Living in Long Beach

Last night, we had our monthly book club gathering. This month’s book was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. When I was first invited to join the Stoneybrook  Book Club, the books had already been selected for several months. A different member of the club hosts the gathering each month and for my month the book that had been preselected was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I loved this book and went on to read the other two in the series. For my first book club gathering, I added a Swedish dinner. It was really a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of my delicious princess cupcakes. They tasted a LOT better than they looked and had all the requisite layers. If you want to see the look I was going for (and the recipe), go to the cookie shop blog. This is very labor intensive but way better than the Ikea ones (which are good in a pinch.) Plus, mine had alcohol in them!!   Anyway, I digress. The reason I give you all this backstory is that I had so m...

Many squirrels reside on the grounds of our condos. They are well fed, unafraid of humans or cats, and have lots of offspring. I have many stories about these lively squirrels but will spare you for fear of becoming known as that crazy squirrel lady. Here is a picture of two of them hanging out in the tree in front of my deck. (Can you find them? Click on picture to bigify.) They create endless hours of fascination for my cats (and sometimes myself - the young ones are so cute.) Last year they created havoc on my Halloween pumpkin. So I after seeing this picture on flickr , I decided to copy it but with a twist. I stitched this cute little thing in a weekend and after I was done, I got the pattern emailed to me! That would have made it a lot easier but I am so impatient… So you are wondering why did I choose the words “It’s Your Screen Squirrel”?? See below for a daily occurrence. Thinking about all these squirrels gave me an idea when Karen made chicken pot pies. ...

It's been a while since I've watched What a Way to Go ! with Shirley MacLaine and all her leading men so I convinced Karen to come over and watch it with me. As the movie progressed, I realized that it would be more fun to try wear some of my vintage furs while watching the movie to emulate Shirley and her many fur changes... (This blog has a great post about all the different furs in the movie, with lots of pictures.) Surprisingly, I do have many vintage furs that kinda match the movie. (I have not bought any furs in years and years and I would never buy a new fur so please no comments about that.) During this scene, I ran out of the living room and then ran back in and sat on the sofa with this very fur wrapped around my head (sans the bow.) Karen freaked. This is a picture I took after the fact with some of the furs. The one on my head is the one that started it all. Here are two that prompted me to get out my blue marabou. Then I just brought them a...

Over the past few years, I have picked up quite a few vintage cookbooks. I love looking through them, especially the pictures and illustrations. My friend Karen and I found quite a few Better Homes and Garden cookbooks from the 60's the other day at a thrift shop. Since we are both broke, we each only bought one. It took us forever to only choose those two. One that got away that we both wanted was Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Cookbook, hint hint. The reason I mention this is because later that evening, I started a new project called 365project. (I’ve created a permanent link on the sidebar to the left.) It’s a site where you take one picture a day and upload it. So I thought I would start by having my first picture be of a few of my most recent cookbook acquisitions.  Then that got me to thinking. Besides challenging myself to take a picture every day for a year, how about if I created a cooking challenge stemming from my new, old cookbooks? And what if I managed to get so...

My Mother has posted some nice fall pictures on her blog and my cousin, Ken, posted some gorgeous fall photos on Facebook. Click on pictures to bigify! Inspired, I walked around my condo and took these photos. This is as “fall” as it gets here in Long Beach. Some evenings I have to wear pants instead of shorts and use a blanket on the bed but then during the afternoons, shorts are still a must. But I do feel like it is slowly getting  cooler. Speaking of fall or autumn, I found a guest towel on sale at Michael’s and was inspired to whip up a cute fall towel. I have loads of thread that I have bought at Estate sales. The problem with these is that many colors don’t have any identification on them or are from defunct companies. Therefore, they can’t really be used with specific patterns. There are several French blogs that I follow for their nice, free cross stitch designs. My favorite is Gazette 94 ; I decided to use one of her designs. It has everyth...