Common Elegance

Yesterday I found myself completely overwhelmed by the number of things I thought I had to do. There were a number of errands I thought I just *had* to run. There were things around the house that *must* be accomplished before I picked my husband up from work. I woke up feeling as though I was going to drown in my list of “To Dos”. After fretting through some of my early morning routine I decided to take a step back and take a deep breath. It occurred to me that a little prioritizing and organizing would go a long way toward helping me accomplish the things that needed to be done during the day.

I sat down and made a good, old-fashioned, hand-written list of the things I wanted to accomplish during the day. This included making to the gym for workout, phone calls, errands, everything. Once I got the list on paper I organized them. Things that must be done. Things that could wait. Suddenly the list seemed so small. Many of the items that I thought would require me to run all over town suddenly became manageable by phone. Things that I thought MUST be done that day could wait for another time when I would be closer to the location to handle them.

My top priority…making to the gym for my workout. Seems like something expendable, but honestly, it’s not. I have to do this for me in order to keep me focused and feeling like I can accomplish the rest of the list. I was able to accomplish some of my household tasks while making phone calls. Multi-tasking for the win! Seeing the finish line in site, I got a BIG curve ball from Mother Nature. It began to snow. This meant that I would need to pick up my husband before the roads became too bad to drive our mini-van.  This meant that some of the things I wanted to accomplish bot inside and outside the house would be put on hold. The best part…IT WAS ALL OKAY! No lives were lost. No irreparable damage was done. The stuff that wasn’t finished will be there for another day.

All of this discombobulation is a symptom of my slacking in the time management department. Let’s face it, it’s been a while since I worked outside the house. It’s been a while since I was focused on much of anything other than household chores and errands. With the new business beginning to come to life and requiring more and more of my attention, I have to learn to manage my time again. Therefore I am employing the prioritize, organize and mobilize approach to my daily routine. This approach helps me keep things manageable and very important–helps me keep my sanity.  I hope it helps you the next time you find yourself with a more than full plate.

Make your list

Organize your list

Mobilize to accomplish your list

Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things.

I experienced a decent culinary victory tonight. The results of an experimental dish were good enough I want to share it with all of you. I was struggling with what to do for dinner tonight. We were due for a non-meat centric meal. I knew I wanted to use this new wild rice blend I picked up our local co-op store, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. I also was looking for something a little spicy. I did a quick review of the ingredients I had available in my pantry, veggie basket and fridge. I found pasilla peppers, black beans and pepper jack cheese. Viola! The result was delicious, vegetarian and fully of yummy spicy goodness!

Spicy Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

1 cup dry rice of your choice

2 cups water

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 pasilla peppers halved lengthwise, seeds and inner membrane removed

1 cup canned black beans, drained

1 1/4 cup shredded pepper jack cheese, divided

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/4 tsp cayenne

Garlic salt to taste

Olive oil to rub on the skin of the peppers.

Directions

Place rice, water and olive oil in a medium sauce pan with a lid. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Split peppers in half lengthwise (stem to tip). Remove seeds and membrane. Rub the outside of the peppers with olive oil.

In a bowl mix rice, beans, 1 cup of the cheese and spices.

Fill peppers with rice and bean mixture.

Sprinkle remaining cheese over the top of the peppers.

Cook at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.

These stuffed peppers really were amazing. Spicier than regular bell peppers (which my husband doesn’t really like that much) but not so spicy that they have a lot of heat. I served them with sour cream and salsa to put on the top. We also had a side salad with the pepper and it was plenty for a very filling meal.

Give these peppers a try and let me know what, if any modifications you make. Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things.

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is day after tomorrow (March 8, 2011). To celebrate this weekend I made homemade Jambalaya and a tiny King Cake for my husband and me. I thought I would share the recipes so you can put together your very own Mardi Gras celebration just in time! The ingredients and preparation are VERY SIMPLE, but the results are outstanding! Ready?! Laissez les bons temps rouler! Let the Good Times Roll!

