We’re not easily seduced by gadgets, but this nifty contraption speaks directly to some cravings we’ve had lately. Cravings for melted chocolate, gooey marshmallows and graham crackers. True, our traditional way of heating up some s’mores works perfectly well: It’s hard to beat aluminum foil. But this S’more to Love S’more Maker is pretty ingenious. It lets you stack up six ready-to-roll treats, and holds them securely in place while cooking. Best of all, you can use indoors (like in a toaster oven) or out (like on your grill). No need for sticks and ticks and campfires! Available at Amazon for about $15. (via Uncrate.com)

The other day I saw a tweet from a friend and fellow blogger, the mom behind Love That Max, that said “I want my next life to be in Restoration Hardware Catalog.” (Like the elegant room, above.) To which I replied, make this one of mine Land of Nod and I’ll be happy! With so many design magazines vanishing, and so many catalogs taking on more editorial features, it’s no wonder that that retailers have become the main source of decor inspiration in our lives. If so many of them weren’t doing such a cracker jack job at it, this could present a real problem. (Think Fight Club and Ikea an you know what I mean.)

But that makes me wonder, if YOU could live inside a catalog which one would it be? Here are few images for inspiration but feel free to mention one not included here!

California Dreaming Who can’t imagine lounging around with a book in this sunny, modern house? via Flor

Boho Cozy: Suddenly Ikea doesn’t seem so plastic, when its fabric patterns get the rustic English cottage treatment.

Our Kind of Movie Night: Outdoor screenings of family adventures? Sign us up for a Crate & Barrel fiesta.

Is the proliferation of sleek, neutral-toned lawn furniture getting you down? Does it seem like everyone on your block shopped at the same Pier One outdoor sale? Well, these vibrant chairs from Play Can will not only save you from boredom, they’ll take you on an adventure to India. Each canvas and wood folding chair features an India-inspired illustration. Shown here is Pagi (turban), which serves as headgear for an ego boost and a veil for quick getaways. Nandi the bull is a powerful and dependable ride transport for Shiva. These chairs conveniently fold up when not in use and can be tucked into your garage or basement when the season winds down. Kursis chairs available on request via email, for approxiamately $92. Email enquiry@theplayclan.com or visit playcan.com.

A couple of months ago, Melissa Clark wrote a fantastic column for the NYTimes Dining section that helps thousands of moms (me included) feel better better about their finicky kids. If a foodie like Clark has trouble getting her daughter to consume anything that isn’t beige, what help do the rest of us have? Her answer: Embrace the beige. And she does so with gusto, sharing three sumptuous recipes, including one for a decadent macaroni and cheese that I just had to try. Even though it has four kinds of cheese, you don’t need cream or milk. This is pasta and cheese at its purist. I love that it mixes marscapone with Brie and good old cream cheese. I admit it’s a combo I wouldn’t have tried myself, but am glad to have given a go. Honestly, my resulting casserole was a touch on the dry side. I think a bit of reserved pasta water would do the trick next time. Here’s my take on White Macaroni & Cheese — pair it with a salad of spring greens and you won’t feel so guilty!

White Macaroni & Cheese

What You Need:

1 pound pasta, I used farfalle
6 ounces Brie, rind removed and cheese cut into chunks
4 ounces cream cheese, softened and cubed
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup mascarpone
3/4 cup grated Parmesan
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon finely grated nutmeg
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs (optional)

How To Make:
1. Heat oven to 375. Butter sides and bottom of a large casserole dish.
2. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Cook pasta to al dente; reserve some pasta water while draining
3. Transfer hot pasta to a large bowl and toss immediately with Brie and cream cheese until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, mascarpone and parmigiano. Stir egg mixture into pasta. Season with pepper and nutmeg.
4. Add a few splashes of pasta water and make sure it is very wet.
5. Pour pasta into the pan and sprinkle with bread crumbs
6. Bake until golden brown and bubbling, about 30 minutes.

We share great recipes, muse about building the best playsets for our children, and delight in objects that add a little beauty to our days. But what post from more than five years ago is still getting regular comments from readers? Dog poop composting! With that kind of interest, we decided it was high time to revisit the topic.

