Best of the Web

The folks at Be @ Home were kind enough to feature me on their latest "Best of the Web" series. 

How cool is that?

Check out this week's picks here. 

Gardening: A Winter Pick-Me-Up

Mother Nature has cooperated in my denial of winter until recently.  Temps over the weekend dove to the single digits, there was snow overnight and with a head cold I can't shake, I thought it would be nice to take a virtual garden walk.

There's lot of good Pinspiration here.

It's a Greek Revival too!

I don't know about you but I feel better already.

Bedroom Makeover Ideas

Thanks to Camille, I was able to round up a few more inspiration photos for my bedroom makeover.   

I do love this headboard.   And aren't the flags are cool?

This room is a little too rustic

but I do love a nice graphic quilt or blanket on a bed.

Remember Tommy Smythe's chevron quilt in the Black Walls post?

Another nice masculine bedroom.  I love a headboard that has a fun shape.

Like this...

...antique headboard I saw at an online auction.

Aren't the turnings and headboard shapes wonderful?

Do you remember Furlow Gatewood's bedroom from Veranda?  I love the warm gray walls with white trim and brown wood pieces.  I think this gray-brown-cream color palette is my favorite color palette.

Did you notice the floors are painted white?  Love them!

It's a little too fancy for my house and my taste but I love this room.

I love a nice iron bed too.

Here's another favorite room, again with white or ivory painted floors.

Swap out the wall color for a gray and it's a more

casual version of the Furlow Gatewood room.

Every time I redo a room and think about painting the walls, my mind goes back to the walls of John Derian's house in Provincetown.  These look like old horsehair plaster that were perhaps painted white one time and then had layers and layers of wallpaper over them for year

This is another one of my favorite images where the crusty plaster walls are left exposed.

I wonder if there's anyway I could recreate this look by applying wet brown paper of some kind that stains the surface of the wall.

Or maybe some kind of paint technique that looks like raw plaster.

Maybe applying paint with a trowel?

Or maybe dark walls with lots of graphic black and white artwork to break it up.

Too many ideas; too few rooms. 

Amaryllis Sweet Lilian

It's been really dark here the past two days but one of my amaryllis bulbs is busting a move so I did the best I could with some photos this morning.

Amaryllis Sweet Lilian

Meet Sweet Lilian.

It looks like there's two more flowers on this stalk left to open and there's another stem in the works.

In the background is Amaryllis La Paz which should open this weekend so I'll try to take better photos of  both of them this weekend.

Does everyone have a long weekend?

Winter Projects

I wish I could say that I'm ready to move full steam ahead with my bathrooms and kitchen renovation but I'm not there yet.  These are big ticket items and the bad economy hasn't really cooperated with my saving plans.  Such is life.

I do have a few projects to keep me busy through the winter.  First is a makeover of the back bedroom.  When I first saw the house and the collection of little cottages that sit down the little alleyway along the garden side of my house, it reminded me Provincetown where cottage are packed tightly against the harbor.  This bedroom started off with a painted floor like the ones I'd seen painted with marine paint on Cape Cod.

This photo from a Martha Stewart Long Island beach home tour has floors that are probably painted with marine paint.

I got the look by painting the floor with Benjamin Moore Calypso Blue which is a slightly toned down version of the electric marine paint.  It's always gotten a great response but I can't help feel this Cape Cod B&B look doesn't quite fit in the house anymore.  

The wallpaper has also been a problem.  I originally did this room on a really low budget.  The wallpaper was about $10 a roll, the sheers are from ebay and the blinds are from Home Depot.  I don't know if it was the cheap wallpaper or the old paint but it's developed fairly large gaps at the seams.  Before the photo shoot, I had to spackle the seams in a few places because I was afraid they would show.  So that needs to come down.  I think I'll just go with paint since I've acknowledged and embraced my affliction of needing to redo rooms every few years.

I love painted floors and I'm hoping a new color scheme will achieve a totally different look.

One of Christmas presents was one of these gadgets:  a silent paint remover.  I first saw one on This Old House and Katy Eliot has mentioned using one to strip paint in her Colonial house in Marblehead, so I thought I would give it a try.  The device uses infrared bulbs to heat the paint and separate it from the wood surface.  It's supposed to be safer for the environment than using chemical strippers and I believe I can turn the scrapings for proper disposal at my city's recycling center.  It's probably best done on days when I can have windows open to exhaust any fumes.  I'll let you know how it works.

I'd like to learn how to sew (better).  As I've said in the past, my mother and aunt used to make many of their/our clothes so I grew up with a sewing machine set up somewhere in the house and am no stranger to using one but I've never done much more than a straight seam.  I'd love to be able to whip up a pillow cover or make a slipcover so I hope to work on that.  I had an old sewing machine that I used to make a lot projects for a course I took at Mass Art a few years ago and I ruined it sewing plastic and cardboard so I just bought a new one last year that's still in the box.

Further work on the kitchen and back porches call for window and door changes that require a variance from the city.  In the kitchen, for example, I'll have double windows over the sink and on the porch side, the windows will become french glass doors.  The kitchen window changes not only require a variance but they sit right where this old chimney is.  The chimney is no longer used but removing it will also require a repair to the siding, the soffit and the roof.  A lot of work for one window but winter will be a good time to get all the applications done and get that ball rolling since it takes a few months.

Recap posts and Advertising

I've been getting a lot e-mails from people asking about paint colors and sourcing for various things I've used in the house and it makes me realize I've not done a good job giving those details.  I see quite a bit of traffic coming in on certain posts.  People seem to like before and after images and I have quite a few so I'm going to be doing a series of before and after posts of each room in the house and try to give more sourcing information.  At the same time -- and I've avoided doing this for a long time -- I realize that I've gone through, and continue to go through, a process and gained a lot of information that's valuable to people.  As a result, I'm going to give advertising a try.  I put a lot of time and effort into the blog and if ads are related to my content and they're useful useful to people, it would be nice to get some revenue from that.

