Tifmurray

When you have documented, for anyone who would listen or read, that you’ll put a fried egg (or a handful of nuts) on top of anything, can you rescue this format (bowl of something + egg on top = B,L, or D) from the oblivion of those rando hodgepodge dishes meant to be eaten only in your own company?

Here’s one path to redemption: the fancy leftovers from a dinner party.

One of the only times I turn to actual recipes written by other people is when I’m hosting friends. It’s an odd habit, even a bad one. Dinner party rules say never to make a new recipes when eight hungry guests await the results, and they are probably right. I ran out of tin foil to cover the pans of the new-to-me fish, old-to-Paula Wolfert tagine, and the potato slices on top of the fish filets cooked so slowly that I dirtied an extra pot because it had a cover that kept the heat in better than tin foil. In the end, dinner was good (enough), and I didn’t breathe a word about the worrisome not-quite-soft potatoes to anyone at the table, a tenet from the rulebook that I do follow.

Anyway, the next day, I reheated the leftovers. Just the scraps from the pan–all the fish was gone. The charmoula–an ultra lemony Moroccan parsley marinade–had time in the oven to sink further into the vegetables and garbanzos that had cooked alongside the snapper filets, and as they roasted, they softened and grew tangy and tasty and flavorful. The potatoes, in particular, were way better than the night before.

When a dish improves at its second serving, you make a note, because that means you should cook a huge pan of it and serve it under eggs for lunch or dinner all week. And that’s just what I did on Saturday morning: cleaned out the fridge, made a new batch of charmoula, added a few of the other ingredients from the fish tagine (namely olive oil and tomato paste), and roasted vegetables right in it for the express purpose of having leftovers or a side dish all week.

We ate the veggies like hash browns next to our eggs and toast, as a starch beneath some extra meatballs, and of course, underneath fried eggs. They’re already gone.

**Recipe**

Charmoula-Roasted Vegetables (with a Fried Egg)
Makes a bunch of veggies and as many eggs as you’d like

Vary the veggies as you like. I really recommend the turnips though: they absorb the charmoula so deliciously.

Ingredients

For the charmoula (adapted from Paula Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco)
5 cloves garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup parsley leaves (a few stems are fine)
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste

For the veggies:
1 large turnip, peeled and diced
1 sweet potatoes, diced
About 6 Yukon gold potatoes, diced
1 apple, peeled and diced
1 onion, sliced

For each serving:
Olive oil
1 egg
Plain yogurt (I like strained whole milk)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Make the charmoula: in a food processor, pulverize the garlic with the paprika, cayenne, and salt. Add the parsley and pulse a few more times to chop well. Then, add the lemon juice, olive oil, and tomato paste and process again until you’ve got a nice smooth sauce.

Place the vegetables in a pan or oven-safe pot with a lid. You might actually need two pots–you want the vegetables in about two layers. Toss with the sauce so all the veggies are covered. Cover the pans tightly with foil or the pots with their lids. Bake for 45 minutes, until the veggies are soft. Then, remove the lids, turn the heat up to 400°F and cook another 20 minutes, until the tops of the veggies have gotten a slight crust. Taste for salt, adding more as needed. Serve warm, room temp, or cold, or reheat covered in the oven or the pan.

To serve with an egg, heat a small pan over high heat. Film generously with olive oil. Crack in the egg and sprinkle with salt. Baste the egg with the olive oil until the bottom is crispy and the whites on the top have solidified. Transfer the egg to a bowl filled with the veggies and top with some yogurt.

Sony’s new LED bulb with an integrated Bluetooth speaker isn’t a new idea. There are actually several models already out on the market which provide this juncture between light and sound. What this new Sony model has going for it is its decor-friendly design, a light fixture which you wouldn’t mind keeping out in the open for everyone to see…and hear.

At just 360-lumen brightness, this bulb is more about mood lighting than a bright spot bulb, which probably makes great sense considering you’d place this bulb in areas of the home – like over a dining table or in a corner of the bedroom – where you wouldn’t want/need interrogation room brightness shining down while streaming music via a Bluetooth/NFC compatible device using an Android/iOS app (SongPal) out through the 2W speaker.

