News Trend Sparking My Joy|Actual

Last night, I took six grocery bags' worth of books and knickknacks from this bookshelf

and while it looked fine before, now my joy is truly sparked!

If you know me at all, you know I am crazy about a good midnight cleaning session.

And while I can easily whip myself up into a decluttering and restyling frenzy all on my own, I have found an amazing catalyst.

Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.

Yes, the quirky and obsessive author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has teamed with Netflix to bring her KonMari method of cleaning to the messy masses. Each episode features tiny Marie, always in her precious white tops and black tights, making a series of visits to a painfully disorganized family, and sweetly forcing them to straighten up.. Watching this process unfold is as absorbing as it is invigorating, and by the end of each episode, I am licking my chops and looking for something to clean.

Which can be a challenge because I do keep a fairly tidy house to begin with.

But the secret sauce of Marie's method is to keep only possessions that spark your joy.

And the magic of this is that no matter how many or how few things you own, you can always hold yourself to a higher standard and discard from the low end of your joy-sparking spectrum.

I find that a tantalizing and exciting process.

So while the rest of the world sleeps, I'll be here sorting and stacking and seeing what sparks my joy.

And I could not be happier.

News Trend My Homemade Quiche|Actual

Crate

knife | Chicago Cutlery c. 1984

baking dish | Crate & Barrel c. 1982

my mother-in-law's legendary spatula | c. 1960

quiche lorraine | last night

Back in the days of the dinosaurs, when my husband and I were dating, we quite decadently made a habit of eating out on Friday and Saturday nights. But Sundays were set aside for home cooking and we often made quiche.

I know. Real men don't eat quiche.

Or so the saying went at the time.

But eggs, bacon, Swiss cheese, onions and mushrooms have never threatened my husband's masculinity so this dish has stood the test of time for us.

For practical reasons, I rarely served quiche as a family meal during my daughters' growing up years. One quiche is not enough to serve a hungry party of six, and I was not about to wrangle two pie crusts into existence for a single dinner. And honestly, my kids never really took to quiche all that well anyway.

My authentic 1982 Crate & Barrel quiche plate spent quite a few years pushed to the back of the baking cupboard.

But these days, when my husband and I are having a rare Sunday evening dinner alone, such as we did yesterday, I bust out my rolling pin and egg beater, and whip us up an old school quiche.

* * * * *

Our favorite recipe comes straight from the pages of The New York Times Cookbook . Penned by the urbane Craig Claiborne, renowned food editor and restaurant critic of the Tines for decades, this cookbook was all the rage among us yuppie foodies back in the day and we used ours as a go-to for years.

Despite my usual cooking style of elaboration and substitution, I have always prepared this recipe exactly as written with zero regrets. Mr. Claiborne set down a sure-fire winner with his Quiche Lorraine and I present his grand creation here just as he wrote it so many years ago..

• Ingredients:
• + For pastry to line one nine-inch pie:
• 1 cup flour
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 2-4 tablespoons water
• Tabasco sauce to taste

+ For custard:

4 strips bacon

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 cup Gruyere or Swiss cheese, cubed

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

4 eggs, lightly beaten

2 cups heavy cream or 1 cup each milk and cream

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Directions:

1. 1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. 2. Line a nine-inch pie plate with the pastry. By all means build a rim with the pastry and flute it. This is essential for the amount of custard indicated in this recipe.
3. 3. Cover the bottom of the pastry with a round of parchment paper and add enough dried beans or peas to partly fill the shell. Bake 10 minutes.
4. 4. Reduce the oven heat to 375 degrees. Remove and discard the beans and parchment paper and set the pastry-lined pie plate aside.
5. 5. Cook the bacon until crisp and remove it from skillet. Pour off all but one tablespoon of the fat remaining in the skillet. Cook the onion in the remaining fat until the onion is transparent.
6. 6. Crumble the bacon and sprinkle the bacon, onion and cheeses over the inside of the partly baked pastry.
7. 7. Combine the eggs, cream, nutmeg, salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce to taste. Strain the mixture over the onion-cheese mixture. Slide the pie onto a baking sheet.
8. 8. Bake the pie until a knife inserted one inch from the pastry edge comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Remove to a wire rack. Let stand five or 10 minutes before serving.

Served with a simple salad and fresh fruit, my homemade quiche satisfies both the stomach and the soul.

And as far as I can tell, it has not yet turned my husband into a sissy.

* * * * *

Ready for more stories about my most dearly beloved, tried-and-true homemade meals?

