For years I’ve kept a “Dinner Party Diary” where I write about special parties ~ for the memories ~ it’s part diary, part scrapbook. And this MUSICA is for you, also for the memories . . . we can only imagine how many kisses there’ve been with this music playing in the background! (Just click on it and come right back, it will play while you read.)
♥ ♥ ♥
I started keeping track of parties in this book in 1993, but not every party I’ve ever given is here . . . it’s a tiny book and probably has only twenty parties. I only do them when I remember, or I’m in the mood, or the party is so good that I have to do it! Our Sunday Breakfast Party went right into the book: I remembered, I was in the mood, and it was good!
♥ ♥ ♥
Our 9th Anniversary is in this book too . . . that one was an afternoon tea party and we hired a piano player to play The Glory of Love, and all the other old songs we love. I always write down the names of guests, the menu, the dishes, and the weather. (And sometimes what we wore, and sometimes poems people say at the table.)
And here we are, getting ready for our 25th Anniversary Party. Starting with putting a clean tablecloth on the dining table; Girl Kitty had grown fond of the old one and wasn’t letting go of it so easily.
And then the flowers . . . it was supposed to be a combination Valentine’s & Anniversary party, but with the gorgeous weather, it turned out to be an impromptu celebration of Spring! We even had the door open! Birds were singing. It was gorgeous.
You can’t celebrate spring around here without daffodils! They are the cheeriest things!
A little pink for the coffee table.
Happy singing bird vases, a heart teapot, a matelassé bedspread for the tablecloth ~ and what breakfast party is complete without chocolate kisses?
Love? Romance? Hearts and flowers? Old music, best dearest friends . . . and delicious food. And everything pretty in pink!
I made the place cards; luckily Joe has a cork fetish and never throws them away, so I thought, what says celebration and happy memories more than a popped champagne cork . . . ? ♥
I tucked the cards into the wires on the back.
We needed a centerpiece. Joe and I took the QEII on what we called “our test run,” to see if we liked it, in 1997 from New York to Bermuda. Sailing on the QEII was something we talked about the first time we met — not necessarily doing it together (it was too soon for that at the time) but something we both wanted individually! So, of course we saved this little bottle of port we found waiting, when we finally did go, in our stateroom, and now it’s part of the glory of, the story of, love. ♥
Almost there, need napkins! Need food!
Jack helps by bouncing off the walls and aerating the chair backs with claw holes. Thank you Jack!
Yes, actual food will be served. I do adore setting the table, but I know that our guests are going to expect food, not just dishes and flowers! Here, Joe’s making crepes the day before, for the Cheese Blintzes we’re serving.
There they are, the blintzes; the lemon, basil, and ricotta-cheese filling is all rolled inside…. we covered the pan and put it in the fridge; the next morning we browned them in the frying pan before serving with delicious jams, applesauce and sour cream. The recipes for all of this will be in my new Breakfast Book!
Did the MUSICA go away? Noooo. Say it ain’t so. Can’t have that. ♥
Is there anything better than plain, old-fashioned, ice-cold, juicy-pink grapefruit on a spring morning? No, and I do what my mom taught me; I cut around each segment for easy eating.
Mmmmm, crisp-edged, crunchy Blueberry Corn Cakes and hot maple syrup! Gotta have it!
Homemade Applesauce made with Granny Smith’s, so fresh and appley! Yummy with Corn Cakes, delicious with pork sausages, perfect with Cheese Blintzes.
My Applesauce is full of apple bits with a little tooth to them, not the smoothed out stuff you get in the market . . . we served it cold. I put some roasted cranberries (left over from the cranberry marmalade I made for the blintzes) in the middle as decoration.
We had bacon, sausage, sliced steak and buttermilk biscuits too . . . the platters warmed on top of the stove. The southern style breakfast at Tara, with Scarlet O’Hara’s family, I read about in Gone with the Wind, was my inspiration for this . . . believe it or not we didn’t touch the decadence they managed to come up with! But we tried!
Margot and Tom weren’t able to make it 
, they’re on their way to New Orleans 
, but before they left, they stopped by with Margot’s gorgeous bouquet of Valentine roses ~ which were still beautiful; she thought we might like to have them at the party.
