Bomb Cinnamon Rolls

Steph here. The other night, I got a craving for cinnamon rolls. Homemade ones. But we are out of yeast to make the kind that rise. Plus, they take too long to make. So I searched the internet (actually my husband Joe did) for a no yeast recipe. He found one! Here it is. Now this chica put a lot of time into photographing her creation. So enjoy her photogs. Here is one of hers:

 

They looks so good right? AMAZING. So I had to try my hand at it. Here is the recipe:

No Yeast Cinnamon Rolls

Yield: 12 rolls

Prep Time: 30 min

Cook Time: 20 min

Ingredients:

Filling:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Dough:
2 cups bread or all-purpose flour, + more for rolling
2 tablespoons granulated white sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten

Cream Cheese Frosting:
2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2/3 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons milk or buttermilk

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a muffin tin with nonstick spray.
2. Prepare the filling: In a small bowl, combine the filling ingredients with a fork until a crumbly mixture is formed.
3. Prepare the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Use clean hands (or a pastry blender) to work the butter into the dry ingredients. Add the milk and the egg and stir to combine.
4. Roll the dough out on a floured surface into roughly shaped large rectangle (about 1/4-inch thick). Sprinkle the filling evenly over the surface of the dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border all the way around. Carefully roll up the rectangle (the dough will be soft). Use a sharp knife to cut 12 rolls. If you want smaller rolls, cut them a little smaller and you'll get 18. Carefully place the rolls in the prepared muffin tin.

5. Bake 20 to 25 minutes. While the cinnamon rolls are baking, prepare the frosting: Combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar and milk/buttermilk in a medium bowl. Use an electric mixer to combine. Add a little more milk if you wish to have a thinner frosting. Spread the frosting on top of warm rolls or drizzle on top. Serve warm.

 So I followed the recipe...more or less...and it was super easy! Here are the buns pre bake...

 

Here are the buns post bake, sans the homemade cream cheese icing on top! Worth the trip to the grocery store at 10:00 at night? I think so...

I urge you to try these. You won't regret it!

Semi-Homemade Beaded Jewelry

So, I should start this post by saying that I am NOT a beader. I aspire to be, but I'm not quite there yet. I decided to write this post to make the point that one need not have many skills or tools to make some simple and inexpensive beaded jewelry and have some fun in the process. This is not a craft about which you should be saying, "I could never do that."

You can find everything you need at a bead shop. If you're in Baltimore, D.C., or McClean, VA, check out Bedazzled. The entire store is filled with self-serve plates/trays of beads arranged in regions of the store by color. Tools, findings, cords/wires/chains, containers for your beads, and everything else you may need, plus some nice gift items, finished jewelry, and books can be found at this nifty store. I also love to go to the International Gem & Jewelry Show when it comes to town. On the other hand, you can always go to your local Michaels or A.C. Moore. Bedazzled, Michaels, and A.C. Moore all have great beading ideas/tips/information/how-to's on their sites.

If you don't want to design your own item, you can buy a beading kit. I am sure that this necklace came from a kit for kids. I made it at a birthday party when I was in elementary school! I can't believe it's still in one piece, but it has definitely stretched a bit too much (it's not exactly a choker anymore).







You also can choose one signature bead and make a super simple necklace with just one bead as a pendant. The two beads below are my most recent Bedazzled acquisitions.

                          

You can also choose a few large beads and then use matching/complementary seed beads like the ones below.

Here's one of the more complicated things I've made in recent years:










I also want to share with you two pieces my mom made when I was a kid and I still wear to this day. Both incredibly chic, classic, and simple.

You can see here that there are only two colors of beads and that they increase in size from each end with the biggest in the middle.

This piece uses two sizes of the same color bead with five seed beads between each larger bead. You could just use the exact same bead all around and still have a cute piece.

There's one more incredibly simple project I made that I'd like to share. For all of you bead wearers out there, I know there has been a time or two when a necklace or bracelet fell to pieces. When you're lucky, you can recover all of the pieces (or most of them). I usually end up shoving the loose beads into an envelope, and if they look salvageable, I transfer them to my beading box. When I have time, I resurrect them into something new (and probably simpler).


