Teacher appreciation week is here! We spent the weekend decorating a door for my daughter’s class and it occurred to me that it might be fun to share. I’ll include a pic of the door we did last year too, plus a door I snapped a picture of as we walked by. Do you like? What are you doing for teacher appreciation?
p.s. If you’re in need a few teacher gift ideas, stop by here or here or here.

p.s.s. I have missed you all and am quite ready to get back to some more regular posting. We have a few crazy projects in full swing around here, but I am crossing my fingers that after all that is tied up, I will be seeing you more often.

I have been unconnected the last couple weeks and have been letting myself be nice and busy with cooking, faithfully attending group strength training at my gym (thank you), and potty training my littlest (success!)

I also cleaned out my closet on a whim and tossed several things into the donate pile. It felt amazing to slide over one hanger after another and love everything. (And just to make sure we’re clear, I am no fashion maven. On no, I rely completely on fashionable friends and consider blogs like this, this, and this required reading.) But I felt like everything left was truly me. I love editing things. I love the result. I love a well-edited kitchen utensil drawer or a well edited room design.

It got me thinking about this blog. I have been thinking since the holidays that I need a little time to rethink this blog, but haven’t quite figured out what to do about it.

I’ve been thinking that, because I love being in the kitchen and I have a chocolate shop, it would be professional of me to blog more about the kitchen. But I also get excited about mothering and organizing and good books and happy mail (as you know) and on and on. And I start wondering if it would be good or exhausting or unprofessional to blog about all of this.

I edited down my posts over the last year (in case you are a blogger and want the stats—I went from 5 posts per week to 1 or 2 without losing traffic, if anything my traffic climbed a bit, crazy and unexpected). And I have truly enjoyed the focus.

But lately I’ve been thinking I need to pull in more things that are truly me. I thought with enough experience, a more honest version of me would surface in every post, but on occasion I feel my posts starting to feel forced.

Up until now, I have had this desire to try new things, to swim in unfamiliar waters. But lately I’ve been feeling like I want to get down to what I do best. I think maybe it’s a natural part of growing up, of wanting to give back. I want to focus on the places where I am sure footed, and enjoying myself, and contributing. Do you know what those areas are for you?

They say that editing your wardrobe leaves you with more to wear, not less. I’d like to make that happen here.

And I’m thinking a new approach might help me trim down the sheer time that a good post takes, which is always a concern when it comes to putting first things first.

So I think I’ll take a little time away and rethink things. I may stop by and share if I send any happy mail, because sharing that is my very favorite.

Until then, thanks for listening. And here’s to pursuing the things you do best. Here’s to finding wardrobe and blogging s-w-a-g-g-a.

I just wanted to drop in and with a little reminder to get your eggs in the mail this year!

Find details on sending eggs via post here and here. Find USPS’s current package rates (make sure you use package rates and not letter rates) right here.

Just wanted to let you know, as part of our big birthday bash, we have a fun offer going today only in the shop. Buy one of our Valentine two-packs (i love how they turned out, aren’t they sweet?) and get the second for $2. Just enter coupon code 2tuesday. You can check off a few teacher valentines or have a little something for yourself and a little something for someone who needs something cozy.

I just wanted to share a little something we have been mailing out for a couple of birthdays this winter and will be mailing as a few simple valentines. This time of year, there’s nothing like the gift of soft supple lips.

***
and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives

A Wreath and Twinkly Lights | A Disguise | School Supplies | A Pair of Flip Flops | A Big Ball | Plastic Eggs 1 and 2 | Silly Putty |Shovel & a Bucket | Ribbon Sticks | Bubblewrap Hopscotch | Fan Mail | Waterbottle Care Package | Bouncy Balls | Sticky Notes | Jr Mints | Frisbee | Mini Banner and Mini m&ms

Hello there. How were your holidays? Has your new year started off the way you wanted it to? I hope so. The new year has put me in a major organizing spree. I love starting fresh. More on that later.

For today, you can find me over at Blogstar, an amazing resource and blog of superwoman Sarah Bryden Brown (long-time publishing pro and author who has put together must. read. books by favorite bloggers). I am bearing my soul about what a complete hopeless introvert I am, and just what that has been like in my blogging life. I hope you’ll stop by!