She was so right! I recut them and put them in a shorter vase and here they are, a little more Valentine love DNA, gracing the granola-yogurt-and fresh-fruit buffet we set up on the sideboard. Thank you Margot! (BTW, that sideboard was here when we bought the house; Mrs Bowditch (a previous owner) told me it was here when she bought the house in 1949; maybe it’s been here since the beginning, 1859, when the house was built and the Smith family moved in! I would like it to talk!)
Man Food.
And there it is in all its glory; we turned on the music and toasted to love and each other with icy tangerine juice and bloody Mary’s; we had tea, coffee, and everything you see on these plates! We talked about local island news while the birds sang outside the 
window; what’s been in our papers, what the ferry boat is up to these days, the weather (of course), how far up the daffodils have come, the blooming snowdrops, our gardens, Facebook, Twitter, movies, spring vacations; and we ate, and ate. I didn’t do a dessert (although I was tempted to make baked stuffed apples in a cream bath!) — but did we actually need anything more? No. We did not. Then everyone kissed good bye and went home; we washed the dishes, read the paper, and took a nap, then we went to the movies and saw the new silent movie called The Artist. And THAT was Sunday, pretty good huh? Love morning parties!
And for your patience for reading through this, not to mention WILLARD, who has spring fever just like me, and is going out to play all day today and tomorrow; you have a reward . . . I have something I’m really excited about . . . a giveaway I think you will love. Ready? OK, it’s these ~
Two Johnson Brothers, Rose Chintz Teacups! Yes! With saucers! ”Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear!” My own set actually has twenty cups-and-saucers, many more than I will ever need! So I am giving away two of them! They come with invisible magic as they were right there on Sunday, at the party of love. (But, of course, just like the sideboard, they won’t talk!) All you have to do to be entered is to leave a comment; “Vanna” will draw a name in about three days . . . want to make sure you all get a chance to enter to get a little springtime pink in your life. ♥
HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY GIRLFRIENDS! Sing HO!
This is our sky last night! We walked into town for dinner with our BFF Lowely and John who live one door over; they came over to “pick us up.” As we stepped out the kitchen door, we were compelled to look up; we just stood there in the middle of the grass, transfixed, heads rolling back on our necks, staring at the sky in awe — it reminded me so much of those summer nights sleeping out in the backyard when we were kids — looking into the night sky until our eyes glazed over and we fell asleep. Martha’s Vineyard is far enough away from the big cities, this little dark island spot in the Atlantic, to get these amazing starlit skies. My photos don’t do it justice; it’s hard for the camera to focus on such little faraway pinpoints; but the stars were clear as ice last night glittering hard in the black sky. I thought you might like to see it.
We walked home, fat and happy from a wonderful dinner and even better conversation; about how to handle life, how our work is going, where we’d love to travel, our trip to New York, their trip to Costa Rica, Lowely’s taking French lessons, how Joe and I met; two couples, holding hands under the stars, chugging up the little hill to home; past the picket fences, the old trees, porch lights on the houses throwing long shadows.
. . . under the spire of the old church and the town hall . . . home to kitties and cozy bed and feather comforter; and that was our evening!
Thinking I might use old books like these for a centerpiece; maybe put some old photos with them. Some glass candlesticks too. I almost told everyone to wear their jammies, and then I thought better of it. But we’ll have a fire.
Can’t decide between these happy no-name flowery dishes . . .
Or maybe a whole table of PINK . . .
But I’m definitely using this! And I might even use this quilt for the table cloth, or would that be too busy? All these decisions, how much fun can one person have?
Or maybe I’ll use this old Matelassé bedspread as a tablecloth and keep the table light and bright and clean. If Girl Kitty will get off of it. That will be the challenge today, kitties love to spread themselves out on my projects and pretend they don’t know what they’re doing! 
See my windows full of hearts? Our house is at the end of a long street; people come to a stop sign here and face my house, just like this. Because of all the one-way streets, pretty soon everyone has to pass this stop sign in order to get where they’re going on this island. 
We got a Valentine from a very special person yesterday! She knows who she is! 