Jambalaya

Ingredients:

1 cup dry brown rice

2 cups water

2 Tbsp butter

1/4 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 Pasilla Pepper, chopped

1/2 Lb Beef Polish Sausage sliced into 1/4 inch slices

14 Medium Shrimp, cooked, peeled & deveined

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into chunks

1 – 14-15 oz can of diced tomatoes with jalapeños or green chilies

1 – 4 oz can of tomato paste

2 Tbsp Olive Oil

Cajun Seasoning to taste

Cayenne Pepper to taste

Garlic Salt to taste

Tabasco Sauce to taste

Cook The Rice:

Place the brown rice, water and butter in a medium sauce pan, cover and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and cook for approximately 40 – 45 minutes. While the rice is cooking you can cook the “sauce” for the Jambalaya. The rice will be a little chewy at the end of the 40 -45 minutes, but that’s okay. It’s going to finish cooking in the sauce and pick up the flavors.

Jambalaya Base Sauce

Heat the oil in a large sauce pot (you’re going to need the room by the time you are done).  Once the oil is hot add the chicken breast and season with a little Cajun seasoning and garlic salt. Saute for approximately 3 minutes, stirring frequently to cook the outside of the chunks.

Add in the onion and pepper and saute until they begin to get tender. Season with a little more Cajun seasoning and garlic powder.

Add the beef sausage and saute until the sausage starts to brown.

Add the canned tomatoes and tomato paste and stir to combine. Season with more Cajun seasoning, garlic powder and cayenne pepper to taste. If you like it spicy (like we do), add in plenty of Cajun seasoning but back off on the garlic salt as the seasoning mix has garlic in it. You could substitute garlic powder for the garlic salt if you want to back off even more on the salt. The heat of the cayenne will sneak up on you so add it judiciously. You can add more…you can’t take any out. Sprinkle in a little Tabasco sauce for extra heat and that vinegary background note.

Simmer the base sauce on low heat until the rice has cooked 40 – 45 minutes. The water should be completely (or at least mostly) cooked out of the rice. Stir the rice into the base sauce and stir well to combine. Cook on low for 5 minutes.

Add the shrimp and stir well to combine. Cook an additional 5 minutes and remove from the heat. Let the mixture sit for approximately 5 minutes then serve hot!

You can put the Tabasco sauce on the table and let folks kick up the heat a little more if they are inclined to do so. The Jambalaya should have a slow heat to it meaning you wont get an immediate burn, but as you finish your first bite, your lips and mouth will start to feel the heat and tingle.

Now that dinner is done, you’ll want a little sweet to finish out the meal. That’s where this tiny King Cake comes in. Traditionally there would be a tiny plastic baby hidden in the King Cake and the person getting the slice with the baby should make the King Cake or host the Mardi Gras party the following year. Since it was just for my husband and me, I omitted the baby.

Tiny King Cake

Ingredients:

1 can refrigerated crescent rolls

4 oz cream cheese, softened

2 Tbsp butter, softened

1 Tbsp powdered sugar

1 Tbs cinnamon

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp Vanilla

Glaze:

1/2 Cup powdered sugar

1 tsp Vanilla

1 Tbsp Milk

Colored sugars in gold, green & purple;  or food coloring to make gold, green & purple glaze

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until well blended and fluffy. Set aside.

Unroll crescent rolls and separate into 8 triangles. Place the triangles with the large ends overlapping in a circle in the bottom of a round cake pan or on a cookie sheet. The ends should overlap significantly and form a large band of dough at the bottom. Press the seams together so as to form one solid base of dough.

Spread the cream cheese mixture around the bottom ring of dough leaving about 1/4 inch of dough toward the center. You will be using this to tuck the tips over and under and you don’t want your filling oozing out into the center of the pan. Once you have spread the cream cheese mixture evenly around the ring you will want to tuck the thinner tips of the triangle over the top of the filling and gently under the base of the solid dough ring.This should serve to basically cover the filling you placed around the bottom. Pinch the seams over the top together.

