Clinkscales Arts

My version of Ina Garten’s French Apple Tart from her Back to Basics Cookbook.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.  Stay tuned…

EDIT:  She’s done!  Apricot glazed has been added.  Isn’t she beautiful?

Can you feel the change coming?  Summer is slowly slipping out the door and autumn is on her way.  We got to spend (almost) a week without using the a/c.  I love having the windows open and letting the cool air pull through.  It’s a time of year to get ready to settle into long nights.  Since night is my favorite time of day, this is good for me.  I love the night and the more of it I can be conscious for, the better.  Don’t get me wrong, I also love the spring.  Coming out of hibernation, shaking off the winter and watching everything come to life again.  But I live for those autumn and winter days, and they are upon us.

The weekend was relaxing and restorative.  I managed to get enough food in the house by Friday that I didn’t have to make the usual Saturday trip to the grocery store.  I hate going on Saturday, so why can’t I manage to get there during the week?  Heaven only knows.  I haven’t left the house since I got home Friday about 4:30pm.  Oh, take that back, Jeff and I went to the casino last night, but only for an hour, so I guess I technically did leave the house.  (But at least it wasn’t to go to the grocery store!)

We feasted on seared pork chops and apple sauce with fresh tomatoes and sour dough bread on Saturday.  It was simple, but stupendous.  Today we had rustic chicken with onion (think scallopini without capers and only a bit of lemon) along with a twice-baked potato and green beans.  Oh, and more sourdough bread.  We’re sourdough fans, yes we are.

I totally flaked out on dessert this weekend.  I’ve been making homemade desserts every weekend for the last month, but tonight, Jeff got a Klondike bar.  But not just any Klondike bar, it was a Reese’s Kondike bar!  OK, I know they aren’t that good, but it was sweet wasn’t it?

We’re sitting around now, bellies full, enjoying the last bits of the weekend before facing a new week tomorrow.  I am catching up on some of my favorite blogs and Jeff is reading the news.  My sweet Felix has passed out beside me – he gets very tired, you know.

Here’s wishing you a bountiful week ahead.

If you’ve read my blog in the past, you know I have a thing for art (as witnessed here).  I love to collect art that touches me, speaks to me, screams ‘Hey lady, I’m supposed to live with you!’

I’ve had my eye on Peach with Leaves by Jonathan Bernard Koch for the last 2 months, but just didn’t have the money to buy it.  Well, I decided the time had come to add to my collection.  I email Jon yesterday only to find the painting sold the day before!  You know I lost another most beloved painting when someone swooped in mere hours before me and snatched up The Girl from Oklahoma,  couldn’t stand to lose another that I loved so much!  After a bit of finagling, the painting was mine!

Yes sirree, this is now headed to my home, to hang in my kitchen and be admired by me.  I’m a happy gal today.  Jon’s use of light just takes my breath away – just look at this painting!  Do you see those wonderful, soft intermingling colors?  I can feel the downy of the peach skin and the crispness of the leaves.  Sigh.

Yeah, so it’s been three months since I posted.  I have pulled myself into a cocoon, trying to hide from the hot Oklahoma summer.  My creativity has gone dormant for a while and I haven’t been doing much creating.  It scares me a bit when it disappears, but I know it will come back when it’s ready.  So, to fill my time, I’ve been doing a lot of visiting with my family, sitting on the couch (this is a favorite activity) and a LOT of cooking.  Some has been successful, some not so much.

My sister re-arranged her ‘family unit’ and now she is sans one husband and has never been happier.  She bought a beautiful home and I gave her a house warming party.  The party pictures were crappy, but here’s a pretty good shot of her bedroom.  I picked out the painting above the bed – it’s it gorgeous?  She deserves this sanctuary (and that mattress is to die for!  I got to take a nap on it.)

