Rustic Plum Tart

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Are you a part of the For the Love Of Facebook community?  Let’s be friends!

Truth be told, I haven’t been doing much cooking lately. Okay honestly, I’ve done zero cooking, other than reheating meals, and I can’t remember the last time I tried a new recipe. I used to try at least one new recipe a week, but with the pregnancy and now the postpartum phase, the last place I’ve been able to recapture my mojo is in the kitchen. I had a good friend over a couple of weeks back though, and I wanted to make something special for us to enjoy together, so I decided to make a good standby, this rustic plum tart. Now is the perfect time of year to make this tart, as it screams Fall to me. Without sounding like too much of a weirdo, I despise super sweet things, and this tart is the perfect amount of sweet, with the buttery savoriness of the crust, to make a perfect dessert or breakfast time treat.  It’s rather simple to make and is a good way to get rid of a big batch of stone fruit that may be close to becoming over ripe (I’ve tried it with peaches and apricots with very good results).  The layer of crushed up almonds under the fruit gives it just the right amount of crunch and texture. And the kicker to this dish is the topping of creme fraishe, or Greek yogurt if you have that on hand. It adds a nice amount of moisture and a bit of tang to make the plum taste really zing. And the leftovers warm up nicely too. Just keep refrigerated and reheat a few seconds in the microwave as needed. Enjoy!

Rustic Plum Tart

Pastry (I’ve used a store bought pie crust many times with much sucess, but if you have a bit of extra time, this crust is easy and pretty fail proof):
2 cups all-purpose flour
8 TBSP (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 TBSP sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg yolk
1/3 cup cold water

Tart
1/2 cup shelled almonds
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 lbs plums, pitted and sliced
4 TBSP unsalted butter cut into small pieces
1/2 cup red currant jelly (or a blend)
1 TBSP Grand Marnier (I use triple sec)
Creme Fraiche for serving

To prepare the pastry: combine flower, butter, sugar, and salt in a food processor or standing mixerand process until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the egg yolk and cold water and process until the dough just comes together in the bowl. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Combine almonds, the 1/4 cup sugar, and the flour in the food processor and process until the mixture is a powder and set aside. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to form a large rectangle, 1/8 inch thick. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet. Sprinkle the almond mixture over the pastry, leaving a 1-inch border all around.

Arrange the plum slices over the almond mixture. Fold the border of the dough up, pressing and pinching it together to make a rim. Dot the plums with the butter and sprinkle the remaining 2 tbsp sugar over them. Bake until the filling is bubbly and the crust is golden, about 1 hour.

Meanwhile, mix the red currant jelly and the Grand Marnier (or triple sec) together in a small bowl. Brush the mixture over the entire tart just after it comes out of the oven. Let the tart cool and serve warm or at room temperature, with the creme fraiche.

*Adapted from Celebrate! by Sheila Lukins



The 3rd Child

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“You don’t have a baby book for me mom?!?”

It’s true what they say about third children; they do sort of get the short end of the stick.  With Hayden, he does have the fact that he’s our last child on his side, so we do fall on his every coo and cry.  But as far as sentimentality goes, we are lacking.  Case in point?  The child doesn’t even have a baby book.  Oh how I remember searching and shopping for the perfect baby book to record every single bit of drool that Taylor, and even Syd, let fall out of their mouths.  But Hayden?  The thought hadn’t even occurred to me until the other day when he started to smile and I didn’t have a book to record this special milestone in. Lucky for Hayden not all is lost, and I’ve got this Block to Grow On from Child To Cherish to help me remember to record the important stuff.  It’s perfect because it serves as a piggy bank, a keepsake box, a decorative item in the nursery, and helps to give me prompts to remember and record the important milestones.  Because guys, I’m lost without prompts.  I joke that the only thing I’m consistent about is not being consistent, so things like taking pictures of Hayden in the same spot for a year, or recording every single tiny detail of his first year of his life is just not going to happen.  I’ve come to terms with my forgetfulness and I’m okay with it, but at least this little block helps me to remember the really important stuff.  The stuff that would put me in the bad, forgetful mommy category if I forgot to notate. There’s sections for baby’s weight and height at each month for their first year.  Heck, even if I forget to record that stuff, I can always fall back on my pediatrician, right?  There’s also a cute prompt on each side, like first step, first smile, etc.  Again, I’m lost without prompts! The Block To Grow On is the perfect gift for any new mom, and especially perfect for us forgetful, busy moms that want to record the special milestones in their baby’s lives in an easy and cute way.  Child To Cherish has lots of other great quality gift and keepsake items.  You can visit them on their Facebook page, or find them on Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

 “This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group™, but all my opinions are my own.”



