fretwork love

i am absolutely loving the cover of atlanta homes and lifestyles magazine this month because of the amazing fabric covered walls.  my heart sang when this magazine came in the mail and i saw the lovely cover. 

 

{image – atlanta homes and lifestyles}

the michael devine fretwork fabric that womack jowers used on the walls is to die for.  don’t you love it too?!!!

LiveJournal Tags: atlanta homes and lifestyles,michael devine,womack jowers,fretwork

Brown Sugar Baked Sweet Potatoes

My family did not grow up eating sweet potatoes and we definitely did not have sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving.  And quite frankly, I don't really care for them.  But as many of you know, when you get married and start a family of your own, you adapt to new traditions.  One of which, in my case, is sweet potatoes.

This past week, we spent Thanksgiving with my Mom and her new (as in just got married a week ago) hubby, Allen.  Like I said before, Mom and I don't do sweet potatoes, but we wanted to make sure we kept our guys happy so we added sweet potatoes to the menu.  Rather then doing a giant sweet potato casserole that would only be eaten by 2-3 people, we opted for another solution - Brown Sugar Baked Sweet Potatoes.  And let me tell you, these were a big hit!  If you are looking to add some sweet potatoes to your holiday entertaining menu, I highly recommend you give these a try!

Brown Sugar Baked Sweet Potatoes

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 medium-sized sweet potatoes

4 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter

Cinnamon, to sprinkle

32 small marshmallows or 16 large ones cut up

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Place sweet potatoes in a deep baking dish and poke several holes in each one.  Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes or until tender.

Meanwhile, cut your two tablespoons of butter into four equal pieces.

Cut each sweet potato down the center (length-wise).  Be careful not to cut all the way through the potato.  Place one piece of butter inside each potato.

 

Next sprinkle each potato lightly with cinnamon (as much or as little as your family likes).  Then sprinkle the inside of each potato with one tablespoon of brown sugar.

If using large marshmallows, cut them into pieces.  If using mini-marshmallows, then just skip this step.

Divide marshmallows out and place 1/4 in each sweet potato.  Place sweet potatoes back in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

Remove sweet potatoes from oven and allow to cool slightly.  Place sweet potatoes onto serving platter and enjoy!

If your family really enjoys sweet potato casserole, they will definitely enjoy this recipe.  Try this easy recipe on a weeknight to go along with your family dinner.  Super-easy and super-delicious!

A WAVE OF SCIENCE—BUT WHERE'S ADA?

The seventh and latest installment in John Boswell's Symphony of Science. Great, as usual. Though surely he will manage to come up few more women thinkers next time? Twenty-first century, and all that.

(Ada Lovelace, first ever computer programmer.)

The entrenched refusal to acknowledge the many women, past and present, at the forefront of science led in 2009 to the declaration of March 24th as Ada Lovelace Day—an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Lovelace is today recognized as the world's first computer programmer. From Finding Ada:

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

From Rebecca Thomson at New Scientist's Culture Lab:

Today it's fairly well accepted that women are under-represented in both science and technology fields: for example just one in five of the UK's technology workforce are female.

But the negative nature of the debate, and the complaints raised within it, mean the considerable achievements of women who do work in the industry can slip under the radar. A recent piece by gadget magazine T3 neatly highlighted important contributions to the field made by women largely forgotten.

It included Mary Lou Jepsen, whose work on holographic video systems at the MIT Media Lab and in optics resulted in important developments in the fields.

One of her biggest achievements was her part in the One Laptop Per Child project, which delivered laptops to 1.5 million of the world's poorest children. She helped get the project off the ground by inventing display technology that is readable in sunlight, and working on the power system that made the laptops energy efficient.

Then there's this sadly enlightening piece in last week's The Observer: The Royal Society's Lost Women Scientists.

So how about a Wave of Ada segment to your next movement of the symphony, John Boswell?

Time for Me: Part 1 – Skin Care and enter to win $100 Visa gift card

For the last almost three+ years I have either been pregnant or nursing.  Yes, that’s right.  I had my daughter Savannah and then when she was 7 months old I found out I was pregnant with my younger daughter Matilda.  Two weeks ago I finally got my body back.  After 15-months of nursing my daughter Matilda, I finally decided it was time to wean.  I’d definitely say weaning was a bittersweet time for me.  But all and all, I think it’s a little bit more on the sweet side.

