I was at a restaurant a while back and I ordered an omelet – it came with a rich and creamy tomato sauce on top and plenty of fresh basil. I looooved it! The omelet was good too, but the sauce was spectacular, so I went home and experimented to make this recipe to be served on pasta instead – a thick and creamy tomato sauce. My family loves it, and it is so easy to make! Unlike regular marinara sauce which often needs to cook for a long time to get a good depth of flavor, this sauce develops … Read more

I don’t know who came up with the phrase “simple as pie”. Does that mean as simple as it is to make pie .. or as simple as it is to eat pie? Because the former is definitely not always easy … largely because of the fact that pie involves pie crust. However, my friend Lindsey recently made some *amazing* pie crust that has absolutely changed my view on crusts. For one thing, pastry is usually finicky and you have to be really careful on how you handle it. But this was SO low maintenance, easy to roll out and … Read more

What is nothing? It is not what is inside an empty shoebox … that is still something. There is air, dust particles, heat, etc. in there. Nothing is not just a tiny bit of something. Nothing is not any thing. Nothing is no thing. Last week, in the Truth & Evidences series, we talked about how the material universe had a beginning, and the scientific evidences there are for that. In the past, scientists thought that perhaps the universe was eternal, but as more and more scientific data has come to light, it points more and more to the fact … Read more

Well, we’re preparing for the big move! And I don’t mean our move to Boston, although we are leaving for that TOMORROW! (WOOHOO!) But actually, in the context of blogging, I’m talking about how to move from Blogger to WordPress. This series is now in week 8 and we’ve been making great progress working on Lori’s blog redesign (and hopefully you’ve been making progress on your blog too!) as we’ve been going through this series. The goal was to use Lori’s blog, In My Kitchen, In My Life as a demonstration on how to create a new fully branded look, … Read more

Well, we’re preparing for the big move! And I don’t mean our move to Boston, although we are leaving for that TOMORROW! (WOOHOO!) But actually, in the context of blogging, I’m talking about how to move from Blogger to WordPress. This series is now in week 8 and we’ve been making great progress working on Lori’s blog redesign (and hopefully you’ve been making progress on your blog too!) as we’ve been going through this series. The goal was to use Lori’s blog, In My Kitchen, In My Life as a demonstration on how to create a new fully branded look, … Read more

Well, we’re preparing for the big move! And I don’t mean our move to Boston, although we are leaving for that TOMORROW! (WOOHOO!) But actually, in the context of blogging, I’m talking about how to move from Blogger to WordPress. This series is now in week 8 and we’ve been making great progress working on Lori’s blog redesign (and hopefully you’ve been making progress on your blog too!) as we’ve been going through this series. The goal was to use Lori’s blog, In My Kitchen, In My Life as a demonstration on how to create a new fully branded look, … Read more

Black Friday is almost here! Closely followed, of course, by Cyber Monday. I’m very excited to announce that for the entire time from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (11/23/12 – 11/26/12) my entire shop, FlourishCafe, will be buy one get one free. So how does it work? Just purchase the print(s) you are wanting, and then in the “message to seller” section at check out, simply link to the other print(s) you would like to get for free. If you buy one print, you get one free. If you buy five prints, you get five free! The only stipulation is … Read more

Well, this is the last week of the blog redesign challenge! Next week I’ll be putting up a poll so you can vote on the next challenge … always fun to start a new project. It was really interesting on Monday’s post how many of you mentioned marketing and promoting as being something you have questions about – because that happened to be related to what I was planning to write about for the last post of this series! Now, this is by no means a comprehensive look at the subject … these are just a few tips, primarily … Read more

It’s time to kick-off the creative biz challenge! WooT! Thank you to all of you who volunteered to have your shop critiqued and posted your questions – it was great to have so many options. And of course while I won’t be able to do everyone’s shop, I hope that the critiques and the information in this series will be valuable across the board. And really, I think that won’t be too hard – everyone asked pretty much the same things! It broke down easily into just a handful of categories. But there was one HUGE topic no one really … Read more

So, we’re back on an every-other-week schedule for the Truth & Evidences series, currently looking at some various things that in existence, and discussing their origin – such as the origin of life, the origin of the physical universe … and next, the origin of morality. My sister-in-law made an interesting point the other day. Some things are things that we decide or choose – for instance, whether I feel like vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Some things, on the other hand, are not decided, but rather they are discovered – for instance, that 1+1=2. No one decided that, it … Read more