The 2 Seasons — A mother/daughter duo, experiencing two different seasons of their lives and residing in two different parts of the country, team up to write a lively blog about their new homes, decorating, food, fun, and their world-wide travels.

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Bourbon Balls Recipe

May 17, 2012 By Spring

Early last week I blogged about our Kentucky Derby party. If you missed it, you can read about it here. I made a variety of Kentucky favorites, one of them being bourbon balls. I had several requests for the recipe, so here it is. You will be shocked how easy it is. I found this recipe somewhere on the internet, but I do not remember which site. I give my biggest apology to the genius who developed it because I cannot give you credit.

BOURBON BALLS

1 stick of butter

1 lb. box powdered sugar

1 cup chopped pecans (I only used 1/2 cup and I thought that was plenty)

Pecan halves for decoration (optional)

4 Tbsp. bourbon

4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

4 oz. bittersweet chocolate

- One day ahead: Cream the butter and sugar. Add the chopped pecans, mixing well. Add the bourbon.

- Shape into balls using 1 teaspoon of the mixture for each ball. (You may need to let the batter sit in the fridge for an hour or two before you can easily roll it into balls.) Refrigerate overnight.

- Next day: Melt semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolate in a large bowl in the microwave or over a double boiler. Put a toothpick in the balls and dip in chocolate and place on waxed paper. Remove toothpick and put pecan half on top. Refrigerate to harden. Don’t eat too many at one time, if you know what I mean…….

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Cheers!

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The Porch Dining Area

May 16, 2012 By Autumn

In yesterday’s post (here) I showed you a cute idea I saw at the Decorators’ Showcase home here in Lexington. Today we are on the same porch (there are four), and I want you to see the items they have on their table top. Remember, I used my iphone, and the photo quality could be better.

The table was not an old one, but it had that old look to it.

Instead of a tray, the “homeowner” uses an old dough bowl to carry items from the kitchen to the porch table.

The plates are equestrian themed. Why not? The house is surrounded by horse farms.

This cute candle is under a demi-john that has had its bottom cut out.

Isn’t this a cute carafe for coffee or tea?

The runner was a bluish gray burlap. Burlap was used on many of the windows throughout the house.

A plate rack hanging nearby held more of the equestrian plates.

This view is taken from the sitting area which was pretty cool, too.

Love…..

Isn’t this trunk turned coffee table adorable? There is another one of those demi-johns missing its bottom. Poor thing.

Here is a side table. I’m not sure how long those nuts would last on an outdoor porch in the real world.

Two contemporary side chairs fit right in because of their texture and color.

This masculine pillow was perfect on the side chairs.

These botanical prints were perfect. The brick was hand-made on the property when the house was built in 1885.

Here is one more peak. It makes alfresco dining even more appealing.

Take care.

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Too Cute

May 15, 2012 By Autumn

This past Saturday I took a long and leisurely solo bicycle ride in the country. One of the roads that I took just happened to go past the Decorators’ Showcase house which had opened the day before, and I just happened to have enough money on me to pay the fee. My bicycle pulled me into the parking lot, and I spent a long time just browsing through the house. I’ll share some more posts about the house soon, but today I had to show you the cutest use for a garden rake.

They turned plain ole garden rakes into holders for wine glasses and bottles.

The house was built in 1885 and had four porches, all decorated to the max.

These rakes were hanging by the eating area on the porch next to the kitchen. Can you see the little equestrian bottle opener?

I had one of those “Why didn’t I think of that”? moments.

The decorator from L.V. Harkness, a store here in Lexington, used three new rakes and hung them at three different heights. Two of the rakes were hung with the handles upward, and one rake’s handle was hanging downward.

If you have an outdoor area that you use as a bar, you might want to add rakes. They can be new or cleaned up old ones. You can be sure they will be an instant conversation piece and an unusual accent.

*****

Since I was on my bicycle and didn’t know I was going to the Decorators’ Showcase house, I only had my iphone with me. Nevertheless, I took tons of photos and can’t wait to share more of the house with you.

Take care.

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Our Solar Clothes Dryer

May 14, 2012 By Spring

We try to do want we can to be green. We have reusable bags to take to the stores, we changed our toilet flushers to the ones that save water, we have been buying energy-efficient light bulbs, we compost our leftovers, and we make our own detergent.