Click here to read more and enter to win a $100 Visa gift card.

A Green Nursery

Creating a healthy home has been a priority of ours since we began our renovations five years ago. Our motivation was due, in part, to the fact that this was a home in which we hoped to raise children. So naturally, creating the healthiest nursery possible was also main priority for us. It motivated all of our choices, from furniture and wall treatments, down to the rug.

These are the choices we made:

The Cribs: We chose the Da Vinci Jenny Lind crib because it is made with wood harvested from sustainably-managed forests. It's also lead and phthalate free, and stained in a non-toxic finish. Also, the teething rail is BPA free.

The Crib Mattresses: We chose Naturepedic organic mattresses. They offer a non-toxic waterproof surface that includes 100% food-grade polyethylene. They are also hypoallergenic, filled with organic cotton filling.

The Crib Sheets: We chose 100% organic cotton crib sheets.

The Armoire: It was important to us to not purchase any furniture for the nursery that was made with manufactured wood, that may contain glues, adhesives or other compounds which may off-gas over time. Antique furniture provides this safeguard, as well as the opportunity to recycle beautifully-crafted pieces made long ago.

Mike created shelves for the armoire using solid tongue and groove pine floor planks. My Mom then covered them in 100% cotton fabric.

Nursing Chair: We selected the IKEA Jenny Lund slipcovered arm chair for nursing. I was really nervous about bringing a new chair into our nursery, as most new furniture is constructed with manufactured woods that may off-gas. So, I was happy to learn that IKEA strictly procures wood from sustainably-managed forests, and their pressed wood products comply with low formaldehyde standards.

The Rug: We narrowed down our rug choices quite fast in knowing that we would only buy something that was made with natural fibers (with no rubber or plastic backing). We initially looked for 100% wool rugs, but ended up ordering a 100% jute braided rug for its style and shape. It's also reversible, so it should stand the test of time.

Wall Treatments: Like the rest of our house, the nursery was painted using Benjamin Moore's no-VOC line. Everything from the ceiling and the mouldings, to the doors and walls, were painted with the color Simply White in either flat or semi-gloss finishes.

Choosing white for the plaster walls was a natural choice for me as it was the color of my childhood room, from birth until I left for college.

White also has the added benefit of having less pigment added to the mix (pigments most often contain VOCs). I did just recently learn however that Benjamin Moore is one of the very few lines that uses VOC-free pigments. Thus their VOC-free line truly is VOC-free, no matter what color one chooses.

When Mike created the paneled wainscoting, he used solid wood mouldings, assembled and secured in place with a finish nail gun instead of glue.

The Closet: To create extra storage, we relocated the antique dresser from the guest house. We preferred using the dresser for the same reason that we chose the antique armoire. Also in the closet are the toys and books in waiting....until the babies are older.

Purchasing two cribs, two mattresses, two car seats, clothing, diapers, etc.... added up as you can imagine. So we focused our budget on the things we knew we would need from birth through the first several months. Any toys and books we have were ours from childhood, or were given to us by family and friends.

When we do start buying toys, we will focus on brands that offer phthalate-, BPA- and lead-free products.

Baby clothes: We have been very lucky in that we have received lovely hand-me downs from my friend Karen, and my brother Steven and his wife Marna, who have a son and two sweet daughters. The above knit sweater was my adorable nephew's.

This sweet outfit is a combination of a hand-me down (the white cotton onesie) from my niece and a purchase from a baby consignment store (the 100% organic cotton jumper with pink velvet piping). I've found consignment stores to be a wonderful resource for beautiful clothing, often hardly worn, at much lower prices than retail (organic knit jumper was $11).

I hope that everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday! I managed to stay on my feet long enough to make the pie crust... I spent the rest of the day on the couch nodding off and listening to the bustle of kitchen activity made by my mom and Mike.

Happy Holiday Season to everyone! xo

Special Guest

A few posts ago, I posted about a cookie cake that Mr. Tea Rose Home made for our son's birthday party. So many people asked for the recipe that I asked Mr. Tea Rose Home if he would be interested in doing a guest post. He gladly accepted. So enjoy the recipe tutorial!

