People are always asking me what blogs they should read (I mean besides this one) and I usually start listing off the well established names as starter reads, even though I myself don't really visit them as often as I used to. I find that many slightly smaller blogs have more unique projects and recipes. I met so many talented, lesser known bloggers at Alt, and my favorite,favorite was Tiffanie Turner from Corner Blog.
Read MoreLet me start with the fact that I made a BIG mess in my kitchen doing this project. I also had a lot of fun. I've been wanting to make my own food coloring for a while, not only because it seems like a good idea, but because I love the colors I've seen produced from vegetable dye. I had some wins and some losses with this project. Green was a fail. I used my juicer to extract the color, then cooked it down, adding a few tablespoons of vinegar to ready it for dying eggs. I tried to make green using spinach. Unfortunately the meaty plant part separated from the water part and it became kind of pulpy. No prob, I strained it, but then when I cooked it, it turned brown. That's not green! I tried it without cooking it, but the dye wouldn't stick to the egg. So no true green. Boo hiss. I read that you could boil yellow apples to make light green, or red onion to make jade, but I was looking for kelly, so I moved on. I did have some big wins. I made blue! This involves some chemistry, which was very exciting for my little helper Wylie. This is a great activity to do with little kids! Scroll down for my vegetable dye recipes.
Read MoreThis kid is obsessed with specialty drinks like chocolate soy milk, coconut water, or any other kind of packaged $4 drink he can get his hands on. He most especially wants them when he's "starving to death" right after school. I usually fend him off with multiple rounds of crackers,popcorn,and watered down lemonade (he can't have dairy), not my favorite, but it keeps the whining to a minimum.
Read MoreI had to sit out on a trip to the beach yesterday in order to make a dent in my school work and new blogging projects. Check out my latest post on Playful Learning today! I *may* have eaten a bowl of olives for lunch, and I spent a sunny day indoors which is never a good thing. The silver lining here is that one of my assignments is to pull a bunch of tear sheets as part of visual glossary for elements and principles of design, kind of like old fashioned Pinterest. Lucky for me I've had a subscription to Dwell for years, and I'm kind of a magazine hoarder, so a good part of my day was spent pouring through my collection, or as my friend Coco calls it, lady porn. Don't they look sexy on my danish modern table? I think so.
Read MoreI like to grow my own herbs, mostly because they last much longer growing in soil than they do wilting in my refrigerator all week. I use herbs a lot in cooking; my absolute favorites are cilantro, thyme and oregano, and it just so happens that this is the best time of year to get them going, so I decided to make a kitchen herb garden for my counter top. You can use these indoor gardens to get seeds started for transplanting outside, or to keep inside by a sunny window. I like having indoor plants that do something beside look pretty (like my collection of air plants). To make this sorbet colored kitchen garden I bought three stone colored 6" plastic pots and a matching tray for about $10. I used wide rubber-bands to divide the pots about 1/3 up, and painted them with two coats of acrylic paint (Martha Stewart: Geranium, Pink Salmon, Neon Orange).
Read MoreMake + Haus is the new name and online home for the blog Poppy Haus. Established in 2011, the blog archive now contains hundreds of original design projects and whole food recipes, many featured on the likes of Apartment Therapy, Martha Stewart, Design*Sponge, Curbly, and Epicurious.
