Friday Favorites from Joy the Baker, Ful-Filled, Cooking for Keeps and More

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Good morning! I hope that your week has been great! I am looking forward to the long, holiday weekend, and a little peace and quiet. All week my two dogs, Pisa and Paris have been barking at the contractors that are remodeling the bathroom and the mudroom. After a few hours they stop barking and then then try to escape from the room I have barricaded to go into the bathroom to befriend the same contractors. 

I hope that you enjoy my finds this week. 

Food 

Image Joy the Baker

This Mediterranean Fresh Tomato Tart with Feta from Joy the Baker looks amazing! I have to make this!

Image Cooking for Keeps

Grilled Feta and watermelon stack from Cooking for Keeps is an easy salad to have in your recipe collection. 

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As is this Late Summer Harvest Salad from Ful-Filled.

Image and recipe from Seasons & Suppers

I made this, Pumpkin Cranberry Walnut Bread , my first pumpkin recipe of the season, and it was delicious! I will be making many more loaves of this for the holidays and to give away.

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Kir Royale Cocktail from Cookie + Kate are one of my favorite drinks, I usually use my own homemade raspberry liqueur(which is an easy and delicious DIY gift) when I do not have Chambord. 

Articles

Meet the Unfluencers

Stop Spending Tim With People Who Deplete Your Energy, Confidence and Happiness

Dating While Dying

This Bookstore in the Clouds is Fabulous!

Restore Your Wellness at Work with These 8 Tips

The 13 Best American Road Trips to See Fall Leaves

Dear Introvert/Extrovert Stop Canceling on Everyone Podcast

Books 

Fall Walk by Virginia Brimhall Snow

Learn about autumn leaves through a lyrical tale with illustrations and activities. 

With beautiful illustrations and a lyrical narrative, Virginia Snow takes children on a fun and educational adventure. Take a stroll through the woods and learn to identify 24 different kinds of leaves by their shapes and autumn colors. At the end of the day, learn how to press the gathered leaves and how to make a leaf rubbing.

Book includes:

• Colorful illustrations of 24 separate leaves

• How-to instructions for pressing your own leaves

• How-to instructions for rubbing your own leaves

• A game matching leaves to trees and names

• Fun facts about the trees featured in the book

This is a great book for kids and grandkids. 

When You Read This by Mary Adkins

Iris Massey is gone. 

But she’s left something behind.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.

Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.

Told in a series of e-mails, blog posts, online therapy submissions, text messages, legal correspondence, home-rental bookings, and other snippets of our virtual lives, When You Read This is a deft, captivating romantic comedy—funny, tragic, surprising, and bittersweet—that candidly reveals how we find new beginnings after loss.

The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris

Vianne Rocher has settled down. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the place that once rejected her, has finally become her home. With Rosette, her ‘special’ child, she runs her chocolate shop in the square, talks to her friends on the river, is part of the community. Even Reynaud, the priest, has become a friend.

But when old Narcisse, the florist, dies, leaving a parcel of land to Rosette and a written confession to Reynaud, the life of the sleepy village is once more thrown into disarray.

The arrival of Narcisse’s relatives, the departure of an old friend and the opening of a mysterious new shop in the place of the florist’s across the square – one that mirrors the chocolaterie, and has a strange appeal of its own – all seem to herald some kind of change: a confrontation, a turbulence – even, perhaps, a murder…

Dragonwyck: A Novel( free on Kindle Unlimited)

In the spring of 1844, the Wells family receives a letter from a distant relative, the wealthy landowner Nicholas Van Ryn. He has invited one of their daughters for an extended visit at his Hudson Valley estate, Dragonwyck. Eighteen-year-old Miranda, bored with her local suitors and commonplace life on the farm, leaps at the chance for an escape. She immediately falls under the spell of both the master and his mansion, mesmerized by the Gothic towers, flowering gardens, and luxurious lifestyle—but unaware of the dark, terrible secrets that await.

Anya Seton masterfully tells the heart-stopping story of a remarkable woman, her remarkable passions, and the mystery that resides in the magnificent hallways of Dragonwyck.

Finds

I like this cake stand and think it would be a great piece for Fall desserts, with or without the dome. 

Wood charger($9.98) for your holiday table. 

Brown and white transferware is one of my favorite things to use in the Fall. I just purchased several bowls similar to these Spode bowls at TJ Maxx. 

Beautiful soapstone pumpkin from TJ Maxx. This pumpkin is available on line, just click the link here.  

Ghost and Pumpkin Garland, Available online at TJ Maxx. 

I hope that you have a happy weekend, enjoy the holiday and the extra day off! If you are in the path of the hurricane, stay alert and be safe, I am praying for you.