A French Dinner

 The slide show is now in my sidebar. I will take some time next week to figure out how I could have made it part of my post.

A few weeks back we had dinner with friends. Our friends love dishes, food and flowers as much as we do. So the day was chosen and all we had to do was bring a bottle of wine and I brought my camera.

I should have known when I saw the chef that we were in for a wonderful meal!

He was consulting with Julia

and the two of them chose.

The table was set and there was a lovely centerpiece.

The light in the dining room changed throughout the afternoon.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2011

I am joining Amy for the Spring 2011 Quilt Festival. You can read about it here or click on the button on my side bar. The inspiration is from Kaffe Fassett'e Museum Quilts. For the quilts in this book, Kaffe draws upon textiles from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I fell in love with the apparent simplicity of this quilt called Floral Columns. He suggests collecting these bold floral prints and arranging them so that they flow. Here is the inspiration from his book.

Here is my quilt....

The quilt hangs on the wall behind my chair in the studio. A folding screen behind my chair holds more quilts.

Please visit the Quilt Festival and see all the wonderful quilts!

Better late than never.....

 Fresh Market had peonies and I had to buy some. They are a little pricier than some of the flowers at the market but it was Mother's Day!

I filled an antique vase with them and put them on the pine coffee table. There is a subtle scent and they are soft like clouds.

We had friends in for dinner. Jack made his sauce and I made up individual antipastos. Dinner was delicious! I wanted something different for dessert. Ina talked about simple Italian desserts on one of her shows and I tried one. I had a small bottle of Vin Santo. You can read about it here.

Arranged on an antique glass plate were a clementine, biscotti, chocolate covered caramels with sea salt and the Vin Santo. The biscotti was dipped in the wine and followed up with a slice of clementine and a bite of chocolate! Perfect end to a lovely meal.

I am joining Beverly at How Sweet the Sound for another Pink Saturday.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day and Happy Pink Saturday!

 I am doing an edited rerun today as I spent the week finishing and starting to organize for the trip up north. Each year the process seems to take a little longer...
I thought this post was fitting for the day.

The “sandwich” board belonged to my mother. Nothing smelly was chopped on this board. I remember this board so well. We walked to school and walked home for lunch and walked back to school and then walked home. There were no school lunches until I moved from the borough to the township. Lunch was very often an egg salad sandwich or tuna salad or PBJ and Campbell’s soup.

When my sister gave me the board, the pink bowl came to mind. My mother gave it to me years ago. It was the egg/tuna salad bowl.

Notice the fork with just 3 tines. That was the egg salad fork so that there would be larger chunks of egg in the egg salad. My mother had two so my sister and I each have one.

I love the designs on the bowl. I believe at one point they were nesting bowls with blue and green bowls. They must have perished along the way.

I think we will have egg salad sandwiches today!

I am joining Beverly at How Sweet the Sound for this weekly event. Be sure to stop by and say Happy Pink Saturday and see what the other “pinks” have shared.

This and that....

I have been on a mission to finish quilts. I have put the binding on 2 more quilts. The last step is the most tedious for me. I know others find the hand sewing relaxing. My favorite part is picking out the fabric. I love to cut the fabric and piece the designs. The quilt below is a design from the quilts of Gee's Bend. I had read about these quilts and the women who made them and I was fascinated by the color and the design. I was pleased to see that kits would be available. Last summer I gave this to a friend to piece for me as I recovered from hip replacement surgery. He did an outstanding job and the long arm quilter dis a wonderful job. I sewed the binding so it was a collaborative project.

 

I was interested to see that Pottery Barn was working with the Gee's Bend Foundation and reproducing a quilt for sale. You can see the quilt here. You can read more about the quilts here as well.

In the early 90's, my friend Patti and I would race over to Keepsake Quilting in Center Harbor, NH. We would just make piles of fabrics and buy a half yard of each. We would take turns picking the pattern. It was fortunate that we both liked stars. This quilt was created. This is mine and hers is almost identical.

We watched Notting Hill, The Shag, Mystic Pizza, Pretty Woman and I still hadn't finished sewing on the binding. Big quilt. When I downsized, blue and white no longer worked and I had stopped making the antique looking quilts. I was more enamored of Kaffe Fassett and color. So I gave the quilt to my sister. The quilt was quilted by hand by the Amish in 1993 but no binding. We were chatting about 3 weeks ago and she mentioned the binding.....In a weak moment of complete insanity I sweetly offered to do this job for her. She must have hung up the phone and raced to UPS because I got the quilt 2 days later. I will ship it back tomorrow.

I have updated my quilt gallery at the top of the page. I am in the process of photographing all of my quilts here in Florida. I will do the same when we get back to Maine. Four more quilts will go to the quilter on Thursday. I am finally getting to the bottom of the almost done pile!

Have a great week!