Under a blue moon

Turns out I need a conservatory

 

Can you tell where I spent the day yesterday?  How about now:

 

That should be a dead giveaway but in case it isn't:

 

I spent the day in San Francisco with my sister Kate, my niece Maddi and (hang on this might be confusing) our sister Mary's sister in law Julie, who was visiting from Wisconsin.  Her husband is attending a conference all weekend so we whisked her away for a day of shopping and sight seeing.

 

I have wanted to visit the San Francisco Consveratory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park ever since it was restored in the late 90's.  It sustained major damage during the winter of 1995 and finally reopened in 2003.  It is a beautiful example of a Victorian conservatory.

And get this - it was a kit!  You know like Ikea furniture or something!  Can you even imagine what the instructions looked like?  It was bought as a kit by James Lick in late 1800's but he passed away before he could assemble it.  A group of San Francisco businessmen purchased it from his estate and gifted it to the city. 

 

Being there made me want to watch Green Card again.  The best part of that movie was Andie McDowell's apartment and her conservatory. 

 

I'm wondering if kits are still available? 

Bella speciosa felinus

 

We've had a few days of gorgeous weather around here.  Warm, sunny days that are perking up my newly planted deck pots quite nicely.  Not too hot to render them limp and lifeless and whiny (like someone around here gets when the temp goes above 84 degrees).

 

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I went for pale yellows, blues and pinks.  Soothing colors.  I threw a little of everything in each pot to give the deck the feeling of an unstructured English garden.

Hey - how did THAT get in there?

 

No orange allowed!  That's what happens when you aren't paying attention when you are loading your cart at the garden center.  Orange things sneak themselves into your cart.

There that's better.  Peachy pink I can handle.  Please ignore the weird, peanut buttery shade of our house.  It will be painted soon.  If our painter ever calls us back.

 

In another two or three weeks that lobelia will be spilling over the edge of the pot, quite fetchingly.  The Bacopa too.  Bacopa is the perfect flowering plant if you ask me.  It's sweet little flowers bloom quite profusely and it comes in shades of white, lavender and pale pink.

 

You have to watch out for some plants because they will take a liking to your garden and spread unmercifully.  Or they will bring giant alligator lizards into your house and let them loose.  Like the Bella speciosa felinus plant.  Tricky, that one.

Happy Friday!

 

I hope you all have a splendid weekend and I wish you all had a husband that would risk malaria and West Nile Virus to bring you an armload of lilacs and dogwood (with a little bit of Azalea thrown in) and a cat that likes to supervise all the goings on.

It is going to be glorious weather here in Northern California this weekend so I fully expect my NorCal blogging peeps to have gorgeous pictures on their blogs.  You know who you are.

I'm going to drag Rick to the 1st Annual Roseville Antique Faire this weekend.  If anyone is going let me know.  Maybe we can meet up.

 

Edited to add:  I just realized how many pictures of Belle have been popping up lately.  She a bit of a camera hog, wouldn't you say?  I think she should get her own blog.

My cup runneth over

  

Or my email. If you have emailed or commented and I have rudely ignored you please accept my heartfelt and abject apologies.  I blame work and the unworldly wind we have been having (like something out of a Ray Bradbury poem) on the sad state of affairs that is my inbox. 

I will devote myself this weekend to responding.  If you have asked to exchange links or have just sent me a kind word, I will get back to you, I promise. 

Easter was a lovely affair.  I love the eating holidays.  There I said it.  I love getting together with my loved ones and having no pressure except to try to top last year's menu.  Thankgiving, Easter, Halloween (were the food is decidedly lowbrow but still a feast) - no presents - no pressure.  Just food and dressing up.

I made Mari's stuffed Strawberries.  Quite a pretty presentation.  And deceptively easy to make.  Search on her blog for 'strawberries' and you'll find the recipe. 

 

Every year our Easter menu is the same.  Why monkey around with perfection.  Except somehow, along the way, I got stuck with providing the breakfast meats.  Me.  The vegetarian.  This year my fellow chefs took pity on me and assigned me the fruit portion of the menu.  That was easy enough.  Stuffed strawberries for the wow factor and sliced honey dew with blueberries because the color combination is so pretty.

Another fun aspect to the food holidays is that I can pull out my serving dishes and use them.  Of course it would probably help if I had decent photos of them but I was more focused on the food when I took these pictures.  The platter the melon and berries is on is quite lovely.  A big, green pressed glass platter that I bought at Anthropologie for $3.97.  The thing is HUGE.  And it was on the clearance table for some reason.   I'm hoping it's not because of the lead content or anything like that.

The plate the strawberries is on is especially dear - my sons gave it to me on my birthday this year.  They went to a local antique store and found this lovely pink pressed glass cake plate.  This was my first time using it.   I'm sure it will be around for many more of the food holidays.

I love YouTube videos like this....

