Use Code "BLOG" To Receive 15% Off My Prints at Etsy!!!

I'm running a blog discount this week!!!

From 5/14/08 through midnight EST 5/18/08, receive 15% off any size print (discount does not apply to mats) if you mention the code BLOG in the "notes to seller" section of the order! Alternatively, you can send me a note through Etsy to receive the discount. Just click on any of the small photos on the right of this page to reach my shop! Over 100 different images/sizes available, and I do custom sizes as well.

To order, simply add an item to your Etsy cart (you'll need to register first, similar to Amazon.com - it's free and fast!), then choose your method of payment. If you choose Paypal, I will send you a revised Paypal invoice reflecting the discount. If you accidentally pay first, I'll send a refund for the discount amount! :)

Thank you so much for visiting!!

Summer Reading List

I've been thinking of creating a summer reading list for myself but haven't researched yet what books to include! So first, I'll share some of my all-time favorite summer reading (great for any season, really!!) :)

Please leave a comment with your favorite summer reading books, I'd love to make a list this month and go book-hunting! :) Thanks!

Some of these are out of print but it's worth digging up a copy from your local used bookstore! Quite a few are what I'd call mystery, suspense and light romance. When I say 'light romance', I think of think Cary Grant - the type of romance in old fashioned black and white movies :)

Mary Stewart: lovely descriptions that let you actually experience new places and mysteries with the characters! I just adore her writing. Great plots, lots of suspense and a little bit of old-fashioned romance!

My favorites:
Nine Coaches Waiting - a young woman travels to France to be a governess for a mysterious couple and their nephew in a mansion...

Touch Not the Cat - a woman investigates the death of her father (there is a wonderful magical feel to this one, but not overbearing!)

Thornyhold - a woman inherits a quaint cottage in rural England from a mysterious aunt...

The Stormy Petrel - a writer leaves for a vacation in an 'ivory tower' and finds intrigue and interesting strangers!

The Moonspinners - a young woman on vacation roams rural Greece and finds more than rare plants and flowers!

Madam Will You Talk? - a young woman meets a little boy on vacation and finds he needs her help!


I've never read a Mary Stewart book I didn't like, and in fact I've read them all at least 4 times!!


Phyllis Whitney:
Phyllis Whitney's books have very intriguing plots and mysteries, and are always a good read! The sense of place and involvement of the reader are almost as good as Mary Stewarts, in my opinion! As in Mary Stewart's books, these are often similar to gothic mysteries - lovely suspense and a little bit of very light old-fashioned romance! Often these books involve a young woman stumbling into a mystery and meeting two men and having to figure out which is 'good' and which is 'bad'... perfect for summer reading!

My favorite book by her is:
Silverhill - a woman visits the home of her deceased mother and finds danger and mystery!


Jeanne Ray:
Jeanne's books are a great light read - they have very good character development, humor and a little bit of light romance! These books often focus on relationships between family members, their significant others, etc.

Julie and Romeo: an adorable romantic comedy featuring two 60-year olds from rivaling florist families!!

Step Ball Chain: a great read about family relationships and romances!


Mignon F. Ballard:
I've read two of her Angel books, and prefer the first, but both are nice for light summer reading!

Angel at Troublesome Creek: a woman who recently lost her mother finds mystery and advice from a visiting guardian angel! Very cute book, a little mystery, a little humor, and a little light romance!


Dorothy Cannell:
Her early books were completely wonderful!!! Great mix of humor, light romance and mystery!

My absolute favorite book by her is:
The Thin Woman - an overweight woman seeks an escort to a family reunion of sorts, and ends up hunting for antique treasure and a smaller waist size! Hard to describe, but completely fabulous book. The rest of the books in the series are good, but in my opinion don't hold a candle to the first.

Also good by D.Cannell are:
God Save the Queen - a young woman, the daughter of a servant in an old castle (set in modern times - the family is very old and lives in the 'grand hall'), attempts to solve an old family mystery, and discovers love in the process!

Down the Garden Path - a woman poses as an amnesiac to dig up the truth in a suspenseful, lightly romantic mystery!


Nancy Atherton: :
So far I have loved every Nancy Atherton book I have read!! I have reread them all. Start with:
Aunt Dimity's Death - a woman down on her luck loses her mother, and gains an aunt, a great mystery, and a nice young lawyer & his father!

If you enjoy it, I recommend the entire series!

Yasmine Galenorn:
This author is for those who enjoy a bit of the supernatural - there are some new age spiritualism and supernatural aspects to these mysteries, but they are fantastic reads whether or not you share her beliefs! I have enjoyed the whole series.


Melissa Nathan:
These books are utterly engrossing! Some of the best from the chick lit (chicklit?) genre. Wonderful character development, lots of wry humor, fantastic plots! They are not quite as 'fluffy' as some of the chicklit novels!