The Sony LSPX-100E26J is a good looking exposed pendant bulb option and one which opens up areas throughout a home or apartment formerly off limits for audio component installation. Just screw it into an fixture and connect via Bluetooth, and users can control both lighting brightness and audio. It’s also reflective of how LED lighting, with its cool operational temperatures, allows designers to play with bulb features far beyond “on” and “off”.

The Sony LSPX-100E26J LED Light Bulb Speaker first appears in Japan on May 23rd in Japan, with US availability not yet announced.

“The government,” the Huffington Post’s Nick Baumann wrote on Twitter on Thursday, “is giving former CIA detainees their memories back.”

Baumann was referring to a Huffington Post report that U.S. authorities are relaxing sweeping rules that prohibited prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay facility from publicly telling their stories of CIA detention and interrogation, since disclosing those experiences could reveal the agency’s secret sources and methods for combatting terrorism. The report included these jarring opening lines:

For years, Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ memories of their time in CIA custody have been considered classified state secrets. Abu Zubaydah's lawyers can’t talk publicly about how he lost his left eye. Lawyers for Mustafa al Hawsawi, who can now only sit on a pillow, can’t tell the press or the public about anal feedings that left him with a rectal prolapse. And until recently, Majid Khan's lawyers couldn’t bring up the time he was hung from a pole for two days, naked and hooded, while interrogators threw ice water on him.

But all that is changing, albeit gradually, following the release in December of a Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing extensive abuses in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program during the Bush administration. The revelations thrust many of the intelligence agency’s techniques into the open, prompting the government to rethink its classification rules for detainees remaining at Guantanamo.

“Under the new rules, the torture methods used in CIA prisons are no longer subject to classification, although any information that could reveal the locations where torture took place or the people who helped facilitate it remains secret,” the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and Jessica Schulberg reported on Thursday. Lawyers for detainees must still petition the government to declassify their clients’ memories on a case-by-case basis.

In a first test of the new system last week, Atlantic contributor and Reuters reporter David Rohde aired allegations by Majid Khan—a Guantanamo detainee turned government witness who has confessed to plotting attacks with 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—that Khan was tortured and sexually abused at a CIA “black site.” Khan’s lawyers had captured his account of the ordeal in 27 pages of notes taken over seven years, which were only cleared for release by the government in May.

It’s the latest heave in a tug of war between the government and civil-liberties advocates over a fundamental question about the limits of secrecy: Can a government classify people’s memories? More specifically: Can the U.S. government deem anything a detainee says secret?

In 2012, U.S. Army Colonel James Pohl, the military judge in the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, barred testimony or discussion about “the enhanced interrogation techniques that were applied to an accused … including descriptions of the techniques as applied, [and] the duration, frequency, sequencing, and limitations of those techniques,” ruling that “without limitation, observations and experiences of an accused” were classified.

But James Connell, an attorney representing Guantanamo detainee Ammar al-Baluchi, rejected such reasoning in a 2012 motion to declassify prisoners’ accounts. “A person’s own experiences—whether the smell of a rose or the click of a gun near one’s head—are what make them a person, and the government can never own or control them,” he wrote, according to the Huffington Post. Connell added that detainees “were exposed to classified interrogation techniques only in the sense that Hiroshima was exposed to the classified Manhattan Project.” Their classified memories had been imposed on them against their will through a program that President Obama had since banned.

In a separate motion filed around the same time, Connell pursued another line of reasoning: that by preemptively classifying detainees’ statements, the government was violating its own classification procedures. Information relayed by detainees in court or to their lawyers was “born classified” rather than born free and then classified—a standard of “presumptive classification,” Connell argued, that the U.S. government had previously only applied to public discussion of America’s nuclear program:

The most egregious example of the government’s use of overclassification to suppress unclassified but embarrassing information at Guantanamo Bay is the device of “presumptive classification.” Presumptive classification—more mythology than law—attempts to extend traditional classification rules beyond information damaging to national security to all statements made by or information learned from Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Under the regime of presumptive classification, if a prisoner says that he misses his family, this information is “born classified” even though no original classification authority would or could ever classify it. This practice, unchallenged for years, violates every relevant constitutional, presidential, statutory, and regulatory principle of classification.

