Valentines Day Vintage

This is what I woke up to this morning. I am a lucky girl and I have a super thoughtful boyfriend.

Over the weekend we headed out to Montclair to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of a friends Vintage Boutique called Garnish.

Talk about coveting everything in a store! I love my friend Lisa's taste and the way she had the store laid out so neat and adorable totally gave me shoppe envy! I could have walked around in there for hours just looking at every last little detail of every item.

I seemed to have recently begun this obsession with old mechanical clocks. I think it has something to do with my obsession with old mechanical sewing machines, but who knows. They're just pretty cute too.

Anyway - I saw this clock and fell in love. I  totally couldn't justify my purchasing it cause I just don't need it. I kept shopping around to find a little something a little more practical to spend my money on that night. (HA - practical.) Not sure if I can call what bought practical, but I guess they are a bit more useful than the clock

I wound taking home a baking book from 1961 and a mechanical egg beater. Again - am loving anything mechanical that is not electric these days!

Here they are:

Saturday Morning, I immediately had to make something from my new book. (see - totally practical!)
I knew I had some poppy seeds in my pantry, so lemon poppy seed pound cake it is.
Oops, no recipe for that in my new cook book. But that's okay, I will happily make do.

I used the Basic Pound Cake recipe found on page 116 and added some lemon juice and poppy seeds and all was well and right in the world.

Here is the recipe in case you are interested:

Basic Pound Cake

A delicious, old-fashioned cake, especially good toasted (from the book, not me)

6 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
(I added the juice of one lemon, some zest & half a bottle of poppy seeds)

Set oven to 350 degrees. Grease a deep, 9 inch tube pan and dust with flour.
In a large bowl, combine eggs and sugar and beat for a minute. Set bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Place saucepan over low heat for about 10 minutes, or until eggs are slightly warmer than lukewarm. Don not let water boil. Stir eggs occasionally while they are being heated to prevent them from cooking on the the bottom of the bowl.

While eggs are warming, cream butter and flour till light and fluffy. Add vanilla.

When eggs are lukewarm, beat them until cool, thick and tripled in bulk.  Quickly stir 1/4 of beaten eggs into creamed mixture. Pour mixture over remaining beaten eggs. Fold in gently. Be careful not to overmix.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake about 50 minutes, or until cake is golden brown and pulls away from sides of pan.

Megan Side note: All that business about warming the mixture over the hot water was skipped in my version. I just made sure the eggs weren't cold when I mixed them with everything else. I did this by letting them sit under warm water coming out of the tap of the sink. I also didn't really beat the eggs as they said. I beat them with the sugar with my new beater, but then procedeed to add all the ingrediants and bake it.

The more I think about it, I really didn't follow the directions at all (suprise, suprise). But my turned out okay. I had to take it out of the oven a bit early cause I had to head to work so there was some oozing batter when I cut into it later that day when I tried a pice. This was because it wasn't quite cooked all the way through. But I have to say, I am a big fan of any cake just a little bit underdone. Is that gross?

Hoboken Guide @ Design Sponge

A fellow business owner here in town passed along a link to a Hoboken City Guide on the Design Sponge Blog. I am soooo honored to be a part of this piece, as I absolutely love Design Sponge!

"Welcome to Hoboken. A vibrant New Jersey town just a hop, skip and jump over the river from Manhattan. Hoboken was made famous as the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, the filming location of the Marlon Brando movie On The Waterfront and the music venue “Maxwell’s” where Bruce Springsteen filmed the video for “Glory Days.”

Hoboken is also the town of many firsts, including inventions like freeze-dried coffee, bubble wrap and ice cream, as well as the first organized baseball game and the first brewery. It boasts the most bars and restaurants in one square mile of its town’s boundaries, and the indie/designer/art scene is on its way up due to many artists and musicians living here. It is also home of the infamous Cake Boss from the Lifetime show."

And here is what they had to say about us, under the category Art, Craft Supplies & Galleries:

"M. Avery Designs — Also home of the Hoboken Handmade Collective. If you love fabric, this is the place to visit. They also host classes and socials and offer open studios for use of their sewing machines. All items in the store are handmade and gorgeous. 266, 7th Street (at the corner of Willow Ave.)"

Read more at Design*Sponge  

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2011/01/hoboken-city-guide.html#ixzz1AlrVWDHV

WIne Bottle Tiki Torch Project

Here is a great project I just found while browsing one of my favorite design blogs Re-Nest.

I'll admit, it doesn't look like the safest form of keeping the bugs away/lighting up your backyard, but I kinda wanna give it a try...



Here's what you do :

What You Need

Materials
1/2" x 3/8" copper coupling ($0.97)
Tiki replacement wick ($1.54)
Nylon thread seal tape ($.97)
Recycled wine bottle or beer bottle (Free!)
Tools
Citronella torch fuel (price not included)

Instructions

The construction is pretty simple:
1. Wrap the pipe wrap around the copper reducer many times. The opening on our wine bottle required about 15 times around so that it would stick and we actually inserted the smaller 3/8" side into the bottle as the 1/2" side didn't fit (as compared to the original How-to). In the future, we'd also want to try it in beer bottles for smaller torches to place around the yard.
2. Insert the wick into the reducer.
3. Fill the bottle with Citronella and insert wick. Let the oil be absorbed into the wick before lighting.
4. Light, enjoy & be careful!