All of her books are wonderful, but my 2 favorites are:

The Nanny - a girl seeks change in her life and finds a job as a nanny - hilarity, heart-warming children, and light romance ensue.

Persuading Annie - I don't know how to describe this without giving away the plot, but generally - a young woman learns the truth about some mistakes in her past - this is a light drama, light romance, funny book.


Sophie Kinsella:
WONDERFUL - she might be my favorite chicklit author. Her books are completely hilarious, heartwarming and FUN! Becky might be my long-lost (though more stylish) twin sister!
I have loved all of her books - there is only one I have not yet read.
The Shopaholic series is fabulous, as is Can you keep a Secret, The Undomestic Goddess... Wonderful reading!!! Be prepared to stay up all night if you start one in the evening!

Laura Wolf:
Diary of a Mad Bride is a funny, slice-of-life, chicklit book describing one woman's path to her wedding. A perfect read for the beach or porch swing!

Delicious and Moist Low Fat Banana Bread

I'm sure the cute furry little squirrel in the above photo would LOVE this bread! I took his portrait last week when he was running around begging for bread on campus; it is available in my etsy store!

As usual, the amounts aren't exact. But as long as your batter is the consistency of a regular batter-type bread (ie pumpkin bread batter, etc), it should be fine! I'll note what amounts I used, but you can substitute flours, nuts, sweeteners, etc.

This banana bread is unusually moist (I hate dry banana bread!!), and falls apart a little when you eat it! It is so delicious it doesn't need any spreads. It is heart-healthy (esp if you add the grains and whole wheat flour, and flax seed!) and has no refined sugar.

When I make batter breads, I mix everything together and add the baking soda last.

3 very brown/black bananas, mashed
1/4 C oat bran
1/4 C wheat germ (I wanted to use ground flax seeds but we were out!)
about 3/4 C flour (I used white, but wheat would be good too!)
1 whole egg
1 egg white (I think 2 egg whites, or 2 eggs-worth of fake egg substitute would work too)
1 tsp salt
1/4 C apple butter (the type with no sugar added)
about 1/4 C apple sauce (I ran out of apple butter or would have used 1/2 C apple butter!)
1/8 to 1/4 C honey
1 Tbsp butter (or olive oil)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 C nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc)

Fold everything together without stirring too much - will be heavy if you over-mix. Fold until just blended.

Bake at 350deg F for about 40-45 mins; it's ok if it gets a little brown as it's very very moist and won't get dry by staying in the oven for a minute or two longer!

makes 1 loaf. I use silicone baking things to avoid having to grease them, but you might want to grease/flour a regular loaf pan if using, or line with waxed paper. Also, you can add everything but the eggs and baking soda, and taste to see if it's sweet enough! Then add the eggs & soda once it's at the level of sweetness you prefer.

If anybody tries this out, let me know what you think! :)

Luscious Strawberry Sorbet Recipe - Blender Style!

This sorbet is a mix between a slushie and sorbet. You can pour the mixture into an ice cream maker for a more true sorbet texture, but I like the blender style for when I need a sweet treat right away!

All you need is a bag of frozen strawberries, lemon juice from a bottle and a little sugar. Vanilla extract is nice too.

Add about half a bag of berries to the blender, still frozen, pour about 1/4 to 1/2 C of lemon juice on top, a few tbsp of sugar (I like to use very little sugar, maybe 1 - 2 tbsp), and a tsp. of vanilaa if using. Whiz until all the berries are chopped fine, will resemble soft-serve ice cream in blendedness :) YUM!!

You can vary this with lime juice, or skip the sugar to make a very low-sugar (no sugar added) snack. Strawberries are relatively low in sugar to begin with, so it's pretty healthy!

Tempeh Thoughts

Here's a quick and easy recipe for tempeh! If you're not familiar with tempeh, it is a patty-like fermented pressed soy cake/block; there is a multi grain version as well (I like that one best). The texture is sort of similar to a really firm but crumble-able veggie burger, and the flavor is very plain when cooked by itself.

My favorite way to prepare it takes maybe 15 minutes tops, and is quite easy and delicious! Goes well with rice, salad, in a pita, in a wrap, or it's great eaten as is! The overall flavor of this recipe is red wine vinegary and salty. My parents and I love tempeh made this way, but my husband cannot stand the taste of tempeh cooked in any manner.

As with all my recipes, I rarely measure, so these are approximates. And of course you can leave things out and subsitute, etc.! I never make it exactly the same way twice. You could even do something really fun and add stewed tomatoes to this! Or crumble it up and add to spaghetti!

Cube the tempeh into 1/2" squares (I use half a package of the 3-grain tempeh).