(Source)

When I lived in Hawaii, we had a huge clothesline outside our house which was great because the weather was always amazing. We could use it any day. Now that it is getting warmer and not raining as much here in Syracuse, a clothesline has reappeared. It’s another way we can be green.

I ordered this clothesline from Amazon last year for under $20. It is great because it is retractable, and we can easily take it off and bring it in for the winter.

It attaches to this hook, and then we pull it across the yard. It looks a little rough because it already survived a season. It still works great, though.

To make the line tight, we wrap the cord around a couple of times. I marked with a Sharpie where I stop pulling so there isn’t any guessing. The line is nice and tight for all the clothes each time.

The line goes diagonally across our yard. It is long enough to hold one extra large load of laundry. The line was in use all weekend since the weather was nice, sunny and breezy.

When the clothes are dry, they feel and smell great. Then I just unhook and let go. That’s all it takes to put my clothesline away.

As you can see, progress is being made on the landscaping in the backyard. I will blog soon about that process.

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Cheers!

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Out of the Cabinet

May 13, 2012 By Autumn

Happy Monday! This week makes one year since Mr. Autumn and I moved into our dream townhouse. I have had a great time decorating and gradually showing you the results. However, I’ve been hiding a little secret, and it’s time to reveal it.

One of my favorite spots is my pantry/office (here) located beside the kitchen. I set up a bake station in this room so that I can do all of my cake, pie and cookie prep and mixing here without carrying the heavy Kitchenaid mixer into the kitchen.

But a deep, dark secret has been lurking behind this pantry cabinet.

Here it is. I have been living with and fighting this mess for a few months now. Whew! I feel so much better now that I confessed this little weakness.

This week-end I decided that enough was enough. The solution was so easy. All I needed was two of these organizer racks that I picked up at Bed Bath & Beyond for just $5.99 each.

When we remodeled, I had a small sink installed in the bake station area. Its pipes made it impossible to have an upper shelf in this lower cabinet. This is how it looked after I cleared out all of the pans.

After fretting about this one cabinet for a few months, it only took me a few minutes to get it looking like this.

So, how about you. Have you organized anything lately?

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Take care.

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The Mother’s Day Room

May 10, 2012 By Autumn

Hi All. We always share a favorite recipe on our Friday post, but today I want to show you a few photos of The Mother’s Day Room.

Last November when I was in New York City visiting my friend, we went to the Holiday House. It is an annual fund raiser for a good cause (sorry, I don’t remember which organization it benefitted). It was held in a large mansion on the Upper East Side, and each room was all decked out to represent an annual holiday. A different decorating firm is assigned to each room, and they carry out their vision of what that particular holiday should look like.

The Mother’s Day Room was a huge room on the first floor and was done up in shades of white with touches of pink.

Mother has her desk area. She must not mind cords. She spends a lot of time here writing thank you notes to the best of New York society for the lovely time she had with them.

Mother displays her family photos, trophies, and ribbons. Oh, poor thing. No blue ribbons, but they wouldn’t match now would they?

She has a place set up for her afternoon tea with friends, Buffy and Bitsy.

Her silver tea service is very classy.

She had interesting black and whites of women displayed over the fireplace. I bet they are ancestors.

She has a beautiful and huge chandelier. The maid cleans it every week.

Her French doors have mirrored inserts so she can catch a peak of herself as she saunters by. (This mother saunters).

She has very tall white orchids around the room. Her gardener must grow them in her green house.

Mother likes art deco.

I also think Mother might have a little drinking problem. She has two bar areas in her room. I hope this mother has a wonderful day this coming Sunday.

So, do you have a Mothers Day Room? What is it like?

*****

Jordan and I want to wish all of the mothers out there a wonderful Mothers Day. Jordan is going to share her recipe for bourbon balls with you next Friday, but we have lots of interesting things to share with you before then. So, we’ll see you back here on Monday.

Take care.