Preheat the oven to 400°; put softened unsalted butter and cream cheese into a deep bowl . . .
Add grated orange zest (P.S. I hope you have one of these 
Excuse me, time out: Water came to a boil, need to stop and fill my cup!
OK, toss the orangy goodness into the bowl . . .
Use a hand mixer to beat everything together until smooth . . . mmm, cream cheese, butter and orange . . .
Scrape down the batter in the bowl . . .
Add sour cream for richness and tender crumb. BTW, Don’t you think that when the world lost Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald that an overall mistake was made? Don’t you want to say, please, put them back? They left us music divine.
Stir in two tablespoons of granulated sugar . . .
Gradually beat in a little flour until well blended . . . Oh-oh, check out the top of the refrigerator, we have company . . .
Speaking of Valentine’s! 
More beating of the flour . . .
Add mini chocolate chips – if you like walnuts, which I do, you can add them here too . . . which I would if we hadn’t run out! Almost had all the ingredients; but trust me, with them or without them, the word is 
Stir well, my little darlings . . .
Put a heaping tsp. of dough into each cup of an ungreased miniature muffin pan (I took this photo to show you what a heaping tsp. looks like) . . . I used my black-iron heart muffin pan, which I’ve had for a hundred years — I’ve truly gotten my money’s worth out of it! When it’s not in use, it makes my pantry wall look cute by hanging there. I know a secret about this muffin pan, I’ll tell you at the end of this post!
You want to fill the cups completely down into the little points, around the curved tops, so you have good shapes, and level the surface of the dough.
And bake 15-17 minutes until light brown . . .
We are complete: we have Beauty on the table, Beast is on the fridge, biscuits are in the oven, and all’s right with the world.
Have a basket ready, line it with a clean tea towel . . . pop the biscuits right out of the pan into the basket, you don’t have to let them cool first.
Beautiful and delicious, they can bake as you put on the tea water, and be done by the time the tea has steeped . . . the orange is what you smell first, the chocolate melts on your tongue, and you are happy.
I tried them with this delicious new honey I put on everything these days (it came from
Serve one of these tea biscuits next to a cup of breakfast tea; put them in a basket for a tea party; or if you have a fun Valentine’s tin — they are a wonderful surprise, arranged on a lace doily and dropped by a friend’s house.
Girlfriends, Gardens, Giveaways, and Gab
Hi Everyone! I just had to start off today with a big heartfelt Thank You — I spent all day yesterday writing a brand new Willard which will start going out to everyone next Tuesday . . . and in between, when I wanted a little entertainment, I would make myself a cup of tea and read your wonderful comments! You are all the things I love most about my girlfriends . . .
For me, and for each other! You make every day Valentine’s Day!
♥ ♥ ♥
And now I guess we should get to the main reason we are gathering here today, the very big excitement we have brewing on this blog, what we’ve been waiting for with tea cups in hand, which is to find out the name of the winner for that Heart-Shaped Iron Pan and the Emma Love Tin we’re giving away to one of our lucky girlfriends.
But perhaps not! Let’s not be too predictable; a little build up of expectation is fun, besides, until I type out the actual name of the winner, you are ALL still lucky winners, and I really like that so much better! The hardest thing is to set the Random Number Generator into action and just choose one! I’m like a mom who likes the presents to be opened really slowly at Christmas so I can see my kids faces. Wade through this first and I’ll tell you at the end. First I want to show you what I got for Valentine’s Day. If you’re a darling, tall, smart, handsome man named Joe, what do you get the girl who has everything?
♥ ♥ ♥
OK, pour your tea, we have to get going, I have business to talk to you about today: I’m calling today TCOBD: Taking Care of Business Day. I will try not to bore you too much. But I’ve gotten so many blog-oriented questions lately, I thought I would put them in a pile and do them all at once and today’s the day.
