Friday Featured Etsy Seller: Let Them Eat Pie

Here's a fun Etsy shop from right here in DeKalb! Let Them Eat Pie serves up mini pies baked in jars. They are so cute (and delicious looking!). I wish there was some way that I could just go into town and pick one up...

Thursday Text: Wuthering Heights

I finally finished reading Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I got the whole Bronte Collection on my Kindle for $.99. The book is very imaginative. It's especially interesting to read the Brontes after reading Jane Austen - so different. Now I'll have to find a good film adaptation!

Habitat

Habitat is a British store that we visited at the mall in Istanbul. They had a lot of interesting things, including beautiful kitchen linens and tableware (like these).

Strawberry Thief Watering Can

I saw this watering can at TJ Maxx the other day and thought that it was fabulous. It is made by Navigate using William Morris's Strawberry Thief pattern (from the Victoria and Albert Museum, who, by the way, have a super online shop). Navigate has a whole line of cute gardening stuff. It's getting to be that time of year!

Little Dorrit

Did you get to see Little Dorrit on Masterpiece? The Andrew Davies version is stellar. It has a fantastic cast. I haven't read much Charles Dickens, but I'm enjoying the PBS adaptations. I'll have to catch up on Great Expectations now!

Friday Featured Art: The Lacemaker

I enjoyed seeing two pieces by Vermeer at the Louvre. The Lacemaker is a beautiful, small painting. I really love the intricate frame. My Dutch grandfather would make pictures by cutting different shades of wood and piecing them together - so I thought it was neat to see the flower designs inlaid in this wood frame.

Thursday Text: Betty Crocker Easy Vegetarian

I picked up this book for $7 at Barnes & Noble the other day. It's really great! So many vegetarian cookbooks have weird recipes with crazy ingredients, but this one seems really doable. We're not strict vegetarians, but we do try to "eat meat sparingly," as counseled in the Word of Wisdom.

Pottery Barn Quilt

Did you get a Pottery Barn catalog recently? I loved this page. I couldn't find the quilt on their web site yet, but I think it's fantastic. I really like it because it looks just like something my sister, Sara, would make!

Unseen Titanic

Have you read the latest issue of National Geographic yet? There's a fantastic article about the Titanic, complete with new images of the wreck. I thought that this ring, found in a leather pouch, was exceptionally beautiful. Check out the images here.

Turkish Treats

Sweet shops in Istanbul had very fabulous window displays. We went to one a couple of times for yummy puddings. At a coffee shop at the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum, we found some sugar candy, like the picture below. We bought the golden, honey-colored kind with hazelnuts. The picture at the bottom is Turkish Delight (or lokum). I got these great pictures from the web site of the sugar candy company (Sekerci Cafer Erol) - and I think I figured out why so many of the English translations in Istanbul were so funny. Google Translate translated part of the page for me, and it turned out like this:

Erol Confectioners Jafar, this production technique that is completely against the respect from our experience in adding sugar candy sugar candy flavor adds a kind of dozens.