As Seen On

Well, the blog has certainly seen a flurry of new visitors in the past few days.  Last week, on a whim, I quickly submitted my tutorial to Apartment Therapy.  They liked it and posted a write-up two days later.

For the record, I had nothing to do with what they wrote.  I liked the angle they chose, but they posted the wrong Besta shelf!  Now,  if you're going to submit anything to Apartment Therapy, you have to have thick skin because the comments and opinions can be somewhat brutal.  Thankfully I've never had a negative comment before, but not this time.  But it wasn't my fault.  The culprit was the silly shelf that they posted at the top.  Anyway, it made for some interesting reading.  Apartment Therapy readers really take other peoples' safety seriously.  People thought I was being negligent for building a banquette out of something so obviously flimsy.  Let me tell you, I'm no dummy and I did my research.  The units I used are a lot stronger than the one pictured.  Anyway, that's by-the-by.  On the most part, once I had straightened out the confusion on the base units, people seemed to like my banquette.

The next day it was featured on Centsational Girl in the BOTB (Best of the Blogosphere) series, and has garnered some more positive reviews!  Yay!  You can see that link here.

And for all of you wondering whether it is strong enough to hold adults, here it is in action.

It was out semi-annual "tour de tapas".  We had 10 people seated around that table (6 on the banquette), and I can happily say the bench did not collapse!

And here was what was happening on the other side of the room. 

Cheers!

Pretty Peonies

People love Trader Joe's here in Utah.  I personally love a few items, but find the store to be a bit dated and generally smells of rotting fruit when you walk-in, not to mention the abundance of fruit flies that are circling the non refrigerated fruit and flowers (sorry Trader Joe fans, don't mean to offend).  But they do have some very inexpensive items that I just can't resist.  Namely their frozen chocolate croissants and their flowers.

It was time for our annual Giro dine-o-round and I wanted to make some inexpensive table setting that were springlike and fresh.  I found these beautiful peonies and other flowers at Traders for a very reasonable price.  And four days later, they're still looking fresh.

I split a $3.99 bunch of flowers to make 5 bud vase table settings.

 2 bunches of $3.99 sunflowers brightens the laundry room turned bar.

I finally hung some drapes to hide the washer dryer.  You may recognize them from my clients' family room makeover.

Another couple of pictures of the outside.

We were the final house on the Giro tour and hence served yummy deserts, cocktails and coffee.

I'm becoming a bit of an expert on making Pavlova.  So easy to make but never fails to impress.  I bought those cute ice cream cups and teeny tiny spoons & forks from Crate and Barrel.  We've hosted this dine-o-round thing for a number of years now and I thought it was finally time to ditch the plastic plates and silverware.

Our fellow hosts made this lovely flour-less torte and served it with framboise.

 Lots of gratuitous cake shots!  But they all look so wonderful I couldn't chose the best one.

Afterwards the flowers came inside to brighten my kitchen table.  I love how they work so well with the kids' pictures.

Hope you all had a great holiday week-end!

Happy Valentine's Day

Hope you're having a wonderfully romantic day with all your special loved-ones.  I woke up to the smell of freshly baked almond and chocolate croissants, courtesy of Trader Joes.  Later, Damian and I have a date at the accountants office, don't you just love taxes?!

Christmas Memories 2012

Happy Boxing Day!  A gazillion photos from our christmas day.