I know many of you understand how blogs work, but lots of you aren’t sure; we have new girlfriends joining us every day, and I remember how it felt to leave a comment and have it disappear. I would work so hard on my comment, and then it would go away, leaving my connection to that blogger and her followers out in the cold, never to be seen by human eyes, making me feel like an idiot. Everyone else could do it, what was wrong with me? (This is rhetorical, you don’t have to answer
) So I thought I’d make sure that doesn’t happen to any of you and explain how this blog works. There are no photos that “go with” this subject, so I am going to scatter pictures of my Central-Coast-of-California picket-fence garden between the paragraphs. OK? Because I’m getting a bit of a yearn to get my hands into some garden dirt. I think it might feel inspiring to see a little garden in bloom right now . . .
Mmmm, can’t you just smell those roses and wild alyssum and those California hills? We found that giant homemade birdhouse at a flea market.
OK, back to business, I’d like to deal with the biggest troublemaker first: the RSS Feed you see in the column on the right of the blog: see where it says, “Subscribe, Click Here?” I’m thinking about taking that down. If you click on it, you can sign up to receive emails telling you my blog has been updated, and they send the actual blog to your email address, which sounds like a good thing. But there are drawbacks, which is one of the main reasons I’m writing today. Thousands of you have signed up for it, so you get this blog directly to your email account — but there are three main things going wrong with this method of reading the blog. Number one, for better or for worse
, you don’t get any of my homemade videos, so you don’t get to see Jack leaping in the air to go after a ball, you don’t get to see any snowstorms on Martha’s Vineyard, or walks in the woods. All those big black squares you’ve been seeing? In real life, those are movies. You can probably live without them, but there’s more. Number two, none of the little icons at the top of the blog are visible to you, so you can’t see “Martha’s Vineyard Love Letter” or “Domesticity City,” you can’t see the Peter Rabbit room, or “I Love England” — there’s a lot more on the actual blog that’s missing in those emails! (People are reading this via email right now…they don’t know what I’m talking about — they have no right-hand column, no art icons, all they have are these words, which is why I’m writing to them now.) Number three, and the worse part of it, is that you can’t see our comment page; you can’t leave comments to enter our drawings, you can’t see each others comments . . . and that, of all of this, is the thing I miss for you the most, because you can’t see the smart, funny, charming comments full of love we get here everyday or leave any yourself! Girlfriends are talking to each other and making friends, I think you would enjoy seeing it. But that part’s not delivered via email!
At least you can all see these breath-of-fresh-air pictures, but what you really need to do is allow the email to just be your alert that something new has been added to the blog, and then immediately come to www.susanbranch.com and read the real blog, with all the art, the extras, the comment line, right here at the source. Up to now, any comments you leave from your emailed blog updates are coming, one by one, to a separate-from-the-blog info@ email address . . . which is invisible to the world. Many of you have noticed there is no “comment” word at the bottom of your emailed post and are writing to ask where to leave your comments so you can enter the drawings. In order to answer, I would have to send an individual email to each of you — I’ve tried, but it’s just an impossible job . . . So come on over!!! www.susanbranch.com — where despite that it’s only February, the sun shines warmly and the garden is happy happy happy . . .
XOXOXOXOXOXO
See what you’ve been missing? So glad you’re here! Next subject in this Thursday’s tutorial: When I write a blog or a Willard you will see colored letters like that, underlined. Not everyone knows they are links . . . if you click your cursor on the word Willard, you will be taken to a place where you can sign up to receive my Willard Newsletter and read how it got its name. When I write the word MUSICA, and it’s underlined, you can click on it and get the musical selection for the day. The idea is that if you click on it, a new screen from youtube will come up and music will start playing; if you don’t like it, click it off. If you do like it, just leave it, move the screen over if necessary, because under the youtube screen, this blog screen is still there — come back here . . . to read with the music playing in the background. I do it this way because I don’t really love it when I come to a blog and there’s music playing that I don’t like! I get frantic looking for the volume button to turn it off; I’m easily driven insane and I wouldn’t want this to happen to you. But music can be wonderful; I love the music my mom used to sing around the house when I was growing up, music from old beloved movies; I like to match it up to my post, like the Love music I did for Valentine’s Day, sometimes I think it’s the best part of the post, like what’s playing right now!