My dog poop composter: no longer in business

First, my update: we stopped using our DIY dog poop composter after a few months. (If you’re not the DIY type, you can purchase dog waste composters, too.) Reader comments had tipped me off to some potential hazards of the compost, and as I said in my original post, two big dogs = a lot of output. Our bin filled up fast, and it seemed the waste wasn’t really going anywhere. So we went back to bagging. I’ve done more research for this post, and here’s what I’ve found out.

Dog poop composting: the negatives

Maybe it’s because the Pacific Northwest is full of environmental types and ample waterways, but it seems a lot of the negative press on dog waste composting originated here:

• The Public Works department in nearby Snohomish County, where a four-year study was conducted on pet waste composting, flat-out calls dog poop composters a bad idea: “They may seem practical, but they do not kill hazardous pathogens that may be in the waste and can pollute water. Landfills are designed to safely handle substances such as dog waste, cat litter, and dirty diapers. Yards are not.”
• King County (where Seattle is located) is officially okay with it, but Tom Watson from King County’s Recycling and Environmental Services was less than enthusiastic in this 2009 article for the Seattle Times.
• The City of Eugene, Oregon is cautiously okay with burying the waste, but discourages against using the actual resulting compost. Their study found that harmful bacteria and disease is present even when dog waste has turned to compost. Compost Gardening sums it up well:

Compost specialists obtained samples and tested them for salmonella, coliform bacteria, and other nasties. “We then allowed the material to sit for another six months and tested it again, hoping time and microbial competition would bring the material into the ‘safe’ level,” wrote compost specialist Anne Donahue. “It didn’t.”

Eighteen months after the crumbly-looking compost was set aside to cure, it still contained enough microbial pathogens to contaminate a planting of leafy greens.

Dog poop composting: the positives

That’s not to say opinions out there are 100% negative:

• The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Fairbanks Soil and Water Conservation District offered dog waste composting as a solution for sled dogs. This publication from 2005 gives a detailed how-to, along with troubleshooting tips. (Note: PDF at the link takes some time to load.)
• How-to articles from National Geographic and the Sierra Club are also pretty good endorsements for the practice.
• This CNN/Mother Nature News article is for composting, but not for using the resulting compost: “bury it deep” is the advice (there are also some good links to more information in the article).
• Sharon Slack at City Farmer, where I first got my compost bin how-to, has had practical success. Because Slack lives in a part of Canada where putting dog waste in the garbage is forbidden, she has been composting it for more than 15 years and says she’s only had to empty the bin once in that time.

Pet waste composting caveats

It’s a simple fact that pet waste composting poses more potential hazards than regular food and yard composting. These are the big cautions:

Don’t compost pet waste anywhere near water sources or edibles gardening

Keep the bin away from your growing vegetables, fruits and any water sources (one source said at least 100 feet from water sources). Once the waste has broken down, you can use the compost on ornamental plants, but never on something you intend to eat. (Or as the City of Eugene recommended, bury the waste, but don’t use the resulting compost at all.)

Cat or other animal waste?

Do your research on other types of waste, but make sure any cat litter is biodegradable. This Root Simple post may help.

Make sure your pet waste compost will heat up consistently to 145ºF

The bottom line: whether you compost doo or bag it, ALWAYS PICK IT UP

The worst thing you can to do the environment is just leave your dog waste lying where it is. Check out this dog waste infographic at Mother Nature News: dog waste left on the ground can contaminate water up to 20 miles away. Dog waste contains parasites that can sicken humans. Decomposing dog waste in the water robs fish of oxygen. And on and on.

So, dog waste composting wasn’t right for me, but what about you — what will you do with the doo?

Photo by Flickr user Nick Herber; used by Creative Commons License.

Nearly every day, I look into our dining room and smile. Our bright tomato red Eames Eiffel Tower chairs always make me happy. I loved them forever and now they are ours. But after seeing the newest DWR catalog, and its stunning cover subject, I am restless with new possibilities. You see, they’ve updated they’re classic using modern 3-D veneer technology. Now the graceful molded chair comes in new wooden forms: ash, palisander and walnut. The wood is sliced into spaghetti thin strips and the glued back together. It allows the materials to bend and curve perfectly. The thick veneer ensures the same toughness as the plastic. They’d be gorgeous with a white table, or perhaps something brighter.

How would you style these new Eames chairs into your life? Check them out at DWR and let us know.

Before we rush out to HomeDepot to pick up one of our own, or invest in something as stunning as the Daze ($689 from Haskell), above, I’d love to get your take on backyard fire pits.

