Our dear (and newly hitched) friends, Geoff and Katy kindly sent us this great cookbook, Home Made by Yvette van Boven. It has tons and tons of unique and creative recipes which focus on and build upon base ingredients and making things from scratch. The back cover says it best:

How do you make cheese from pantry staples? How do you create an oven smoker from scratch in just two minutes? How do you make ice cream without an ice cream maker? And how can you use your homemade cheese, smoked fish, ice cream and many other delicious ingredients in original recipes? In Home Made, winner of the Dutch Cookbook of the Year, Yvette van Boven will show you that preparing your own food is simple.

Clear step-by-step instructions will encourage you to try these easy techniques without having to buy expensive appliances. Once you’ve created an ingredient, Yvette’s original, authentic and easy recipes will immediately inspire you to make a breakfast, lunch or dinner that you can proudly announce is truly HOME MADE!

The book is very well crafted and has many many descriptive and helpful photos (a must for me) with intuitive instructions and witty commentary.

We’ve already tried out a simple gelato recipe with our leftover frozen marion berries from last summer which turned out great (even without an ice cream maker) and Tracy tried out one of the many bread entries, a Rosemary Olive Focaccia.

Let me tell you…the pictures do not do this justice. I know what I’ll be eating for breakfast this week!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Yesterday Jacob and I went to Whole Foods for avocados (we needed a guacamole fix) and I spotted these gorgeous buds. Fresh, coral charm peonies! These are my absolute favorite. Having not worked in a flower shop for many months, I miss handling these beauties and especially working with peonies. Of course we could not resist. They are so very beautiful, with depth in every petal, and always remind me of the flowers from My Fair Lady.

Look in the markets for some of your own! Here’s a few tips on picking out long-lasting peonies (they aren’t too cheap!):

- Choose a bunch whose buds look like they’re just about to open, but have not quite burst. When you get them in your home, they’ll open soon enough. Especially here without air conditioning, these opened up like this in a few hours.

- If the buds are already open, it means they won’t last as long, but they will work fine if you want to use them for a special occasion the same day.

- It’s natural for peonies to fade and change color but when picking them out, you want ones that are fairly solid and bold.

Make sure to get them in water as soon as possible. Give them a fresh cut and remove any leaves that may sit below the water line. I simply set mine in a glass vase on our coffee table for a vignette with a couple thrifted French ink wells and a small calendar Jacob got me from Japan.

You can see in the above photo the buds just beginning to open, and the one below from today where they are all fully open and lush.

Have a great week, everyone!

As a homeowner, you’re allowed to keep up to 6 chickens in your yard! 

And here’s a cousin of Lulu’s.

And on our porch, many of our plantings from last summer lived through the winter and are now blossoming again. Below you can see the ranunculus Tracy planted a few months ago, just beginning to sprout up. 

As you can see, blogging has taken quite the back burner. This is mostly due to me not carrying my camera around with me as often, and that my phone is an older iPhone whose photo capabilities and qualities are limited. Not great excuses, I know. But thanks to some prodding by others, we’ll try to get better at this.

Here are a few shots inside our apartment as it is today. We made some progress this past weekend with cleaning, organization and closet storage, etc. Aka, we can now see the floor in our closets and not have to remove everything inside to get to what we need.

Also, I had installed shelves below and around our TV last fall but they didn’t quite have the look we were going for once completed. We originally had all our books on the white IKEA BILLY shelves which are in the back corner and Tracy’s milk glass on the open TV shelves but visually, there was too much going on. So we switched the two and are much happer with the result. Now, sitting on the couch you can see books and magazines and the white milk glass compliments the vertical shelving behind.

Also, NIGHTSTANDS! What seems like an incredibly easy furniture decision had become a nearly two-year absence there of and all-together avoidance of the topic. We wanted to get ones that worked well with our bed frame, maybe something mid-century or earlier, however our thrifting jaunts were never fulfilling. Finally, IKEA supplied us with the most simple, unfinished wood option, RAST. At $14.99 a pop, these little guys are working out perfectly. We might get another soon as they also double as a printer stand, another item we’ve gone without for too long.