Hello ladies! Thanks for all the compliments on the cookies. I told Mrs. Tea Rose Home that I could write a post about how I make my cookies. She said, "Why, can't we just post the recipe?"

I jokingly replied, "Well, then we could write: It's on the back of Nestlé’s. The End."

So, there is my secret, the recipe is on the back of Nestlé’s Toll House Chocolate chips, however, that is not all. There is one thing that I learned over the years and it's not on the back of some bag. So without further ado, here is the recipe:

2 1/4 C. flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
2 Sticks Butter
3/4 C. sugar
3/4 C. packed brown sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
2 Large Eggs

I use a KitchenAid mixer, and I always make the cookies in this order following these steps. This is why they turn out so good, and since I know of no one that makes them like this (because they've said so) it has got to be done this way.

Put the butter (Use the real stuff, no margarine; I use either salted or unsalted sweet cream. I haven't made two batches side by side to see if there is a real difference. When I make a double batch, I'll mix them.), sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and eggs into the mixing bowl. Raise it up and turn the KitchenAid on to its lowest setting. Clean up (you don't have to clean; I'm just trying to keep the KitchenAid on longer.)

Mix the other ingredients into a separate bowl. Really you are supposed to sift those ingredients, but we either don't have one or I'm too lazy to find it, so I just put them in a bowl and lightly mix with a wire whisk.

This whole time the KitchenAid should still be mixing. You might have to stop it to get the butter clump off the mixing arm then start mixing it again. I will sometimes speed up the kitchen aid and lower the bowl to shake some of the mixture off and slow the KitchenAid down and raise the bowl back.


If the dough looks like this, you haven't mixed it enough, keep mixing. Go watch TV with the kids or something, depending on how cold or solid the butter was; this could take some time.


This is what the batter should look like, nice white and fluffy. No lumps from the butter or sugar. Now what I do is add about a tablespoon of the flour mixture in at a time. While the KitchenAid is mixing at its lowest setting, I'll add a scoop of flour and wait for it to get totally mixed in before adding another. This keeps the flour from clumping. Maybe you can just pour it all in and be done with it, but my cookies always turn out perfect if I do 1 heaping tablespoon at a time.

Once all the flour is mixed in, turn the oven on to 375°. Keep the KitchenAid going for several more minutes, and then turn it off. The dough should be delicious; yes, me and my kids love to eat the dough. Anyways, remove the mixing bowl from the KitchenAid and pour in the chips. When making a double batch, I mix in milk chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate. Mix with a spatula; be sure to dig in and pull the dough from the bottom and get a good even spread of chips throughout the dough.

For the cookie “cake”, I made a double batch and then scooped most of it into the pan and spread it out as much and I could. I think the dough was somewhere from a 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick, I'm not sure, I didn't measure. Either way, with cookies, you are supposed to cook for 9 to 11 minutes. I like my cookies doughy and gooey, so I go for 8 1/2 minutes (I use teaspoons to scoop out individual cookies.)

With the cookie “cake”, I cooked it for 9 minutes and that was too short, so back in for another 4 minutes... still not enough; 4 more seemed to do it; there was a nice light golden brown starting to form on the edges, it was done. Nice soft moist gooey cookies... mmmm.... Great with milk!


They were almost all gone by the end of the party.

Well ladies… that was it. The KitchenAid was nice and warm from all the work, I must have mixed for 30 minutes or more but that is my secret. Keep mixing and then mix some more.

I hope this recipe tutorial will be helpful for you to make the cookie "cake". Thank you Honey for the special guest appearance!

SUNDAY POETRY: "THE LOBSTER"

(Photo by Leslie Ricker, at the Lobster Institute.)

THE LOBSTER

by Carl Rakosi

Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms,   

green sand, pebbles,   

broken shells.

Off Suno Saki, 60 fathoms,   

gray sand, pebbles,   

bubbles rising.

Plasma-bearer   

and slow-

motion benthos!

The fishery vessel Ion

drops anchor here

                           collecting   

plankton smears and fauna.

Plasma-bearer, visible

sea purge,

                sponge and kelpleaf.   

Halicystus the Sea Bottle

resembles emeralds   

and is the largest   

cell in the world.