For marinade - whisk together:

1/4 C red wine vinegar

a dash of shoyu sauce (or soy sauce if you don't have shoyu, but the latter is REALLY worth having around - it's much richer and flavorful, and not as sugary-tasting)

a tsp or two of sesame oil

a tsp or two of olive oil (or leave out for low fat version)

a few slices of fresh garlic

some pieces of chiles de arbol, or dried chipotle pepper powder - these have a nice rich flavor

dash (few drops) of ume plum vinegar (this has a lovely salty fruity flavor!)

**If you don't have all these ingredients, just the red wine vinegar, an oil and some garlic would be just fine!**

Marinate for 10 minutes in the pan you're going to cook in. Turn up the heat and cook until the marinade has evaporated! YUM! Let me know what you think :)

Wedding Vendors!

Why are there photos of animals under Wedding Vendors? Because we spent a day of our honeymoon at the zoo! I made these photos into blank folded notecards and sell them on Etsy :)

We got married in October in State College, PA, and it was so difficult to find and choose vendors that I thought I would share here!

I got my dress from Dillards.com! Lovely flowy dress, not very expensive.

We had our flowers done by Woodrings of State College. They are AMAZING! They're SO nice, and will work with any price range. I didn't want to go too low but I didn't want to spend tons of $ on flowers either - they did lots of gerbera daisies and gorgeous arrangements that were bright and colorful for fall. We did mini gerbera boutonnieres and they were lovely. The centerpieces were gorgeous, not very expensive, and they did them in such a way that we could take home the entire centerpieces (containers included). I adore Woodrings!

Our cake was done by Heather Luse of Delectable Delights. She is SO wonderful to work with! We met with her and saw her beautiful examples on display, and she worked with us to find out exactly what we wanted, which was cupcakes - spice for half and the others in yellow cake. She decorated them beautifully with fall leaves, and arranged them the day of the wedding along with the people from Woodrings, so there were flowers on the cake stand, etc.

We had the actual wedding at Toftrees, and their wedding planner is FANTASTIC!!! She is so helpful, nice, informative, detail-oriented, and amazingly organized! Toftrees did a great job, the food was delicious, and they were VERY willing to work with us on dietary issues such as nut allergies and vegetarian dishes, as well as special requests of cider and other details!

I got my stationery at Wedding Paper Divas, which was really inexpensive and lovely! You do have to contact them by phone with all questions or problems to get a timely answer, but they are great and really friendly.

However, if I had known about Etsy when I was planning, I would have bought stationery from SandyPhotoArt - check out her shop, it's gorgeous! Here is one of her invitations that I LOVE:



We used apples as place card holders (using the Martha Stewart Pear idea!), bought those from Way Fruit Farm near State College. They're very friendly and have lots of great apples and other fruits! Very inexpensive. Harner Farms is fantastic too but at the time they didn't have enough Honeycrisp apples. They do have very cute goats though (Moe and Jo!):)

I got the wedding guest book at Michael's. Horrible. Couldn't find what I wanted, and the one we did finally get fell apart while people were signing it! I wish I had known about Etsy!!!

My friend and I got the programs from Staples - bought a little CD template and paper - we made one at home and ended up getting the rest laser printed at Kinko's, which worked out fine.

The musicians were AMAZING - Emily and Eric McKee. They were so lovely to work with, and played beautiful classical and celtic music.

I hope someone finds this helpful! I know I found the cake person (Heather) through someone else's blog! :)

Good luck planning!

Tag You're It!

I was tagged by studiojewel from Etsy (http://studiojewel.blogspot.com/) to state 7 random things about myself, so here goes!


1) I've been a vegetarian for 16 years.

2) I had nightmares ALMOST EVERY NIGHT from the ages of 12-ish to 26. Some nights I would even stay up all night to avoid certain nightmares I was sure I would have that night (some were predictable - I had annual ones, weekly ones, etc). I have no idea why they finally went away!

3) I can't do basic math (ok I'm semi-stealing this one from studiojewel who said she loves math!!) - seriously, I can't multiply and divide without using my fingers. I certainly can't do fractions or percentages. I have a cheat sheet that I use for math in the lab!! Sometimes when people show me how to do research-related equations I pretend I understand what they're talking about just to not look stupid.

4) I am definitely addicted to sugar.

5) I still believe that there's a possibility that when I walk around in the woods there's a chance something fantastical and magical might pop out from behind a tree!

6) The only concert I've ever been to featured Davy Jones from the Monkees in the 1990s!

7) I think Kelly Kapur (from the office, played by Mindy Kaling) and I would get along! :) I like being around people who talk a lot - less pressure on me to try to keep up the conversation!! And my husband thinks he and Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) would be pals! We are TOTAL The Office geeks :)

Well, now I will tag 3 other people...

AlwaysArtistic (wonderful photography on Etsy)
ThisOldHenHouse(fabulous notebooks, journals and more on Etsy)
CrazyTimesCandles(lovely candles, soaps, melts on Etsy)