I went back and forth to Texas three times during her moving and for the party, then I talked her into coming up here for a sister’s weekend.  The kids were with their daddy in Colorado, so it was just us.  We went gambling a couple of times and both of us came out ahead.  Then, I dragged her to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.  I wanted to see their Turner to Cezanne exhibit before it ended.  I enjoyed it, but it didn’t compare to the Impressionist exhibit I saw at the Kimbell in Fort Worth last year.  My sister’s favorite part of the OKCMOA was the Chihuly glass.  They have the largest Chihuly exhibit in the US.  It’s pretty impressive.  Here’s the 3-story glass sculpture that greets you at the entrance:

Here’s a hallway that is topped with a glass ceiling and Chihuly pieces.  Check out the light filtering down through the colored glass:

I have a bunch more pictures of the glass, but I’m a crap-ass photographer and they are blurry.  I need a camera that has picture stabilization…or something.

And then there was the food of the summer.  I’ve made several of the Chinese recipes from Blog Chef blog.  I made Mongolian Beef (really good recipe, but I marinated my meat in entirely too much meat tenderizer and made it so salty), Kung Pao Chicken (good, but a lot of work if you don’t have a wok and are substituting a skillet), and Chinese fried rice (scorched the garlic the first time and it was inedible, added too much sesame oil the second time and really didn’t like it either).  As I was looking up the url’s for the these links, I found an Egg Foo Yung recipe – I love egg foo yung!  I will definitely be trying this soon!

Another thing I discovered this summer was Sour Cherry Slab Pie from the Smitten Kitchen blog.  Dear God this was fabulous!  Here are the cherries defrosting (had to use frozen, fresh are out of season).  These were so flippin’ tart – makes my mouth water just seeing them!

I had a horrible time with the crust.  I used Jeff’s mom’s recipe and supposedly it makes 5 single crusts with 4 cups of flour.  Well, I should have used the entire recipe for the slab pie, instead of 3 single crusts like the pie recipe said.  Her crusts were much bigger than mine – I had to roll my dough paper thin and it drove me crazy!  It looked like shit, but it tasted like heaven and that’s all that really matters now, isn’t it?

I also did something I haven’t done in a long time, I read some wonderful fiction novels.  I’m usually a non-fiction kinda gal, but I ran across an ad for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and I was intrigued.  It’s about mothers and daughters and history and witches.  I really enjoyed it a lot.

And then I found another novel to lose myself in – The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  This came from Alicia Paulson’s blog, Posie Gets Cozy (I want her to adopt me and surround me with homemade goodness and patchwork quilts!)  She asked for recommendations and this one was one of the ones she chose.  I haven’t read much of it, but I will be spending a lot of time with it tomorrow afternoon.  It’s really cool that both of these books are by first-time authors.

So you see, I am still here.  And I have been creating, just not jewelry and such.  We’ve eaten most of my creations.  I’m loving the fact that I’ve been reading, I really miss it.  I used to read all the time, but with computers and blogs and working too much, I find it harder to sit down with a good book.  If nothing else, I remedied that.  What have you been doing this summer?

Aww, my baby turns 8 this weekend.  I can’t believe it’s been eight years since Jeff and I came hope from our Eureka Springs Memorial Day jaunt and found four little kittens tucked in the back of my closet.  I wish I had taken pictures of him when he was little, but alas, I didn’t.  But here’s one of him hanging out today, just enjoying his Sunday.  Hope you enjoyed yours too.

Sorry if the picture is kinda blurry, I was hungry, dirty and hot.  I planted my topsy turvy tomato thingies today.  More about those soon.

Simply put the code “MEMORIAL 2009″ in the notes to seller section during checkout and your discount will be refunded via PayPal. No need to wait for an adjusted invoice!

Yeah, I know, you probably think the little green men came and took me away.  I disappeared into the wild blue yonder.  Well, I do that sometimes.  I’m still here, just not here.

