine, thank you very much. It’s actually a bird feeding technological wonder. It’s basically like a standard tube feeder only it’s divided into three sections, one on top of each other. There are about nine feeding stations and each section has it’s own compartment of food so all three levels empty at the same rate. Rather than having it empty from the top down (where towards the end only the bottom stations are usable).

I even filled the suet holder yesterday. Ick. The first time I did it I was all grossed out by the lard aspect. It was impossible to get the lump of suet into the feeder without half of it smearing all over me. It was like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube. Then someone told me to freeze the blocks of suet first – they just slip into the feeder with minimal mess.

I’ve always said that if I come back in another life as an animal I hope it’s a bird. I just don’t want to be a bug or lard eating bird. I’ll come back as a crystal eating one.

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