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Taking the South to the North, Derby Style

May 9, 2012 By Spring

Since we had a great week of celebrating the Kentucky Derby on our blog last week, I thought it was appropriate to host a Derby party here in Syracuse. It was a chance for me to introduce some southern foods and traditions to my northern friends. First off, I sent out paper invitations. I love, love, love invitations and decided to send invites in the mail. Might as well help the postal service out.

I bought the invitations in Kentucky and printed them out on our home printer. We used our custom monogram on the invite. Any chance we can use it, we do.

I tried to do a little Derby decor. A few months ago I saw this horse in a store and bought it. At first I was going to use it as a table centerpiece, but it didn’t have enough color. I ended up putting him on the mantel with some fabric in a frame for a little kick. The fabric may look familar. It is extra fabric I had from my DIY drawer liners. You can read about them here.

I used the chalkboard platter to remind people of the great day, and I printed out some silks to add some color to the dresser near our front door.

Our bar that Mr. Spring built (details coming soon) was set up as Julep Central. Since Mr. Spring is a true Yankee, born and raised in NYC, I thought this quote by Henry Clay, a famous Kentucky statesman, was great to display on the bar.

Since the Derby is the Run for the Roses, of course I had to make the centerpiece red roses. I have been cutting the stems and changing the water daily, and they still look great!

We had a “Best Hat” and “Best Bow Tie” contest. I bought these official Kentucky Derby glasses and mint julep cups for the prizes. Now, whenever the urge strikes them, the winners can make their own juleps.

The table was filled with all the goodies. Most of the food was bite size, so it was very easy to replenish as needed.

I happened to be in Lexington when all the Derby party items were for sale, so I loaded up my suitcase and brought it all back to New York.

These sausage cheese puffs were so easy to make. I made a ton before the party and froze them. Carmel from Our Fifth House had a link for these cute Derby printables. Here it is if you are interested for future use.

I love eating beer cheese when I go to Kentucky and never thought about making it till I found a recipe. It was a huge hit.

Benedictine is another Kentucky favorite. I made little finger sandwiches filled with it.

I tried my luck at mint julep cupcakes.

I also had to introduce bourbon balls to all our friends. I tried a new recipe, and I was shocked how easy and how great they turned out. I will be making them again.

I was so proud of these things.

I was able to grab Mr. Spring away from playing bartender to take a quick photo. He looked like the true southern gentleman. Not bad for a Yankee. Our horse didn’t win, but we had a great time celebrating the Derby with our friends.

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Cheers!

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Making Art for the Dining Room Wall

May 8, 2012 By Spring

The dining room is a popular room in our house. Since we do not have an eat in kitchen, we eat all of our meals in our dining room. I didn’t want a formal dining room because it is just not our style. We prefer something light and fun. The room had a big blank wall that needed some color.

So, I made it go from this……..

To this for less than $30.00.

The only art we had in the room was this cool DIY Dine sign that Mom and I made here. However, we still had one big blank wall to deal with. The only thing on it was our thermostat that we framed here.

Here is a picture of the blank wall. It’s not very interesting, is it? I loved the wall that Emily over at Emily A Clark did in her dining room. I wanted to frame some pictures of flowers and get the same look she accomplished. I was going to buy a book full of old flower prints that my friend Amanda bought. We both had the same plan. I was telling my mom about my idea, and she suggested going to the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. The digital gallery has thousands of images from expired copyrights, so anyone can print them for free. I was able to find images that I liked and print them with our color printer at home.

Here is a screen shot of the home page of the NYPL digital gallery. I decided I wanted to do flowers so I clicked on Nature & Science. Once I was in that section I typed in flowers in the search column and 195 pages of flowers immediately became available.

After being so excited with all the options, I started looking through the pages of flowers. I didn’t have to search far. I fell in love with bright colorful flowers on pages 3 and 4 that would be great for my blank wall.

I thought finding the flowers would be the hard part, but it was super easy. Next up was to print the images. I resized them and started to print. I bought eight sheets of 8×10 photo paper at the Dollar Store, and it worked great for just three copies. Then I started to have issues with my printer. I did some on-line research and discovered I needed to buy photo paper by the company that made our printer. I have an HP printer, so I bought their paper, and it was a huge difference. I guess the printer is able to grab it easier. That was a little tip I was thrilled to learn.