Young sea horse   

Hippocampus twenty   

minutes old,

nobody has ever   

seen this marine   

freak blink.

It radiates on   

terminal vertebra   

a comb of twenty

upright spines   

and curls   

its rocky tail.

Saltflush lobster   

bull encrusted swims

backwards from the rock.

(Slipper Lobster larva. Photo by Peter Parks. From the Australian Museum.)

ENDLESS SUMMER FOR SEABIRDS

(Streaked shearwater. Photo by marj k Marj Kibby, at Flickr.) 

Shearwaters are long-winged, strong-flying seabirds of the open ocean who come ashore only to breed. The rest of their lives—including the time between fledging and sexual maturity, up to 12 years in some species, maybe more—are spent entirely at sea. They're long-lived birds, with reports of one 55-year-old Manx shearwater still breeding in Ireland as of 2003.

Their time aloft and afloat is not without pattern. The more we learn, the more we see how these oceanic travellers follow vast systems of winds and waves across hemispheres and even oceans.

First up, there's an interesting paper out in the current issue of The Auk about a presumed foraging association between streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) and skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis).

Foraging associations—as the term implies—are the result of a follower species (here, the shearwater) commonly following a nuclear species (here, the tuna) to capture prey flushed in the course of the nuclear's feeding or travels. The deep blue home is full of foraging associations... including the way savvy human fishers follow seabirds to find fish.

(Skipjack tuna. Photo JFontes—ImagDOP, from here.)

(Streaked shearwater at breeding colony on Mikura Island, Japan. Photo by Kanachoro, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

A little background: Streaked shearwaters breed on the islands and coastlines of Japan, China, and Korea, and make impressive winter migrations (≤5,400 kilometers /3,300miles) to the waters off Vietnam, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Australia.

(Movement of a streaked shearwater from Japan to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, between 16 October 2004 and 13 January 2005. Figure from Ornithological Science.)

In the figure above you can see the flight of one shearwater between its breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere during the boreal summer and its "wintering" grounds in the Southern Hemisphere during the austral summer. Those results are reported in a 2008 paper in Ornithological Science by some of the same members of the shearwater-skipjack team during an earlier phase of study.

(From Ornithological Science.)

In their latest investigations, the researchers attached small global location sensors to 48 breeding birds in 2006, 38 of whom returned the following year with their geolocators intact. Their findings, from the abstract:

Most Streaked Shearwaters wintered off northern New Guinea, an area of low primary productivity but high Skipjack Tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) abundance. Streaked Shearwaters flew for longer periods and landed on the water more frequently around dawn and dusk during the wintering period. This pattern of activity is similar to that of subsurface predators such as tuna, and to that of tropical seabirds that are known to feed with subsurface predators. We suggest that Streaked Shearwaters probably forage in association with subsurface predators in the tropical oceans during the wintering period. Foraging in association with subsurface predators and morphological adaptations for gliding may allow Streaked Shearwaters to forage efficiently in both temperate and tropical environments.

(You might have to divert here to watch the video.)

This Blue Planet video shows the dynamics of shearwaters (not sure which species) working schools of mackerel herded up to the surface, initially by dolphins, then by skipjacks... I love the way they've mixed shearwater calls into the underwater video—dramatic, but inaccurate, at least to the extent heard here.

(Sooty shearwaters. Photo by marlin harms, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

In an incredible piece of scientific detective work a few years back, a different team of researchers found that another species, sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus), embarked on remarkable 64,000-kilometer/40,000-mile annual migrations through the entire basin of the Pacific Ocean from Antarctica to the Bering Sea—the longest migration of any animal tracked to that point.

(From PNAS.)

Their map shows the geolocation tracks of 19 of their tagged sooty shearwaters at New Zealand breeding colonies (light blue); their migration pathways north (yellow); and their wintering grounds and southward transits (orange). Figures b–d represent the figure-eight movement patterns of individual shearwaters travelling to one of three "winter" destinations in the North Pacific.

The authors suggest the figure-eight  pattern is facilitated by prevailing wind patterns and by the Coriolis effect—which influence the long-range trajectories of the birds as they rocket between hemispheres at rates of up to 910 kilometers/565 miles a day, and as they chase the waves of summer from one hemisphere to the other.