If you happen to be watching the Today show this morning, keep an eye out for our Ticket Chocolate. eek! In the meantime we will be here trying to remain calm. And using our best elf packing skills to mail out some chocolate.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We know someone who is going to need a few festive decorations in her college apartment while she is slogging through finals, so we decided we’d better drop a some the mail.

It just so happens that a set of 100 holiday lights weighs in at just under 13 ounces. Lucky for us. So we were able to stick on a few cheery stamps and drop that string of lights in a big blue mailbox.
We also picked up a $3 straw wreath-form, which is perfect for wrapping in tinsel. That weighed about the same, so in the mailbox it went. It just fit.
Followed by a string of tinsel, of course.
Photo credits for all post office shots go to my lovely mother. Who came visiting and offered to come along to the post office and snap pictures. We ended up having a great conversation with a pair of English women, who got in their car, then got back out to find out what we could possibly be doing. Which it turns out is a pretty good way to start a conversation.

Happy holidays, everyone.

***
and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives

A Disguise | School Supplies | A Pair of Flip Flops |  A Big Ball | Plastic Eggs 1 and 2 | Silly Putty |Shovel & a Bucket | Ribbon Sticks | Bubblewrap Hopscotch | Fan Mail | Waterbottle Care Package | Bouncy Balls | Sticky Notes | Jr Mints | Frisbee | Mini Banner and Mini m&ms

It has been almost a year since my sister-in-law and I opened the doors to our chocolate shop, and almost a year and a half since we first came up with this crazy idea.

Since then it has been a fun, wild ride.

We’ve found ourselves driving around the bay area with our minivans packed to rear-view-mirror-level with chocolate to deliver, we’ve learned how to mail chocolate to Florida in September, we’ve tasted hundreds of blends of hot chocolate, and then tasted them again, and then made our friends taste them, and we’ve made new friends with a whole lot of very awesome customers and shop owners and other people.

But we are ready to share the fun.

and the work : )

We are ready to expand Team Ticket.

We would love to bring on a few new willing women or men to join us on this adventure of ours. What will these women and men do, you ask? We don’t exactly know. We know they will probably work from home. But that’s about it. That’s where you come in.

We’d love to bring on some helpers, perhaps this January or maybe this August 2012. We know we want a few chocolate lovers to help us peddle Ticket Chocolate to smart little cafes and independent grocers and the like. And we know we would adore someone very organized and willing to help us keep up to date on our stock, or we might even like help from someone who is very serious in the kitchen to help us source ingredients.

But we really want to shape the positions according to who might like to join us and what they can bring to the table or fit in their lives. So if you have a moment and care to apply, we’d love to meet you.

Just click on this link and complete the survey.

And if we don’t get back to you in a flash, or even before Christmas, don’t worry. We are probably zipping around delivering chocolate. Or fitting in a little last-minute Christmas crafting and shopping. But we will read every application and be in touch either this January or this summer.

Thanks for considering.

I have some serious eye candy to share with you today.

The forever talented Paula of Frog Prince Paperie put together a wintery and warm hot chocolate bar featuring our Hot Chocolate Ticket Sticks.

and a lot of other tempting goodies.

Don’t you love those “haute cocoa” labels? You can find them in Paula’s shop, along with every other completely beautiful tag and label you’ll need for an instant party.
Be sure to check out the full shoot over at Amy Atlas Events, and don’t miss the Frog Prince Paperie blog if you’d like to see more of Paula’s work. It is going to make you want to party.

Photography by John McLaughin Photography.

A few years back I picked up this book on a whim from the library shelves. But as soon as I started reading it was clear I was going to need my own copy so I could mark all the good parts.

I adore much about this little volume. Adore hearing about twenty-something Nora arriving in NY and acting like the full grown up, finding circles of friends and attending dinner parties and making herself a devotee of one cook book after another. I remember when feeling so grown up when I first started cooking on my own. Don’t you? When you first have your own kitchen and are responsible for feeding people from it.

And speaking of being a grown up, I also enjoyed reading that there is another full-grown woman who has a terrible time at trying to commit to a good purse. Thank you, Nora.

