Friday Entertaining

It is the perfect time of year to entertain outside and since it's friday, I thought I would share with you a few of my favorite outdoor rooms, a great guide to making a sophisticated cheese board and a little DIY project I created earlier today that anyone can do at home.

{Circa Interiors for Southern Living}

"A mix of texutres lends interest to a neutral color palette without disrupting the clean, uncluttered look." –Cindy Smith

 {The porch serves as an open-air dining pavilion with views of the Sawtooth Mountains. Interior design from my newest fav - m. elle design To see more of this house visit Elle Decor here}

I love this centerpiece for an outdoor table! I think you could easily recreate this arrangement if you had an interesting oblong container like a rustic dough bowl or antique concrete trough.

Just add moss and a variety of ferns with different colors and textures.

{The basics for creating a great cheese board from Real Simple}

I often order a cheese board when I am at a favorite restaurant in town and think it is such a wonderful thing to serve when you entertain at home. The only problem is, I am like a deer in the headlights when I arrive at the cheese counter. I often ask for some assistance and am still overwhelmed with the choices. Several years ago, my sister and I went to New York together and had the 'original' cheese board that started my lust for cheese boards. We went to a restaurant named Commerce in the village and the cheese board included honeycomb like the one pictured above. It was my first experience tasting honeycomb with cheese and I have been addicted ever since.

I love the simple explanation and cheese tutorial in this Real Simple article. 

I collected leaves during my morning walk and created these pretty little votives. They were so easy and look so beautiful when the candle is burning. Here are the simple instructions:

Collect a variety of leaves in different shapes and colors.

Place a stripe of double sided tape around the middle of a votive. Following a floral demonstration I saw many years ago, I bought a roll of double-sided carpet tape that I keep on hand.

Twist some gold decorative floral wire around the center and knot.

You can add a twig or a little moss or lichen to the knot if you desire.

Have a nice weekend!

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Mountain Retreat

I love the textures and warmth in this beautiful room designed by Suzanne Rheinstein. It's the kinda' of place I crave as the seasons change and temperatures begin to dip. All I need is a good book and a roaring fire and possibly a good glass of wine. Oh, and a big window with glorious view!

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The Oyster Roast

{Kiawah Island Oyster Roast; photo from Lord Tierney}

Nothing welcomes fall in the South more than an old fashioned oyster roast! A crisp fall night, old friends, a bonfire, bluejeans and cowboy boots ~ these are a few of my favorite things!

Growing up, one of my neighbors hosted an oyster roast in his backyard. Just about the time of the first frost when the air was crisp and darkness settled in just after 5:00, he would host an oyster roast for all the neighbors. He would drive to the coast to get seafood fresh off the docks and dig a huge pit in the yard to roast the oysters. All the neighborhood kids would stand in line at the grill as he would pop hot clams in our mouths as they opened from the heat. He would roast corn on the grill as well. That was really before Ina Garten and Martha Stewart taught the world about the richness of flavors brought out in vegetables from roasting.

{Image via Coastal Living}

Of course in those early days, I would only watch other people eat the oysters. My first experience with a raw oyster came the summer of my sophomore year in college. I lived at the beach {Hilton Head Island, South Carolina} with several of my college besties. By day we soaked up the sun and by night we all worked at the oyster bar and restaurant ~ hostess, waiter, waitress, bartender ~ me and the college ya-ya's did it all.  A particularly good looking, strappy, down-to-earth, kind of guy shucked oysters. One night he loaded one up on a saltine cracker and topped it with a dab of cocktail sauce and a squirt of lemon. That's all it took!

{photograph from Garden & Gun, The Oyster Roast, October 2008}

Where did I get the inspiration for this post ~ The Oyster Roast?

The most common question I get from friends about blogging is "Where do you come up with the ideas for your posts?" That's an interesting question given that I never have a problem with {ideas}! I think that is why I enjoy blogging so much ~ it gives me an opportunity to share my ideas and release some of the creative energy that is constantly swimming around in my head. Does that make any sense to anyone?

Anyhoo, the inspiration for this post actually came from a quirky thing I purchased last Spring at Metrolina. I mentioned in an earlier post that I would share the details about my quirky Spring found object. I only wish you could have seen my poor husband's face when he opened the door for me after a long day at work and saw me carrying this!