(Credit: NASA/Seasat.)

You can correlate something of the travels of the sooty shearwaters to this map of prevailing winds over the Pacific.

The 2006 sooty shearwater paper appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From the abstract:

Electronic tracking tags have revolutionized our understanding of broad-scale movements and habitat use of highly mobile marine animals, but a large gap in our knowledge still remains for a wide range of small species. Here, we report the extraordinary transequatorial postbreeding migrations of a small seabird, the sooty shearwater, obtained with miniature archival tags that log data for estimating position, dive depth, and ambient temperature. Tracks (262 ± 23 days) reveal that shearwaters fly across the entire Pacific Ocean in a figure-eight pattern while traveling 64,037 ± 9,779 km roundtrip, the longest animal migration ever recorded electronically. Each shearwater made a prolonged stopover in one of three discrete regions off Japan, Alaska, or California before returning to New Zealand through a relatively narrow corridor in the central Pacific Ocean. Transit rates as high as 910 ± 186 km·day⁻¹ were recorded, and shearwaters accessed prey resources in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere’s most productive waters from the surface to 68.2 m depth.

But now the flying record of the sooty shearwaters been topped by a diminutive seabird, the Arctic tern, who not only crosses hemispheres but ocean basins as well.

(From PNAS.)

These are the geolocation tracks of 11 Arctic terns tracked from breeding colonies in Greenland and Iceland. The green lines are their autumn postbreeding migration (August–November). The red their "winter" range (December–March). The yellow their spring return migration (April–May). Two southbound migration routes are adopted in the South Atlantic, either (A) West African coast or (B) Brazilian coast. Dotted lines link locations during the equinoxes.

The research is reported in a February 2010 paper in PNAS, revealing migrations for Arctic terns of more than 80,000 kilometers/48,000 miles a year.

(Arctic tern. Photo by Malene Thyssen, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

Such globe-trotting transits keep these butterflies-of-the-sea hopped up on the endless summers of the high-latitudes. They barely know night.


The papers:

• Takashi Yamamoto, et al. At-Sea Distribution and Behavior of Streaked Shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) During the Nonbreeding Period. The Auk. 2010. 127 (4) 871–881. DOI: 10.1525/auk.2010.1002. 
• ♥ Akinori Takahashi. Post-breeding movement and activities of two Streaked Shearwaters in the north-western Pacific. Ornithological Science. 2008. 7 (1) 29-35. DOI: 10.2326/osj.7.29. ♥
• ♥ Scott A. Shaffer, et al. Migratory shearwaters integrate oceanic resources across the Pacific Ocean in an endless summer. PNAS. 2006. 103 ( 34) 12799-1280. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0603715103. ♥
• ♥ Carsten Egevang, et al. Tracking of Arctic terns Sterna paradisaea reveals longest animal migration. PNAS. 2010. 107 (5) 2078-2081. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0909493107. ♥

I ♥ open-access papers.

Thanksgiving Giveaway Winner!

Hi all! How was your Thanksgiving? I posted the winners for the Thanksgiving giveaway If you are not one of the winners, don't be sad. :) I will be doing another giveaway in the near future by CSN Stores. CSN Stores have over 1 million products on their site, toys to tv tables. It is fun to browse, and you might find the perfect gift for your loved ones just at your fingertips!

I am going to decorate the house for Christmas tomorrow with kids’ help (?) and with Christmas music on. Doesn't that sound fun? I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend.

Visit my Sponsors' Page to see if you are one of the lucky winners! I will see you on Monday!

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a quick post to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours!

Gosh, I sure am thankful for those two little faces in the above pictures.  I can't imagine my life with out them.  It's probably cliche to say, but having children is like having your heart walk around outside your body.  What a great joy they bring to our lives!

And I am definitely thankful for this man........The Cottage Papa!  What a truly magnificent father and partner.  So thankful that he chose me to be his for life!

I hope you all enjoy your turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberries, pumpkin pie, pecan pie and whatever else your Thanksgiving feast consists of.  But most of all I hope you enjoy your family and friends and take time to snuggle and hug your loved ones!  They're what life's all about, right?

Thank you so much for reading The Cottage Home!

Happy Thanksgiving!!