How About Orange points us over to the Museum of Hoaxes. I really like the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes Of All Time.

Slate’s April Fools’ Day Defense Kit, Wired’s Pranks for Nerds, via The Morning News.

Product Dose offers a few ideas for your April Fools’ Day Office Pranks.

This is our dining room, that is the new mirror which we’re going to hang over the buffet, and this is my question: How high should we hang that mirror? The wall is 8 feet tall, the buffet is 34 inches tall and the mirror is 24 inches tall. Do we hang the mirror at picture level? (Which according to Apartment Therapy is 57 inches on center.) Do we eye the height? Is there a guideline to use here?

Home-made detergent at Modern Cottage

Dyson slim, at Uncrate. Oh Dyson, if only you had retracting cords.

Pro Ven Di soap hooks, interesting, at Apartment Therapy.

Resevoir wicking pots at Cool Tools. Not as pretty as the Eva Solo Self-watering pots, but cheaper.

The Overboard, a large cutting board, at Uncrate.

Sporadic wall panel for wine, on AT. I hope it’s still around when I’ve saved enough to buy it.

Coat Check, I forget where I found this – Design*Sponge?

Reel mowers at Smallist.

Nice wall mounted magnetic knife rack on Instructables.

Gardenseed Matchbooks at Shelterrific. I see housewarming presents.

Framed frosted glass dry erase board at Uncrate.

I love top-down window coverings. I think they should be standard in all places, especially that one office building I worked in back when we lived in San Francisco. Anyhow, this person asks about top-down roller shades over at Apartment Therapy, and while I’m pretty sure there isn’t such a thing, the comment by Pilgrim is interesting. They used two Ikea shades to create their own top-down solution. I have more to say about window shades and my recent foray into buying some, but that will come in a little bit.

a bit late for St. Patrick’s Day on my part:

fried cabbage and potato cakes at The Kitchen

blasphemous (soda) bread at Smitten Kitchen

traditional Irish soda bread at Bakingsheet

a little early for Easter:

making your own peeps at Chow

drinks:

wine in juice boxes at Serious Eats (cute though, right?) and pre-filled and sealed (think bubble tea) plastic wine glasses at Chow

savory:

broccoli rabe dumplings at Sunday Undies

rolls of delight, part II at Pip In the City

Marcella Hazen’s Bolognese Sauce, recommended by Michelle (thanks Michelle!)

sweet:

the best chocolate cake, expletive-free at Smitten Kitchen

strawberry lime stuffed cupcakes at 52 Cupcakes – I’d want to serve these already cut in half

sugar ants, with detailed pictures of doing some awfully tiny piping, via Boing Boing

Pretty pretty Easter eggs made by felting wool over styrofoam shapes and needle felting designs on top by Betz White. See more here, via Craft.

Betz White makes these cute wool cupcakes, was on the Martha Stewart show (swoon), and she has a book coming out later this year called Warm Fuzzies: 30 Sweet Felted Projects.

Skip To My Lou has a tutorial up on how to make chalkboard Easter eggs using Martha Stewart’s formula for making your own chalkboard paint. Such a great idea.

How to make a MOOPocket at Splatgirl Creates. Also, you might not want to look at how to make candied bacon, oh my yum.

A few years back I became interested in learning to make sugar bubbles, especially like the one I posted about here which was made by Blair Fukumura. Did I learn to blow sugar bubbles? Uh, no. I let it go long enough that suddenly we were buying a house, which sucked all of my previous want-tos into a hole of forgetting.

Back when I was thinking about it Blair Fukumura was super cool and wrote to me with a few tips and he mentioned he was working on a show for the Canadian Food Network. I heard from him yesterday that the pilot of his show, Piece of Cake, is up on You Tube! Hooray! It’s up in four parts, and part one of Piece of Cake is here.

The photographs above are both of Blair’s work, Millenium Falcon Cookie and Strawberry Interrupted.

We’re starting to plan some lighting in our house and when I ran across this plug to socket cord at Ikea the other day I started wondering how we could use it. It seems to breathtakingly useful for those who rent and don’t plan on staying so long. It immediately makes me of the suspended mirrored bulbs in the first issue of Budget Living, and this cluster of bulbs (your may need to scroll a wee bit) that Evany snapped (made by a tall, blond, gorgeous Megan so obviously it’s not me).

Recently Apartment Therapy showed off this neat light socket adaptor that will allow you to plug a lamp to an exisiting socket, they use the Ikea Knappa lamp as an example.

I thought they were gone for good, but on Sunday I spotted two enameled cast iron pots at my Target (Southcenter Mall, Seattle, for the locals). So, if you wanted one but couldn’t find one earlier there is still hope.

loving:
Naughty Needles

reading:
Wintersmith

celebrating:
having taxes done

buying:
Minted Rose Rosebud Salve

cooking:
bolognese sauce

The Kitchen has a nice little round up of Dutch ovens. They cover Staub, Lodge, Le Creuset and the new ones from Calphalon.

These are the basic things I’ve learned about Dutch ovens in the last year:
[Read more →]

Evany rightfully points out that she created a belly warmer (like the one I linked to yesterday) four years ago. And how did I fail to remember that even though I posted about it way back in 2003? Easy, I’ve perfected the art of putting stuff up on my website without thinking about it all that hard. Evany, I am sorry!

Voting for the Softie Awards is open. I’m partial to the functional group, which includes the Leia Wig from Bleu Arts! All the entries are great. Two that caught my eye: Mr. Owl’s House looks extra charming and this Crocheted Sakura looks very graceful. And of course, one can never get too much of plush food.

Delight.com is a daily deals blog sort of like Woot but offering prettier things. They have had some tempting things already but I’m really considering todays offer, the Luxe Link purse hook which folds up all nice and compact and, apparently, works as a small mirror. I’ve been needing a purse hook but don’t want one with a leopard print, which is all I seem to find. But is my bag heavier than 9 pounds?

square handled knitting needles are apparently easier to hold on to, I’d like to check these out

Indie Craft Shows.com keeps track of what’s going on all over, via The Crafty World

links to knitting machine stuff at Bleu Arts

how to make japanese papercraft boxes at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

how to make pretty fabric thumb tacks at How About Orange

and at Craftzine:

I like this swiss cheese scarf with crocheted edging around the holes

how to digitally design fabric and print it on your own printer, neat

despite how silly they might be I like the idea of these knit belly warmers

Seattle.net is running a food photography contest, Delicious Dish, from the site:

We all have a favorite place in Seattle to eat, and one dish that we order over and over again. Now is your chance to show the world your favorite food in Seattle! Take a picture of your favorite food item/dish from a local Seattle restaurant (not a chain), explain why it’s the best, and send the picture to us by March 28th.

The Prize: We will reward the best photo with $100 cash and their photo will be the Featured Photo on our Homapge. The runner-up will receive $50 cash. Both the first and second place winners will receive a $25 gift certificate to Bai Pai Restaurant in Ravenna!

Seeing as a friend (hi Maggi!) recently phoned me to rave about a restaurant which I forget the name of which serves your food in tiny Le Creuset pots, I figured this contest might give me an excuse to eat there.

But as for a dish that I order over and over again, I cannot say I have one yet. I had the French toast at Etta’s once and fully intend to make that a regular habit. Does mushroom and pepperoni from Stellar count? Because that would be my current regular. If Tutta Bella could make the fig, prosciutto and goat cheese pizza a menu item that would be my thing. I’m afraid the one dish that became a regular for me, one that I think about nearly seven years later, is back in Cleveland and lives at Stino da Napoli. I miss you, Petto Di Pollo Alla Genovese.