But back to the cooking.

One part of the book stuck in my mind word for word, and I was immediately sure I’d just been let into a big secret of being a proper grown up, and a charming hostess. The kind of hostess everyone talks about, no, writes books about after leaving the party.

This big secret is what Nora calles the rule of four.

“The most important thing I learned from Lee was something I call the Rule of Four. Most people serve three things for dinner—some sort of meat, some sort of starch, and some sort of vegetable— but Lee always served four. And the fourth thing was always unexpected, like those crab apples [more on this in a sec]. A casserole of lima beans and pears cooked for hours with brown sugar and molasses. Peaches with cayenne pepper. Sliced tomatoes with honey. Biscuits. Savory bread pudding. Spoon bread. Whatever it was, that fourth thing seemed to have an almost magical effect on the eating process. You never got tired of the food because there was always another taste on the plate to match it and contradict it.”
[p. 25, I Feel Bad About My Neck]

Brilliance, right? I am a sucker for a good, classic recipe, well made. Serving a few classics and then adding something magical? so so brilliant.

And who is Lee? this friend and host who served one magical simple meal another? It is Lee Bailey, who has written cookbooks I am going to need to own some day soon, with titles like Cooking for Friends and Soup Meals and Country Weekends.

I love having friends who are great cooks (but I have to admit that none of them have written their own cooking volumes, yet) and adore picking up recipes and little tips from my cooking friends. And I am now adding Nora Ephron and Lee Bailey to that list.

So just to aid in my imagination that I am BFFs with Mr. Bailey and Ms. Ephron, and was peeking over Lee’s shoulders as he cooked, I decided to cook up Lee’s first meal for Nora.

“And then dinner was served. Pork chops, grits, collard greens, and a dish of tiny baked crab apples. It was delicious. It was so straightforward and plain and honest and at the same time so playful. Those crab apples!”
[p. 25]

Incase you are as totally inspired by Mr. Bailey as I am, I’ll add the particulars below incase you’d like to give it a whirl.

I’ll share in order of how you’d need to prepare for a dinner party, incase you want to try this out on some friends. The whole shebang is pretty simple, though your are going to need to get your oven going and a few burners on your stove.

Baked Crab Apples
We’ll start with the star of the show. Those crab apples. Crab apples come and go at my grocery store during the fall, so call before you shop. And if you have lady apples available, they’re just as small but more sweet than tart. I started with this recipe I’d seen a year or two ago and adjusted.
12 crab apples (three or four per guest is plenty)
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar

Preheat your oven to 275. Smear each apple with butter, either by using a paper towel or doing it corn-on-the-cob style, and then roll in the sugar. Place in a baking pan and bake for up to an hour, when apples begin to look browner instead of pink, but while they still are a bit firm and before they wrinkle.



Now won’t those darling apples impress your dinner guests? They are perfect for eating with a fork and knife, or by hand. And you’ll have more time for conversation since they don’t go down as fast as applesauce.

Classic Grits
Now it’s time to get out a couple sauce pans. You might want to start the water boiling for the greens at the same time you start the grits. And as for the grits, I love this recipe from my man Alton Brown.
2 cups water
2 cups milk
1 tsp kosher salt
1 cup stone ground cornmeal (i like course ground yellow or white)
4 tbsp unsalted butter
4 oz sharp cheddar, shredded OR 3 Tbs bacon fat (optional, depending on if you want to impress your guests or be healthy)

Bring water, milk, and salt to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Slowly stir in cornmeal so it doesn’t clump, I use a whisk. Allow to cook on low for 20-25 minutes, stirring as constantly as possible, every two minutes if you can manage, until creamy and oatmealy but not too solid. Slowly stir in butter, add any additional salt you like to taste, and if you like, stir in bacon fat or slowly stir cheddar an ounce or two at a time so it fully combines.

Sauteed Garlic Collard Greens
I love the melt in your mouth collard greens, boiled for an hour with a couple ham hocks. But I also love the sauteed version, which leaves them with a little more zing.
2 bunches collard greens
2 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, minced

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut the center stem from your collard greens and discard. Chop greens into large pieces, then boil for about 7 minutes, until they are wilted but still hold a little shape, then drain. Meanwhile, heat your pan for saute-ing to medium high. Melt butter, then toss in garlic and toast for a minute or two, and finally, toss in your greens and saute until they have just a little but of a brown fond on them.

