Nestled In

 

Today I’m enjoying the beautiful afternoon light. It seems that the darkest winter months are finally behind us and the sun has reappeared. What a difference a little sunshine makes!

 

The Small Stakes sells silkscreened posters designed by Jason Munn. His clientele includes bands such as Death Cab For Cutie, Feist and Modest Mouse. I just recently found his work through Design*Sponge’s affordable art guide and was blown away. Above and below are pictures of just some of our favorite posters from The Small Stakes poster gallery.

While browsing Etsy tonight I came across this lovely original painting done by Michele Maule. Our tiny budget doesn’t allow us to buy original art quite yet so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that later on there will be prints of her lovely artwork available in her shop to purchase.

It has become a habit for us to go to the thift stores and second-hand stores when we are in down town. We have found couple of great second-hands stores which sell really beautiful old furniture. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a single decent coffee table. The search continues.

Instead we have found more lovely arm chairs which we can’t buy but we/I sure would like to see in our home. The yellow arm chair on the left was very beautiful. I liked it because it looks like there’s something wrong with it. The seat is lower than normally but the back rest is taller than normally. Gorgeous! The rocker on the right looked cosy and it felt good to rock in it.

We also saw this beautiful old sofa that had wooden edges on the arm rests. It was in really good shape. The store we saw it in is sort of second-hand/antique store so the sofa cost a lot.

On weekends it is allowed to sleep, relax and eat deliciously. A week ago we ate at Amarillo (my favourite restaurant - it serves Texmex food) with friends and today I baked a chocolate cake. The cake I made is almost like a mudcake and it is mainly made of chocolate, sugar and eggs. I haven’t baked many cakes before because I am quite lazy and I usually bake only muffins and pancakes and other “fast pastries”. I didn’t have any chocolate cake recipes so I had to google for them. I came across an easy-to-make recipe and the cake turn out to be delicious! We ate it with rasperries.

Recipe

Dough:

• 200 grams of butter
• 200 grams of dark chocolate
• 4 eggs
• 2 desilitres of sugar
• 1.5 desilitres of wheat flour
• 1 tea-spoon of baking powder
• 4 table-spoons of cacao powder (for baking)

Frosting:

• 150 grams of dark chocolate
• 1 desilitre of cream
• 1 table-spoon of butter

1. Melt the butter in a pot and add chocolate. Mix until the chocolate has entirely melted.
2. Whip the eggs with sugar.
3. Mix the flour, the baking powder and the cacao powder.
4. Add the melted chocolate into the egg foam and mix carefully.
5. Strain the flour into the dough and mix (still, carefully).
6. Pour the dough into a cake tin (that is greased and dredged).
7. Bake about 45 minutes at 175° Celsius.

After the cake is ready, make the frosting.

1. Heat the cream in a pot (don’t let it boil!).
2. Add the butter and the dark chocolate.
3. Stir until the frosting is even.
4. Let the frosting cool for a while and then spread it on the cake.