I spent a few hours in the studio of Cecile at Blanche Patine learning more about her process and the beautiful antique ceramics Terre de Fer she finds these vintage plates all over France and brings them to Paris to share their stories & resilience.

Herbal allies to our thirst in the high summer heat. This recipe is simple, easy, refreshing & calms the nervous system.

Let me share making bagels is easier than you think. And a good use for your hands when your head is a mess.

When giving to friends + family, I’ve always enjoy hand making gifts. Throughout the years, I’ve gifted blends of mulling wine spices with a yummy bottle of wine, homemade wreaths, lotions, balms and salves, homemade candles, and tea blends too. With the overconsumption of the season, I want to normalize giving secondhand treasures, saved seeds, our favorite recipes written on cards, homemade preserves, & consumable gifts.

Wisconsin is home to cranberry bogs and a cranberry festival in September. I was so excited to preserve the fresh, local cranberry harvest along with zested orange, fresh ginger + warming spices in the homemade jam, a delectable update to a more traditional cranberry sauce to share at your next gathering. It's time to turn on the water bath canner + get cozy in the autumn kitchen…

I’m wrapping up this delicious and well balanced jam into puff pastries atop a fun orange brie from Marin Cheese, one of my favorites california creameries. Check out this simple + seasonal recipe.

i find making a breakfast on sunday night eases us into mondays. i often make a batch of muffins, granola or baked oatmeal. recently my mother gifted us a belgian waffle maker and so i was excited to try making a freezing some for the week’s breakfast. belgian waffles are one of my favorites and these are made with almond flour, feeling quite substantial for breakfast.

one element of our design that i was so excited to incorporate, one i adore on my travels to italy this year, timeless and grounded was the use of stone on the exterior. how to do that in a way that felt like it had been here for years and also helped with an element of our design that changed: the walkout basement.

this is where polycor hardscapes came into play. If you’ve been following along with our home build process you know that I did not want a walkout basement. Primarily for the added costs and the change to the exterior of our home. I wanted our home to feel nestled into the hillside, a part of the landscapes and to walk off the porches into the prairie. We still have that feeling on the north front porch and the west back deck. But because of the slope of our site, the eastern exterior of the house needed a walkout basement.

enter exterior stone. If we were going to have a three story view of the house, I really wanted to ground this element, cut the visual so it wouldn’t be wall of siding, and make this element feel like it had been here for ages, and turned to old farmhouses for inspiration. We went with vertical board and batten siding and horizontal siding to further cut the feeling of an elongated side.

This jam recipe is sugar free! Summer blueberries bursting with flavor, a hint of cardamom, raw + local honey, and a vanilla bean come together in the perfect combination.