If anyone has any tips or advice on advertisting, it would be appreciated.

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Aside from these things, I really need to close the laptop and get my butt on the elliptical.  I won't be blogging about it.

Red Curry Chicken and Biscuits

I was going to say that this isn't your mama's Chicken and Biscuits but it really is with just little tweak in the flavors.  Back when I made the highly pinterested Tom Ka Soup, I was thinking how close something like Tom Ka Gai is was to American chicken soup but with just a few different ingredients, it has an entirely different flavor profile.

So when a friend of mine dropped off a bag of parsley and chive biscuits from Flour Bakery, I thought I'd make Chicken and Biscuits -- a perfect winter comfort food in my mind -- only I'd put my own little twist on the old standard by adding red curry and coconut milk and a few other ingredients.

If you don't have the luxury of a Flour Bakery in the neighborhood, you should buy Joanne Chang's cookbook on Amazon (it's filled with awesome recipes!) but you can also find the recipe here.  (Please note the recipe is for parsley and sage biscuits, but swap out the sage for chives.)  Joanne Chang is best known nationally for her sticky bun Throwdown with Bobby Flay.  (Joanne, won!)  But locally, flour is a place we rush every Saturday morning, usually parking illegally, to stand in line hoping the almond croissants don't run out before we get to the head of the line.  Sometimes we talk loudly about how good the Morning Glory Muffins look just to throw off the eavedroppers.  But I digress. 

The way I made this would serve about three:

1 whole chicken breast, roasted and cubed

1 carrot, sliced

1 medium onion, chopped

2 Tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons flour

2 cups of chicken stock

1/2 cup-ish frozen peas

6-8 mushrooms, sliced

2 Tablespoons red curry paste

1/3 cup of coconut milk

1/3 cup of chopped cilantro

Juice of half a lime 

salt and pepper

Obviously you have to start out having your biscuits made and your chicken breast roasted.  This would be a perfect dish if you have leftover chicken (maybe three cups?) or you could be lazy and buy a rotisserie chicken.  I had a split breast so I removed the skin, seasoned with salt and pepper and roasted it a 375 for about 35-40 minutes.

Saute the onions and carrots in the olive oil, season with salt and pepper until soft.  (I left out the celery because it didn't seem to fit the flavor profile but I think it would have been fine to add it.)

Add the flour and saute a few minutes just so it's not raw.  Add the chicken broth and heat until it starts to thicken.

Add the red curry paste and coconut milk and stir until incorporated.

Add the mushrooms and peas and cook for a few more minutes.

Finally, add the chicken, cilantro and lime juice just to heat a few minutes before serving.

Cut the biscuit in half and ladle some of the stew over the bottom half of the biscuit.  Top with the other half of the biscuit, garnish with a few more cilantro leaves and serve.

It was amazingly good!

As an alternative to biscuits, you could make a simple dumpling and add just a little coriander and/or ginger and chopped cilantro so they're a little different and boil on the top of the hot stew.  You may want to make your own tweaks to the recipe.  More curry, less curry, more coconut milk, no mushrooms, add pototoes...I think it's a very flexible recipe.

I can't wait to make it again. 

** Clarification on the gin-drinking paperwhites **

I just wanted to make sure everyone had the correct details on applying gin to the paperwhites.  Here's an important clarification from the Yankee Magazine article.

"When they're up about three inches, add about half a shot glass of gin to a cup of water and give it to them. Next time you water, repeat, and you'll find that they won't get so leggy. The gin stunts their growth, and they'll bloom more in scale with their stalks."

It also refers to vodka, whiskey, tequila and rubbing alcohol also working but the writer thought gin was the best.  I'd almost like to do two new pots of paperwhites side by side to test out the theory.

* * * * *

Finally, I was goofing around with an animation software I found on line called Picasion.  I made up this little animation on how to make crostini so I'm uploading it to see if it runs.  These things always make my mind race with ideas on fun ways to use them.

Christmas is Packed Away

I had the best weekend filled with rest and relaxation.  How about you?

The living tree is planted outside although I can't help but feel guilty everytime I see it.  It looks so sad and lonely out in the cold.  Am I transferring?

I undecorated the pruned tree today.  It took me about three days to decorate and about 15 minutes to take apart.

I don't know why it took me so many years to figure out I should just take all of the ornaments off and place them in a basket rather than wandering around the living room with ornament boxes laid out on every surface looking for the box each ornament came from.

And then I set up all the boxes on the dining room table to make quicker work of putting everything back in its place.

All the lights are neatly wound up and packed away ready for next year.

But the day wasn't without incident.

Broken item of the season.

And I was unpleasantly surprised to find a big patch of mold growing under the tree!  I'm not sure what happened.  Perhaps the tree stand leaked?  I've scrubbed it up and there's a little stain but I swear I can smell it.  I think it has to go.  Thank god I'm too poor to have nice Persian carpets.  I'd be more ill.

Everything is packed up and put away in the basement except the outside lights which I usually leave up until somewhere between the Epiphany and the date that a former neighbor left me a note in my mailbox that the lights should come down.

Hey, while I think of it, did you know you can keep paperwhites from getting too leggy by giving them a shot of gin?

Yup.

Read about it at Yankee Magazine.

Although we've been really lucky with warmer than average temperatures and no snow since October, there's cold weather coming.  So we're all snuggling up and hunkering down for what we hope is a very short winter.

Still working on my damn goals for 2012.

How 'bout you?