My Homemade Lasagna

My Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

My Homemade Spaghetti and Meatballs

My Homemade Grilled Cheese Sandwich

My Homemade Cold Tuna Noodle

My Homemade Beef Stir Fry

My Homemade Beef Stew

My Homemade Parmesan Chicken Nuggets

My Homemade Enchiladas

My Homemade Chicken Salad

My Homemade Cranberry Apple Crisp

My Homemade Pasta Primavera

My Homemade Pad Thai

My Homemade Quiche

My Homemade Potato Salad

My Homemade Cobb Salad

My Homemade French Toast

News Trend Portraits By Wendy|Actual

I mean, there's the selfie, but that's just the tip of the portraiture iceberg.

What about all the shots we take

at birthday parties and weddings

and graduations and vacations;

on our world travels and our weekend hijinks;

when friends come to visit

and when family members go away.

We fill albums with images,

we flood them onto social media,

we send them out as Christmas cards,

and we slip them into frames and place them around our homes and treasure them every day of our lives.

We humans really do love to look at our beloved.

Now, most of the time, our portraits come in the form of photographs. Which is all well and good.

But once in a while, isn't it interesting and fun to capture our likenesses in another form of art?

Enter here my friend, Wendy, who is taking a novel approach to portraiture by creating charmingly minimalist paintings of humans.

And dogs.

Now, I'll be honest. When I first glanced at this painting of a class of family friends, I felt unnerved.

Where are their faces??? What is the use of a family portrait if I can't see anyone's faces?!

But then I looked again.

And I realized that through the subtlest of detail - hair styles, face shapes - Wendy had captured the exact essence of each person in this class.

Quickly, I locked down a name to each blank face. I got everyone right the first time.

And now that my eyes are opened, my brain can immediately fill in those blanks and this painting comes alive for me every time I look at it. I no longer see blank faces; I see the person behind the face, and each one is beautiful.

Here's the photo that Wendy used to develop this portrait:

As you can see from this source photo, Wendy's art captures the nuances of the class without attempting to recreate a perfect image of reality.

And you know what that means:

no half-closed eyes

no double chins

no crooked smiles

or any of the other horrible things that often go wrong in photos. .

As a person who struggles to take a decent photo, I find Wendy's artistic renderings to be a gift.

Speaking of which, I think Wendy's portraits make a wonderful gift for a newly married couple, a family with a newborn, a group of college friends, or a family reunion. There's no end to the combinations of humans who would love to see themselves immortalized in Wendy's whimsical style.

And I'm looking forward to the day when I can gather my family from across the continents for a group shot so we can have Wendy paint our portrait too.

* * * * *

If you are interested in having Wendy paint a portrait for you, message her on Facebook atWendy Created To Create.

She paints directly on wood so there is no need for framing, which makes her art an affordable option.

Prices are $75 for a 7" x 7" or $95 for a larger custom size, such as the one shown here.

And each portrait comes with a wooden easel for display. How cute is that?!

News Trend My Miniature Art Gallery|Actual

"I've stood outside my house in Montana looking at the northern lights...Crackling against the sky.

To me, that's magic."-Christopher Paolini

Oh, it all started out so innocently, as my decorating projects often do.

I'd just repainted my bedroom floor a perfect white like a fresh field of snow, moved out a few pieces of furniture, and freed up one long wall along my side of the bed.

Perfect, I thought. Free range minimalism. I'll keep that wall as empty as a Montana landscape and enjoy the tranquil expanse of nothing.

Seemed like a perfectly sound plan.

Until I had a dream.

And in this dream, I saw a perfect vision of my blank wall.

Except it was no longer blank.

I dreamed very precisely of a miniature art gallery. With four medium-sized paintings in light, airy colors. And below the paintings, off to one side, a live edge wood slab bench with hairpin legs and topped with a sheepskin, where one could sit and contemplate the paintings.

Just like a real art gallery with a tiny place to rest and look.

^ Exactly like this.

And even though I didn't know that I wanted a little art gallery along my bedroom wall, I suddenly realized I had no choice in the matter. The gallery wanted me, and that was that.

^ wood terbaru IKEA

^? Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

^? Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

^? Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

^? Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

^? Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

^? Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

^  Dreams really do come true.

And I'm happy that my wall is no longer as wide open as Big Sky country, because now it reflects the lights and colors of my dreams.

News Trend 2017 Ornament Of The Year|Actual

For this year's version of my annual Christmas ornament gift, I will gather sticks and paint them shiny colors.

Said no sane person ever.

Yer that is exactly what I did for my 2017 Ornament of the Year and guess what.

No regrets.

To be fair, there were a few refinements to the process.

I chose only locally sourced natural driftwood, combed from the finest beach in the Pacific Northwest.

That would be Kalaloch.

Holes were custom drilled and wire hanging loops artisinally crafted from, um, wire.

And each piece was painstakingly painted in metallic paint and sprinkled with a corresponding shade of fine metallic glitter.

I'm still finding drifts of that glitter on my garage work table. That stuff plays for keeps.

But yeah. Paint on a stick.

I won't pretend it's any fancier than that.

