Brown Butter Cookie Company

While in the small seaside village of Cayucos, CA this week my mother and I happened upon a cookie shop. We never pass a bakery without looking and sampling so we headed inside for a closer look. The lovely ladies of the Brown Butter Cookie Company are my new favorite people. I know this sounds crazy, but if everyone in the world could enjoy one of their signature brown butter sea salt cookies, we might achieve world peace. I'm not kidding around people. These little baked dough balls are the bomb! Here is their retail space on Main Street in Cayucos, CA. If you aren't in a position to make a pilgrimage to this sacred cookie temple, you can order off their website.


Here are the peace-makers and their dough rolling operation. Every cookie is made by hand and last year these ladies rolled over 75,000 cookies. I would have also posted a photo of the cookies I bought, but I ate them as fast as I could.

Peach Perfect

I usually loathe peach as an interior design color, but if I could get a peach paint to look like the sun baked, terra cotta peach color in these photos, I'd drench my whole house in peach. The grassy green hues compliment the dusky peach colors so beautifully. These shots were taken in Italy (duh) by wedding photographer Jose Villa, who by the way photographed my wedding five years ago!

Oregon Bunkhouse

Every once in a while I visit a home and think, "Wow. I would love to feature this place on La Maison Boheme." Usually, I don't have my camera and usually I'm too chicken to ask for a second visit. Not this time! Karen Kettlety owns and operates a sheep ranch in the quiet, rural and extraordinarily beautiful community of Richland, Oregon. Richland is in the Eagle Valley just west of the Snake River. Karen's lambs are 100% grass-fed on lush pastures which are irrigated with snow-melt from the pristine Eagle Cap Wilderness. Karen recently completed phase one of her new home, which she is building out of re-purposed and recycled materials. I am completely smitten with the bunkhouse she has created above her garage. Please forgive my less than stellar camera work and enjoy Karen's home and handy work.

Much of the wood used in the loft is reused from the property's pre-existing barn. She also made use of the barn's corrugated metal roofing. Brilliant.
Karen's loft bed is enclosed with a wire garden fence.
...and here is Dot, the retired sheep dog.
The rungs on her loft ladder were taken from a branch that had fallen during a storm.

One of my favorite details is this sliding bathroom door - a great idea for small spaces.
The view from Karen's bathroom window is amazing.

Let's head outside...

Every barn needs a barn owl. I caught this big guy taking a snooze up in the rafters. Isn't he astonishing?

In Karen's own words:

Last year at this time, I was living in a camp trailer smaller than your bathroom, in full view of the end of a construction project that started in April. When I bought this place, I knew that someday I would replace the derelict house I was living in. It wasn't that bad, just that the roof leaked, frogs would emerge from the hearth and hop across the living room, the pipes would freeze in winter and so would I. Recovering from a kidney donation surgery in that cold house the winter of 2007 gave me plenty of time to think that living in a new, cozy, everything-works, nothing-breaks-down house would be nicer to have sooner rather than later. So I launched into planing and design and hoped to be shovel-ready by June. But first, I had to tear down the old house and the cracked and broken root cellar to make room for the new one-bedroom house plus garage with bunk house above. The only thing worth saving in all that mess was an old claw-foot tub and a hive a wild honey bees that had made a home within the double concrete walls of the root cellar. I ended up camping out for nine months in the little trailer with a porta-potty behind the chicken coop and a make-shift kitchen set up under an awning. At the end of January 2009 I moved into the wonderful little nest I had built above the new garage, in the shade of my magnificent English walnut tree. The house itself is still a dream to be realized.

Karen, thank you for inviting me into your home.

Interested in purchasing some of Karen's grass-fed lamb?
Visit her website at www.karensgrassfedlamb.com.

Christmas Postcards No. 3

Here are a few more photos from my time at my mother's Oregon farm. The rebar sign below was made by a talented neighbor as a Christmas gift to my mom. Her front yard is usually filled with quail.

Here is a great shot of her home from across the valley.

The view from her front porch.

Christmas Postcard No.2

Merry merry.
(Photo below is from the door to my mother's pump house.)

Christmas Postcard

I can't help myself... I said I'd be away for a week or so... but I can't stay away. Here is a quick postcard of a tool shed on my Mama's farm. Its such a cheery shed! Hope you're all having a beautiful holiday.

Merry Everything, Happy Always!

This will be my last post for a week or so. I'm off for the holidays. I hope you are also taking some time off. Off to visit family. Off to play in the snow. Off to make warm meals and toddies and pies. Off to get cozy with lovers. Off to snuggle up with good books and sweet children. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.




My husband had the pleasure of working as the text and dialect coach for Milwaukee Rep's current production of A Christmas Carol. Nothing like a little Charles Dickens to get you in the holiday spirit. I don't know about you, but every time I see this on the stage I ball my eyes out when Scrooge is redeemed. What a chance. What a wonder. It's the most magical story I know. Here is a little teaser:

Merry everything, Happy Always!
xo - The Greenmans

In the Buff

My mother has a stunning Modigliani print of a nude woman stretched out on a bed. At one time it hung above her bed. She used to make funny remarks about having to take it down when "company" was over. She was half joking. But only half. And recently, I was in someone's home and they had a floor to ceiling nude portrait in their entry. I loved it. It was very bold and very bodacious. It was a Lempicka, I think - all 1920's and boobs. Just awesome. I'm all for it... let's get some nude art up on our walls!

Photo below by Joe Lambie.

And one more - because Jean is totally right - I've neglected the men.
It's by painter, Henry Scott Tuke.