Under the terms of Executive Order 13526, classification of information is an act: a person, specifically delegated authority, decides that the risks of disclosing a specific piece of information to the public outweigh the democratic imperative for transparency in the operation of government. Only one type of information—Restricted Data about nuclear weapons-—is “born classified.” Every other type of information must go through the classification process, which applies strict criteria, a presumption of non-classification, and mandatory declassification rules, before it becomes classified.

In a 2013 brief challenging the government’s arguments for classifying detainee statements, the American Civil Liberties Union also rejected equating “the government’s ownership of and control over documents to its ownership of or control over human beings or their personal thoughts and experiences of government-imposed torture. In other words, while ‘illegal activities’ might be able to ‘produce classified documents’ … they cannot produce classified memories and experiences of those illegal activities.”

Now, more than six years after Obama signed executive orders to shutter Guantanamo and ban the CIA’s coercive interrogation techniques, those memories are just beginning to come to light.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/cia-torture-classified-memory/395657/

Two young Swiss designers launched a collective in 2014, called SUPERLIFE, and the pair have developed the BE READY collection of everyday objects that perform double duty during a natural disaster.

ALIVE mounts under a desk and not only is it an emergency whistle, its base becomes bright so you can be detected by emergency services while hiding.

BLACKOUT is a floor lamp that continues to work when the power goes out with the help of a battery. The top part comes off the stand to become a flashlight.

MEDUSE is a carpet that comes in handy if there’s a flood or a water-type natural disaster. It inflates to become a life preserver.

POUMON is a pen holder for your desk that also contains a filter to allow you to breathe in case of a fire or dust cloud.

My wife and I are expecting a baby girl in September, and Daniel Hamermesh has a scary message for soon-to-be parents like us: The impact that a new baby has on your pocketbook is trumped by the impact on your stress levels. In a new study, Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, translates that stress into dollar figures and finds it is “so huge as to be almost unbelievable,” he told me. (Gulp.)

In fact, the stress costs are so large, Hamermesh argues, that our family would need a lot more income to compensate. “If we thought about it more, we’d have fewer kids,” he said. (Gasp.)

Hamermesh and his co-authors quantify these stress effects in their recent working paper, “The Stress Cost of Children.” Although the paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, the results are startling. Parents’ self-reported feelings of financial stress increase little after having a child. But time stress — or how overwhelmed and rushed parents feel — jumps enormously, especially for mothers, and it lasts several years. Translating that time stress into dollar figures shows that having a child produces a significant burden — on top of the $245,340 in food, housing, education and other costs that the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that it takes to raise a kid.

To make these calculations, Hamermesh and his co-authors used two massive longitudinal studies from Australia and Germany, each spanning more than a decade: the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). (The researchers would have liked to study the United States, but similar longitudinal data doesn’t exist here.) Both the Australian and German surveys followed more than 7,000 heterosexual married couples for roughly a decade through 2012 and routinely asked participants questions like “How often do you feel rushed or pressed for time?” The participants were also asked to rank their satisfaction with their financial situation. The researchers looked at how stress levels changed for couples who had a child during the study period compared with those who didn’t. Despite differences in culture and child-care services between Australia and Germany, the qualitative conclusions from both studies were similar. That suggests the results “supersede any cultural or legislative differences,” Hamermesh said.

Those conclusions show — perhaps unsurprisingly — that the stress burden of a new kid falls heaviest on the mother. Specifically, a mother’s self-reported time stress increases about 20 percent to 22 percent³⁶ in the first year or two after a child’s birth. Time stress rises far less for fathers, between 5 percent and 8 percent. The time stress on the mother, furthermore, doesn’t fade during the first few years of the child’s life, while it does for the father. “If I were a feminist, I would love this,” Hamermesh said.

Comparable research is hard to find. Troves of studies have examined how happiness changes for parents upon having a child. And those are similarly based on self-reported responses to surveys asking questions like “How happy are you?” and “How satisfied are you with your life?” But Hamermesh is skeptical of happiness statistics. “I don’t know what it means,” he said, “and it’s not clear what the heck it measures.” He argued that self-reported happiness is more squishy than self-reported stress.

Those happiness researchers, however, might see Hamermesh’s approach as incomplete. Peder Pedersen, who is an economist at Aarhus University in Denmark and has studied the effect of a new child on parental happiness, said in an email that “it’s absolutely valid to study stress and financial costs” but that doing so is not a “substitute for a well-being measure.” Another economist in this field, Kevin Staub of the University of Melbourne in Australia, said in an email that he sees the Hamermesh paper as an “exciting addition” to the literature, but he added that studying stress does not imply that happiness measures are invalid.