I am intrigued by the latest industrial trend and find the interesting, repurposed old things at South of Market inspiring so when I saw this galvanized steel, New England steamer at the flea market, it was destined to come home with me! The dealer explained to me that the steamer goes directly on top of the fire and that the four stackable interior trays are for different varieties of seafood. Since the oysters need the most heat they would go in the bottom tray. You would fill the other trays with clams, shrimp, other seafood and even corn and stack them in order of cooking time. Of course, that might take a little more culinary expertise than I possess. At the end of the cooking process, all the juices flow through the holes of the steamer down to this bottom tray. You can then drain the juices from this little spout and use them as the base for bouillabaisse or clam chowder. Yum!

I bought the steamer because I thought these trays were so cool!

I didn't actually buy the steamer with the intention of hosting an oyster roast although now I am thinking that would be an exceptionally good use for such a clever flea market find.

{Thanksgiving Centerpiece inspiration from Country Home}

I think one of the steamer trays would be very chic as a centerpiece with stacked pumpkins and bittersweet vine styled like the centerpiece above.

Can you imagine one of my steamer trays stocked with a variety of liquors and bar essentials in a dark manly room on an old library table? I can!

Here is one of my steamer trays styled as a serving tray on my kitchen buffet. I am planting one tomorrow with ferns and paperwhite bulbs as a centerpiece for my kitchen table at Christmas time. You'll have to wait and see how it turns out. To be continued.....

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Happy Halloween

{the weed patch}

{paris marais home}

{twig & thistle}

{eddie ross}

{twig & thistle}

{urban comfort}

{Pumpkin Pie Shake, Vivian Summerfield from Cooking Light}

2 cups vanilla reduced-fat ice cream softened
1 cup fat-free milk
2/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice
3 tablespoons frozen fat-free whipped topping, thawed
Pumpkin-pie spice


Combine first 5 ingredients in a blender; process until smooth. Pour 3/4 cup ice cream mixture into each of 4 glasses. Top each with about 2 teaspoons whipped topping; sprinkle with the additional pumpkin-pie spice, if desired.

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Trick or Treat

Would your home be this beautiful

 if someone unexpectedly dropped by?

This lovely home inspires me daily during my morning walk. A nice treat that made me wonder if my home would be as inviting if someone just 'dropped' by. Last night I was reading about color theory in a design book I picked up at Marshalls. The designer author talked about her days in design school and how her design professor required them to mix colors and paint as a way to understand color, hues, tones and how colors work together and influence each other. She talked about living her life from that point on differently, noticing color combinations as she walked to work and being inspired by the colors in nature. I am like that. I love being outside, the change of the seasons and noticing color.

{p.s. the vine covering the railings is called sweet potato vine}

Color inspiration: pistachio, burnt orange, creamy white, gun metal gray

Just add flowers for a 'pop' of color!

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Seasonal Palette: The Color Orange

{Amelia Handegan}

The color orange is seeping into my favorite color inspiration file. I am clearly a fan of a neutral palette infused with blues and greens but recently I have found myself interested in this delicious fall favorite. I like orange when presented with warm, dark woods and sepia tones. Charleston designer, Amelia Handegan, is a master with color and uses orange to its full potential. An orange palette seeks to capture the warm glow of a fire or the luster of the sunset. It's a happy color I think I could learn to love. I think maybe orange is one of the colors to watch right now.

{Empel Lighting via Belgian Pearls}

{Amelia Handegan}

{Amelia Handegan}

{Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles Magazine}

{Todd Ramano and Robert Burke}

{Atlanta Homes Magazine via Haven and Home}

Aa Hermes blanket offers a classic pop of orange!

{via Greige}

Seasonal flowers offer an easy opportunity to add a dash of color. The lovely coral tulips add so much to this room's appeal.

{Gjelina Restaurant, California}

{Little Brown Pen}

{Big Paisley in apricot from Galbraith and Paul)

Galbraith and Paul began making hand made paper shades and evolved into a fabric design and printing studio. Their hand block printed shades and fabrics are made one yard at a time in their Philadelphia studio. Their colors are amazing and truly shout their hand printed goodness!

{Spring garden in marigold from Galbraith and Paul}

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Dreaming of a White Pumpkin

{Christina Schmidhofer}

Halloween is not just for kids anymore!

{Cottage Living}

The nailhead studded, white, heirloom pumpkins from the late Cottage Living knocked my witchy-socks off! Some might call me "crafty" and these ingenious images just fuel my witches brew.

Have you been crafty this Halloween?

{Cottage Living}

{Inspired Events}

{Cottage Living}

{Thomas J. Story via Sunset}

{Delicate Creature}

{Wedding Bee}

{Ric-Rac White Pumpkins from Eddie Ross}

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