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes.

Mix the ingredients for the glaze together in a small bowl with a whisk.

If you are coloring the glaze, divide it out into three equal portions and color the glaze gold, green & purple. If you are using colored sugar or other sprinkles, skip this step and move on to the next.

Drizzle the glaze over the top of the cake. Sprinkle with colored sugar or sprinkles.

I know your family will love these recipes. They bring the spirit of Mardi Gras into the home! Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things!

My husband’s birthday was today. I wanted to make him a nice meal with a special dessert. I decided on one of his favorite meals, spaghetti with homemade veggie marinara, meatballs and homemade bread. Dessert…what was I going to do for dessert? He’s not a big sweet eater as a rule. One of the few sweets he does enjoy is snickerdoodle cookies. I could have made him a batch of cookies and called it good, but it’s his birthday! Aren’t cakes mandatory on your birthday?! So I hit the Internet for a snickerdoodle cake recipe. Sure enough….I was not disappointed.

I found the recipe by KATEE2 at:

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/snickerdoodle-cake-i/Detail.aspx

The recipe red as follows:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×13 inch pan.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream shortening and 2 cups sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well with each addition. Alternately add milk and flour mixture in three stages, mixing well with each addition.
4. In a small bowl, mix 3 tablespoons sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Sprinkle this mixture evenly over cake.
5. Pour into prepared 9×13 inch pan and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 35 to 40 minutes or until done.

Since baking can be tricky I didn’t deviate from the instructions at all. I followed them exactly as written. The cake fell in the middle, but I assume that was something I did wrong and not the fault of the recipe.

I wanted frosting on the cake. Can’t have birthday cake without frosting..right? Cream cheese frosting sounded like a good match, so I hit the Internet again once again, found exactly what I needed.

I found the recipe at:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cream-cheese-frosting-recipe/index.html

The recipe read as follows:

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract

Since it was a snickerdoodle cake I wanted cinnamon in the frosting so I added about a teaspoon of cinnamon at the end and blended it into the frosting. It was PERFECT!

I frosted the cake and we just had our first taste. It was…frankly…delicious! It tasted like a giant, fluffy, snickerdoodle cookie. I will likely be making the recipe again…and again.

Thanks to the websites referenced herein for providing such great recipes and coming to my rescue! Best wishes to you all for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things. (And a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful husband!)

Many a college student spends their meager food budget on a large stock of small packages of the dried curly noodly goodness known as Ramen Noodles. I myself have spent my share of time surviving on them. So much so that for a long period of time, once I could afford “real food”, I couldn’t stand the thought or sight of Ramen. Spending four years in Japan repaired some of my relationship with the noodle entity, but then I became a “Ramen Snob”. If it wasn’t “real Ramen” I couldn’t be bothered.

Recently however I have opened myself up to a new relationship with the plain old packaged Ramen noodles (due in no small part to my husband’s love for them). As a matter of fact, I have grown fond of them. I find myself actually craving them from time to time. There are times when I want the plain Ramen noodles, prepared in accordance with package directions. However, there are times when I feel the need to turn up the heat and creativity a bit. Last week I had one of those days. Ramen sounded good, but I desired more and some nice spicy heat would be good too. As a result, the following dish was born:

Ingredients:

1 pkg of Ramen per person and enough water to prepare the noodles according to the instructions

1 Tbps Oil (I like to use a combination of sesame oil and vegetable oil)

Two stalks of celery chopped

1/4 cup chopped onion

Siracha Chili Sauce

Soy Sauce

Rice Wine Vinegar

1/4 Tsp Tumeric

1/2 Tsp Garlic Powder

1/2 Tsp Onion Powder

Handful chopped cilantro

Handful of chopped peanuts.

4-5 frozen shrimp per person (peeled and deveined)

Instructions:

Heat oil in the bottom of the pan that you will use to make the Ramen.

Add celery and onions and sauté until tender.

Add water and bring to a boil.

