A Visit to the Strawberry Patch

We love fresh fruit and vegetables, and one of the harbingers of the farm-to-table season here in Virginia is the strawberry. This week we spent a few hours picking these lusciously sweet ruby-fruits to bring home and turn into pie, jam, shortcake, muffins, and frozen smoothie goodness to last through the year!

Do you like to pick your own fruit? Have a favorite strawberry recipe for me to try?

Flower Potluck

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I was perusing the eye candy that is Louisa Brimble's blog. Lo and behold I came across THIS post. It was a beautiful photo with few words. As per usual. But the title intrigued me: A Flower Potluck. There was no explanation as to what a "Flower Potluck" was, but my brain was quickly formulating what it could be. And a beautiful day was born:

 

The Humble Cheeseboard

I can't tell you how many times I have been saved by throwing together a quick cheeseboard at the last moment. Equally at home at a formal affair or a night of sports tv with the guys, allow me to share just a few of the many virtues of this ancient rustic spread.

• It keeps people occupied if dinner is taking longer than expected to prepare.
• If you have surprise guests, it helps the main meal stretch further by acting as a filling appetizer.
• It's quite easy to keep the makings of a cheeseboard on hand all the time. Some ideas might include: at couple varieties of cheese, simple crackers, nuts, bread, spicy meats, dried and fresh fruit, veggies, apple butter, jam, chocolate...
• Everyone loves a good cheeseboard and can find something on it they can eat - even people with allergies and/or special diets.
• There's hardly any prep involved - especially if you buy pre-sliced/pre-cubed cheese, or just place a knife beside the wedge and let people slice their own.

Besides entertaining, a cheeseboard is also a delicious and simple option to take on a picnic, road trip, or plane ride!

Do you enjoy cheeseboards? What are some of your favorite ingredients to include?

How to Make Milk Glass Mason Jars

I love mason jars. Especially the vintage kind. The old styles are just so much cuter than the modern kind you buy at the store today. Don't you think? Knowing that I wanted to use some in my spring decorating this year, I've been patiently assembling a small army from various thrift stores around town. Different shapes, sizes, and ages, I adore some of the treasures I found! Total cost: around $3

I knew I wanted to paint my jars a pretty robin's egg blue, and thought I'd share the process with you today. It's easy as a wink. I started by washing the jars thoroughly. Then picked up a few bottles of acrylic craft paint at Michaels. They were on sale for .33 each.

I thought the turquoise was a bit too bright, so I added a little gray and white to soften the tone.

Then I added in a touch of water, and mixed it all up:

 Now it's time to pour some paint into the jar!

And slowly swirl it all around so that it coats the whole interior:

After it's smoothly covered,  invert the jar into a styrofoam bowl, and let the excess paint drip out for a few minutes (maybe 5-10?):

Then carefully lift them out, wipe the rim, and let them continue to dry upright. Here's one more look at the finished project. I'm so pleased with how they came out!

You can, of course, spray paint (or brush paint) the outside of mason jars too, but I love the soft, creamy, smooth, finish that you get when you paint the interior. Reminds me a little of milk glass or jadeite. And it still leaves that shiny glass finish in tact! - Inspiration courtesy of Jennifer Blair, who is my mason jar and natural cotton boll muse. :-) You can see some of hers HERE and HERE.

A Thought for Friday

Tuscany

Wow. This is gonna be a tough one to keep to just a few words! As before, if you're planning a trip and would like more details, e-mail or message me, and I'd be happy to share...

Springtime in Toscana Italia. Is there anything more delightful? We decided to leave our agenda pretty open ended for exploration - we had two nights booked, and from there we just thought we'd see where the wind led us. *I would not recommend doing this in high season - we were only able to take the risk because things were still pretty slow in the tourist department in April! Turns out? We ended up spending an entire week right where we started!

So the story about where we stayed: our plans originally had us starting out near Firenze, making a slow clockwise loop around Tuscany, and perhaps stopping in Volterra briefly (like for an afternoon) on our way back to the airport in Pisa. - Then, just a couple of weeks before our trip, we decided to watch a Rick Steves video on the Tuscan hill towns, and in the video he declares his love for Volterra as perhaps his favorite best-kept secret! From what we saw on the video, we knew we wanted to make it a more prominent stop on our tour, and as we found it even closer to Pisa than Firenze, we promptly canceled our first reservations, and discovered the gem that is the Albergo Villa Rioddi. Although the room decor is nothing to write home about (most European lodging isn't), the bed was comfy, everything was spotlessly clean, and the views from our windows: worth a million bucks. We loved the breakfast buffet (which was included), wifi was free, and the location couldn't possibly have been better. It was maybe a 5 minute drive to the city walls, and even less to a local super market and laundry mat. It had everything that we needed, and a breathtaking view to come home to every night, so we decided to put down our roots for the week!-
I think it's safe to say too, that after visiting many, many towns in Tuscany, Volterra is our favorite by a mile! It's small. The streets are very navigable on foot (not too steep), the restaurants are divine, there are very few tourists to be had, parking was easy to find, the locals are friendly, there is a beautiful park, and nice rustic walking trails through the woods... It just spoke "home" to us. As a point of reference, everywhere we wanted to visit within Tuscany was less than a 2 hour drive.

Yes, we avoided every major Italian antiquity on our trip. No leaning tower (except from the highway and the plane!), no David, no Coliseum. We were there to discover the Tuscan way of life - not to stand in line all day to snap a picture of something famous. And what we discovered was that we could so easily assimilate into their culture. Our hearts were born for the Italian countryside. We've never felt at home or happy here in America. And now we know why!

Who knows if the future will bring our longing to fruition, but for now, we have our photos and memories to help us relive that magical week in Tuscany. If you'd like to see a few, there is a slideshow below. But be warned: it's almost 15 minutes long!



Tuscany 2013 from Vimeo.

Living in the Moment

How often are we ever truly living in a moment? All senses tuned, full concentration engaged?

I feel like our society is one that doesn't innately teach us how to live presently. It seems we are either being driven by a sense of regret or blame (living in the past), or else one of guilt, stress, or discontentment (living in the future). Perhaps our minute-to-minute feelings aren't so black and white as that, but are we always keeping a mental to-do list running on loop in the background of our consciousness?

Today, I want to encourage you to BE. Pick a moment. Whether it is at a mealtime, or on a coffee date, while you're walking through a park, reading your child a book, wrapped in your husbands arms, or even just sitting at your workspace.

Open up your senses. Feel the world around you. What do you see? Smell? Taste? Hear? Touch? How does your heart respond to those things?

What fades into the shadows during those moments of present-living? It's a beautiful thing...being fully there. Your soul will be imprinted with those moments forever. Your heart will soften to a place of gratitude.
It's how to grasp onto life, instead of letting life run you over. Will you give it a try today?

Be.