Hello Everyone!
Thank you so much for participating in my little survey. I've been thinking a lot about your answers this weekend and I've decided to turn the English Muse into a blog about books (mostly!). It will focus on the sorts of books that we all love: Decor, fashion, photography, art, gardening and literature. I also hope to include Q&As with authors! It would be impossible for me to write a blog about books without including my two other loves: Magazines and newspapers.
I hope the English Muse will become your destination to learn about interesting, beautiful and stylish printed media.
I'm working on the redesign of the blog now so please stay tuned for the launch date!
Thank you!!
Tina
PS: The illustration above is by artist C.J. Metzger. It accompanied an article I did some time ago about etiquette books. I loved the illustration so much that I asked Ms. Metzger if I could buy the original. (The photo she used in the collage is of her grandmother.) It's now framed in my kitchen!
"Tabletops are the daily canvases upon which we sketch," writer/illustrator Leanne Shapton mused recently in her T Magazine blog column, We Three Things. She says: "A glance at someone’s coffee table, kitchen island or even computer desktop offers a revealing self-portrait: bookworm, neat freak, train wreck, mom."
It made me stop and look at my own tables. We now have two kitchen tables in our oversized dining room. (One table didn't seem to fill the disproportionate middle space.) I have no idea what all this clutter says about me, other than I'm, well, a clutterer.
So here are some iPhone snapshots of this little hub of our flat:
Decor books, magazines, a Farrow & Ball paint brochure...
A collection of my daughter's scissors (a new one bought every year for school); an old Chinese bakelite box for holding rubber bands and paperclips...
And painted bug pins in a bowl...
After I read Shapton's post, it reminded me that I had saved an old Elle magazine profile of her in one of my inspiration files. The story prompted me to buy her book, Was She Pretty?
Shapton blogs that her own tabletops "tell short stories of collection and compulsion." She adds: "What gets randomly, or precisely, set down can be read like tea leaves; our surfaces are anything but shallow."
So, what's on your tabletop? If you'll email me a photo (send to englishmuse at yahoo dot com), I'll post it here next week!
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
(Photo of Lola, our Pom puppy)
The cake was a hit at our dinner yesterday! I wanted to share the recipe with you. It belonged to my grandmother on my dad's side.
Ingredients:
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup milk
1 stick butter
Pinch of salt
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat eggs well, then add sugar a little at a time. Heat milk and butter until butter is dissolved. Cool, then add to egg/sugar mixture alternately with flour. Mix well. Add salt and vanilla. Mix. Then add baking powder slowly until blended.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes in two 9-inch cake pans (greased & floured.)
Icing:
1/2 cup butter
1 pound confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
add milk one tablespoon at a time to preferred consistency.
Then eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack...:)
(Props to Bella for taking the picture)
Father's Day is on Sunday and it will be my first without my dad. I'm sort of dreading it, actually. I told my mom I would cook. I haven't decided on the menu yet, but I would like to honor my dad's memory by making his favorite dessert: hot milk cake. I think he'd like that!
I'm also, finally, starting a container garden on our balcony. I'm determined to grow roses in pots!
Every milestone holiday marks a chance for a new beginning, I think.
Wishing you a lovely, lovely weekend, my dears. Thank you.
PS: The photo above is of my dad and me on my wedding day.
