Dinner from the Garden

Lately we have been eating a lot of meals fresh from our balcony garden. This is my favorite way to eat in the summer, full of fresh seasonal flavors with little effort (or heat) in the kitchen. Add to that the fact that we've grown much of this ourselves, and it's pretty much the perfect meal.

Here's one of our simple homegrown meals:

Salad with mixed greens from the balcony (mixed lettuce, nasturtium leaves and parsley), tomatoes from the farmer's market, shredded chicken, topped with edible nasturtium flowers. And on the side, a slice of our homemade sourdough bread.
 

Here you can also see the ever evolving centerpiece of fresh fruit that I talked about here.

What are some of your favorite summer meals?

Living Room Progress

I'm finally back!

It's been a hectic month, with getting a show opened, finishing final projects and design presentations. Not to mention everything my amazing husband has had going on between work and school! We didn't even get to rest this past weekend after school got out, which was filled to the brim with family and friends. We saw "Ironman 3" with my sister-in-law on Friday, attended graduations (and grad parties) of friends on Saturday, then had an afternoon with some cousins from Utah on Sunday.

In between all of that, we finally started getting the house cleaned up and organized again. Today I want to share some photos of our living room. It is the room that gets cluttered the quickest when things are busy, but it is also one of the most relaxing rooms to be in when it is clean.

Here is a shot showing most of the living room (standing in the dining room)

This great antique shipping crate is the perfect coffee table for a small sofa. I picked it up at the beginning of my 3rd year of college at a yard sale. The sides say L.B. Co., for Long Beach Shipping Company. The people who sold it to me said it was a cheese shipping crate.

A small vignette on one of the side tables. (Please forgive the odd color balance in this shot, I think I should have turned off the lamp that was next to the table.)

My cozy reading nook between the windows and the patio doors.

The living room isn't perfect yet. The Victorian chair badly needs reupholstering, and I plan to get more art and photos hung on the walls. We also have way too many magazines around...it's time for a major purge there! It's fun for me to document the progress as our mis-matched belongings slowly become a cohesively designed room. Stay tuned for more!

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Linked up to One Project at a Time at A Bowl Full of Lemons

A Friday at Home...

Finally, a Friday night at home.

It's been too long, between school and rehearsals for "Sonia Flew". But the show opened last weekend, which means my job is done until the end of the run, when its time to strike the set and return the borrowed furniture and props. Until then, I just have one more class project to finish, and a model and drafting for "The Unmentionables" to present...but after next Thursday I'm done for the semester.

Next Thursday I can begin preparing for my internship with a set designer in the city this summer.

Next Thursday I can turn the living room back into the living room, rather than the flat-surface-covered-with-lighting-design-books that it currently is...because the office is covered with set models.

Next Thursday I can create my plan of attack for FINALLY finishing the touch up paint in the house...a project that's been sitting around since we moved in last summer.

But for now, a nice Friday night at home with the husband. Cupcakes and BBQ chicken sandwiches for dinner (yes I ate mine in that order...it's been a long semester) and Star Trek. We're watching the first of the JJ Abrams reboot tonight, in preparation for seeing "Into Darkness" with my parents tomorrow. A well deserved break before the last stretch of projects.

I love this guy.

A Moment in the Sun (And a Rescue Story)

Life is hectic right now, with less than two weeks until the opening of a show I'm designing and less than a month until the end of the semester. But yesterday afternoon, with the sun streaming in through the sliding doors, I had the rare opportunity of an adorable photogenic cat. (Normally she hates the sound of the camera, but she was practically hamming it up yesterday!)

Meet Fleck, my beautiful rescue cat.

Back when I was in high school, my family became involved with cat rescue. It all started one winter night when my little sister heard meowing from a neighbor's roof...there were three tiny kittens stuck in the gutter up there! We got them down, warmed them up, bottle-fed them until they were weaned, and eventually found them their "Forever Homes" through a local pet rescue group.

In the almost ten years since, my family has fostered many kittens, most of which have found their Forever Homes through adoption showcases around the community.