Regardless of whether happiness is a more complete indicator of how parents feel after they have children, the real innovation of Hamermesh’s paper is how he and his co-authors put a price on the time stress. Since they knew mothers experienced more time stress than fathers, they tried to answer the same basic question: How much money would it take to reduce a mother’s financial stress enough to offset the increase in her time stress?

Specifically, the researchers normalized time stress and financial stress into a common unit of analysis³⁷ and considered both types of stress as reciprocal components of parents’ overall stress. From the survey data, they already knew how much time stress went up after a kid entered the picture; they then calculated by how much financial stress would have to fall to offset that rise.

Using the Australian survey data, the researchers found that to offset a new mother’s time stress, her annual earnings would have to increase by about $66,000 (or her husband’s earnings would have to increase by $163,000). Using the German survey produces more modest estimates: A mother would need a $48,000 annual raise to offset her time stress (or she’d need to see her husband get a $55,000 raise instead). As you can see, a mother responds differently to changes in her income than to changes in her husband’s — that’s because a $1 increase in her earnings goes further in reducing her stress than a $1 increase in her husband’s.

There are a number of confounding factors in studying how parents respond to a new child. (This study didn’t follow couples for more than three or four years; the effects beyond that period are unclear.) For one, couples who plan to have a child may do so when their stress is low.³⁸ Sure enough, this paper documents a dip in self-reported time stress for women and in financial stress for men in the year before a child’s birth. Hamermesh and his co-authors readily admit that they couldn’t completely control for these factors, but “if anything, we underestimate the [stress] effect following the birth,” Hamermesh said. (Another gulp.)

So what can we do to help stressed-out parents? Hamermesh and his co-authors believe extra help with child care can alleviate the stress of having a kid — but only so much. Their estimates show that even if women were able to eliminate their child-care and child-related housework responsibilities following the birth of a child, they would still experience higher time stress. Hamermesh said that it’s “just having the buggers around,” to say nothing of the work they require, that stresses parents out. (Sigh.)

But if having a kid is so stressful, and that has real, quantifiable costs, why do people do it? “The long-term gain must exceed the short-term cost,” Hamermesh said, before adding earnestly: “Not having a third kid is a great regret of my life.” (Whew.)

There are a few things in life I can’t get enough of, and maybe the first thing that comes to mind is chocolate! But if I’m being a bit more practical, I also have trouble fitting enough iron, protein, and calcium into my daily diet. So does my opinionated toddler, who can’t even be tricked into drinking green smoothies. What’s a mom to do?

I partnered with Yulu Yogurt to create these decadent fudgesicles that have all the healthy benefits of a green smoothie, but with the appeal of a frozen chocolate treat. Lucy has been chomping them down, clueless that without the cocoa powder, these bad boys would be green! That’s right, Lucy— GREEN! Mwahahahaha! In addition to the iron from the spinach, these fudgesicles are packed with protein and calcium. I wouldn’t even bat my eyes too many times if you dared to call these fudgesicles health food.

Yulu Australian style yogurt makes the perfect addition to this fudgesicle recipe, because it’s extra creamy and not tart as you’d expect Greek yogurt to be. It’s the perfect taste and texture to add to a decadent fudge pop, but the Aussie style yogurt is heavy on the protein (9 grams per serving), which is kind of a big deal, considering Lucy’s tendency towards vegetarianism. Yay for tasty Australian style yogurt made in the U.S.A!

• 2 packs of vanilla flavored Yulu yogurt (total of one Cup)
• 1 Cup milk (I used whole milk)
• 2/3 Cup maple syrup
• 1/2 Cup cocoa
• 2 packed Cups of spinach

Pile all of the ingredients into a blender and blend on high until spinach is completely liquified with the other ingredients. You definitely don’t want any visible spinach bits— the kids will find them, and then it’s game over.

Fill your popsicle molds almost full, leaving a bit of room at the top for adding garnishes later.

Pop the molds into the freezer and set a timer for 1 hour.

