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Welcome to Friday Favorites, a weekly series where I share interesting articles, books, fashion finds, recipes and more.
Good Friday Favorites morning friends, how was your week? Was it a short one for you with the holiday? We had a busy week, we are picking out colors, wallpaper, wood, tile, and lookin at inspiration for two baths. And we received samples for the drapes from several new workrooms. It is such a pain to start over, but a necessary step to get the window treatments in line with the budget, so I will embrace the process.
Did you shop Prime Days? Target deal days? I have been enjoying all of the Christmas catalogs from Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, and of course some of the holiday magazines! Yes, they are out too. Have you found any spectacular deal that you think we need to know about for the holidays.
The irony of all of the early Christmas features from blogs and social media is that my top Pinterest pins for the last 2 weeks are all Valentine’s Day related. What in the heck, talk about skipping a season or two.
I have lots to share with your today including beautiful finds from Boden, lots of cosy comfort food, books and links.
Friday Favorites No. 502 from the Endless Meal, Well Plated, Aberdeen Kitchen and More
Food
Clearly I was craving carbs when I wrote this post.
One Pot Pumpkin Mac and Cheese! This sounds easy and delicious.
Image How Sweet East
Spicy Browned Butter Pasta, just in case you didn’t know, EVERYTHING is better with browned butter.
Image Munaty Cooking
Soft Garlic Knots. I could eat this entire plate right out of the oven. I love hot yeast bread and rolls.
Image Well Plated
Sweet Potato Pie, a delicious alternative to pumpkin pie. Better yet, make them both.
Pumpkin bars with whipped cream cheese frosting, another recipe to add to your Fall dessert list. They are scrumptious.
It’s Friday and that means it’s cocktail time, this week we will be trying Champagne Margarita.
Link Love
Love Katies’ New Series with Fellow Book Lovers
As an Introvert, My Home Is My Haven, So Please Don’t Show Up Unannounced
Beautiful before and after cozy Victorian Home
A young designer’s unconventional approach to the renovation of a wreck
Remembering the night two atomic bombs fell—on North Carolina!
Charleston is the Best Small City in the US
Learn Why There Have Been So Many Great Women Painters
Beef Is Expensive—This Trick Makes Burgers Cheaper
Inside a Highly Lucrative, Ethically Questionable Essay-Writing Service
Books
Long before The Lost Kitchen became a world dining destination with every seating filled the day the reservation book opens each spring, Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on a 25-acre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad’s diner and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into a 19th century mill. This singular memoir―a classic American story―invites readers to Erin’s corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the “girl from Freedom” fairytale, and the not-so-picture-perfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin’s life triumphant.
One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World
The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the writer Michael Frank over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale.
With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium.
Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays over the course of six years that they would spend in each other’s company. During these meetings Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey—measured by both time and distance—of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival.
Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship that develops between storyteller and listener as they explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived.
Organized as a saunter through the year, Romancing the Ordinary celebrates the spirituality of the senses, seasonally and monthly. Ban Breathnach believes that women are endowed not with five senses but with seven. In addition to rediscovering sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch, readers will come to cherish their sense of “knowing” — a woman’s intuitive sense — and “wonder,” her sense of rapture and reverence. Writing in the style so beloved by her millions of readers, and drawing on myth, literature, film, music, and drama, Ban Breathnach encourages each woman to discover what moves her to tears, makes her blood rush to her head, her heart skip a beat, and her soul sigh. Interwoven with the text are seasonal indulgences intended to restore weary feminine souls — recipes, rituals, decorating, fashion, and gardening hints. By encouraging her to delight in the often overlooked gifts of every day — from the aroma of simmering homemade spaghetti sauce to the sensation of freshly laundered linen against bare skin — Romancing the Ordinary is sure to help every woman fall in love with Life.
Christmas Gift Book Suggestions
Christmas Book for children
When Wilma decides her garden needs a new beginning, she gathers string, scissors, shovels, sixty-two dozen balsam seedlings, and Parker, her five-year-old neighbor. Year after year, Wilma and Parker nurture their trees, keeping careful count of how many they plant, how many perish, and how many grow to become fine, full Christmas trees. A cozy, holiday read-aloud and a lyrical way to usher in the month of December.
For More Book Suggestions
If you would like more book suggestions please check out My Book Shop.
Finds
I guess I missed out because at least a dozen influencers were talking about buying this blouse on the Amazon sale and I forgot to add it to my cart. Did anyone get one, I am intrigued.
Boden
Have you shopped at Boden lately? So many new and beautiful things for for winter, including this gorgeous dress(could be worn to a winter wedding) this skirt, this embellished sweater and this coat, it is a statement piece.
Tulle is everywhere this season and Boden has skirts, dresses, shirts and more.
If you need styling tips for tulle check out Cindy Hattersley, she is an amazing designer and fashionista.
UNTIL TOMORROW
I hope that you enjoyed Friday Favorites no. 502 and that you found something to read, make or enjoy.I cannot wait to try the champagne margarita tonight, we are having friends over for dinner and I will be serving this as the “signature cocktail.”
Have a wonderful weekend friends and don’t forget to stop by tomorrow for ”weekend meanderings” with Kim and Juliet! We will have lots to share from coast to coast. By the way, Juliets’ lovely home was featured this week on Cindy Hattersley’ blog! It is a beautiful, cosy, comfortable home.
This post contains affiliate links, if you make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you.
Friday Favorites No. 519 from The Defined Dish, Damn Delicious, Inspired by Charm and More
Friday Favorites No. 514 from Delish, Modern Honey, Creme de la Crumb and More.
Friday Favorites No. 513 from The Roasted Root, Valentina’s Corner, Freutcake and More
Friday Favorites No. 551 from Camille Styles, The Endless Meal, Eleanor Rose Home and More
As usual, I tend to scan your links, then go back and read some. That pie looks too good to slice and eat! I’m not really a pasta eater for some reason. I’m so glad you’re getting your home all fixed up for the holidays.
Brenda
I have never made a sweet potato pie but I thought the same thing Brenda, it is beautiful! Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Pumpkin Mac and cheese?
It is delicious William. Have a wonderful weekend.
Morning!
You have way too many ADS running here!
Maybe because I’m reading on my phone?
It is NOT an enjoyable read as one is fighting the Ads trying to hit the X in the upper right corner to get rid of it only to have ANOTHER appear!!!!
Something needs to change!Even writing this comment an AD is popping up at the bottom!!!
I feel you need to Know as it annoys me a Reader and I’m certain others.It takes twice as long to
read your post as it does the others.
Hi Elizabeth, thank you for letting me know. I am working on reconfiguring the ads. I appreciate your comments.
Elizabeth, I love your blog posts! Do you know why I always get the email notication a day late?
Hello Penny, I am trying to fix that. In the past I used Mailchimp, and now use flodesk, unfortunately MailChimp keeps sending emails too. Thank you for letting me know.!