{1930s Camille Tharaud Limoges Shaker for dusting YOUR Cappuccino's with Cocoa}

Today I like to share a great tip with you for using Dutch processed Cocoa to dust off your Cappuccino! Here I show a 1930s French Camille Tharaud Limoges Shaker that is just perfect for that purpose!

The Blue, White and Gold stripes will blend with almost any type of china. If you want to copy this, make sure to fill your shaker with the best cocoa around, my all time favorite, also for baking, is Droste Cocoa! Available Vander Veen's The Dutch Store. 

For a decorative or romantic touch, you can use a heart shaped stencil for dusting your cocoa.

1930s Art Deco Camille Tharaud Limoges Shaker you also can see at French porcelaine. Further it is in the Art Deco Limoges Camille Tharaud and other Ceramists book on page 78. I will place a link and picture beside this post. This rare 1930s shaker is available at: Spectrenoir.

The 1930s Camille Tharaud Limoges shaker is shown here on a Japanese tray with a cup & saucer in a Royal Doulton English Rose pattern. Just click on the name to go to Replacements Ltd for this 1930s china.

Spoon is gold plated and from Douwe Egberts, in The Netherlands. With such a gold rim china I love to use those 4" French gold foil lace doilies.

Here the Camille Tharaud Limoges shaker is shown with some more English Rose china from Royal Doulton, and also some Christofle pieces.

Camille Tharaud Limoges shaker together with the Christofle toast rack that I have shown here.

This precious shaker is in perfect shape; no damage whatsoever and the gold is not faded either.

Here the Camille Tharaud shaker is shown together with page 78 in the book.

This 2005 book is a Schiffer Book for Collectors With Price Guide

Hope you learned something about how to use a shaker for Cocoa.

Sorry Sold Out...

My 10th Blog Award

Carolyn in New Zealand from Draffin Bears Little Bear Studio, passed on yet another award. Thank you so much Carolyn!

So this award I'd like to pass on to:

• Sue and her handyman from Beach Bungalow
• Biene from Schlaflos in NRW with her Adoption Office for the most unique bears and other cuddly toys (English too!)
• Adrienne from The Rich Life (on a budget)
• Annette Lounging with a Latte
• Gwenny from Gwenny's Way

Please do have a look at these ladies' great blogs and you might want to follow them.

Wishing you a great weekend ahead!

We were blessed with some much needed, heavy rains on Thursday after a very hot Wednesday.

Look at the RealFeel around 3:17 PM...

Oops, that chocolate for sure did melt...

{More of Our Citrus}

Just like to show you more of our citrus, these photos are from June 6 and the last one is from August 12 of 2010 so you can see the end result of all those blossoms. Heavenly fragrance... such a joy to have those! Have a look at those up close pictures of the sweet blossoms and their lush buds. My husband Pieter took those for you to enjoy. Next time you eat an orange, you will know how they developed...

A spider build her web-nest in-between those buds... Smart!

All our citrus trees are in huge planters and are on the brick patio in front of the green house.

I believe this is the Citrus Limon Ponderosa from Logee's Greenhouses 

{Our Garden Critters}

Often I've joked about how many species there might be living on our entire property. I wish they would all come out and line up alongside the road to introduce themselves to us. Would we really like to know?! Our felines once in a while do lift up a tip of the veil by bringing us yet another species we had not seen up close... Last week I had two of our garden critters being revealed to me. One was a skink, I don't exactly know which one it was. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Georgia has only a few species of lizards, six of which are skinks. So I rescued one of those six! They belong to the reptiles.

I had to hold on to this one while making photos with one hand. Their toes are rather scratchy too.

Big eyes, a funny nostril and open ears...

Tiggy-Tiger had obviously wounded it a little, under its belly, as I have a bit of blood in my hand... But after all, I rescued him/her from a cruel death!

One last shot before I set it free, near the creek where it rapidly disappeared under the water plants. The creek is near dry...

This swamp snake I found curled up on the tiles of the staircase area... all by itself! But there are also some black cat hair so maybe our Spicy, Bandido or Barty did bring me this.

Georgia has a rich biodiversity of snakes, with forty-one native species now documented according to the same source; Georgia Encyclopedia. So I did squat down to take this photo of the dead snake for identifying it later.

I picked it up, behind its head and put it out on the retainer wall next to the driveway for Pieter to have a look at its full length. How in the world do those felines hold this in their mouth while pushing through the cat door?

