This is my first blog, and my first time using WordPress. All things considered, it has gone rather smoothly. ;-) Being a designer, I knew what I wanted but I didn’t have the skills to design my own. All in all, though, I’m pretty happy with what I ended up using. (Designers can be very difficult about things when they *KNOW* what they want. The two worst are shopping with a designer for either shoes or a couch. Go figure!) Now that I have *The Armchair Chef* up and running, it is like I have moved into a new apartment or office and I’m rearranging the furniture and hanging pictures! I just realized last night (as I was falling asleep) that the green background here is very close to color I have picked out for the Front Hall in our house, to set off the Raspberry Rush walls in the Living Room. Our house is 100 yrs old with beautiful, strong, dark woodwork and the wall colors have to have enough visual punch to stand up to the trim. In between wall painting (we paint fairly often) the walls are often a white basecoat and everything looks AWFUL for those couple of days. On the other hand, it gets us motivated to finish the job, if only to hide the ugly white! On the Cooking and Baking front, I dug out my elderly bread machine last week. He is about 13 years old, with the glass dome top and is, of course, nicknamed R2D2. We have very little counter space in our *challenging* kitchen, but he fits in the corner very nicely. I have been making French Bread and we have all been enjoying it very much. We are down to the last slice or two so I’m going to start a fresh batch in the next hour or so. I’ll share the recipe in a later post… but now I have to get back to working on *Monogram Mayhem.* Tink *When I dream, I cook and bake like an artist…*

About a month ago, I suddenly decided I needed to get back to my love of Baking and Cooking. My Mom has been here for a long visit and we have had some wonderful talks. The subject of cookbooks came up and I shared the fact that I used to enjoy reading cookbooks. I have a lot of dietary restrictions but I never let that stop me from reading about wonderful things, even if I couldn’t eat them! Mom told me that my grandmother Aine, (a published poet, btw) also loved to read cookbooks! As we talked further, I mentioned that I had Aine’s copy of *The Joy of Cooking*. This all seemed to rekindle my interest… Jeffrey was kind enough to climb up into the attic and bring down the boxes of cookbooks he had stored there. I am really enjoying renewing friendships with my old favorites. On the weekends, Jeffrey, Mom, and I have been visiting flea markets and antique shops and I have started buying more old cookbooks. One of last week’s scores was a cookbook about Microwave Baking! I haven’t had time to really sit down and read it, but at a cursory glance it seemd comprehensive and VERY interesting. I am quite intrigued about this and will report back as I get it read and will give details if I try any of the recipes! In my other life as a Needlework Designer, I am quite busy working on my new book, *Monogram Mayhem & More for Needlework - How to Design with Alphabets and Wordforms*. It is going well and I’m getting pretty excited about it! It will make its debut at the TNNA Indianapolis Trade Show in June, so I need buckle down! Tink *When I dream, I cook and bake like an artist…* PS - If anyone is wondering about the date changes, I deleted the blog when I had about six posts so I could make some technical changes. I then reinstalled The Armchair Chef and reposted the posts. Ya gotta LOVE technology!