So, don't feel overwhelmed! You can rescue injured jewelry, and you can make some really cool things with very little practice--just think what you could make if you do decide to dedicate yourself! For me, the hardest parts are not buying too many things in the store(s), threading the beads, and tying the knots. All of the above pieces use cord or wire and a clasp. I used small pliers for a few of the pieces, and for the pieces with seed beads, we used a beading needle.

Want an even easier project? Try earrings or bookmarks! It's always a nice feeling when you've made something yourself, even if that something doesn't require too much effort!


--Lael

PS. For some really cool DIY jewelry, see this Mixed Method post!

Goodwill Hunting: Tom, the Piper's Son, $8.00

There are so many interesting things about this piece that I found at the Goodwill store on Padonia Road last autumn that I don't know where to start! It's made of wood, measuring about 8 1/2 inches wide by 12 inches high, and it features a young boy running with a piglet tucked under his left arm. Both characters are adorable, especially the piglet, who looks thrilled. His hooves and curlicue tail are all stretched out, as though he imagines he is flying through the air. The craftsmanship involved in its creation--through a process called marquetry--makes this panel even more intriguing.

I counted at least 42 separately cut, individually painted pieces of wood veneer in this design. Wow! Even details like the boy's eyebrows, and the tiny buttons on the cuffs of his jacket, were cut and placed in custom-made recessions in the underlying panel.

Without any textual clues on the front or back of this piece to help me understand the subject, I turned to Google. Searching for "boy running with pig" turned up an old children's nursery rhyme that I believe this piece illustrates. It goes like this:

Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Stole a pig and away did run
The pig was eat
And Tom was beat
And Tom went crying down the street

At first I was shocked to think that this innocent looking boy with his cute green short trousers and jacket (not to mention his fastidious, how-much-Brylcreem-did-that-take? side part) is whisking this pig away only to turn it into bacon. Turns out a "pig" is a kind of pastry, sort of like a miniature apple pie, which means this piece of art is also a visual pun.

Even better: the nursery rhyme served as inspiration for a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon meant to spoof Dragnet, one of my favorite shows to watch as a kid! Thrift Art simply doesn't get any better than this.

Exhibit at the Walters Art Museum: "Paradise Imagined: The Garden in the Islamic and Christian World"

"Paradise Imagined: The Garden in the Islamic and Christian World" is the current manuscript gallery exhibition at the Walters Art Museum (through September 23rd).

A show of approximately 26 pieces, the manuscript gallery shows are always small but intense. The website describes the exhibit in detail, beginning with this line: "This exhibition explores the art of gardens and the cross-fertilization of garden imagery between the East and West. Gardens have functioned as spaces of invention, imagination and mythmaking, as well as places of repose and recreation, for different cultures across time."

Although I greatly enjoyed the exhibition and would encourage everyone to go, I felt that a good number of the pieces seemed to have been included solely for having a floral motif: an Iznik plate, several leaves from different manuscripts/editions of De materia medica, a covered pot and tray, an alphabet book, a mosque lamp, and several illuminated Qur'an manuscripts. Don't get me wrong, these pieces were all lovely, but I would have liked a bit more explicit "garden" and "paradise" to flesh out the story the exhibition was trying to tell.

However, this is a one room exhibition without loans--in fact, the vast majority of pieces in this exhibition were collected by the younger Walters, Henry. Knowing that can certainly give the exhibit another layer, when one considers what it would mean to have acquired those objects.

This exhibition is also exceptional for something its title notes: its attention to cross-cultural works and exchange. It was wonderful to see such a diverse exhibit which incorporated works from many countries, cultures, languages, and in several media--pottery, an ivory inscription, woodcuts, illuminated manuscripts.

There were many gorgeous works with excellent detailed workmanship. The Walters has an excellent website with digitized images of many of its works. I wrote down the accession numbers of some of my favorite items so I could link to them: an Italian 15th century psalter and a Persian Book of Kings (Shahnama).

It's always worth it to play around on the website, especially since the museum digitized all of their Qur'ans!

So why include a picture I took of a rose that has nothing to do with the exhibition? If this exhibition was about viewing gardens and flowers in different ways across cultures and times, well, I figured, why not (and you know, image permissions and all that jazz)?