So tell me, fire pit owners: Are they safe? Where’s the best place to put them — on the grass? On a patio? And most importantly, what’s the secret to making perfect, gooey s’mores? ;-)

I never thought that garlic soup sounded too exciting. Boiled garlic? How is that satisfying? Give it to me roasted, or sauteed with some olive oil and red pepper flakes. At least, that is what I used to think! The other night, my friend Jenn said she wanted to make Julia Child‘s garlic soup (Aigo Bouido) from one of her classic cookbooks. With two preschoolers and a toddler running around the house, I can safely that say that two cooks are better than one, so I rolled up my sleeves and started peeling garlic cloves. Making the soup is incredibly easy, and the ingredients are things you probably have on hand. The result was far more complex and satisfying than I ever imagined. It hits all your senses — starting with your nose! Imagine a brothy scampy, minus the shrimp. A bowl of this paired with a loaf of crusty bread and a chilled white wine is about as perfect as any meal could get. Here’s our take:

Julia Child’s Garlic Soup

What You Need:
1 head of garlic — each clove separated and peeled. (about 16 cloves)
2 quarts of water
1/4 tsp of sage
1/4 tsp of thyme
1/2 bay leaf
4 parsley sprigs
3 tbl olive oil +
3 egg yolks
an additional 4 tbls olive oil

How You Make
1. Peel the garlic. Julia recommends boiling them for a second and then removing peels. I just flattened with a knife.
2. Add all ingredients up to egg yolks in the water, and boil for 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Beat egg yolks in the serving bowl and slowly add in the additional 4 tablespoons, beating with whisk the whole time. It’s like you’re making mayonnaise.
4. Just before serving, add one ladleful of the hot soup to the egg mixture, slowly. Beat some more. Pour the rest of the soup broth into a the bowl, through a strainer. Smush the garlic gloves through strainer to squeeze out extra juice at the end.
5. Serve immediately and don’t worry about how much bread you are eating!

It’s not something I am proud of, but we have a dog crate in our dining room. We’ve moved it around the house, and really it’s the place that we find it least offensive, tucked into a corner that’s mostly out-of-site. However, when we sit down to a meal, there it is, just over my husband’s shoulder. It ain’t pretty, but it does make our house a happy place — both for Cupcake and us!

As you can imagine, my curiosity was peeked after seeing a press release on the Hudehutte (pronounced Hound HUT), a fancy covering for dog crates made by interior designer Kim Schroeder. A custom-made fabric cover drapes over the crate — which is honestly big enough to be a side table. It has a roll-er panel that can go up and down as needed, and a glass top which can be ordered separately. There’s no doubt that it raises the aesthetic bar significantly! This level of eye candy does not come cheap — prices start at $650. But a quick search tells me there are less expensive (though less polished) versions available on Etsy and through CrateCovers.com, which has the below one for only $99. Cute, huh?

I have been a huge fan of Roadside America since the wee days of the internet, and for the most part, their app does not disappoint. You’ll pay to see more, however — the Roadside America app breaks the U.S. into seven regions. You can choose one region for $2.99. If you want to see all of them, you’ll pay an additional $5.99 (or $1.99 ala carte). The upside of the Roadside America app is that you can find a lot of interesting backstory on many of the destinations — for instance, I would never have thought to go a few miles off track to visit FAST Corp in Sparta, Wisconsin, but thanks to a story on Roadside America, that became one of the highlights of our trip (more on that in a later post).

Where Best Road Trip Ever! takes the lead for us was not only cost — 99 cents gets you the whole shebang — but also its connectivity and easy navigation. We did a lot of driving through mountainous Montana and middle-of-nowhere South Dakota, and we found that even when our mobile coverage was spotty, Best Road Trip Ever! connected more regularly. It also seemed to have more immediate “Here’s what’s close to you right now” options than the Roadside America app. I also like that it lets you mark the places you’ve visited or save future stops in a “Wanna Go!” section. Let’s put it this way: I’m not convinced we would have found Evel Kneivel’s grave, a hilltop park filled with giant dinosaurs built in the 1930s, or an enormous statue of the Green Giant without Best Road Trip Ever! helping us out. And for that, we are grateful.

Next up: reports on some of those weird and wonderful places we visited.

Best Road Trip Ever! art via Propaganda3.