Fleck and her brother Stripe decided that they already had their Forever Home, though, and didn't need to go to showcase! The loving cats they were at home became grumpy lumps of fur around strangers. Well, one thing led to another, Fleck became inseparable from me, and suddenly I had a cat while I was in college!
(My parents ended up officially adopting Stripe too, so brother and sister still see each other)

It's been almost six years now since I officially adopted Fleck (7 since she came into my life as a foster kitten) and I'm grateful every day to have this loving furball in my life.

She still hates strangers, but around Sean and me she is the sweetest thing to come home to after a day at school or work!

Spring is in the Air!

Spring is here, which unfortunately for this theatre grad student means lots of work and little play. But while waiting for glue and paint to dry on models, I do get a little time to decorate the house with bits of spring. Here are a few photos of the console table in the living room.

The nasturtium on the balcony is overflowing with flowers right now, so I picked enough to fill this teacup with them.

I love how the yellow and orange of the nasturtiums pick up the colors in the oil still life behind it.

The console table is typically my decorating oasis -- it's one of the few surfaces that the husband knows not to put stuff down on (the other important one being my drafting table!) So, despite the chaos of school and work, this table is always a nice, calming surface with things that make me happy. You can see some of the chaos below and next to the table, but not on top!

Some of the different pieces on the table right now:
-oil still life, painted by my aunt when she was a kid. This used to hang in my grandparents' house, and now I have it.
-otter painting, by me. This might find a new home in the office, since the colors would work well in there. But for now it sits in the living room, adding cuteness!
-photo box with fun family photo from my wedding. The box itself was a wedding present from some friends.
-purple candle, from my mother-in-law (purple is my favorite color)
-small jar with amethyst: I used to collect rocks, and I've been working on using that collection in my decorating
-jar with sea glass and white shell: the sea glass in here comes from all over the world, from Santa Cruz to Rimini, Italy!
-vase: This has a great story! Our first Valentine's Day, Sean brought me a dozen roses. But, living in the dorms, I didn't have a vase! Luckily my amazing roommate did, but I had Sean promise me that the next time he bought me flowers he would buy me a vase. And so he did!

I love having a place in the home to display things I love, especially those that bring up wonderful memories. And by incorporating the seasons into this display, the table can constantly tell a new story.

3 Easy Spring Centerpieces

I love to decorate with seasonal items all year long, but spring is my favorite time to bring nature inside. Between the fresh flowers, the fruit, the herbs...nature has practically done my decorating for me! Here are a few of the centerpieces I've done on our dining table over the last couple of weeks:

For Easter, this simple arrangement of wooden and gold eggs in a wooden tub is festive and also reminiscent of freshly gathered eggs.

The wooden eggs (both natural and painted white) were found at Michael's; the gold eggs were from my mother-in-law in our Easter baskets.


I like to keep fresh fruit on the table as much as possible. It's my default centerpiece, since it looks nice and having fruit in sight every day encourages us to eat it. Here's an arrangement from last week, when we had four oranges. I picked some nasturtium and sorrel blossoms from our balcony to add some height and color.

Lastly, our current fruit selection. Maybe not the most artistic fruit arrangement (3 oranges, 2 apples and one lone avocado) but it shows how simply swapping out the cake platter changes the feel of the table. Plus, you can see that these really are centerpieces that are meant to be eaten!

I love how good produce can be the best dining room or kitchen decoration! Especially at this time of year. I hope you're able to enjoy the spring produce, even if the weather doesn't yet feel like spring in your area!

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Linked up to:
 One Project at a Time over on A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Design Finds of the Week #3

While doing visual research for both my design classes and for the different plays I'm working on, I come across some fascinating design inspiration. A few of my finds this week:

Wooden Scaffolding

I don't know what building this scaffolding is covering, but I love the look in this photo. So temporary, yet so artful at the same time.

(source)

Wooden Scaffolding Sculpture

Are you seeing a theme to my research this week yet? This sculptural scaffolding is inside what appears to be the dome of a church. Just beautiful in it's functionality.

(source)

Other great finds of the week:

"Earth Tear" Sculpture made from recycled bottles http://www.recyclart.org/2009/03/earth-tear/

A set of posters depicting Italian inventions http://juicycanvas.com/blog/italian-inventions/

A four-poster bed that looks like four trees, with a bird nest at top http://www.slmetalworks.com/portfolio/beds.html