Back in the living room, while I don’t have ‘before’ shots, believe me, it was not-so-nice. The map, a great find which we used at our downtown studio last year, here again covers the TV. On either side, I had installed three shorter shelves of the same type, however they were pretty useless at only 12 inches wide, serving only for vignetting chotchkies. Without them, the wall and shelving below reclaim their importance as a sort of transparent credenza/fauxdenza. Also at IKEA we picked up a gorgeous (& real!) fiddle fig plant which is apparently all the rave now. My poor ficus on the other end doesn’t quite hold it’s own…it’s had a rough life but I have high hopes for its survival.

For those of you who are cringing about those poor Eames LCM chairs stacked and hiding against the window, just know that they are on my mind too. ONE DAY, my beautiful modled plywood friends, I will make the terrifying effort to restore you. 

So, our 70s apartment is looking a bit better nowadays. Good enough, even for entertaining friends (shocker!). Stay tuned.

Taken via instagram

Just a quick note to to say hi and that we’re still here. Funny thing how time flies. And once you get off the blogging routing, its really hard to begin again. Should we post about that thing back in August? What about December holiday posts? Or just start off fresh? Not sure what we’ll do, but let this be the start of starting again.

The above was taken as part of our holiday family portraits at my parent’s new property in north Houston. They have a great big backyard with a beautiful forest and a few trails for adventures. We’re looking forward to spending time there once the house is complete.

Move-out photos post deep clean. I will miss those beautiful floors.

As you may probably know, Tracy and I have moved across town and are now East-siders! This is definitely a move in the cool direction, if you’re not familiar with Portland neighborhoods and Wilamette River-side rivalries. It’s sort of like Germany and the Rhine river: Düsseldorf and Cologne argue who’s on the better side. Anyway, 450 square feet had its charms for sure, but our quality of life within such small confines was never where we hoped it might be. Over the past year we had come to appreciate living in downtown with its conveniences but, especially with our budget, life on the Eastside was the new beacon of hope. MORE SPACE! SINGLE-DOLLAR SIGN RESTAURANTS/BARS! FREE PARKING! NATURE! CHEAP LIVING! BREATHING ROOM! All important and now sought-after components.

Our checklist was simple:

-at least 600 square feet

-free on-site / nearby parking

-a dishwasher (you can’t go without after growing up with one)

-cross-ventilation (ie. windows on two sides of the apartment for air flow)

So we scoured the local listings and hunted the vacancy signs. Portland is not as affordable as one might think. Cost of living is about 20% higher than average but it’s not impossible to find affordable living. We had fanciful notions of looking for an entire house to rent and were even thrown on a little teaser by a fake Craigslist ad. The too-good-to-be-true deal turned out to be just that as there was a decimal place missing in the faux listing. Also true to Portland is the fact that apartments are scarce and landlords typically do not hold apartments for very long. Most units only allow 1-2 weeks from posting until fill and we aren’t that flexible but prefer the peace-of-mind that comes with finding a place a month or so ahead of time. It was Tracy who saw a posting on her bike ride home that saved the day. The unit we were after had just opened up and would match our 4 week window. While it didn’t have the character of our 1930′s art deco, wood floors, etc. apartment, we were willing to settle for it’s benefits: 780 sq ft (!), for lower rent (!!), free parking (!!!), and a dishwasher (WOO!), a actual bedroom (no more of this, “Welcome to our apartment. Mind the bed as you make your way to the couch…” business), East and West facing windows for excellent circulation, a great little patio/balcony and finally, a second-floor unit meaning with no one living above! #WINNING

So it’s possible the features that we are most excited about come standard on 90% of American apartments, but guys…we even have more than one electrical outlet in a room! O_o

As you can see, we have fast-forwarded a few decades in terms of aesthetics but I know its going to turn out great. Right after I remove that giant, black beast of a radiator cover over there (there’s even a faux log setup with a light and twirling paper inside to imitate a real fire…so kitsch it’s kind of nice…but not that nice). I very much believe that apartment renters have full rights to make modifications to their interior living spaces. With limitations, of course. You can’t knock out a wall or turn the kitchen into an aquarium and live out your Jules Verne cooking fantasies. But considering the amount of time you spend in a place, it’s ridiculous to hear about painting or wall-mounting restrictions. Walls can be spackled and repainted so easily. Besides, my Boy Scout roots dictate that I leave a place better than I found it. So while this place’s walls are an acceptably warm shade of beige/white/bland and won’t require repainting, there are a few adjustments we will be making. Stay tuned.

Things are greening up nicely here in Portland. It seemed like an overnight transformation: from stark winter to blossoming trees and flowering branches. It is now officially (and visually) springtime in the Pacific Northwest.