Friday, March 27, 2009

Window Shopping (or Surfing)

Budget does not allow me to put everything in my cart this week, but window shopping through some greats is fun too.

Taking a look at my favourites this morning, I realized something spooky - I had a whole page of green items that I LOVE. Maybe it's a spring thing, but I want all of these things!

This scarf by kalla has been calling my name for some time now.

I'm facing having to redo my taxes, so this print by CritrusTree speaks to me:


Who could pass on an incredible sale, especiallywhen it's from
eNVe

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Soup Club



My Soup club consists of four busy moms (including me) from my neighbourhood. We all have very different lives, but share one common problem: after we take care of everyone else, we often find that we neglect ourselves. (I.E. forgetting to eat lunch 3 days in a row!).

Out of our shared love of soup, we formed a club to rotate soup making each week. The rules are simple: make soup, enough for two-three bowls per person, and deliver to friends. That way, after only making soup once, we all get fed lunch for a month!

The bonus of soup club is that we get to share receipes and sometimes, mistakes, and remind each other to take a least five minutes for our selves.



This week was my turn. I decided on Pureed Vegetable Soup for my friends (a favourite from Williams-Sonoma "Soup").

Here's the recipe - For my Soup Club I doubled the measurements:

2 TBSP Olive Oil
3 Leeks, including light green parts, finely chopped (I roughly chopped mine and they were fine)
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
4 zucchini, sliced
3 waxy (all-purpose) potatoes sliced very thin
1 1/2 TBSP Tomato Paste
6 cups prepared chicken or vegetable broth (I made mine from chicken leftover from the weekend).
1 cup chickpeas
1 TBSP fresh lemon juice
Salt and white pepper

Directions:
1)In a large saucepan, heat oil and cook leeks over medium heat unitl translucent.
2)Add carrots, zucchini, and potatoes and saute until they begin to soften (3 min)
3)Add tomato paste and stock, cover partially until veggies are tender (25-30 min)
4)Add chickpeas and cook additional 3 min. Add lemon juice and salt and pepper. Remove from heat.
4)Blend in batched in a food processor, or, use emulsion blender,until smooth.
5)Optional: add lemon zest and parsley when served.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Monday Blog Special


New necklace

New necklace.

Today, I am a busy beaver in my studio. Door locked, kids with the sitter kind of day!

There are lots of new items being added to Penny Glass Girl and Penny Shop Girl this week. Drop by and have a look.

This weeks sepcial: mention "blog" in your notes to seller at checkout and I will refund your shipping and include gift wrapping and a gift card with your purchase. The perfect time to send a gift or to treat yourself.

Happy Monday!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

New Pendants in my Shop


I am wrapped up in Birthday celebrations for my "little" boy (almost as tall as me at 8!). But I just wanted to post a quick peek of my new bubble pendants. I am haing lots of fum with chemicals of all kinds this week, so stay tuned for some more fun finds.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Better Late Than Never BLOG SPECIAL

New earrings this week. I have been having fun experimenting with new materials.

Ok, so my Monday blog special didn't happen this week. The call of great spring weather combined with march break with the kids forced me out of the office and studio and out into the beautuful sunshine.

So, in it's place, I have a Thursday blog special to make up for it: Buy any jewelery item in my shop and receive a free pair of earrings. Any pair! Just mention "blog" in the notes to seller upon checkout and tell me which pair you would like. Good until the Monday Blog Special returns next week.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Making An Imperfect Pizza.

Pizza day happens every week in our house. It doesn't have to be the same day each week - we are after all, a typical busy family - but our kids would never let us forget the ritual.

It has to be a day that Dad is home, he has an important role: the DJ who selects the music and therefore the tone of the evening. On this day, Joel Plaskett, a favourite in our house was playing on the ipod.

Some days when we have time we make the dough, you can find the recipe here but others days we cheat and get the dough from our local bakery, they usually have some on hand as does our grocery store.

This week, my oldest son just had to be the one to roll out the dough, an important honour which he took very seriously as he donned the pink apron.


This week, my youngest son was more into making playdough pizza, that's ok too.


And after an hour of dancing, dough rolling and clean-up, we add pizza sauce and cheese and bake it on a pizza stone which has been slowly heating up to 425 degrees in the oven. Ta Da, the best, most imperfect pizza ever!