After one hour, you can add popsicle sticks to the middle and garnish the ends of your fudgesicles with tasty toppings, like chopped nuts, mini chocolate chips, flaked coconuts, or even sprinkles! Push the garnish bits into the not-quite-frozen fudgesicles and return the molds to the freezer and finish freezing for at least another 3 hours or until solid.

After my fudgesicles were frozen solid, I dunked my molds into a basin of warm water to loosen them, then they slid right out after a bit of wiggling. If you’re serving your fudgesicles to a crowd, you might want to cover a deep dish with crushed ice and serve the popsicles on top to keep them from melting right away.

There ya have it, folks! A nourishing and delicious summer treat perfect for sneaking in some greens, thanks to the delicious taste and wholesome goodness of Yulu yogurt. And if you don’t believe in hiding greens from your kids, this is an easy recipe to make with them! (Though I for one won’t be divulging my spinach secrets any time soon.)

Yulu yogurt is available at the following grocery store chains: Giant Eagle, Kroger, Meijer, Walmart, Natures Best, Safeway, Shoprite, Albi, Stater Bros, UNFI, Ahold, HEB, Kehe, and Lucky.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Yulu. The opinions and text are all mine.

The post Secret Spinach Fudgesicles appeared first on Making Nice in the Midwest.

I've been wanting to try dying deviled eggs with beet juice for a long time. One of my favorite local lunch spots, Aviary, serves them and I order them pretty much 100% of the time—SO good. 

To hard boil eggs I use this simple method—place eggs in a large pot filled with water (so eggs are completely covered). Let the water with eggs come to a boil on medium-high heat. As soon as the water is boiling, turn off the burner and remove the pot from the heat. Let the water cool to the side (at least 15 minutes). When you remove the eggs, they will be hard boiled. Easy peasy! 

To dye the eggs, immerse the whole egg (with shell peeled off) in beet juice for one hour. I got a 16 ounce glass of fresh beet (straight) juice at the health food store to use. You could also use juice from a can of cooked or pickled beets. Beware, this juice will dye anything and everything including your clothing, anything wood and anything that isn't stain-resistant (another day I loved my quartz counter tops because it wiped right off). 

Beet juice is BEAUTIFUL. The color is absolutely incredible. 

When you cut the egg in half, it will be all white with a thin rim of pink around the edge. If you like that look, cut them right before you serve. After even just one hour, the color bleeds through most of the egg so it looks more like my photos look. I cut these, made the yolk mixture, and refrigerated them overnight before assembling. 

I started with about 22 eggs (I wanted to have some extras in case I messed up, which I did, peeling the eggs perfectly is tricky!). To make the yolk mixture combine the following in a food processor—egg yolks, 3/4 cup mayo and four tablespoons whole grain Dijon mustard (I always buy spicy mustard!). Blend all ingredients. Use a piping bag to fill the eggs or just a spoon if you don't have one. 

Garnish with a sprinkle of smoked paprika, fresh thyme, fresh chives and fresh dill (the chives are the yummiest). Enjoy! 

I already can't wait to make these again for my next party. They do take a little more prep than typical deviled eggs, but I think it's well worth it for the beautiful presentation. By the way, if you're curious—you can't really taste the beet flavor once they are complete. It's mostly just for the look! 

Hope you enjoy trying these out! xx. Elsie 

Credits// Author and Photography: Elsie Larson. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess Actions. 

I hated chickpeas as a child. Of course, I hadn't actually tasted them, but I remember that my dad loved to put them on top of his salads and I just thought they looked too weird to actually taste good. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I dared to try them and realized that they not only tasted nothing like I thought they would, but they were actually delicious! Since then I've been eating them lots of ways (including on salads!), but this way of preparing them is my particular favorite at the moment:

Baked Rosemary Parmesan Chickpeas
Adapted from Lemon and Anchovies Rosemary-Parmesan Roasted Chickpeas 

Preheat your oven to 400°. Drain and thoroughly rinse your chickpeas and set them on a few layers of paper towels to dry for a few minutes (you can also press down on top of them with a paper towel to speed up the process). 

Put chickpeas into large mixing bowl.

Chop 2 tablespoons of rosemary and and toss the rosemary, chickpeas, olive oil, garlic, parmesan, and salt and pepper together in the mixing bowl until evenly coated.

Pour the mixture onto a baking sheet and spread it out into one single layer. 