But that's the tremendous thing about my Ornaments of the Year. They don't have to be fancy.

All I ask is that they be unique, handmade, and given in love. And in those respects, this year's ornament is definitely a winner.

* * * * *

For more Ornament of the Year posts, check these out:

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

News Trend Origami Gifts|Actual

My fourth-born daughter has mad origami skills.

Ever since she was a toddler hanging out at her older sisters' Girl Scout meetings, she has had an uncanny knack for seeing in her mind's eye how to bend the two-dimensional paper into intricate 3_D shapes. Her fingers are insanely skilled at folding with intense precision and managing the tiniest twists and tucks. And her memory retains countless patterns which she can fold up at a moment's notice.

And while she often treats us to origami gifts - a set of puppy dog valentines when she was eight, several years's worth of help with my Ornament of the Year, and a set of boxes to fit over my twinkle lights - she also shares her gifts with the world. After the 2011 tsunami in Japan, she folded 200 tiny cranes in an afternoon and sent them off for a fundraising project.

But most of the time, the process is more important than the product. Ever since high school, at church, my daughter quietly rips her worship folder into bitty squares and folds elephants, cranes, boxes, what have you, as she listens to the worship. Afterwards, she hands her creations to children or leaves them silently standing on a table for someone else to come and discover.

Origami is a special part of my daughter's life.

Origami meant something special to my grandmother too.

I remember with fascination an origami book that I found in her basement when I was probably five or six.. Complete with a set of exotic origami papers, this book became an obsession for me and I desperately wanted to figure out how to make the projects in the book.

I remember trying and trying to interpret the directions and make the right folds but failing very time.

I remember carrying the open book up the stairs with my failed attempts carefully balanced on the pages, and asking the grown-ups for help.

Although I don't recall her exact words, I remember my grandmother giving me the direct impression that this origami business was far too difficult for anyone to understand, let alone a child, and I should take the book back downstairs, put it away, and forget about origami altogether.

And I remember feeling a bit sad for my grandma. She obviously cared enough about learning origami to buy the book, which would have been considered a luxury. And as I considered her a capable grown up, I certainly expected she was clever enough to figure it out. But for whatever reason, she had given up. And that seemed incomprehensible to my childhood self.

So as I watch my daughter sit and quietly fold the complex, masterful shapes like the ones she has conquered this week, I think about my grandmother.

And I imagine how impressed Grandma would be to see my daughter effortlessly folding up a storm of precise and perfect origami shapes, far more intricate and challenging that the ones in her old origami book. I think she would be very proud to see her frustrated dreams come true in her great granddaughter's gift for origami.

And that is something very special to me.

* * * * *

If you'd like to see more of my daughter's origami magic, check these out:

A set of boxes she helped me fold to decorate the twinkle lights in my kitchen window

More origami boxes on twinkle lights around my fireplace mantle.

My origami squirrel,

Tiny little elephants for our 2011 Ornament of the Year.

A hanging group of paper cranes she folded when she was ten.

More paper cranes, these folded from graph paper.

More boxes on twinkle lights, these red for Valentine's Day.

News Trend Saturday Night Sauté|Actual

You know, I'm not usually one for prepackaged meals or fancy bagged food kits.

Ninety nine times out of one hundred, I'd rather buy simple, fresh ingredients and cook them up at home, seasoned mostly with onions and garlic, olive oil and pepper.

But then again, I have cooked up and served about a billion dinners in my lifetime, and I am always looking for something new and different to try.

Enter this new product from Trader Joe's.

While wandering around the internet last week, I came across a complimentary review of these veggie-based sauté kits, and asked my husband to grab one on his next Saturday morning trip to TJs.

I do all the regular grocery shopping, but my husband loves his monthly trip to Trader Joe's.

So that evening, along with a gorgeous fillet of lemon and dill baked salmon, I whipped up the Brussels Sprouts Sauté Kit.

What I found inside the main bag was a lot of loose Brussels sprout leaves and a few slices of the actual heads with the leaves still connected, if that makes sense. There were also smaller packets of hazel nuts for roasting, lemon vinagrette for dressing, and lovely Parmesan flakes for melting. The ingredients were fresh and generously portioned; the directions were simple and clear.

The salmon baked for ten minutes, and the veggies were even faster. Honestly, the most time-consuming step for the entire meal was ripping off a properly sized piece of parchment paper to fit the baking dish for the fish.

A bowl of fresh red raspberries rounded out the quick, easy, and visually appealing meal.

The verdict was unanimous. My husband, my fourth-born daughter and I agree that the Trader Joe's Brussels Sprouts Sauté Kit was every delicious thing it was touted to be, and I have no snobbish regrets about using a kit.

In fact, I've authorized my husband to make an unscheduled visit to TJ's this Saturday to pick up the green bean version.