Custom wedding jewelry sneak peek

Oh hey, this is my 100th post!! Awesome. :)

I just recently finished up a set of wedding jewelry for a lovely bride from Missouri.  Once all of the photos are edited and ready for viewing I'll post them here with a little bit of background about the design and the brides' inspiration.  But in the meantime, I wanted to share a little sneak peek of the pieces:

Blue and green seem to be the wedding popular colors these last few seasons- which is fine by me because they look amazing together!

In other news, our garden is sprouting up quite nicely.  I think that I may even be able to snack on my strawberries in a week or two!  Dan and I are very lucky that our garden did not suffer too badly in the terrible flood our street experienced the other night.  Unfortunately, our elderly neighbors across the street from us were not so lucky.  Their garden was completely submerged in the flood waters and now they will have to destroy their entire bed of lettuce and all of the other crops.  I didn't see their garden, but Dan did.  From what he told me, our garden pales in comparison to theirs.  Hopefully, since we are only at the beginning of the planting season, they can salvage what is left of this spring and replant.  

Emmaline Bride feature!

As I was going through some unpublished posts of mine I realized that I've been keeping something very exciting from you all!  On March 8, Helen Ethel Studio was featured on Emmaline Bride!!  Here is the link if you care to take a gander.  Emma, who is the absolute sweetest, featured the Art Deco inspired wedding collection that I made last spring.  It was such an honor to have my work shown among the many other artisans on the Emmaline Bride blog.  In addition to the feature, Helen Ethel Studio is honored to be a featured artisan in the Marketplace!  I've been busy working on a new collection specifically designed for bridal parties.  It is all centered around my Allegory of Spring earrings which are proving to be quite popular.  Hopefully we'll see it in the Marketplace soon. :)

Honestly, I can't believe I forgot to mention this on here!  Better late, than never I suppose!

Scooped Ice Cream, West Chester, PA

I've been a bit preoccupied with thoughts of ice cream as of late.  With the warmer weather I was reminded that finally, finally, we have a kitchen with amble counter and storage space to comfortably operate and store a homemade ice cream machine.  I've been wanting one for years but the size of our old apartment's kitchen shattered my dreams of cool, creamy homemade ice cream confections.  

These thoughts were only strengthened when Dan's sister and her daughter took us to a delicious little ice cream parlor in West Chester, Pennsylvania a few Saturday's ago.  I snapped a few shots of the quaint shop to share with you all.

Scooped Ice Cream is a small ice cream parlor that offers housemade ice cream and gelato at their two locations in downtown West Chester and in Chester Springs, where the ice cream is made.  The shop's use of local ingredients (including cream, fruits and chocolate) sourced from a certified free-range and organic farm in Lancaster, Pa is evident in the quality of the ice cream.  My two scoops of Mint Chip were so creamy and absolutely delicious they left me craving another visit in the near future.

Scooped offers an exciting and somewhat unusual variety of flavors that change daily and seasonally. When we visited, there seemed to be the traditional varieties available and less of the more exotic flavors, but all seemed enticing.  I tasted a few, including a raspberry chocolate chip, but settled on the tried and true mint chocolate chip.  

Other flavors that the shop has made are Candied Bacon in Maple ice cream, Bailey's Irish Cream, and Cookie Monster.  Dan's sister raved about their Cantaloupe ice cream offered in the warmer summer months.  Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any gelato offered when I was there.  I suppose that only means that I need to go back for another visit!  According to Scoops twitter account, which posts updates on the changing flavors, Coconut Macaroon, Chocolate Hazelnut and Espresso are amongst their gelato flavors.  According to a commenter on FourSquare, Scooped also makes a Chocolate Caramel Sea Salt ice cream.  In all honesty, I might actually stalk a business for a taste of that ice cream!

The West Chester location was perfectly quaint and everything you'd expect and hope an ice cream parlor to look like.  According to this article, the location is said to have once been a speakeasy. Even better.

So even though I don't have the capabilities of making my own ice creams and gelati yet, I find comfort knowing that Scooped is there for me when I am in need.  

Address and info on both Scooped locations:

We planted a garden.

Yesterday, Dan and I muscled up and constructed and planted a raised garden.  Here are a few photos of the process.  Later this week I'll be posting a more detailed account of the process, including what we planted, and how it is organized.  From there, I'll be posting weekly updates on it's progress.  We are so excited to embark on our little raised garden bed adventure. :)

The raised garden bed, with a layer of enriched soil.

Arranging the plants.