Add Seasoning packages from Ramen

Add Siracha chili sauce to taste (I like it spicy so I probably use a good tablespoon, but adjust it to your preference)

Add a couple of splashes of soy sauce (this ads depth of flavor but also ads salt so use this judiciously)

Add Tumeric, Garlic Powder and Onion Powder

Boil for one minute to allow the flavors to meld

Add in Ramen noodles (I like them long and whole so I just add them to the pot in the block, but if you prefer to break yours up, feel free)

Cook the noodles until they separate easily and are almost tender

Add shrimp and cook the mixture until the shrimp are pink and curled

Remove from heat and place into large soup or noodle bowls

Sprinkle chopped peanuts and cilantro over the top of each bowl

Serve and eat!

Sure this dish is a little more complicated and expensive than your average heat and eat package of Ramen, but when you eat this bowl of spicy noodle soup, you won’t feel like a starving college student. You’ll enjoy mouthful after mouthful of love and spicy goodness. At the end you will be satisfied and full!

Ramen is a great base ingredient. I hope you all get out and experiment with Ramen and share with us what you create. I look forward to your posts!

Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things.

Some time back I was standing and staring at the pantry trying to figure out what I was going to serve for lunch. Rhian popped up and suggested making tuna salad with lime juice and mayonnaise. This was something she had done once before when things in her pantry at the time were sparse and she didn’t have the traditional makings for a “real” tuna salad.  I thought the idea didn’t sound awful, so I gave it a try. Guess what? IT WAS GOOD!

She had originally put her tuna on tostadas, which I didn’t have the first time I made it so crackers had to do. The next time I made the dish I planned ahead and actually had tostadas on hand. I also purchased some fresh cilantro thinking that might add a little depth to the simple dish. Guess what? IT DID! and IT WAS GOOD!

Here’s how you make the magic:

2 cans of tuna (I like to use at least one can of solid white albacore, but regular tuna will do fine)

2 Tbs mayonnaise (more if you like your salad a little more “wet”)

1 Tbs fresh squeezed lime juice (you can use the bottle stuff, but I like the fresh squeezed lime better)

3 Tbs finely chopped fresh cilantro

Garlic Salt to taste

Mrs. Dash to taste

Mix these ingredients together.

Serve on tostada shells (you can buy them in large sleeves at your local supermarket) *SEE HINT BELOW You may also choose to add lettuce, cheese, or other toppings.

It find that it’s nice to place a few small lime wedges on the table so folks can add an extra squeeze of the fresh lime over the top of the tostada when eating. It really makes the mixture come to life.

HINT: There are only three of us here in the house so it is often difficult to eat an entire sleeve of the tostada shells before they become stale or get broken and less fun to use. I have found that you can purchase the tostada kits (like Taco Bell ™ brand) that have fewer shells and are packaged so they don’t get broken as easily. You can use the shells for the this recipe and then use the seasonings and salsa, etc. from the kit in later dishes.

I hope you enjoy this simple, light but satisfying dish. Let me know how yours turns out or what you do to make it even better. Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things.

Here we are into February 2011–ALREADY! This year we kicked off a brand new Common Elegance with a new theme and a new format for posts. So far I have fed you delicious chicken and a yummy dessert. Now time to put on the work clothes and get busy outside the kitchen.

We as a family recently found ourselves considering the amount of space we have in our small (but adequate) townhouse here in the beautiful Sierra Foothills. Three adults in a two-bedroom townhouse can make for tight quarters especially when one of those adults is a budding culinary student acquiring kitchen utensils, tools and cookbooks at a record pace. Our options are: move into a larger place which consequently would entail spending more money on rent, utilities and other amenities than we currently pay (which would likely result in us having to give up at least part of the lifestyle we have grown to love–my husband would have to work more or I would have to go back to work outside the home); live in the clutter (that thought makes me twitch); or clean out the clutter and purge the things we no longer need or want. We went with clean and purge!

