new year

A NEW YEAR

Jane Milligan Arbeiter2 Comments

I’ve just spent the first few days of the new year “cleaning” and trying to organize things in my art room. (Again!)  It’s great going through bins and drawers and shelves and rediscovering things I’d forgotten about.  But I’ve decided that this is the year I am going to have to weed out some of my supplies!  I have collected so many odds and ends – cabinet cards, atlases, maps, dictionaries, wallpaper books, songbooks, letters, postcards, stamps, fabric, paper, paper, paper – with the intention of using it in my collage work, but there is just no way I could possibly use all I have in a lifetime.  I have so many old books that I could never bear to rip apart, so I would scan the pages I wanted to use.  Not quite the same feel, though, as the real aged paper. So rip old books I will!  (Nothing valuable, of course).  And I will use the ephemera I’ve collected and hoarded. Enough of holding onto things!

This is a quick little assemblage I made with some of the scraps I came across.

had13bks

Makin’ the Donuts

Jane Milligan Arbeiter1 Comment

Since the New Year, I’ve been in a homebody, domestic mode-cleaning, organizing, cooking…and baking.  That’s something I have a love/hate relationship with.  Maybe it’s the precise nature of baking, having to accurately measure out the ingredients, or my low expectations that come through, but my results when I bake have been less than stellar.  Never-the-less, I was craving a donut this morning, but did not want to go out to the store in the cold rain.  After an internet search, I found RetroDinnerDiva’s recipe for 20-minute donut holes from scratch.  Just what I was looking for.  I had all the ingredients, the recipe didn’t seem complicated, so I went right to it.  Well, as promised, they were easy and they were quick and they were perfect.  I sprinkled some with cinnamon sugar and some in confectioners sugar, but they were tasty plain too.  Thanks Stephanie at http://www.retrodinnerdiva.wordpress.com.  Check out her blog for some great recipes, tips and humor.  A cup of tea and these little bites (not too many) cheered me up on such a dreary day!

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