Roast the chickpeas for 40-45 minutes and use a spatula once or twice to stir the chickpeas around. Once the chickpeas are done, sprinkle a bit more salt on them and let them cool a bit before eating.

You'll want to eat these the same day that you make them since they don't keep well, but I think once you taste them, it won't be a problem to finish them off that day. I added more rosemary to my version because I like it to really be a stand-out flavor in the snack, but you can adjust the ratios to your liking. What do you think? Are these worthy of a snack night feature in your house soon? xo. Laura

Credits // Author and Photography: Laura Gummerman. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess actions.

Lately I've been working to eat a little healthier. One thing I'm doing is trying to avoid dairy and refined sugar during the weekdays. It's been a great change because I save any sugary (or creamy) treats I'm craving for the weekends and focus on filling my days with vegetables, fruits and other good stuff. 

But, I do have a sweet tooth (to say the least). So finding some kind of weekday treat was key to this change. I've been making lots of different banana ice creams, so I thought I'd share. 

I love that you can easily customize this basic recipe to feel like soft serve frozen yogurt or a firmer ice cream depending on how long you freeze the mixture. For me this really hits the spot when I'm craving a sweet treat during the weekdays, but I can feel good that I'm not consuming any refined sugars or dairy—mostly fruit! Plus, it couldn't be easier to make. Here's how in pictures:

Here are the combinations I've been enjoying the most lately. 

Strawberry Poppyseed: 3 frozen bananas (sliced before freezing), 5-6 frozen strawberries, and 1/2 teaspoon poppy seeds. Blend in a food processor or quality blender until smooth. If the mixture is too thick or you have difficulty blending, then add a few tablespoons of cashew milk or water (or fresh fruit juice).

Chocolate Peanut Butter: 3 frozen bananas (sliced before freezing), 2 tablespoons natural peanut butter, and 2 tablespoons cocoa. Blend in a food processor or quality blender until smooth. If the mixture is too thick or you have difficulty blending, then add a few tablespoons of cashew milk or water. 

Vanilla Coconut: 3 frozen bananas (sliced before freezing), 2 big handfuls of unsweetened coconut flakes, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. Blend in a food processor or quality blender until smooth. If the mixture is too thick or you have difficulty blending, then add a few tablespoons of cashew milk or coconut water.

Mango: 3 frozen bananas (sliced before freezing) and 2 frozen mangos (peeled and cubed). If the mixture is too thick or you have difficulty blending, then add a few tablespoons of cashew milk or water (or fresh fruit juice). This one has a sorbet feel to it!

Now I just need to figure out how to make some no sugar, no dairy hot fudge. Hmm. Anyone have a recipe for me for that? 

If you've never tried banana ice cream before, I highly recommend giving it a try because it is shockingly good for how simple it is. You could also freeze these into popsicles if you like. Thanks for letting me share a current obsession of mine. :) xx. Emma

Credits // Author and Photography: Emma Chapman. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess actions.

After a year of bathing myself and my baby in a 1960’s disgusting tub we are finally remodeling our bathroom, see all the before and progress images here. It’s not all ‘easy decisions, affordable, no mistakes and glamorous fun’. Trust me. But the fun part of any remodeling part is the finding inspiration and picking out those pieces that get you to suck in your breath with excitement.

The lighting was one of the things I actually got excited about. I looked for brass vanity lighting for a while and realized that I needed to broaden my search and just find awesome sconces that I could hang over the vanity. Sure, they might not be in the form of a ‘double’ or ‘triple’ but they would be in the form of ‘very, very awesome.’

1. Hudson Valley | 2. Ceder & Moss | 3. Ceder & Moss |  4. Jonathan Adler | 5. George Kovacs | 6. Robert Abbey | 7. Arteriors | 8. Circa Lighting  | 9. Maxim | 10. Circa Lighting | 11. Robert Abbey | 12. Arteriors | 13. Kohler | 14. Arteriors | 15. Circa Lighting | 16. Feiss | 17. Rejuvenation | 18. School House Electric | 19. Hinkley | 20. Roll & Hill | 21. Park Studio LA  | 22. School House Electric | 23. Rejuvenation | 24. Hudson Valley | 25. Hudson Valley | 26. Robert Abbey| 27. Schoolhouse Electric

We already chose and have the ones we are using (being installed as soon as our tile is done).