When I was at the Dollar Store, I also found nine 11×14 inch frames. I have never seen that size before so I almost bought all that were in stock. They are black wooden frames, but I decided to make the black a little bolder. I spray painted the frames black with some leftover paint I had on hand.

I was going to buy mats to fit into my frames, but with the resizing of the photos, they were not the exact size. I didn’t want to have the flowers look too grainy so I printed them in a size just shy of an 8×10 photo. No worries though. I decided just to measure and cut my own mats.

I bought a two large mat boards at Hobby Lobby for $7.99 each, and they were on sale 30% off. Plus, now I still have the leftovers. I measured and cut out the mats. This worked out great, and it was much cheaper than the $2.99 each for the pre-cut 8x 10 mat board.

Once the mat boards were all cut, it was time to play around with the photos I printed to see which ones I liked beside each other. I used the dining table to arrange and rearrange them. I planned to hang them very close to each other so they would look almost like one big piece of art.

Here is the finished wall. I am so thrilled with the fun colorful photos. They add so much to our dining room. This whole project was under $30. If I eventually get tired of the look and decide I want different flowers or birds or anything else on the digital library, all I will have to do is print and replace.

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Cheers!

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I Made Dishwasher Detergent???

May 7, 2012 By Autumn

Hi All!!! First of all, I didn’t even know a normal person (assuming I’m normal) could make dishwasher detergent. I thought only Mr. Proctor and Mr. Gamble could do that. That was until Jordan sent me a recipe for it a while back.

So, yesterday Jordan and I were having our daily phone conversation about the blog, and neither of us had anything prepared for today. We make a month-long schedule, but even though she has completed some of her projects, she hasn’t written them up yet. I haven’t finished my projects, but I knew we could come up with something. That’s when and why I decided to go ahead and make the dish detergent. I saw an interview on the Today show with the Duggars (the family with 19 plus kids), and they make their own detergent. I hope this doesn’t make me an honorary one of them or anything like that.

Luckily, I had purchased the ingredients on my last trip to the grocery. I thought it might be a fun little project, since I love to bake and cook as much as possible from scratch. Be warned that there are several recipes floating around out there for dishwasher detergent, but some of them have Kool-aid as one of the ingredients. I know. I don’t want Kool-aid washing our dishes.

It couldn’t have been easier. I just measured and tossed everything in a big (cute) pan and whisked them so until they were well-blended.

Here’s the recipe I used:

2 cups Borax

2 cups Washing Soda

2 cups Lemi Shine

1 cup fine kosher salt

Combine ingredients in a large bowl and whisk till well-blended. Use 1 tablespoon per load of dishes.

I am storing the mixture in an old mason jar with a zinc lid. This detergent is supposed to be ec0-friendly, so putting it in an old jar will make it even friendlier.

Of course, I had to make a label so we wouldn’t confuse it with creamer or something like that.

If this concoction works as well as it is supposed to, I might just be finished with…..you know, Finish.

*****

Take care.

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Put a Plate on It!!

May 6, 2012 By Autumn

Whew!! Now that our Derby Week Event is over and deemed a success, we can settle down and get back into the decorating mode.

*****

Charles Faudree Details

I am always late to the party when it comes to getting the latest decorating book. Just last week I got around to buying Charles Faudree’s most recent book, Details. I heard him speak at a luncheon last year, and he is an entertaining, funny, gifted, and charming man.

We have an area in our foyer that is cute but needed to be cuter. I followed a directive from Charles’s book and put a flea market plate on it. Come to think of it, I don’t believe Charles told me to get the plate at a flea market. He probably recommended getting it at a high-end shop or a Paris market, but I ignored that bit of advice.

Now it’s cuter. But wait, you need to see the big picture – the whole scenario so you can make some sense out of it.

This little corbel with the candle and now plate on it hangs above a still life print.

They fill in some space beside the grandfather clock.

Next to the grandfather clock on the floor is my little French market basket turned umbrella stand. This is the aerial view taken from the steps!!! (It’s a narrow hallway). I actually dusted the top of the clock before I took the photo, thank ya very much!!!

So, all I had to do to spiff the area up a little was put a plate on it. Thanks, Charles, for the idea. I owe you one.

Take care.

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