I have been caught up in Idol-land though.  I was really pulling for Adam Lambert to win and was disappointed when he didn’t.  He took it with such grace.  He knows that he didn’t lose anything, I’m sure he has people clammering at his feet to sign him.  I still think he’s truly the most talented contestant to every grace that stage, not to mention he’s a cutie.  I admit it, I like guys with makeup and nail polish, or not.

I’m really happy that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend!  YAY!  No lake visits for us, but I’ve got something better – four days filled with nothing, nada, zilch!  The sound of that is music to my ears.  Well, actually, I do have things to do.  I have new items that are completed and not photographed yet and I’ve got a studio table full of little bits and baubles just waiting to be strung together.  And, I might get to some of that this weekend, don’t know yet.  I bought a topsy turvey tomato planting thing today (two actually) and I have tomatoes to plant.  There’s nothing better than home grown organic tomatoes.  I spent a small fortune last year buying them from a local farmer and I decided I was going to grow them myself.  I’ll keep you posted on the upside down tomato plant thing.  I have my doubts, but I’m willing to try anything once.

The Happily Handmade Giveaway ended last week and winners were drawn this past Monday.  I had a winner from my shop – yay!  Congrats to Paulette Dorland – she won basket #11.  A fine bunch of loot if you ask me!  I also did my $25 gift certificate drawing for my shop.  As soon as the winner confirms with me, I’ll announce them too.

A happy weekend to all!  I’ll be announcing a special promotion for Memorial Day weekend tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

A huge thanks to Nicole and the gals from Happily Handmade Giveaway for the great write up in their blog today!  If you haven’t entered the HHG, what are you waiting for?!  You only have one week left.  Last day to enter is May 13th.  Prizes will be awarded on May 18th.  GO!

Last year after reading about the Bead & Button Show and their auction to help fight breast cancer, I came across Jeanette Shanigan’s website and her beaded quilts.  Jeanette asks beaders around the world to donate individual beaded squares based on a theme.  She then sews the squares together to make gorgeous quilts, mounts them in shadow boxes and donates them to be auctioned at the Bead & Button show.  In 2008, these quilts raised nearly $4,400 for breast cancer research.

Being a member of the Etsy BeadWeaver’s team (EBW), I knew we were sitting on a goldmine of talent.  I asked the group if they would like to make squares to be included in Jeanette’s quilts.  I would collect all of the squares and submit them at one time in hopes that they would all be included in one quilt.   Fifteen EBW members stepped up and created 35 squares to be included in a 2009 quilt.  The theme for 2009 is “Bead artists have the heart to take on breast cancer” and I believe the EBW contributors did a magnificent job representing it.

Below is a mosaic I created of all of the EBW squares.  This is not the actual quilt, only a digital version using photos I took of each square.  Please visit the Bead & Button Show website to find out more information about the auctions, which will be held June 6, 2009.   Below the mosaic is a list of contributors and links to their shops.

First row (l to r): Susan Clinkscales, Eddy Downing, Eddy Downing, JoJo Curley, Swanee Hielscher
2nd row: Swanee Hielscher, Swanee Hielscher, Swanee Hielscher, Linda Davis, Smadar Grossman
3rd row: Smadar Grossman, Smadar Grossman, Smadar Grossman, Lisa Savoy, Lisa Savoy
4th row: Lisa Savoy, Jama Watts, Jama Watts, Jama Watts, Kerrie Slade
5th row: Kerrie Slade, Kerrie Slade, Kerrie Slade, Victoria Thompson, Victoria Thompson
6th row: Victoria Thompson, Kim Shaver, Dawn Nelson, Melody Murray, Melody Murray
7th row: Ileana Munteanu, Ginny Bracht, Ginny Bracht, Ginny Bracht, Ginny Bracht

I just entered this photo in Handmadeology’s Etsy Worthy Photo Contest and I need your votes!  I also just listed these Red Patina Earrings in my shop.  I am so totally addicted to these patina brass stampings, don’t be surprised if a lot more start showing up in my work – and not necessarily just in jewelry.