Which ones do you think they are????? I love all of them in different ways but we wanted something modern, but not too serious, unique but not wacky and we also needed something that filled the horizontal space above the mirror (like a double or triple) so whatever it was had to look good pairing two of them together. It will eventually go in this space:

Hint: It’s this one, and they are so wonderful.

The master bathroom is almost done y’all. I’ve never had a new bathroom, I’ve always had ‘vintage’ bathrooms as I’ve never lived in an apartment or house that is less than 50 years old. It’s all stopping by the end of the week (although the toilet hasn’t arrived yet so I have to re-install the old toilet for a while until it does come, and then when we do the guest bathroom we’ll install it).

But lets talk faucets – we wanted brass because brass is still reigning supreme in the metal world. But there are a ton of brass faucets out there and a lot of them look cheap bad 80’s, and well, that’s not what we want. And after looking around I decided to go for a more matte brass with more of a satin finish instead of the super high gloss mirrored brass – even though I kinda love that as well.

So here’s a roundup of a bunch of brass faucets that we love:

1. Kohler  | 2. Jewel Faucets | 3. Elements of Design | 4. Kohler | 5. The Watermark Collection | 6. The Watermark Collection | 7. Kohler | 8. Delta | 9. Delta | 10. Delta  | 11. Rejuvenation | 12. Cifial | 13. Newport Brass | 14. Rocky Mountain Hardware | 15. Elizabethan Classics | 16. The Watermark Collection | 17. Delta | 18. Jewel Faucets | 19. Elements of Design | 20. Kohler  | 21. Waterworks | 22. Waterworks

We are renovating two different bathrooms – the master and the guest, so we chose two different faucet/tub sets. For the master we chose this beautiful guy and for the guest this slightly more playful and fun faucet.  And yes, my theory on mixing finishes is that as long as your bathrooms feel like they belong in the same house (sharing a similar style and feel) you can make the finishes and fixtures different. I think if I didn’t have an audience I would probably have phoned it in a bit more and used more of the same finishes, but I really wanted to ‘design’ two different bathrooms that shared similar color palettes and styles but would showcase two different design ideas. I think in this case the pressure of the blog has been a really, really good one. The tile is up and it looks INSANELY beautiful (I’ll snapchat about it later today – handle emhendersonsnap). Bathrooms and kitchens are hard, folks. Its all so permanent and you have to make all your big decisions before seeing it together – you can’t piece it together unless you are doing it yourself. Do I have any regrets? Yes. A big one – which I will tell you about as soon as I change it :) AHHHHHH the learning curve of going from stylist to designer….

*Check out our bathrooms before, and the light fixtures we chose. 

The Wright Plus Housewalk took place this past Saturday, featuring historic homes here in Oak Park and also in nearby Riverside, IL. The three Frank Lloyd Wright homes on the tour have been maintained and decorated in the Wright style, which is probably as it should be, and the other homes were a mix of modern and traditional.

The Avery Coonley House and Avery Coonley Stables/Coach House

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1908 and 1911, Riverside, IL

The estate has several properties on it, and it’s the grand house with the lily pond that is currently for sale with a listing price of $2.1 million. Wright said that at the time the Coonley estate was built (supposedly with a nearly unlimited budget), that it was the finest house he was capable of creating. The stable is nothing to turn your nose up though — those horses were living large, and of course there were renovations undertaken to turn it into a home fit for humans.

The Oscar B. Balch House

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1911, Oak Park, IL

Balch (no relation!) was a decorator, and one of the only people to hire Wright upon his return to the States after having ran off with a client’s wife. He collected and helped popularize Teco pottery, and it seems fitting that the current owners display their own extensive collection of it throughout the house.

The Mary Walker Herron House

Tallmadge & Watson, 1924, Oak Park, IL

This house started its life as a Victorian in the 1880s, was completely remodeled and reworked as a Tudor by Tallmadge & Watson in 1924 (who won out over a competing remodeling bid by Wright), and has gone through another transformation inside by the current owners with modern stark white walls and trim, dark flooring, and mid-century modern furniture. Very now.