It was a harmless Swamp Snake of some 45 cm. When Pieter did come to look at it, there was no snake on the retainer wall... Aha, lesson learned is that snakes play dead out of self defense and only move on after quite some time. We saw it one more time and then it was gone. Second chance in life I guess.

{FRIENDS}

The postman did bring a parcel from Celestina Marie Design with her great artwork; LOOK...

Friends

Celestina Marie is also the White House's Blue Room Artist - click Miss C~Goes To Washington!.

I am taking the risk that the dear friend I bought this for, will see it but so what? I had to show it to my readers right away!

Gifts purchased from her Gift Shop are a joy to receive; always wrapped so neatly. She creates Christmas in July!

An organdy pouch with fresh lavender she added on the outside and the inside even held a special tea bag that I enjoyed this very afternoon as a much needed pick-me-up...

Thanks a million Celestina Marie and I can only highly recommend this artist!

{Our Dinner with + Gift to our Medical Friends}

After quite a wait we finally managed to get together with all our medical Friends. Yes, Friends with a capital F! They went the extra mile for both of us. First in January of 2010 when I got almost completely paralyzed and ran for days a high fever that didn't want to go down, they all came together to see me at the hospital. Two Internal Medicine doctors and one Radiologist. The latter traveled after work the two hours to my bedside, with his wife. I was even given some delicious home cooked Indian food from the other friend, the Internal Medicine doctor's wife. We know each other for 28 years! It feels so good to leave your well being in the hands of caring, true Friends! They found a cure for my rare auto immune disease and I was quickly on the mend and therefore forever grateful to them.

In September when Pieter had his heart attack, without the usual symptoms, he was sent off per ambulance to the next big city for treatment by a good heart surgeon, who did his quadruple bypass surgery. Once again, I felt secure for leaving Pieter into the hands of dear medical Friends.

So naturally, we wanted to do something for them in return, something special and from the heart. Due to all sorts of family circumstances we could not sooner get all together than July 19. We made reservations at Ristorante da Maria with Lady Chef Maria and Heinz. This time we had her cook vegetarian Indian food, for all of us. We worked in India for over ten years for Pond's India and for another company in Poona, so we LOVE the spicy food.

Now to the special gifts that I found in Germany, in the north near Hamburg. Elvira from the blog Rosengärtchen (Rose Garden) not only creates fabulous Christening gowns and such but she also designed very unique handbags with Peacocks, which she called Secret Garden.

This one caught my attention in her blog: Tasche Secret Garden and in her online shop. Knowing that the Peacock is a very special symbol in our Friends' culture, I contacted Elvira after she made me a Rose Bag: Tasche Romantic Rose und eine Uberraschung and shown also here: {Introducing YOU to Romantic Rose Handbags from RosenRomanze Germany}. Asking her if she would be able to make three of those. She wrote back yes; all unique items and thus different, but she was more than happy to make them for me. That was in October of 2010...

Elvira used blue seed pearls, semi precious stones and metal rose bead buttons for a closure on this luxurious bag. She designed it such that one looks through a window of an old Palace into its secret garden, where peacocks proudly show their beautiful feathers, between the flower beds...

Also the inside of the bag shows this romantic floral paradise, with on its trails here and there a peacock feather... like on the inner-bag with multiple compartments for cell phone etc.

Elvira made this unique design by using different materials such as linen, cotton batting, wool, and decorated it with fancy embroidery and lace.

On a string, attached to the bag, is a pouch that closes with mother of pearl buttons, for securing money or keys.

Secret Garden Bag 2 with a tassel.

Secret Garden Bag 3.

With a lot of thanks towards Elvira for letting me use her photos!

Which bag would you like most?

{TIP: How YOU can place 5 LinkWithin - Related Posts with Thumbnails}

• Today I would love to share with you a TIP on how YOU can place up to 5 LinkWithin - Related Posts with Thumbnails under each post. 
• It is real easy to do. Look at the example of 5 Thumbnails shown below so you know what I am talking about...

• Just follow these steps. Click on→ this link first.

• Fill out your Email, copy and paste your Blog Link and choose Platform.
• For WIDTH you select 5 stories from the drop-down window!
• Click: Get Widget

• Click Install Widget to open Blogger in a new window, and follow the steps below in that window.

• Click on Add Widget after you selected a blog (if you have more than one...).

• 
• Now Drag and Drop the LinkWithin box under the 'Blog Posts' box as shown above.

• Click on Save and you're done! You have now 2 more chances that people click on another interesting post to visit. This is the fastest and easiest way for anyone to get to any post!

 ENJOY

Have had to remove this widget as it caused lots of problems!