Artist Spotlight: Elizabeth Behan

Today I’m featuring my sweet friend, Elizabeth Behan. Her passion is making things that are beautiful out of things that others would throw away. When I asked Elizabeth about featuring her on my blog she asked that I direct everyone to her {re}Wedding blog so that her story of hope and reconciliation could be spread to as many as will read it.

This past year Elizabeth and her husband, Micah, celebrated their {re}Wedding and Elizabeth worked hard to find just the right items for every part of the ceremony. From old lamps to typewriters, brooches to moss, every single detail had her stamp on it.

So, without further ado, meet my friend, Elizabeth. In this photo, she’s wearing the dress and necklace that she made for her wedding. She really is incredibly talented.

This is the bouquet she made for herself, it includes many brooches and if you look closely you’ll see a typewriter key as well.

This is a hollowed out pocket watch that Elizabeth made with her son who was to be their ring bearer.

And here is her daughter’s bouquet made with typewriter keys that spell out her name and an old clock face.

 

In addition to wedding things, Elizabeth also makes jewelry for sale.

You can find Elizabeth on Facebook here. She often sells things locally but can do special orders as well and you can contact her through her facebook page for that.

I hope you enjoyed today’s Artist Spotlight. You can find my previous Artist Spotlight on Ginny Celoria here. And, again, you can find Elizabeth’s story at her blog, behanrewedding.blogspot.com.

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Island Dreaming Part 2

Today I’m going to feature some fabulous kitchen islands for you to dream about this weekend. It makes me want to give my own kitchen island a little spruce.

Here we have islands in red…

BHG.com

Orange…

BHG.com

Yellow…

BHG.com

Green…

Coastal Living.com

BHG.com

Blue…

Coastal Living.com

Indigo…

And Violet…

The Luxe Home.com

And there you have it, kitchen islands in all the colors of the rainbow. I can’t believe I found one in violet. What are you dreaming of for this weekend?

Blueberry Muffins

Last week the girls and I were at Costco and, as usual, we passed by their racks of enormous, delicious-looking muffins. I considered it for a second and decided to buy some. And since it’s a warehouse you have to buy two enormous packs of muffins, we chose apple streusel and chocolate chunk. Not that I could have any but it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that Travis and the girls could have muffins on Saturday morning for breakfast.

Sort of.

I sat the packs of muffins on the kitchen island which meant that anytime I did anything in the kitchen I had beautiful, gluten-full muffins staring me in the face. As the day wore on I began scowling at the muffins every time I walked by. I was starting to get the impression that I hadn’t bought those muffins for Travis and the girls at all. Apparently I’d purchased them because it was I that wanted muffins.

Dangit.

After considering and scowling at those muffins for an entire day and a half, I decided that I needed to make some sort of baked good. I checked my Pamela’s mix bag and I had barely over 1 cup of mix left. Drat! I could have made pancakes but I didn’t want pancakes, I wanted muffins! So I checked my bag of Cup 4 Cup, a gluten free flour that I haven’t talked about yet here at The Button Casa, and I had two full cups of flour. Surely I could make something with 2 cups, right? So I went through some recipes I had in a folder and I found a blueberry muffin recipe that had turned out great with regular flour and it required the 2 cups of flour that I happened to have on hand.

I think it was meant to be.

The really great thing is that while these were fabulous when I made them gluten free, my non-gluten free friends can make them too. Just use your favorite flour.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups Cup 4 Cup gluten free flour (or all purpose flour if you don’t want gluten free muffins)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 1/2 cups blueberries

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir together 2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt.
  3. Stir the flour mixture into egg mixture alternately with milk. Fold in blueberries. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. In a small bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle topping over unbaked muffins.
  4. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

I highlighted step #3 because it’s important and I forgot to do it. The batter ended up climbing up my mixer attachment.

You can find Cup 4 Cup flour at Williams Sonoma exclusively. It’s a little pricey- $19.95 for 3 lbs.- but it’s by far the best flour I’ve worked with. I’ve used others to make things like pizza dough and it honestly felt like I was working with sand and the texture of the finished product tasted like a biscuit. When Travis tasted these muffins he said he couldn’t tell the difference between the ones I made and regular muffins…except these tasted better :) I think I’ll keep him around a while.

Mmmmm…..muffins.

If you click the link for the muffins you’ll notice that these are supposed to have streusel. Well, when I made them before I realized that the streusel recipe isn’t very good and since I was out of flour at this point anyway I just topped them with raw sugar.

And there you have it, gluten free blueberry muffins. Enjoy!

 

My Girl

Today is Amanda’s birthday. This is the very first birthday ever that I’m not with her to celebrate. In the weeks leading up to today all I could think about was the day she was born and the tiny, beautiful, pink bundle of love that she was. So much so that a couple of weeks ago I was buying milk and all of the expiration dates were April 25th. I immediately started tearing up…in the dairy isle. I tried to recover quickly and I’m usually good at the stiff upper lip thing but it took a while to recover from that.

It’s gotten me thinking about who I was when she was born and who I am now. It’s made me think about my circumstances then and the amazing amount of love that she brought into my life. It’s that love that made me care about what happened to me. Because whatever happened to me also happened to her and I couldn’t let anything hurt her. It’s because of Amanda that I went to college. I had to take care of her and get us off the merry-go-round to nowhere. People saw me as strong but what they didn’t know was that my strength came from a tiny little person with blonde hair and blue eyes that loved me completely. What I hoped for her then was that she’d grow up strong, happy, and healthy. Looking back on it now I fully realize that I should never have been able to navigate those circumstances without divine guidance, without divine wisdom. I was far too young and far too hurt to make the right choices myself.

I look at her now and I’m so filled with thankfulness. She and I navigated many rough waters together and what has she grown up to be? She has overcome  many obstacles and  much adversity and what I see in her now is grace. I’m not proud of her because of what she’s accomplished, I admire who she’s become. She loves deeply. She is unbelievably loyal. She loves God with her whole heart and she’s walking out his plan for her life. In all the doors that God has opened for her this semester at school she’s not filled with pride but fully recognizes that God has given her favor and has opened the doors she’s walking through.

I miss her so much. But I wouldn’t trade having her close in proximity for God’s plan for her life. I don’t know fully what God’s plan for her at SEU is but I do know she’s growing. She’s being stretched. She’s getting stronger, building stamina, and every day she’s changing.

Our life now is a far cry from the place we started. And I couldn’t be more thankful.

Happy Birthday, Amanda!

Love,

Mom

Taking My Own Advice

Reblogged from The Button Casa:

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My last post gave me some inspiration to tackle two things that drive me crazy here at the Button Casa. The kitchen island and next to the microwave.

I cleaned this up a lot before I took a picture of the mess. Usually the fruit basket has a newspaper, bills,  hand cream, a pack of gum or various other odds and ends.

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I'm re-blogging this today for Tabitha at Debt Free Decorating. She's doing a series on organizing here: http://debtfreedecorating.wordpress.com