The Hemingway House

Fiddelke, 1906, Oak Park, IL
Hemingway’s birth house is in town too, but this was his boyhood home, where he likely formed the opinion that “Oak Park is a neighborhood of wide lawns and narrow minds.” I’d like to think that the latter characteristic has changed some in the years since he lived here. The home was designed with great input from Hemmingway’s mother, and has recently been brought back to a single-family dwelling after having been split into a three-flat since the 1930s. We got to head all the way to the third floor to see Hemingway’s old bedroom.

The Paul Blatchford House I

Architect Unknown, 1887, Oak Park, IL

The porch features a keyhole opening which is not original, but was recreated based on photographs of the original design. The bones of the home were very similar to my own — same unpainted oak trim throughout, tall windows with wooden shutters, Victorian hardware, and so on. The owners kept it to a traditional Victorian look though (as opposed to what I’ve been doing with my 1891 home), choosing historical paint colors, wall treatments, and furnishings.

* Interior photography was not allowed. All exterior photos in this post were from the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust.

© 2015, published by Making it Lovely as The Wright Plus Housewalk, 2015 | 9 comments | affiliate links may be used in posts

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Fresh spring rolls are one of my favorite healthy snacks. The only draw back is they can take a little while to put together since you have to roll up all the prepped ingredients into the wrappers. Not a big deal, but if you're pressed for time, it can be a concern.

In many ways, this is the LAZY or quick version of fresh spring rolls. All the ingredients and even a similar peanut dressing, but it only takes about 15 minutes to throw everything together. Perfect for a quick lunch. 

Spring Roll Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing, serves 2 (you can easily make more servings).

For the salad:
1-2 oz. cellophane noodles (about half what you see pictured above, I went too crazy)
1/2 head of lettuce, chopped
1/3 or 1/2 head of red cabbage, shredded
2-3 carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into matchsticks
2-3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
a big handful of peanuts, chopped

For the dressing:
1/4 cup coconut milk
1/2 tablespoon red curry paste
2 tablespoons natural, creamy peanut butter
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar (optional, but it does add a nice sweetness)
1/4 cup peanut oil or water (to thin the dressing)

Begin by soaking the cellophane noodles in hot water for 10-12 minutes (check your package directions as soak times can vary). Prep all your vegetables. 

For the dressing whisk together the first five ingredients listed above. I made my dressing with peanut oil, but you could also use water. The oil adds a richness, but it has a tendency to separate. You can simply whisk it again before pouring it over your salad. Either way, whisk the oil or water in last, slowly drizzling it in as you whisk to help it blend in with the other ingredients. 

Assemble your salad and pour the dressing over the top. Enjoy and happy salad days! xo. Emma

Credits // Author and Photography: Emma Chapman. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess actions.

Berkeley residence by geremia design.

specializing in custom interiors and art consulting, Lauren Geremia, principal designer at Geremia Design, a bay area interior design firm, invited me to share some of her recent residential projects, and i readily agreed. the firm’s work is lovely, and very often i get inquiries for local interior designers, so i thought it would fun, and helpful to share their projects. these lovely images are from two east bay projects, and geremia also curated a fantastic selection of contemporary art for both. drawing on her fine arts background for concepts and designs, lauren’s projects incorporate unique pieces, including custom furniture that’s created by both Lauren and her friends, who are fabricators and artists.

up first — this charming wood-shingled Berkeley home is located on a quiet street with persimmon trees and foliage surrounding. It was important for this young family to keep their home comfortable for their children and dogs, while providing areas to formally entertain guests. geremia selected furniture and accessories with unique detailing, and designed a custom media unit for their living room. They had an interest in starting an art collection, so they curated their space with contemporary photography working with collections from Hauser & Wirth Gallery, M+B Gallery, and Paulson Bott Press.

oakland residence, by geremia design.

For the residence in Oakland, geremia wanted to give their client an updated and contemporary look for his one story Craftsmen home, including furniture with detailing that nods to the architecture of the space. their client travels frequently, but when he’s home likes to host dinner parties and cook for his friends, so they created a comfortable living and dining space that can accommodate guests, and curated an evocative selection of contemporary art that suits his taste. LED lighting and a custom designed hand oxidized brass media unit are design highlights of the project. for this project, the firm utilized pieces from Alexis Moran Furniture and Mignonne Decor, and collaborated with Canada Gallery, M+B Gallery on the artwork.

• photography by Melissa Kaseman Photography for Geremia Design.