Daily Style Week 7 – As Casual As It Gets

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Don’t forget to enter the Anthropologie gift card giveaway!
Skirt – Target; Jean Jacket – Nordstrom; T-Shirt – James Perse; Tennies – Converse; Bag –c/o StorkSak; Sunglasses – Reed Krakoff c/o Neiman Marcus

7 Weeks postpartum and I’ll tell you that button-up pants are still pretty darn uncomfortable for me. I bought one pair of marked down jeans at Madewell a couple of weeks back, and while they technically fit, they are not comfortable and I feel like they’re squishing my midsection like a sausage. But if I went up a size, they’re slipping down, so I’m definitely in that in-between postpartum stage. Elastic waists continue to be where it’s at for comfort and ease of dressing. And since our weather is still a bit chaotic, today reaching 80 degrees, long pants just didn’t feel good, so I challenged myself to figure out a way to wear this skirt in the most casual of ways to make to work for a busy week, spent with the kids and with little help from my other half who is slammed at work.  I was super thankful to have Miranda rescue me from dinner alone, and met up with me and the kids at Ruby’s for an early meal and some good company.

Overall the look works because of the jean jacket. I’m wearing just a simple gray v-neck t-shirt underneath, that paired with the tennies and without the jacket felt a bit sloppy. This look is proof in point that a layering piece can not only make an outfit, but save it as well. A styling tip on jean jackets like this, as well as button up shirts, is to push the rolled up sleeves as far up to the elbow as possible. It elongates and slims out the arm.

And by the way, would you ever guess the bag I’m holding is Hayden’s diaper bag?  Cute right?  The nylon Tania Bee bag from StorkSak is my new best friend in that it holds everything, is lightweight, and doesn’t look like a diaper bag.  It’s updated shape can pass off for just a regular purse, and it’s got plenty of pockets inside to hold all my crap!

So this is just about as casual as I think this pencil skirt can get.  Do you think I pulled it off, or did I push it too far?  You can see how I dressed up this pencil skirt here, and how I gave it a sort of in-between casual look here.  Linking up with WIWW.

Linking up with WIWW and Casual Friday



Refreshed With An Anthropologie Giveaway

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Happy Monday friends!  How was everyone’s weekend?  Mine was busy and tiring.  We’re working with Hayden on adjusting his schedule a bit and it’s leading to some less sleep for us right now, but hopefully it will lead to more sleep eventually.  Wish us luck!

You may have noticed that things are a bit different around these parts today.  I made the decision a couple of weeks back that I needed to scale back on some things in my life, and one of them was having two different blogs.  Life is just too busy and filled with good stuff to be worrying about spending so much time on the computer, so I’ve decided to discontinue writing at my other blog Four Flights of Fancy, a decision that was hard for me to make, but very necessary.  I’m sad because my love for blogging was sparked by that site, and I had so many really sweet and supportive readers, but for now it’s just not the right season of my life to be trying to do so much.  So with that said, I have decided to focus my energy and attention here on this site, and with that decision, I had to make a few changes around here so I contacted my fantastic blog designer Sara and her coding partner in crime, Thor, to make some site adjustments.

I’ve added sponsors for the first time, and put up ads from the Glam ad network in order to help continue to fund the DIY projects y’all love so much.  I’ve also added tabs for Family and Home, since I will be intermittently writing about both here on this site, I hope you don’t mind!  While the site will remain focused heavily on Style, Beauty and DIY’s, my family and the things we do together as a family in our home are the most important things in the world to me, so doses of the two will be added in.

Other than that, Sara added some fancy new design elements in the post headers and the sidebar, just to give the site an overall more cohesive look.  I love it and the work she does.

To celebrate new seasons and giving things a refresher, I thought I’d celebrate you all, the ones that have been reading here since I began a few months ago, or the ones that are brand new, and offer a chance to win 2 Anthropologie gift cards so you can give your Fall look a bit of a refresher!  I’m giving away a $50 and $25 gift card to Anthropologie!  Details, and your chance to enter are below.  This giveaway is open to everyone, both US and non US residents and winners will be announced next Monday.  Thank you so much for reading and all of your support!
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Hayden’s Birth Story

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Hayden turned 6 weeks old yesterday, and the memories of his birth are still very fresh in my mind and my heart, but certain details seem to be fading just a bit.  I never thought I’d share a birth story of one of my kids, and I’ll be quite honest, I’m not sure how many of you will even be interested in reading this, but since a few of readers and friends had asked about my drug free birth, I thought I’d just put it out there.  Move along if you have no interest in hearing about this, but would of course love for you to stick around. Read More »



