Spring Shopping

I have not abandoned you, gentle reader, I promise.  The past 10 days have been filled with sick children, sick children going to school, healthy children being sent home from school on the suspicion of being sick and a sick parent.  Add into that Valentine's Day cupcakes (I promise to share the vanilla recipe at some point, the chocolate cupcakes were nothing but my Halloween cupcakes refrosted in pink and red with some mini hear sprinkles), and nothing new has gotten made for you!  (Bad blogger!  No biscuit!)

I promise, this weekend, there shall be new goodies.  But, in the interim, I'm going to take you on a virtual shopping trip.  Mom and I took the girls to one of the more extravagant malls in the Metro Detroit area this past weekend and did some shopping.  I'll spare you the trip to Build-A-Bear and the shopping for children's shoes.  But a spin through Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, and Crate And Barrel put me in a redecorating mood.  While I wait for my new refrigerator to arrive (hopefully the old one will hold out that long), and get ready to repaint the floor, I'd like to share with you some of the fun things I'd like to have in my kitchen as I freshen it up for spring.

I love these colors.  I would trade in Geraldine, my Heavy Duty KitchenAid, if only the 6 or 7 quart models came in these Easter egg colors!  But go shop KitchenAid and check out all the gorgeous mixers that could add both function and fun to your Spring kitchen.

I love all things vintage and one of my favorite things from days gone by are tools that are made by hand, especially wood tools.  This gorgeous flame birch French rolling pin is high on my list of gorgeous baking tools.

While you're there, click around Etsy for some more gorgeous hand-made items.  Need a shopping list?  What about one of these gorgeous framed chalkboards?

Or maybe you'd rather have more room to write notes to the kids, husband, or even yourself.  How about this gorgeous chalkboard?

And then there are the aprons.  I love aprons.  I need more aprons!  Sur La Table has some gorgeous new ones with a vintage flair:

And then there was this set of mother/daughter aprons that nearly caused me to have a Cute Seizure.  I could have spent an hour or more at Sur La Table, but the Empress was getting bored:

Another Sur La Table find is this pie bird.  Oh, how I want one of these!  For those of you who haven't seen them, these little beauties go in the center of your pie with the head poking out above the crust.  They let the steam escape.  And this sweet shade of blue would look so perfect in spring pies!

And he'd look so cute in this Emile Henry pie dish:

It also comes in pink, and either would be a fabulous vintage look, maybe on a polka dot table cloth?

Enjoy your Spring Shopping, and I promise - more recipes soon!