Posie Gets Cozy: Paint and Switch. Two more light gray paint colors to bookmark, Wickham Gray and Stonington Gray, both by Benjamin Moore.

Pharox60 6 Watt Dimmable LED Bulb Daily Find | Apartment Therapy Unplggd.

in the loop – Home – how to: make a bubble wreath.

Rain gutter bookshelves! At Parent Hacks.

Tea & Cookies: Create an Organized Spice Rack? Check. She has great information on what she picked and why, as well as useful links to the other spice organization systems. I still just pile everything into my drawer, but feel the need to at least label them a bit better.

Gifts & crafts | Get crafty at these five local picks for fabric shopping | NWsource.

Gawker Finally Discovers Charles Mudede, Does It Wrong | Slog | The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper. Truth: For a while Charles Mudede’s posts drove me so crazy that I had Scott write me a Mudede Filter for Firefox. Any posts by him simply didn’t appear, and I was completely unaware of their absence. It was nice.

When Art Becomes a Dog Park by Jen Graves – Visual Art – The Stranger. I had no idea it was there, I feel like a bad resident for being unaware of large outdoor art.

Cupcake Royale Announces an Eastside Opening Date – Voracious. It’s opening in the old A-frame building that used to be an IHOP, excellent!

Please Calm Down by Lindy West. Hahaha, the local paper takes on the new local xiao long bao restaurant frenzy.

Now Open – Seattle Restaurants | Slog. Yay! My local St. Dames gets a mention. Their food and cocktails are exceptional.

I’ve recently converted to McCann’s Irish Oatmeal, the Quick & Easy version. I love steel cut oatmeal in the morning but it can take a long time to cook. McCann’s is still still whole oats (not rolled) but cut into smaller pieces, as though somebody left the food processor spinning a bit too long. So, McCann’s lack some of the loveliness of steel cut oats, but make up for it in the 5-minute cooking time.

I’ve also recently been converted to Golden Syrup, first introduced to me by my friend Maggi. If you’ve never had it it’s thick like honey but tastes a bit like caramel. It’s good on pancakes and waffles, and intensely sweet so I only use a bit. It’s so much fun to watch as it slowly drips off the spoon and does that ribbon/curly thing before settling back into the pile of syrup. It’s about as much excitement as I can handle first thing in the morning.

Add pecans to your oatmeal and it’s not quite like having pecan pie but you can always pretend.

Clearing away decorations yesterday revealed that the stack of cookbooks I keep in my dining room has grown. From top to bottom:

Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson who has the site 101 Cookbooks where she has lots more delicious and healthy recipes. Super Natural Cooking was also the focus of our very first cookbook club and was liked all around (unlike the later Cookin’ with Coolio which was, well, interesting).

Not Your Mother’s Casseroles by Faith Durand who you might recognize as the editor over at The Kitchn. Most of these are able to be assembled and possibly frozen ahead of time, there are breakfast casseroles, I predict I’ll be cooking a lot from this book this year.

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I also have the iPhone app which is handy when I’m standing in the grocery store wondering if I have everything I need.

Biscotti: Recipes from the Kitchen of The American Academy in Rome, The Rome Sustainable Food Project. I spent a summer in Italy, uh, some years ago and have been meaning to learn to make excellent biscotti ever since.

52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust. After getting caught up in the no-knead bread craze I find I miss bread and want to start making it again. That and I appreciate working through something obsessively.

Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food. “Gain firsthand insights from interviews with researchers, food scientists, knife experts, chefs, writers, and more, including author Harold McGee, TV personality Adam Savage, chemist Hervé This, and xkcd.” Gosh I love this book.

The Everything Cast-Iron Cookbook by Cinnamon who is a maker of bags at Poise and writer of the One Good Meal column at Gapers Block. I’ve only managed to make a few things from this book but look forward to many more.

The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Recipe from Each Year 1941-2009. I am frankly disappointed with myself because I didn’t make time this past holiday to bake any cookies at all. I’ll just have to make January an equally acceptable cookie month.

The Newlywed Kitchen: Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together by Lorna Yee who writes at Cooking Through China and a food writer at Seattle Magazine. These recipes make just enough for two and are great to make together.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks by, obviously, The Pioneer Woman. I have yet to get up the courage to take on the Cinnamon Rolls (the recipe makes 50!) but we have plans to take on the Rib-eye Steak With Whiskey Cream Sauce this weekend.

I’m Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown. It’s been available for a while now but I still use it as a what’s-going-on primer.

Bake!: Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking. I had no idea who Nick Malgieri was before this book made it’s way to me but I was immediately drawn in by the obvious enthusiasm, clear instruction and pretty pretty photos.

The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by Jaden Hair of, you guessed it, Steamy Kitchen. It’s almost as good as having a relative show you how to make new dishes.

Baking Illustrated by the people of Cook’s Illustrated. I trust them, and need all the extra instruction I can get.

Conspicuously missing from the pile:

Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef by Shauna (Gluten-free Girl herself) and Danny Ahern. It was named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2010 by the New York Times. Yay! I was very grateful to get to spend an afternoon at her house making Gluten-free Cake Pops with Jessie from Cakespy. Double yay!

Best current design blogs? | Ask MetaFilter.

Videos of Harvard lectures available » blog.khymos.org. Via a.wholelottanothing.

Starfucking with Kevin Smith, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. Nintey cents plus whatever you want to donate, nice. All proceeds to to the Wayne Foundation.

swissmiss | The TED Commandments.