Weekend Links – Internet Manners, Comments & Contributors

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Source

Last week when I spoke at the Penelope Lane conference, someone asked what is more important, comments or page views.  Without hesitation I replied “page views.”  And for the most part, that is absolutely true.  I went on to tell her that when you’re applying for paid campaigns or trying to get into an ad network, or trying to get sponsors, they never ask how many comments you get per post, but how many page views.  I continued to say that it used to really bother me that the posts I worked the hardest on were my DIY tutorials, and yet they always got the least amount of comments, but when I wrote about silly things like zombies, readers I’d never heard from came out in droves.  Yet my tutorials are what in many ways carry my stats.  So now I’ve just learned to let it go and be happy with the few comments I get and instead be happy with how many pins I get.

But then the other day I read this post, about Internet Manners.  You may have already read it, as I posted it on my FTLO Facebook wall.  It’s a great read and it reminded me that you k now what, my tutorials are important to me.  I put my heart into each one and they take hours from start to finish.  Between planning, buying supplies, doing the tutorial, taking pictures, then editing pictures and writing the post, I can easily spend 4-5 hours on a single DIY tutorial.  Take yesterday’s pumpkin tutorial for instance.  Between going to the store, decorating, styling the shoot and editing the hundred photos I took, I worked on it for a good 4 hours easily.

I have 2 comments on that post, and it’s been pinned over 100 times.  Seriously?  The point of the article is to stop and say thank you.  Take the time to visit the site from Pinterest and say “hey, this is cool, I’m gonna make it!”  Of course some of us do this, but let’s be honest, the vast majority of us don’t.  I too am guilty of it, I’ll admit.  So from now on, I’m making more of an effort to stop and say thank you, or even hi, or hey, you’re a real cool cat for making cool stuff.  Would you consider doing the same?

Edited to add: I want to make sure I say that I certainly appreciate that people even pin my projects at all, and don’t want to come across as ungrateful that someone likes what I created.  I most certainly do!  Rather, I think it would be nice to get a larger ratio of comments to pins on these posts than I get.  I realize commenting is sometimes hard and takes time, so at then end of the day I’ll take a pin over nothing any day 🙂

In related posts, I came across this one about comments written by Joy the Baker via HH, and it’s a lovely read.

And I can’t wait to meet Joy from Oh Joy! in a couple of weeks at her book signing for Blog, Inc.  She wrote this post Bringing It Back Home a while ago but still a good read, and I respect her for her decision quite a bit.  I think the occasional or single contributor to a blog is great and can really help a blogger grow, both for the host blogger and contributor.  I contribute and have been asked to contribute to a couple of blogs 1-2 times a month, and that’s not what I’m referring to here.  But what I’m talking about is the trend to bring on a plethora of contributors to a blog, so that  it doesn’t even function as a blog anymore but a website, and yet they are still trying to categorize themselves as bloggers.  The voice of the original blogger is only hears about 2-3 times a week and inevitably does it start to get lost?  I recently saw that a blogger I used to read and respect quite a bit just brought on a team of 6 contributors.  Six!  And here I am the single lone blogger on this site, and I’m supposed to be able to rival that kind of team of talent? It’s near impossible and seems a little unfair.  I don’t know, it just starts to get a little sketchy, these lines in blogging.  Maybe some day I’ll do the same and I shouldn’t talk too much trash, but when does a blog go from being a blog to a website?

Enough blog talk, for now, I’ll leave you with a bit of my writing over at Disney Baby, about kid and baby stuff if you’d like to go have a read:



DIY Neon Pumpkins

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If you’ve been following me for any length of time, it probably comes as no surprise to you all that I would take Halloween and add a splash of neon to the holiday (to see all of my neon inspired projects click here).  It’s been my favorite way to add color to just about anything this year, even Hayden’s nursery, and so what holiday is more befitting of vibrancy than Halloween?  These pumpkins were super easy to make and just required some spray paint, and a few standard craft supplies, along with a bit of a wing-it and see type of creativity. I first began by spray painting my pumpkins with a coat of primer to cover up the orange real well, then a coat of satin white paint.  I tried painting a few black but was not happy with the results of the black + neon so ditched those.  Once the pumpkins were dry I started playing around. For the polka dot pumpkins I used my left over office supply stickers from this project and just added them in a vertical pattern, wrapping the stems in neon construction twine.  To make sure the stickers adhered, I added a coat of Mod Podge just to the stickers, saving me time and cost of supplies. For the glitter pumpkin, I completely just did it free hand and put dots in an intermittent pattern all over the pumpkin, and let the glitter fall over.  I didn’t bother dusting off the excess, as I kind of like how it looks just sprinkled about. For the twine wrapped pumpkin I simply just wrapped the pumpkin all over in twine, and this was one of those ideas that just sort of came out of thin air. Lastly, the ikat inspired pumpkin, came out a bit more like a harlequin, diamond pattern, than I would have liked, but I’m still pleased with it for a first time try.  I think to replicate more of the look you see on these inspiration ikat pumpkins, I’d have to go back and add some white paint over the neon yellow, something I may try doing this weekend if I have time. Overall I love my cluster of neon pumpkins and think they are a fun take on the trend.  I completed all of these, including drying time, during just one of Hayden’s naps, so it’s a quick and easy project no doubt.    So are you experimenting with any unique and fun designs this Halloween, or are you keeping things simple and old-school and just carving traditional jack-o-lanterns?  We’ll still carve our pumpkins later in the month, but for now these are fun to look at!