Plants, after planting.  I'll be adding a few more later this week.

Our helper. :)

Happy Friday

Thursday afternoon, heading home from work.  Shot while waiting for my bus.

Happy Friday, friends. I don't have anything too exciting announce- other than the fact that it is Friday (as you all are aware), and that makes me very, very happy. It's been an odd and busy sort of week and I am extremely thankful for the weekend. I thought I'd share a collection of photos I snapped over the past few weeks with you all. I don't think I do this enough, and I'd like to change that. So from now on readers, please expect a few random photo posts. I hope you don't mind.

Self portrait, snapped Thursday afternoon while playing around with the new Visual Supply Co. app.  Please excuse my appearance- I woke up yesterday two hours late and panicked with no time to get ready for work.  Like I said, I'm very happy today is Friday.

A quite afternoon at Independence Hall.

Heidi, all prepped for her walk during the deluge we were greeted with Saturday night.

Simpson House Tea Room, Chester Springs, Pennsylvania

This past weekend, Dan and I were fortunate to have my parents visit us over the Easter holiday weekend.  On Saturday my mom and I visited the Simpson House Tea Room in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania while Dan and our fathers went golfing.  The visit to the tea room for a traditional English tea was a first for both of us and we really had such a wonderful time.  

The Simpson House Tea Room is located in a restored farmhouse that dates back to the 1890s in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.  The decor is bright and airy without being too overly sentimental.  It recalled, what I would imagine, as an English cottage.  We enjoyed a traditional full afternoon tea, or "low tea", that consisted of a mixture of savory and sweet finger sandwiches, scones, and sweet confections.

Simpson House offers an assortment of over 100 loose teas ranging from Black teas, to Rooibos to a variety of Green teas.  

Our "Royal Tea", as it was described, included a pot of tea for each of us.  We both ordered from the Easter specialty menu which included approximately 6 or so seasonal teas.  My mom enjoyed a Black tea infused with white chocolate chunks and I chose a caramel Rooibos tea that was divine.  The caramel flavor seemed to develop throughout my meal- I really wish I had inquired about the possibility of purchasing the tea to take home!  My mom really enjoyed hers as well and it smelled delicious.  Our individual pots included an ample amount of tea that carried us through the meal and remained warm until the very last sip.

The meal began with a choice of three house made soups.  I chose a tomato basil soup and my mom went with a Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn soup that appeared to be lighter than the typical chicken corn soups I am used to seeing.  The soups were paired with salads composed of fresh greens with what I believed was a raspberry vinaigrette.

My Weekend in Pictures

Happy Monday everyone.  This weekend was a quiet one for Dan, Heidi, and I.  With the rainy, cool weather on the East Coast we weren't really up for doing too much running around and opted to stay indoors where it was warm and cozy.  I actually preferred this because I got a bunch of work done on projects that I wanted to do for myself.  I thought I'd share a few of the photos with you.

We had an embarrassing amount of brown, mushy bananas is the freezer that were just waiting to be used up so I made deliciously moist Banana Blueberry muffins on Saturday morning.  I'll be sharing that recipe with you later this week - it's a winner, for sure.  I also used some of that banana to make Banana Coconut pancakes on Sunday morning.  Those were also quite delicious.

I nearly finished my Wiksten Tank.  Isn't it lovely?

Wiksten tank, in progress.

I really struggled with the neck line.  I'm not quite sure what happened but I think I'm going to pull out my stitches and try it again.  It's also gaping a little bit in the front and back, but it's nothing that I can't live with and I think with a little tweaking I can get a better fit in the future.  I really like the pattern and for the most part (excluding that curved hemline!) it's a quick one to sew up.  I'll definitely be making more for my spring wardrobe.  

I also turned these little guys:

Into this:

Isn't it fantastic?!  I'm ridiculously excited about my new desert terrarium.  Here are a few more shots:

Aerial View

Detail, showing the terrarium's curious little inhabitant.

Please excuse the photos.  I snapped them with my phone but I intend to get some better shots with  my camera in natural light.  I'll be doing a post dedicated to this terrarium detailing the materials, cacti and succulents used.  Readers, I am seriously in love with this.

A few more highlights included finally watching the English-version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  We saw the Swedish-version a few months back and had been really looking forward to the 2011 film.  I'm completely enwrapped in the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, so viewing the film served as a nice little recap for me.  AND Sunday was the season premiere of The Killing.  Ah, yes.

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend, as well!  I'm looking forward to a four day work week (hooray!) so Monday doesn't seems quite so bad. :)