Month: December 2012

At Rault’s (since 1845!) on Magazine Street, they’ve been making jewelry with beautiful old locks and keys:

Wish this one didn’t come out so blurry but have to show those bracelets!

Fellow lovers of burlap, rejoice.  This looks ten thousand times better than the probably-yucky-black-velvet-underneath-that, don’t you think?

Yessss:

…and if you’re into jewelry for your house, they have plenty of that too:

Above the double doors, Obama and Leah:

Plenty of art inside, including stained glass pieces:

There are three Charles Sims paintings as well. This is by Bruce Bice:

I mostly avoid steam tables, but here, sign me up. A taste of many things…

…and yes, that fried chicken was *good*.

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Leah Chase’s 90th birthday is coming up, and plans are in the works for the Edgar ‘Dooky’ Jr. and Leah Chase Family Foundation, from the T-P and their press release:

Friday, Jan. 4, three lunch seatings at Dooky Chase Restaurant will feature a special menu of Leah Chase’s favorites. The chef will attend and share stories. Cost is $40 per person.

Saturday, Jan. 5 The Dinner of a Lifetime, $250 per person, will celebrates Leah Chase’s 90th birthday, will be held at the Hyatt Regency, with a cocktail reception followed by a four-course meal prepared in her honor by soon-to-be-named well-known chefs.

……..

“I’m so excited about the celebration, even if I’m more comfortable being on the giving end than the receiving end,” Leah Chase said after the initial announcement. “I love to give, and I’m so thankful for everything the community is doing. I’m so grateful to everybody.

“Now, I feel like I owe people, and the more I owe people, the longer I have to live to pay it all back,” she said. “This city has done so much for me and my family and I feel like I ought to pay back and I’m not quite sure how. But I keep trying.”

The foundation will focus on “social justice activities that foster inclusion, and support of the creative and culinary arts,” according to the press release. Leah Chase is a noted art collector.

This week we’ve been celebrating Chanukah; for our cake this year I designed a dreidel with a heart showing for our sweet-sweet family! Thank you Amy at Whole Foods for always turning my scribbles into yummy icing!

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Chalmette Movies is going to be showing this film about Hubig’s Pies before each feature:

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From the Cavalier Daily: Former University professor Joseph Blotner, a renowned William Faulkner biographer, passed away Nov. 16 at the age of 89. Blotner is credited for leading the effort to bring Faulkner to the University’s English department.

Blotner and Faulkner grew close in their time together at the University, a relationship that provided Blotner with the expertise needed to construct his comprehensive two-volume biography. The book is considered by many academics as essential to the study of Faulkner.

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Hero Pecans are available, order online / retail locations at website:
Alabama Black Belt: Pecans!: born in 2009 from a HEROyouth* marketing assignment, is revered not only for its quality of taste, but for its business model. Pecans! is not only a sustainable small business, but co-serves as a job training opportunity for at-risk HEROyouth to gain valuable food service skills. Utilizing home grown ingredients to forge its pecan butter, sugared pecans and pecan brittle, it is a must taste in the South. To make it even sweeter, all Pecans! profits go to the HEROyouth Scholarship Fund that rewards three (3) scholarships annually to HEROyouth students who are pursuing a post-secondary degree.

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Very nice article on Alabama’s oldest farm, and its 101-year-old farmer, at al.com with slideshow.

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From The Telegraph — goodbye TKAM, hello insulation manual:

American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.

A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.

Books such as JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by “informational texts” approved by the Common Core State Standards.

Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California’s Invasive Plant Council.

The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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A music documentary, ‘Muscle Shoals’, will premiere at 2013 Sundance.

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We went to the Willie Nelson concert at the Alabama Theatre and *wow* was it ever so fun!

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Epicurious came out with their 2013 Food Trends list. Front burner: vegetable plate — back burner: meatballs.

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NPR says: Texas Twang is Fixin’ to Ride Off Into the Sunset.  Sniff.

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The Steel Magnolia home is for sale in Natchitoches.

We finally made it to The Shed in Ocean Springs after hearing about it for ages (and seeing the owner on television a dozen times):

It’s primitive, but it’s easy.

And I love these two sweet boys:

The food was good — much better than expectations, which for whatever reason were pretty low, and undeservedly so.  The sides were ‘eh’ but the meat was nicely smoked and yummy; maybe the sauce was too sweet but overall it was certainly very nice.  My only real thing…did we all not decide ages ago that styrofoam was a supremely bad idea? I remember going to fast food places in college (thank heaven for dollar menus and ramen noodles…) and my ‘special request’ would be that my lunch/supper be put on paper rather than plastic. And still today we are doing this? Everyone here — eating ‘in’ or carry-out — was served out of these containers:

New episodes of BBQ Pitmasters (I *think* the gentleman who owns these restaurants has been on) starts December 16…

The other day, I was at a shop that sold Jonathan Adler picture frames, and thought how pretty they would be as menorahs — you could change out the ‘picture’ part every night if you liked…glitter paper, a special picture, some other interestingly-patterned paper…

I decided to try it out, and bought another frame, took off the ‘stand’ from the back, put a pretty paper inside (which doesn’t really go with this style, but was happy and I liked it anyway), and hot-glued on candle cups, with one of them atop a flat glass marble so as to be the shamash (helper):

So pretty:

I really wanted to have a garland this year for the porch and stair railings with a lot of color.  While I haven’t been a big fan of deco mesh in the past, I thought for this year anyway it might be a good change — and every bit of the material I used for it was 50% off at Hobby Lobby (Hobby Lobby runs it as a Christmas sale, but while they didn’t originally put the blues on sale, the silver *was* — and I was able to use silver and turquoise ribbon that they consider Christmas colors, too).

Rather than give the full instructions here, I used the excellent video at the bottom of this post as a guide.

If you don’t have a ‘work garland’ like what’s described on the video, and can’t find one at the store like me, you can make one yourself.  I just cut this long string of beads to the length I needed, then twisted pipe cleaners every 10″ or so.

First, the deco mesh — just as according to the video. Then some turquoise (which granted looks more blue in these pics) tulle, then wide shiny silver ribbon, then two different turquoise ribbons:

 Doing every bit of my railings, thanks to it being 50% off a HL, cost less than $40 and I can use this for years to come if I choose.

Tons of inspiration at Pinterest.