Pepper Design Blog

A Little of This & That... Renovating, Decorating, DIY Projects & Family

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Dining Room Update: Curtain Call Part 3

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The curtains are up! Remember back here when I was debating six favorite fabrics for the new curtains?

I had the hardest time deciding… but thank you all for the comments and emails that you sent my direction! You helped to confirm my final choice which was the Orla Kiely print!

You might also remember that if I chose the Orla Kiely print I’d have to make the curtains out of a duvet cover. Well it was a close close project, but my king duvet cover (90×108″) made for a near perfect fit. I was hoping to use grommets to hang these guys but when I received the fabric in the mail I realized that the pattern ran in the 90″ direction rather than the 108″ – eek! So instead I clipped up my curtains which gave me a few extra inches of fabric to play with to create a wide hem.

These photos are a bit washed out… it was hard to capture the print against the bright windows and I may end up lining them to help show off the design that I love so much!

I’m sticking with just the jute rug for now, though I might swap out for the brown cowhide rug if I can find other ways to bring in bright colors (you might remember that it was my favorite but made the space feel a tad too dark).

I’ve also swapped out two dining room chairs for a bench/ottoman from the living room.

It makes the space feel much more open – though I’m also keeping an eye out for a bench that might be a little higher and a little narrower. This guy isn’t too realistic to sit on for a full meal.

I love most how the turquoisy blue in the buffet is accented so well in the curtains. They really compliment each other and look great in person.

The pattern is just the modern, geometric update that the space needs!

And overall the room is really moving in the right direction… here’s a reminder of the space before we moved in!

So happy I took the leap of faith with these new curtains and ordered an unusual fabric choice (a duvet cover!) off of eBay, they turned out to be much cheaper than buying the fabric by the yard and I’m so happy with the look! What do you think?

Read the full dining room story by starting here: choosing a rug, curtain call part 2, curtain call part 1, newly styled bookshelves, a buffet-over, upgrading the lighting, the before.

Homemade Chocolate-Dipped Doughnuts

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And they’re gluten free. But don’t let that deter you my wheat-eating comrades, these guys are amazing.

My good friend Anna recently threw a party for her son’s 2nd birthday and featured these chocolate treats as the dessert.

They were so delicious. Rich, moist, flavorful and – dare I say, healthy? okay not quite, but with ingredients ranging from your traditional sugar and eggs to mashed ripe bananas and nay a stick of butter in sight, I’m counting it.

After discovering hers and her son’s intolerance to gluten and dairy, Anna has found ways to substitute key ingredients in delicious recipes to create yummy meals. The secret behind these doughtnuts? A fabulous cookbook that she recently lent me by Silvana Nardone, editor-in-chief of Everyday with Rachel Ray and author of Cooking for Isaiah (check out Silvana’s daily blog here):

Other than the unique flour blend that Silvana has created (which I’m thinking I can substitute with white flour – funny that I’m trying to re-gluten a gluten-free recipe?), the ingredients are basic: eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, baking powder, ground cinnamon, salt and bananas.

Banana Doughnuts (from here)

Makes: 12, Prep Time: 15 minutes, Bake Time: 15 minutes

1¼ cups Silvana′s Gluten-Free Flour Blend
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1½ cups mashed ripe bananas (3 bananas)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
½ cup vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 350 °. Grease 2 nonstick, 6-count doughnut pans. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon. In a small bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar, eggs, 1 ¼ cups mashed bananas, 2 teaspoons vanilla and the oil. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry until just combined. Spoon the batter about three-quarters full into the prepared pans. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted comes out dry, 12 to 15 minutes; let cool completely on a rack.

Chocolate Glaze

¼ cup boiling water
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chopped (about 1 cup)
2¼ cups confectioners’ sugar
1½ tablespoons light corn syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Rainbow sprinkles

Stir together the boiling water and chocolate until melted. Sift in the confectioners’ sugar and add the corn syrup and vanilla; stir until smooth.

Set doughnuts on a rack over a baking sheet. Dip the doughnuts in glaze and set on the prepared rack; top with sprinkles. Enjoy!

Yum. And more photos from the adorable birthday party!

Favorite details include paper lantern hot air balloons (holding little dinosaurs who are each peering over the edge) hung up in the trees and a scrabble mat that doubled as a brightly colored tablecloth (above).

Happy Birthday Mr. Gavin!

PS he’s Kevin and my’s godson, which gives me even more bragging rights. :)

So handsome. This is my favorite picture from the day.

Have you been surprised by any alternative ingredient recipes lately? I must try these doughnuts again soon.

Pinterest Tips & Tricks

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Happy Friday! Today I thought I might share a few tips I’ve learned with Pinterest. You may have heard of a few of these before, but I hope that you find some of them helpful!

*Find out how to see which images from your site/blog have been pinned
*Find the original source of any image
*Let friends, bloggers and websites know that you’ve pinned them
*Add ‘search engine optimization’ to your pins
*Collaborate with friends on boards

Are you on Pinterest? It’s quite addicting!

1. If you have a blog and are curious as to which images from your site have been pinned, there’s a quick and easy way to find out.

To find out which images have been pinned from any site, add the url address of that site after: www.pinterest.com/source/. For example, Pepper Design Blog would be: www.pinterest.com/source/pepperdesignblog.com. This little tip shows which images have been most recently pinned, not all pinned images ever.

2. Pinterest has really improved in helping users to find the original source of an image, but it’s not quite there yet. You can quickly jump back to the original url of an image by selecting the link right under the pinner’s name:

But here’s my favorite trick! When that doesn’t work, or when you want to find the original source to any image online, simply pick up and drag that image into a ‘new tab’ in your browser window. Here I’m dragging one of the posts from my PDB feed from above right over the little ‘+’ sign that indicates a new tab.

The new location that opens is where the previous pinner found your image. You might have to drag and drop the image a few times, but eventually you’ll be led right back to the original post. The only time that this doesn’t work is if the pinner pinned an image from the homepage of a website rather than the particular post that that image came from (which is why it’s key be sure you’re on an individual post url when you’re pinning images, too. You can usually select the heading of any post on any homepage to be taken to that post’s individual url). PS A commenter mentioned that you can double click on an image and it will take you right to the source – I tested it out and it works! An even easier solution!

3. If you ‘follow’ a pinner, you can notify them that you’ve pinned their image (much like Facebook and Twitter). This is helpful if you want to ask a question or offer a comment on an image that you’d like the originator to see, or if you want to share the image with a particular friend. Tag someone in a description by using the @ symbol and then by selecting from the drop down list as you type out the name/blog/website that you’re following.

4. Pinterest uses the descriptions of images to help other users find those images when they are searching for a particular word or phrase. Feel free to help Pinterest out by using hash tags (#) in front of keywords in any description for an image you’re pinning, it will help your fellow pinners at some point in the future! PS Furthermore, Pinterest will default to a description that just lists what the image was originally saved as ‘desserts_ballooncupcakes_400px.jpg’ which isn’t useful at all to other pinners. Be sure to rename to help future searchers out :).

5. This features is actually new to me because it wasn’t around when I joined Pinterest, but now you can collaborate with friends directly just be identifying them when creating a new board. Now the bride-to-be can add her bridesmaids for collecting ideas, or a  designer can work directly with a client by collaborating on an Living Room Makeover board.

Well there you have it, five new tips that I’ve found to be very helpful. Not on Pinterest yet? You’ll love it :), and come say hi by finding me right here.

Have a wonderful weekend!

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