Over the last two weeks we have cleaned out the linen and medicine storage cabinets in the master bathroom. Reorganized the tool storage in the utility/1/2 bathroom. Rearranged our mountain of hats and coats in the hallway closet. Sorted through four bookshelves worth of books (giving away some, setting up a loaner library at my husband’s office, and creating piles of books that no one will likely ever want to read to be taken to the recycle center). We from four bookshelves to three. I took the empty bookshelf we created and, at the suggestion of my husband, turned it into a blanket, sheet and pillow storage area in our bedroom. I completely emptied a 2-drawer file cabinet of old work papers for a career that I moved away from some time ago. The cabinet is now up for sale. Our daughter even got in on the action and cleaned out her dresser upstairs. It’s too large for her room and she would like to downsize to a chest-of-drawers and perhaps a shelf or two for more storage and room in her bedroom. We placed an ad for the dresser–free so long as someone would remove/move it from her bedroom upstairs. We are pretty confident that we have found a home for it as of the time I am writing this post.

Next week I plan to purge the bedroom of old picture frames, consolidating the pictures into a photo album. I want to sort through my old jewelry and the boxes and hangers they occupy and see if I can get rid of some junk pieces, sell or give away others. The overall goal–reduce the number of boxes I am using to store these pieces and find a new appreciative home for them. I will also look through the clothes in my closet again to see if there are pieces I can give up there as well. I did that just a few months ago so that likely won’t be a high yield project. Finally my husband and I will sit down and go through four-drawer filing cabinet of papers that need to be purged and shredded, burned or otherwise disposed of to protect our privacy but create some nice new storage space for current records that need a place to sleep.

By now you may be wondering why I am torturing you with a recount of my cleaning activities over the last two weeks. That’s what Facebook is for–right? Well, my hope is simply this–to inspire you to take a look around you for clutter that can be cleaned and purged in your own home and/or office. Do you feel like your stuff is taking over and you are losing the organizational battle? It is a New Year! What better time for a New Start! If you truly feel overwhelmed, start small. Pull just one box out of the closet or garage. Go through that box with a critical eye. When was the last time you actually used anything in this box? Is there any real, significant sentimental value to anything in the box? Are you really likely to ever need those records from 15 years ago? If you have any question at all about whether or not files, information or records should be retained, I encourage you to search about the Internet for information relating to this topic. There is a wealth of information on this subject so that you can create some real tangible guidelines for personal record retention. When you finish that one box, pull out another. Before you know it, the mountain of clutter will be a small manageable pile of useful things and you will have increased your free space.

While I’d love to come organize your house for you, it probably isn’t going to happen. Therefore you must take this task on yourself–but not alone! I am with you! I am behind you! I support you! Let’s get to it!

Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things (once you uncover them from under the clutter).

I found myself with a basket full of fruit that was going bad. I HATE to waste food. So I started pondering what to do with it all in order to make something that we would eat and would keep for another couple of days. I had pears, apples, blueberries and an orange.  Quite a variety–right? The pears had already progressed to the point a salad was not going to work. I decided I would make a crisp. I immediately consulted the Internet for recipe as a base. I came across a recipe from Paula Deen on www.foodnetwork.com (URL for the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/pear-crisp-recipe/index.html). This gave me the basics for the crisp topping, which was my biggest unknown. Here’s what I did:

Mixed Fruit Crisp

2 Pears diced

2 Apples diced

1 cup of blueberries

1 Orange

2 cups of oats

2 cups of flour

2 cups of brown sugar

1/2 cup butter melted

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Place the pears, apples and blueberries in an 8 x 8 square pan. Squeeze the juice from the orange over the fruit and toss.

In a bowl mix together the oats, flour and sugar.

Sprinkle the dry ingredients over the fruit.

Pour the butter over the dry ingredients as evenly as you can.

Bake for 45 – 55 minutes.

I found this to be an easy save and something my family can enjoy for dessert for a couple (or more days).