--Lael

Light as Art

Hi, this is Steph. And this is my first post with On the Side after Five. I am an architectural historian by training, but a crafter at heart. I love taking photographs, cooking, diy paper projects, rubber stamping, painting and more. Check out this blog a couple times a month for posts by me! They will focus on whatever project or inspiration currently consuming me. Enjoy!


The other night, I had the pleasure of going to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. It was a much needed trip. I needed a bit of 'zen' time. Time spent enjoying a peaceful, quiet and intriguing place. This post isn't about creating any tangible object. Rather, it's about finding time to enjoy art. For the past few weeks, Longwood has been hosting a wonderful light installation by Bruce Munro, a British light artist. WHAT?! I didn't know one could be a light artist but, now I want to be one.

Inside the Conservatory, the main overhead lights were dimmed, and Munro's lights dangled from the ceiling in various configurations. Small lights, large lights, groups of lights, single lights. They were magnificent! Gazing at the lights, while smelling so the scents of some many wonderful flowers was super calming and just put me in a good place. 

Outside, in a far off field, recycled bottles filled with water and strung with lights created large lit drums. This, in combination with some mystical music created a lovely place to sit and just relax. The whole scene was really breathtaking. And surreal. 

One of the best parts of the whole installation was near one of the coolest treehouses at Longwood - an entire forest filled with fiber optic light bulbs! Each bulb slowly changed color from yellow, to red, purple, blue, and green.

The purpose of this post? To share an amazing place with all our readers, of course! But also to remind you to go out and look for art all around you. Art doesn't just live in art museums. Munro's installation and whole body of work takes light to a new level. One that I certainly enjoy!

Check out more of my photographs here.

Goodwill Hunting: Horse, $4.00

UPDATE: Hi everyone, I'm Jessica! Lael asked me to kindly introduce myself, since this is my first post. I work as a visual resources librarian, which means I get to look at art all day, every day. I'm not at all artistically talented, so it's a good thing I like spectating. Someone once told me that if you can't do, teach; and if you can't teach, teach phys ed. I guess the philosophy behind my love of acquiring thrift store art is similar: if you can't make art, buy art; if you can't afford to buy art, dumpster dive for it!

When I first saw this piece at the Goodwill on Joppa Road I was struck by the negative space around the horse. The absence of any context made me think of Japanese woodblock prints featuring animals against neutral backgrounds (here's a 17th-century example by the artist Tanyu: Startled Horse). What I love most about this thrift shop find is the muted color palette and the fine detailing of the horse's hair, not to mention the gentle expression on his face.

On the back of the frame--which is coming loose at the corners and required some hammering together--is an old label from the Freeman Victorius Framing Shop in Charlottesville, VA, in business since 1938. This riderless horse has been hoofing it around the Mid-Atlantic for a long time, decades maybe, but he's found a new hitchin' post in my apartment.

The Quest for the Alpha Omega

Okay, so this post is really just about me trying to acquire jewelry.

A few years ago around Christmas, I saw this Alpha Omega  in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Store online shop. $550???? Yup. They also have this Christogram. $375!!!! The latter is based on this "Fragment of a Marble Sarcophagus" in the MET collections.

I was sad, but in January a clearance catalogue came out which had a cheaper version with the Chi Rho. I was super excited to obtain it for around $40.

Although I love this piece, I've been looking for a less expensive suitable Alpha Omega since then (but, if anyone wants to buy me a $550 piece of jewelry, I won't complain. It's a beautiful piece).

In the process, I've found some very cool items.

An Etsy search revealed this crisp pendant and this wonderful piece. A lot of the ones I have seen have that sort of arched shape. And there's the type that has everything. 

Although I am still searching, I stumbled upon this website when reading a recent volume of  Biblical Archaeology Review. They have an Alpha Omega cross.

Most of the items on the site are crosses, but if you like Alpha Omega's and Chi Rho's, you'd probably like these: Canterbury Cross, Evangelist Cross, Kilklispeen Cross, and the Scriptures Cross.

And don't worry. This is not a paid advertisement! I just wanted to show you some nice pieces. I'm still hoping to figure out a way to make my own...more inspiration is always a good thing! And then I found this blog post. Maybe I can eventually learn to make my own jewelry!

PS. For any clarification needed, check out these Wikipedia articles about Alpha Omega and Chi Rho. Sufficient for this purpose!

--Lael