Zulily Today- Cookin in Veggie Color!

Today my colorful veggie recipe keepers and placemats are for sale on Zulily! Check them out! If you are like me, I print out a lot of recipes from online sites and Orange Circle has come up with a great format to keeping track of all these recipe printouts. It is a vertical format with pages you can put your printouts in and wonderful divider tabs with cooking information like a cooking glossary, substitutions, common recipes, etc. The binder holds up to 70 pages and stands upright on your counter so it's easy to see while you are preparing your meal.

The placemats come in a tear-off pad with 50 sheets of paper placemats. Be inspired to get in your veggies everyday in a colorful and fun way!

On Zulily, go to the Orange Circle Studios Sale and enjoy!

Seize the Day Calendars 2012

Getting ready for the new year?
Perfect time to seize the day in a colorful way... with new 2012 Seize the Day calendars from Sellers Publishing. I am honored to continue the line and am excited for a new year of inspiration and fun!

There is a wall, mini and daily calendar with inspiration and illustration to brighten your day. For 2012 Sellers added two more formats to the line- a planner calendar with a monthly grid that allows you to keep track of individual family member's activities (or you could break it up into different tasks, like a line for exercise, a line for appointments, a line for scheduling in your goals). The other new format is a three year, checkbook sized calendar, perfect to fit in your purse or tote.

Barnes and Noble carries the Seize the Day line in stores and you can order online
Barnes and Noble  http://tinyurl.com/84bgvnb
Amazon http://tinyurl.com/73khusv
Calendars.com http://tinyurl.com/735o6l6

Little Red Tulip is UP!

So excited that Julie's on-demand site is up and running! Little Red Tulip, www.littleredtulip.com

I have two lines up that I love- Suki, a modern take on asian patterns, and Mixed Modern Fruits from my Seedlings collection for kitchen stationery items. I also have double-sided coasters in my "Nature's Inspirations" images I use for my "Seize the Day" calendars with Sellers Publishing.

Suki comes in your choice of three colorways- fresh bright red/orange/chartreuse, warm brown/orange, or lively purple/chartreuse combinations. For office products and desk sets I've designed a couple different tear-off pads, perfect for keeping track of the whole family's commitments for the week or with weekly grid and a notes and to-do section. If you are like me, you make lots of notes and lists during the week and I need a central place to keep my rambling thoughts... Suki currently has 3-ring binders, journals (with interior pages that can be personalized as well), notebooks, clipboards and coasters. Stationery to come...

Mixed Fruits are designed for bright and lively kitchens with binders (I use my binders for keeping recipes and printouts), recipe cards, canvas wall art, coasters, and notebooks. There are other binders for modern kitchen girls like me- a more contemporary take on our favorite- the roosters, as well as modern veggies and kitchen gadgets.

Please check out www.littleredtulip.com for personalized products. More will be added daily!

brand new obsession

I haven't posted lately. The kids went back to school and I dived into being lead room mom, meetings for girl scouts, meet the teacher nights at two different schools, music lessons for kids, and my newest obsession... healthy eating! It is a big culinary shift at our household to VEGANISM. My daughter has been a vegetarian for almost two years and after seeing the CNN show "the Last Heart Attack" about vegan diets and heart disease and President Clinton, I was convinced to give it a try. It started out as a 30 day experiment and the 30 days are up today. The result...I am won over, I am on board, and I am ready for the next 30 days and so on!

This new passion requires some time and scheduling. It takes planning and time to prepare healthy meals, not so processed, closer to the source. More trips to the grocery store. New information. More reading. Arming myself with a new "toolbox" of foods. All our old patterns and foods are basically out the window. But I feel great and am immensely happy with the change.

Now I am debating how I marry my love of design and my love of good healthy food. When I design for the kitchen with colorful veggies and juicy fruits I feel inspired and energetic. It speaks to my passions and makes me want to stay the course. I LOVE nicely designed things in my kitchen, from an eclectic cup from Anthropology to vintage mixing bowls to new, modern colorful knives and high tech coffee makers. The kitchen is about senses... visual, colors, textures, smells, tastes, sounds... It is about coming together in celebration, in community, with nourishment and health, comfort, joy, family...

Design + health + food + senses + enjoyment. I feel a new group of designs and creative inspiration is around the corner, marinating and percolating, cooking up in my mind... a great big emotional yum!

72-Hour Sale on One Kings Lane- My Certified International Dishes!

I'm very excited to have my Certified International dishes for sale on One Kings Lane! They write, "We love a tabletop that's festive, fun, and full of flavor even before the food gets there." So do I!

For the next 72 hours the appetizer and wine collections are featured sale items, but things often sell out early. One Kings Lane is a great destination of top-brand and designer furniture, decor, art, gifts and vintage items at up to 70% off - please check it out!

www.onekingslane.com

This is what summer looks like

My son is a gardener. He doesn't like to eat tomatoes but he sure likes to grow them. That's fine with me as I love to eat them. Simple slices with a little salt. I just can't get over how much flavor is in vegetables you grow at home- it's amazing! So sweet and juicy.
Bountiful! Yum!

Freshen Up Color

It all happened because I decided to dust the upper shelves. It's one of the drawbacks of open shelving in the kitchen- dust and gunk builds up. (Oh, the maintenance involved with some design decisions...)
I was taking the dishes down, thinking how I'd like to use these more if they weren't so high, so hard to reach. If I rearranged things and put the dishes in another cupboard, what would I put there? As I thought of my options, I felt none of them would look right with the spicy orange we'd painted on the wall a couple of years ago. I was ready for something fresher, something lighter, more summery...

And as quick as that, off to the hardware store and a day of painting. Behr Blue Cypress. I love changing the color on an accent wall and how it transforms the mood of the room immediately. I like the light and happy feeling I get when I walk in the room and am thinking of painting this color in my studio too. I feel like I'm at the beach and things seem calm and peaceful. I'm loving the change!

After moving the dishes to a more accessible place, I still haven't used them yet!