Retro

I've been going retro lately. The inspiration for this floral ring came from a pillow I saw in the Anthropologie catalog. I took the pillow in a new direction...it wasn't really retro to begin with. The pillow was so inspiring, and the ring was so successful, I plan on taking more inspiration from their pillows and accessories. I'm a big fan. I really can't even go into that store unless I want to come out with empty pockets. A looooong time ago, I applied to be a buyer for Anthropologie. Obviously, I didn't get the job! Wouldn't that be so fun?

I wanted to share a variation on a recipe that I use like, every week from Donna Klein's Gluten Free Vegetarian Cookbook (found in the What I Heart list). This recipe is first of all, simple, and most importantly, my favorite dinner EVER. When I cook this dish, this is all I cook (no accompaniments) and we have very little leftover. It probably makes enough for 4 people if you use it as a side dish.

Oven Baked Potatoes

• One yellow onion, diced
• Half of a red bell pepper, diced
• Half of a green bell pepper, diced
• A tablespoon or 2 of your favorite cooking oil...probably Canola
• 3 cans of sliced potatoes, drained, rinsed and dried a little (I just put them on a paper towel)
• Some chili powder...as much as you can handle, and (optionally) some Chinese Chili Paste
• Some turmeric, depends on how much you like...about a tablespoon
• About a tablespoon of cumin seed
• Some salt, and if you want, some pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. Prepare a large sheet pan or baking sheet with some aluminum foil and spray it with non-stick spray. Sautee the onion and peppers in the oil in a large skillet until soft, about 5 minutes, I would say, but it always seems to take longer. Add the potatoes, cumin, turmeric, and as much of the chili powder and Chili paste as you can handle. For us, it's about 2 tsps chili powder and 2-3 tablespoons chili paste. We like it semi-spicy. Toss everything around in the pan with your spatula until all the potatoes are evenly coated. Spread everything evenly on the pan and place in the oven. Sprinkle salt over all of the potatoes, of course that's BEFORE you put them in the oven. Here, you can do it 2 ways. The recipe says you need to flip the potatoes after 15 minutes. I'm too lazy to do that. I just wait until the potatoes are a little brown and then I take them out and serve them. If you do flip them over, just cook them for 15 minutes more and take them out and serve them.

You will love these potatoes for dinner, or even for breakfast...they would be great with eggs. I'm totally making them for dinner tonight. TTFN.

1 Pretty, 2 Pretty...

We had the chance to visit my family this weekend, and as always, we had a wonderful time. My cousin, who first introduced me to beading several years ago, dragged out ALL her beads (and she has SO MANY!) and we made kind of a day of it. As you can see in the pic, my middle niece fell in love with beading and made herself a yellow, purple and pink necklace. (She loves yellow. Hey, who doesn't?) She's learning to count the "big" numbers now and she counted the beads as "1 Pretty, 2 Pretty, 3 Pretty", and so on, until she got to 55 or so. Awwwwww!

As promised, here is a pic of the first beads I've made in my beadmaking class (minus the one I regrettably lost). Very basic. Is it too obvious that brown is my favorite color? There are about 4 more beads that had been cooling in the kiln and I will have those on Wednesday night. I hate to break it to ya, but all of those are pretty much disasters. hee hee. I had a bad week last week.
Speaking of classes, I just got back (about an hour ago) from a VERY basic stringing class. Believe it or not, with all the weaving I do, I didn't really know how to string properly, and the class was actually given to me free of charge because an error was sort of made in my favor, so I decided to take it. It will definitely help me in the future, I'm sure. The teacher of the stringing class is really amazing; she's taught another class I took and was very knowledgeable and thorough. If you're into beading, I really recommend the basic classes at 3 Beads and a Button.

I have 3 new projects in the works...no idea which one I will start on. I'll decide that tonight. I actually have to bring this to a close now because my husband has to work at the desk. TTFN!

Just Beady

Welcome to my new blog! My first blog, which follows the trip my husband and I took to India and London was a joy to write and I decided to start a new one. The name of this blog, "Just Beady", comes from the name my husband calls me when he sees me intensely working on a beading project when he comes home every evening (he's always saying, "Hey, Beady!"). Above is a Picasa collage of my first few rings. I think they're all really well-made and I'm very proud of all of them. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the black and orange one. I will definitely be making more of those. There is one similar in blue, green and gold.

On Wednesday nights, I take a glass bead making class which is pretty intense. I thought it was going to be a really fun, creative process, but there are a lot of technical aspects that you have to remember, and it's often difficult to focus on creativity. To be honest, my teacher tends to pay a lot of attention to what I'm doing and it sort of gives me more than a teence of performance anxiety...I find myself making obvious (BIG) mistakes and forgetting the simplest things. And my hands are forever shaking...not a good thing when you're holding molten glass in both hands! I consider myself to be a pretty confident person, but she really kind of has an effect on me. I actually have to remind myself to take a breath when I'm working on a project...time sort of stops and I'm just sort of somewhere else. I should take a picture of some of my first beads. They're really pretty awful as far as form and decoration go, but hey, at least they're not totally lopsided and they didn't crack in the annealing process! I'll work on those pics. I lost one of the beads in the car...it was my favorite. :(

Anyway. I have a dead link on this page linking to an etsy shop that I have yet to create. I plan on selling my beaded creations on etsy very soon, but have yet to create my etsy shop. I'm a little too busy this weekend to do it, so hopefully around the beginning of the week I'll get that handled. However, if you would like to see (and maybe even BUY) the GORGEOUS and, can I just say extremely creative vessels and beads made by my teacher, you can go to her site or her etsy shop.

I will post some new pictures soon. I have a new bracelet that's really pretty and I'm working on a new ring. TTFN!