Hope you all enjoy the crisp. Try some variations of your own and let us know what you come up with! I’m always looking for new ideas.

Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things.

We had the opportunity to stay with our dear friends Jerry & Ronda in Texas during one of our visits. Jerry was responsible for making dinner one evening. He made the MOST AMAZING chicken! I brought the recipe home, played with it a little and thought I would share it with all of you. It is enough like his that I had to give him credit here (and I think he got the recipe from his LeCruset pot when he purchased it).

I would recommend reading the recipe all the way through (including the notes) before jumping right in the kitchen to whip this up.

Jerry & Jerri’s Stuffed Chicken

1 Whole chicken, giblets removed and rinsed inside and out

1/2 Onion (red, yellow or white will work) chopped into large pieces

1 Roma tomato cut into large chunks

1 Handful (no really a handful–maybe more if your hands are small) of pimiento stuffed green olives whole

1 Handful of fresh herbs (whatever you have on-hand or whatever you love) whole stalks/leaves

Seasonings of your choice (See Note)

Salt & Pepper

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Cast iron pot with a lid like a dutch oven or Le Cruset ceramic coated pot with a lid.

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees (Yes I said 500).

Loosen the skin around the breast of the chicken.

Season the cavity of the chicken liberally with your selected seasonings.

Season under the skin liberally with your selected seasonings.

Stuff the cavity of the chicken with the onion, tomato, olives and herbs until full. (Really push that stuff in there and fill it nice and full!)

Close the flap of skin at the back of the chicken over the stuffing (using toothpicks or skewers if necessary–don’t forget to soak them in water first).

Rub the outside of the chicken with olive oil. Really give it a good massage and make sure you cover all the skin.

Season the outside of the chicken well with salt, pepper and your selected seasonings.

Place the chicken in the pot (leave the lid off for this step) and place it in the 500 degree oven for 30 minutes.

**PAY ATTENTION HERE**

Turn the heat DOWN to 350 degrees.

Cover the pot with the lid.

Cook for another hour to hour and a half until the internal temperature of the breast reaches 160 degrees.

Remove the pot from the oven and let the chicken rest for at least 5 minutes.

Carve the chicken and serve with some of the yummy goodies tucked inside the cavity (leave the herbs behind).

NOTES:

All temperatures are Fahrenheit.

When I season my chicken I tend to use Cavendar’s Greek Seasoning and Seasoned Salt. However, you can use whatever you love. If you have a thing for garlic salt and Italian herbs, go for it. Like just plain salt and pepper? Knock yourself out–just be sure to use it liberally so that the meat is well seasoned.

Any sort of herbs with the exception (I would think) of mint and dill would work well. I have used sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, basil, bay leaves and fresh oregano at different times and different combinations. I have not been disappointed in the results.

REMEMBER to watch your time and turn down your heat after the first 30 minutes. This results in a crispy, tasty skin and juicy meat. If you forget to turn down the heat (as I have done on more than one occasion–even though I set a timer) all is not lost. So long as you catch it before the skin burns and the meat dries out, the dish will be saved.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy this recipe. It’s a beautiful dish to serve for family, friends and guests. The flavors are outstanding and it can be paired with a variety of side dishes.

Best wishes for love, laughter and finding the elegance in common things.

Happy 2011!  Wishing you all LOTS of love and laughter while finding the elegance in common things in this coming year.

As you can see, Common Elegance has gotten a makeover for the New Year. I decided it was time to take Common Elegance a different direction. What does that mean exactly? Well, this year you can expect one outstanding food post every week (some with photos–as I dabble in learning a little about photographing food) plus one bonus post a month with something extra. This something extra could be an organizational tip, a party tip, a contest, or just a thought to ponder.

I am excited about the new direction and hope you are too. I am looking forward to hearing from each and every one of you this year. Don’t be shy! Tell me what you think about the posts. Tell me what you’d like to see more or less of on the site. Add tips and suggestions for your fellow readers. Let’s get busy making 2011 a year FULL of Common Elegance!