 

Embedding is disabled on this video so click HERE to watch it. 

This type of video always brings tears to my eyes.  It reminds me of my all time favorite video of Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma.  I can watch this one over and over and over again.

I love how unglamourous, how down to earth and how blessedly talented they are.

Thank goodness for other bloggers

 

I don't have to be the least bit creative.  I saw these Easter favors on Heather Bullard's blog and decided to do them for all my assorted nieces, nephews, young cousins and my own two sons.

We are doing our traditional Easter Brunch at my Dad's house and I wanted to bring a little something for all the kids.  Keep in mind the youngest is 16 years old and the oldest is 37.  But who doesn't like getting something on Easter?

I remember when I was about 22 years old and showing up at my parent's house for Easter Brunch and, oh this is painful, there was no Easter Basket for me.  My mother figured that we were old enough, and probably dieting anyway, to forgo the usual Easter basket of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and, my personal favorite, malted milk eggs.

We all had Easter baskets the next year, I can tell you that.

My kids will probably get them until they are 60 years old.

Obviously no one is in charge around here....

 

Why does this always happen on my watch?  I bet Remy never gets muddy when his parents are watching him. 

This picture was taken at about 7:15am.  Who gets that dirty so quickly?

More pictures tomorrow - my boys did some great birthday shopping for me.  I think they must read my blog. 

Who's in charge around here?

 

Well I guess that answers that.

I spent the morning replanting the pots on the deck.  Belle oversaw the entire operation, making sure I wasn't slacking off.  She was none to pleased about the dirt on the deck, let me tell you.  She looks cross, doesn't she?

I have the hardest time finding pale colored flowers around here.  Everything is hot pink, dark purple or fiery orange.  Not my colors at all.  I managed to find enough pale yellow, pink and blue to fill six of the pots.  They are all kind of meager looking right now so I'll wait until they fill out a bit to take more pictures.

Kitchen pig

 

I'm not sure when the pig showed up on my Mother's kitchen counter but it's been there for a really, really long time.  It is terracotta and it has a patina to it from years of being where all the cooking action is happening.

He just sits there, with a benevolent smile, happy to be a witness to all the good food and general chaos that has always been the way of my Mother's kitchen.

I have coveted that pig.  And on my birthday I found his long-lost brother.  The same sweet smile.  Only this one was terracotta with a green pantina-like glaze on it.  I didn't care much for the color but that never stops me.

 

I just sponged over him with three different shades of cream paint.   I think I'm going to give him an antique glaze to warm up the color and a couple coats of bee's wax to give him a bit of a gleam. 

I also bought a new set of the sweetest sheets.  I think we all know that Shabby Chic is undergoing some financial hardships and unfortunately the stores will all be closing.  But Rachel Ashwell's Simply Shabby Chic line will continue to be sold at Target.

 

When ever I go into Target I always make a beeline to the bedding department so see if there is anything new in the line.  I have several sets of sheets, throw pillows, dust ruffles.  It's all so lovely.

A couple of months ago I was looking for a basket and was in a section of the store that has storage options for children's bedrooms.   And what did I spy but a set of Simply Shabby Chic sheets that aren't carried in the bedding department.   Since they are marketed for children's rooms they only come in twin or full sizes.  I wish they came in queen size. 

Since I wasn't really in the market for sheets I passed on them.  But then I found whenever I was in Target I would head over to the children's department so I could pet them.  I decided to buy them for our guest room

Perfect rumply white sheets with the palest pink rosebuds on them.  The top sheet and the pillow cases have a little ruffle.  Who could resist?

Queen for a day

 

Thank you for all the birthday wishes yesterday!  Boy was that fun to wake up to. 

I spent the day one of my very favorite ways.   I make my girls take me out to lunch.  Kate, Claudia, Stephanie and I met up in Morgan Hill and drove to Carmel Valley where we met up with Nicki for lunch at the Corkscrew Cafe.

The Corkscrew is one of my all time favorite places to have lunch.  As soon as I walk through the gate I feel like I've been transported to some lovely European country where the afternoons are spent lazily around a table, with friends and food and laughter.

 

April is a perfect month to have a birthday, if you ask me.  Around these parts you can almost be guaranteed lovely weather and the first blooms of Spring to have arrived to celebrate with you.

 

I need a gate like that.  Isn't that welcoming?  The restaurant has a gravel terrace and I've decided my next house is going to have a backyard just like that.  With a pergola just dripping with wisteria and roses.

And a fountain of angel butts:

 

I felt like I spent my birthday from one end of California to the other.  I started off in Palo Alto, had lunch in Carmel Valley and was home in Granite Bay in time for Rick to take me out for a birthday dinner.

I was even in places I have never seen before, on my drive back home.  At one point I was a little bit nervous that I had gone the wrong direction and was headed for Los Angeles.  Let me tell you California, all of it, is gorgeous this time of year.