In Anticipation of Fall – Jules of Pancakes & French Fries

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I couldn’t be happier to introduce you to my good friend Jules of Pancakes and French Fries. I talk about her quite a lot, so chances are you probably already know who she is, but if you don’t, go visit her blog to get a quick dose of humor, wit, book recommendations, and lots of organization tips. Jules just started her second installment of 31 Days of William Morris, a follow up to last year’s successful series about de-cluttering, and filling your space with things only that you love or find to be useful. Jules’ humor and good taste are evident in her answers below. Here’s a peek into what she’s most looking forward to this Fall season. buttermilk blueberry breakfast cake source
To see the entire blogger series, In Anticipation Of Fall, visit here.



Daily Style – The Pencil Skirt Gets Casual

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Skirt – Target; Chambray Shirt – J. Crew; Boots – Dolce Vita; Bag- Marc by Marc Jacobs; Pins – ban.do

Revisiting this skirt again, but today with more of a casual look, although it still has a bit of a dressed up feel.  I’ll share one more look with you all next week that is truly super casual.  Since my lifestyle doesn’t call for me to even sort of get dressed like this everyday, I always take my opportunity on Sundays to wear the outfits I would love to wear on a regular basis.

This is a perfect example of getting dressed for church; I present my best self without feeling over dressed, and the look carries me through the day without feeling uncomfortable or over done, and in this case, out to brunch with the family at one of our favorite restaurants.  This outfit is nursing friendly and kid friendly, with patterns to distract the eye from any unforeseen spills, and a lightweight, almost wrinkle proof button up shirt.

The ways I’m making this pencil skirt work for me are:

  • dressing for transitional fall weather.  it’s still warm in southern California so I’m pairing it with a lightweight chambray shirt and no tights, and closed toed casual boots, but once the weather cools down I can layer it with a sweater and a pair of tights.
  • adding the fun (yet not ostentatious) grouping of pins, again says I don’t take myself too seriously and gives the overall outfit a feeling of casual ease, and a bright pop of color.
  • the closed toed ankle boots say fall, but don’t leave me sweating while the weather is still trying to cool down.  these type of ankle booties can be worn so many ways, and are great for mommas because they help us feel like we’re wearing a dressier pair of shoes, yet they’re perfectly fine to chase kids around in.  I wrote a post a while back about wearing these type of ankle booties as a grown woman by the way, that you can check out here. Yes, women of all ages can wear these booties!
  • and can I just say one more time, how thankful I am for being able to find cute, elastic waist clothing options lately?  I don’t dare invest in any button up items right now since I’m still carrying 20+ pounds of baby weight, so this skirt is a perfect piece to wear now and later after I lose the weight (or most of it ;))

Happy hump day everyone, and please let me know if you have any questions or other ideas of how to wear this pencil skirt!  Linking up with WIWW.



In Anticipation of Fall – Sarah James of Whoorl

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Today in the blogger series, In Anticipation of Fall, Sarah James of Whoorl helps me out by letting us in on what she’s looking forward to most this Fall season. I met Sarah last year at Camp Mighty and lucky me, she is a Southern California native and I’ve been able to get to know Sarah in real life over the past year. She’s as charming and nice as her hair is beautiful and I love reading her blog to get beauty advice (because I need a lot of that!), and get a glimpse into her life. She and her family just recently bought their first house here in SoCal and you can follow their remodeling adventures on a weekly basis. Please give Sarah a warm welcome and say hi, either here or on her blog, you won’t be sorry!

Thanks so much for being a guest today Sarah! It means the whoolrd to me! And girl, you have to share your pumpkin cheesecake brownie recipe with me! You can see what bloggers Nicole of Making It Lovely, Tera of Tera Rae Stephens and Lindsay of Delighted Momma are looking forward to this Fall here.