Several people ask me how to leave comments . . . just scroll to the bottom of any post, you will see the tiny word “comments” in grey letters with numbers next to it. The numbers tell how many comments there are (and you should know, if you can’t tell by now, I read every one of them!). Just click on the comments word, and you can leave yours. Sometimes it will take a while for a comment to become visible; first off, I like to read them, and secondly, I have to approve each of them individually because, for some reason I still don’t understand, this blog attracts the Los Angeles Freeway system of spam. Crazy silly nonsensical things, from vacuum cleaner updates, to rogue biting dog information. I don’t know why or where it comes from, but for every ten of your comments, I get three spam comments. Some of them are as long as a novel, we don’t want them on our pretty blog messing things up, so I have to physically delete every one of them — which is why sometimes your comments take a while to “approve.” Have faith, I will always get there sooner or later. The blog also has little quirks: if it wants, it will remove words; it will remove links; sometimes I think it loses complete comments — these things don’t happen often; there’s no rhyme nor reason to it; it’s probably what the future will be like when robots take over the world. Disclaimer: It’s really not my fault. I am only the human around here, and not totally in charge.
I love these colors together!
You’ll notice I’ve been leaving links all over this post today . . . because lots of people don’t know that under those little bits of art at the top of this page are things like my Book List, my Sewing Room, and Girl Food; stories about interesting Martha’s Vineyard people like Nancy Luce, or heroes like Gladys Taber and my dad. They’re there so that when I’m away for a couple of days, you still have fun things to read. I try to add new things there as often as possible, new How-To Recipes for example, there are lots of them, like the delicious Pineapple Upside-Down Cake I made for our Valentine’s Dinner. ♥
I used to have a store in California; I would fill it with roses from my garden every morning, which is why I have this basketful here. Someday I’ll do a blog and show you pictures of my store. It was lots of fun, maybe the most creative thing I ever did, making it beautiful every day, but it wanted so much of my time (picking roses!, I was crazy!) So we opened a store on line where I can only show you pictures of roses!
Most of you know we have Shopping Pages here on the blog, but did you know we have lots of Free Stuff? Stationery you can print out, pretty wallpaper for your computer screens, score sheets for games, bookmarks, and things like that? We change them for the season, pretty soon we’ll have all new things for SPRING!!! You’ll see we also put a Man Cave on our main shopping page! A comfy place for the men in our lives to feel at home and shop for the women they love so they don’t have to wander aimlessly as they are so wont to do in hugely feminine places, poor babies. ♥
Are you still with me? I’m trying to answer everything at once, then I will save this in the FAQ part of this blog so these questions will be forever answered. The only other thing I wanted to tell you is that each of us has a way of making our computer screens lighter and brighter . . . if you do that, everything you see on the internet is prettier, flowers are brighter, watercolors are clearer. If your screen is a little dark, look for a way to make it lighter; my keyboard has a button with a little sun on it, I press it and I can make the screen lighter or darker. OK, that’s all the business for today. I hope it helps someone!
In case my photos aren’t doing it for you today, and so this post isn’t a complete loss inspiration-wise, last night Joe and I finished watching a long lovely movie we got from Netflix. It’s called Our Mutual Friend; the last book written by Charles Dickens, some say his greatest; it’s a 1998 BBC Miniseries — we loved it!
OK, here it comes, I can see Vanna’s golden hand with her pink nail polish and her glittering diamond rings dipping into the huge bowl filled with slips of paper . . . She’s stirring, now pulling one, pulling one, here it comes, oh! She went very deep this time . . . and the winner is… well girls, we don’t have a last name . . . but we have clues: the winner has a Yahoo email address, she’s a single mom with teenagers who loves creating things . . . I wrote her an email telling her she is our lucky winner . . .
I’m waiting for her reply, maybe she’ll recognize herself . . . her name is
S H A R O N J.
Congratulations Sharon! You’re one in over 1,700! I know I speak for all of us when I say how happy we are for you! Your prizes will be in the mail just as soon as I hear from you! I have to say, I’m so happy we have Vanna. I would hate to have to choose the winner myself! What an impossible job, all those fabulous heartfelt funny wonderful comments. I think you’re all wonderful. Thank you for bringing me so much
Have a wonderful day! ♥