Chickadee Home Nest: blue and white vignette

Showing posts with label blue and white vignette. Show all posts

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Furniture Rearranging

Several months ago we thought it was time for Baby Love to start piano lessons, so of course it was a package deal—the piano had to go along with the lessons, so our piano now lives at her house. It’s the piano her Papá and uncle used to ~~learn~~ ~~practice~~ ummmmm spend our money—that’s what it was!—so it seemed only right that she have it now. It didn’t get played much at our house, and when we had it tuned recently we were pleasantly surprised to learn that it’s in very good condition!

Once the piano was gone, it gave me the opportunity to re-think our furniture arrangement. It had been a focal point in our home, and I had loved using it for vignettes (if not for playing, LOL). Here’s where it was~

We played musical furniture (thank heavens for those slider-disk things!), and our vintage buffet came to the former piano spot…that was it! Loved it! That’s where it needed to live! ~~

And guess what’s gracing the sterling punch bowl my MIL gifted us many years ago?! Hydrangeas, of course! Today was a perfectly beautiful day, so I took advantage of the beautiful weather to harvest more of them for future use—I’m thinking Christmas, but my ideas are still a secret (to me too!—I’m thinking…I’m thinking…).

I thought you might be curious about the three pictures to the left of the buffet. The top picture is of my parents happily walking down the aisle after their wedding. The second is a portrait of my mother and me, taken in our home in Havana, and the last is of me with my father at the beach—in perfectly clear water (also in Cuba).

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The move of the buffet created a void, of course, and after more musical furniture we settled on my MIL’s writing desk. It had been living in our bedroom (it’s the surface you see in The Nook and Old Ladder post {HERE}). Now it provides me with the opportunity to gather some blue and white~~

The vase on the desk is another perfect vessel for drying more hydrangeas. The black-and-white pictures are a collection my husband and I put together at our other house and repeated it in this home. It’s a collection of pictures of us and the generations before us. (Some adjustments need to be made to the collage, since I had to take some of them down with the new furniture piece.) Sometimes we talk about taking them down and doing something different there…we’ll see, but it’s interesting to me that after so many years of having them up I still enjoy looking at them. For example, there’s a picture of my beloved grandmother holding my baby brother and I’m sitting real close, right next to her. There’s one of my husband eating an ice cream cone that’s almost as big as he is, and an 8x10 of him deep-sea fishing with his parents in Mexico. Lots of good memories.

The sunlight was playing its lovely games when I walked in the room, and I quickly grabbed my camera.

Aren’t they drying beautifully? I know many of you dry your hydrangeas—how have you used them? Have you used them for any Christmas decorations?

I’ve been on the hunt for blue-and-white bowls, and recently I found this beauty at the antique shop where my SIL has a booth. Guess how much?? I HAVE to share the price because it’s so pretty and it was such a buy--$6.00!! It has no flaws, and the gold rim and base are perfect. See the reflection on the desk?

The rest of the vignette—blue and white plates on brass plate racks/candleholders. I got these candleholders years and years ago, I think from the Pier 1 catalog, because I wanted to display not only our boys’ Bunnykins plates, but also their mugs, and I was able to hang the mugs from the arms. It was a precious vignette in our other dining room. (Hmmmm…I wonder if I have a picture of them? They wouldn’t be digital, that’s for sure.)

I’m looking forward to your ideas on how to use dried hydrangeas, so please share them with me, and if you have pictures, please share those too! I can’t wait!

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you’ll leave me a comment to let me know you were here—I read every single one of them! And if you like what you see a lot, maybe you’d like to Google+ this post or pin it on Pinterest too! Thank you!

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From my nest to yours~

Zuni

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Espresso Your Love

Cuban Coffee (Café Cubano), is made with Café ESPRESSO, the bold, strong coffee that we associate with romantic Italian sidewalk cafés (and now Starbucks). Enjoying a cup of it is a deep and almost-revered tradition in my Cuban culture as well. I have many memories of my family’s after-dinner “cafecito”—a small coffee—as the basis for long (and often-animated) conversations at the table. (By the way, these after-dinner conversation are such an ingrained and much-loved part of a Cuban family meal that we have a name for it: sobremesa [so-breh-meh’-sah]. Isn’t that lovely? The family not running off after a meal, but staying to chat and discuss the events of the day?)

Some readers of this blog may stay away from espresso because it has more caffeine per unit volume than most drinks, but because it’s served in small vessels—usually in a demitasse or even smaller cups—it actually has less caffeine than an 8-ounce cup of drip-brewed coffee! Now, that’s a surprise! The brewing process makes the flavors more concentrated, which tend to be a bit too concentrated for me, so I make a cortadito, which in Spanish means “small cut,” meaning that you “cut” the intensity of the coffee by adding steamed milk to it. Not to be confused with lattés and cappuccinos, and café au lait (or since we’re “speaking” Spanish today, café con leche), a cortadito is still served in a demitasse.

Yesterday was a lovely day in central Ohio; the perfect time to serve ESPRESSO cortaditos for two in the garden.

But first, how to make it.

Nothing fancy…the stove-top ESPRESSO maker I’ve had for years. This is the small version, which makes 1 or 2 cups, and I have a much larger one for family serving.

My family’s espresso of choice is Café Bustelo, now available at many large grocery stores or online. (It’s also available as decaf, as well as instant. I use the instant to make a bold cup of American coffee—it’s delish.)

This won’t be a complete how-to, nor will it be technical, but the reservoir below the coffee basket holds the water, and the coffee basket is filled completely, and the coffee tamped. I use the bottom of my coffee measure to tamp it. There is no measuring—you fill the basket, tamp, and refill and tamp as necessary.

Can you smell it? The brewed coffee bubbles up through the central core. The wonderful aroma of coffee wafts through the house.

This is how we enjoyed our cafecito in the garden.

The demitasses are fairly new to me—an auction win I was thrilled about. Six blue and white demitasses! And the darling demitasse spoons I’ve had for years.

Steamed milk to make our cortadito…

And of course, sugar…LOTS of sugar (or in my case, Splenda). Warning: This is not a drink where you want to cut back on the sugar! Such bold coffee needs the counterbalance the sugar provides.

And I should add that the flowers are real. I am NUTS about these two geraniums we have this year. Don’t they look like they have been hand-painted?!

As the sun moved it created wonderful shadows. I’ll share some of the pictures for your enjoyment.

Of course, we couldn’t be al fresco and not have a few of these!

It was lovely in the garden, and the cafecito…perfect. Won’t you join me? I’ll have it ready in a wink.

So tell me—are you a fan of ESPRESSO, or not so much? Have you ever tried it as a cortadito? I’d love to hear from you—even if you like the setting more than the café.