Wonderful Weekends!

Today has been a great Saturday and there is even more greatness to come as hubby and I are all excited to watch SNL being hosted by the wonderfully talented and funny Jon Hamm!!!! Today has been wonderful for a number of reasons which include:

1. having a wonderful husband

2. it's a bit warmer and sunnier than a couple of days ago when we got our first snow which I am just not emotionally prepared for yet

3. working out on the elliptical trainer while watching the Rally to Restore Sanity makes the workout a LOT less onerous

4. getting a rock star parking space at the mall on a Saturday afternoon

5. singing along to Michael Buble in the car on a beautiful day

6. getting to enjoy a wonderful dinner at home on Saturday night

7. looking forward to hot carmel apple cider and homemade Madelines

I love Madeline cookies and desperately want to visit France one day. I also realize that the closest I am going to get to France in the very near future is visiting the French Quarter in New Orleans so I'll have to do what I can to bring France to me. I bought a Madeline pan a couple months back and finally attempted to bake some up yesterday. They taste yummy and look pretty. I still need to experiment to find just the right recipe and tweak it, but these cookies in the picture above are making me pretty happy right now!

After a day full of running around, it was so nice to come home and spend time in the kitchen making a meal completely from scratch. First off was baking some bread from this amazing recipe at Sew4Home. So yummy! And my husband is a carb fiend so he could eaten only this for dinner and been completely happy. Salad was on the menu, too - a combination of lettuces topped with apple slices, asiago cheese, walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette. Mushroom risotto which takes some time and attention but is so worth it. The recipe here is a good basic one but I always change up some stuff when I'm cooking. Just a little bit of balsamic and orange glazed steak on the side was wonderful!

What a great day! Now hopefully tomorrow I get to spend some time sewing - that will make for a wonderful weekend!

Readable Radiator Shelves

I've been away from here and away from sharing my crafty pursuits with you for way too long! I'm so happy to have finally finished one of the projects around the house that I've wanted to do pretty much since we moved into our lovely old rowhouse.

As it is a lovely old rowhouse, it comes with those lovely old radiators that never seem to be in quite the right place and take up valuable floor space for stuff like bookshelves which hubby and I are desperately in need of as we are both voracious bibliophiles. So at long last I got to creating a few radiator topper shelves.

I began with a little trip to the local Home Depot's building materials area. I picked up a few 1 x 4s and 1 x 10s and wood screws. Back at home, I dusted off the circular saw and marked all my boards (after measuring each radiator twice - very important!). Out came my trusty Craftsman drill and I got all the pieces together.

After a little sanding, the shelves got a couple coats of a nice cream paint. As I am incapable of doing something basic, I had to add a bit more to the shelves . I found a few fun fonts and printed them out at a size that was a bit larger than the height of the front of the shelf. When choosing fonts I's always drawn to those that have a bit of an antique and handwritten feel which works really well for this project as if you make a boo-boo painting, it just adds to the character of the letters.

I rubbed a little pencil all over the back of the printouts and then transferred the outline of the letters to the front of the shelves. I mixed up some of my DecoArt Americana Acyrlic Paints to coordinate with the colors of the rooms where the shelves would be placed and then got to painting!

Now our books have a place to rest and our little old rowhouse has a little bit of art in unexpected places. I'm really grateful to DecoArt for letting me try out some of their paints for this project!

my Christmas wish list begins

On our weekly visit to Barnes & Noble, I was heard squealing with delight when I saw this book on the shelves! My hubby knows how much I want this for Christmas as I love Mad Men and this book takes a light-hearted and so funny look at a pretty dark and serious show. It's brilliant! Then I went to the Mad Men site at AMC and "avatared" myself Mad Men style. Here's me with the gang at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!

Exciting giveaway coming soon!

I have very exciting news coming up and to celebrate the occasion there will be an exciting giveaway coming soon! The pictogram above should give a clue. I can't wait and really wish I could win it!