Dinner last week

Baked salmon with roasted peppers and capers

...ate it with roasted potatoes and onion

Pizza with sauteed mushroom, goat cheese and mozzarella cheese

Pork chop with red cabbage and balsamic vinegar

Pate, goat cheese, sausage, grapes, bread and kale salad

Baked ziti with pesto and ricotta cheese sauce

A new beginning!

Finally, I launched my own shop at Etsy. How exciting!

Here are some goodies that are being sold at my Etsy store.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/HouseOnClintonAve?ref=pr_shop

Vintage show repair box...really old...probably an antique. just lovely!
Really old, perhaps an antique candy tin...pretty large in size and love the worn patina.

The classic milk glass bowl. So good displayed in a bookcase.
The medicine bottles....yumm...
A enamel kettle from Germany.

Piano

We inherited this beautiful baby grand piano from my mother in law recently. We have a narrow living room so I was worried that the piano would be too small in our small living room but surprisingly, it looks pretty good. We had a small settee where the piano is now. We moved the settee to the other side of the living room where our chest used to be.

I collected enough vintage silhouettes to display on my wall. Love LOVE these little vintage silhouettes.

Before

After

Laduree Macarons

Finally, my dream came true.  I waited years for this moment....the ultimate name in French macarons, the creator of the French macarons.  I finally got to taste macarons from Laduree.

I honest can't believe they don't have a shop in NYC.  They have two shops in Japan.  What, those snooty French don't think NYkers appreciate macarons more than Japanese? =P

On my recent trip to French Riviera, visiting Laduree shop in Monaco was on my top 10 list of things to do...but stupid me, when I actually went to Monaco, I was so mesmerized by all the beautiful people and cars that I totally forgot about visiting Laduree.  So the next day, I urged my husband that we must visit Monaco again( we were already back in Cannes and going to Monaco again means we will have to waste at least a half day of sight seeing in Cannes).  So we drove all the way back to Monaco(man, those highway tolls are super expensive in France) and finally got the macarons from Laduree.  I bought 8 pieces of different flavors.  

To be honest, they were ok.  I didn't think they were 200% greater in taste and texture than other macarons from local pastry shops.  Actually, I thought they were a bit too sweet and each piece was kind of overwhelming with too much flavor.   I honest prefer pistachio macarons from a chain shop called Paul which can be found almost everywhere in France.  Can you believe even truckers eat macarons in France because I saw the store at a truck stop??  

Markets in Provence II

Don't these birds just look so fresh...chicken, quail...

Sausages made with olives and garlic. 
These are the most beautiful looking artichokes I've ever seen.
Sausages..so many kinds, so hard to pick.  Luckly, they were all equally tasty.
Different foie gras products.
Fish market
Gambas were pretty popular on the restaurants menu , I guess they are king prawns.
I tasted langoustine for the first time at a restaurant.  They were indeed very tasty.
If there is one food I didn't really care for is this nougets.  They were so so but super expensive, which I will never understand why.

Markets in Provence

Just look at these cheeses..all at great prices.  Sheep cheeses were mild and tasty but most of vendors carried a lot of goat cheeses.

Different types of teas

Olives and nuts
Soaps made with olive oil and lavender
Nice Leg
Olive oils

Different  types of wild mushrooms
Beautiful tomatoes
Can you guess how many kinds of spices are here?Some kind of head cheese...meat product..looks good to me.  Yum.....  

Paintings on the wall.

Here are some of my husband's paintings that are hung in our house.

My favorite is the last one, a cowboy on a horse.  Apparently, this is one of his earlier works.

I don't know too much about art, but I told him that the cowboy picture looks the most original and most distinctive out of all his paintings.  I also like the second still life painting just because I usually prefer still life over landscapes which my husband seems to prefer.

One thing for sure, it would be pretty expensive to fill up all the wall spaces but thanks to him, we have saved a lot of money. ha.

Can anyone tell me why custom framing is so expensive even at the usual half price???