Is it strange that I am completely craving collard greens right now?

Simple Porkchops
And the final piece, the chops. Pork chops are so good on their own, I like to keep them simple.
4 good quality chops
fresh thyme
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your pan to medium high, pat chops dry with paper towels. Sprinkle chops with thyme and newly ground sea salt and black pepper. Add oil to pan, and saute. I usually saute for about six minutes on each side to get a nice caramelized chop, then reduce heat to medium until the chops are cooked through.

And now,

if any of you are still reading after that very lengthy post of me gushing over food,

I need to tell you that I am a huge fan of Southern fare. So if any of you are southern cooks, lets be friends! I would love hearing a thing or two about what you cook up.

And southern or not, what would your magical dish be?

I knew my little house was going to need to be in ship shape for Thanksgiving houseguests, so I decided to take full advantage of it and throw a party the night before they arrived.

Not a real, actual party. I’m not crazy.

But a craft night for my daughter and five other cute chatty girls.

Who are just at the age where they are comletely impressed with anything I do and are fully cluless if I haven’t managed to bleach the kitchen sink or put matching hand towels in the bathroom.

 A few weeks before Thanksgiving my daughter and I picked out some fleece on sale, then the two of us spent a couple nights clipping while watching documentaries on PBS and the Singoff.

We set out all our stacks of circles. Along with popcorn and apple juice. When the girls arrived, all they had to do was pick out their favorite colors, assemble their a pattern, snip a few slits, and string everything together.
The timing was perfect. It took the girls about 45 minutes to chat and snip and assemble. Once they were all done, I sewed up the edges in a few minutes flat, which left just enough time for them to chase eachother giggling down the hallway and make a few mini caramel apples to gobble down. And we sent home a group of happy, cozy, well-insulated girls.

Petal Scarf How-To
Supplies
1/2 to 3/4 yard fleece per scarf
a little thread (optional)
a good pair of sewing scissors

Method
1. Use a lid to cut circles on the fold of the fleece as shown. We found for a little girl scarf, 20-25 circles is just right.
2. Snip a slit through each folded circle of fleece, through both layers, as shown. Leave one circle with no slit.
3. Begin with the first circle and keep it folded in half.
4. Choose the second circle, or link, open it up and thread it through the hole of the first circle, then fold it together again so both layers line up.
5. Now repeat with the next circle, and on and on until you reach about 20 circles.
6. Your very last circle will be the circle with no slit. Thread it through, fold it together so both layers line up, then stich a quick seam along half of the circle so it is sewn closed.

Or if you prefer not to sew, cut a few fringes along the edge and tie them together. Do the same on the beginning circle so both ends of the scarf match.
The end. Don’t you love your new scarf? And please, tell, what are your favorite ideas for a quick, low-key excuse to get together during the holidays?

You are going to think I’m an old soul, but when I was twelve years old I used to page through Sunset Magazine and plan my dream home, er, bungalo. I have been fully hooked on the magazine ever since. Which is why I jumped up and down when we found out our Hot Chocolate Ticket Sticks made it into Sunset’s holiday gift guide this year. Thank you, editors of the awesome Sunset magazine.

How are you doing on your holiday prep? Are you feeling ready? Our tree made it up last night, and it’s hard not to feel in the mood while looking at all those twinkly lights.

If you’re in need of a way to countdown the days, I have a printable holiday sticky-note advent right here. Perfect for tucking in lunches or sticking any random place you like.
 My kiddos are already reminding me it isn’t long until until St. Nicholas day, so I’ll be printing off a few of these produce stickers to make sure Santa can drop off a few navals along with the chocolates and candy canes.
 And finally, incase you’re packing up treats for neighbors, I have a tag or two that might work to tie up your treats.
 And of course, thank you notes for teachers or anyone at all to spread a little gratitude before or after the season.

Happy Holiday prep! And I’ll be back soon to share a few fun things we did over the Thanksgiving week.