Marie WheelerThe newest beautification to my life comes in the form of a gratin dish. I know, bizarre.
Every year we host Thanksgiving dinner and every year I make an Onion Gratin. It is a rich and beautiful dish, but very pale. And it looks kind of terrible against the white of my oven-safe casseroles. Bleh.
This year, along with actually following the recipe (shocker!), I splurged for a locally made pottery gratin dish. Technically, I’m sure it’s not a gratin dish as it is round and not oval, but whatever, it is volumetrically comparable.
On my way home the day prior to the start of my Thanksgiving vacation, I stopped at my favorite local artisan market, Millport Landing, in Millport, NY, as I knew there was some pottery in stock and I was sincerely hoping there would be something that worked.
I wandered around, perusing the blend of antiques and hand crafted awesome and I found it! It was perfect. Now by perfect, I certainly do not mean that it matches anything in my current possession, however, that is not the intention of my new endeavor.
My directive is beauty and supporting local artists, not matchy-matchy, find it at any store lemming-ware.
Am I still terribly afraid of the first chip or breaking the beautiful pieces I acquire? Yes. Am I going to let that stop me? No. This is something new for me, not being excessively frugal and practical, but accepting beauty into my life and supporting other artists. We all want to be free of our day jobs, so why not help each other out?
So two directives on today’s post and I’m okay with being bossy as these are important:
- Find something hand-made and beautiful and buy if for yourself. Save up if you need to, but do it.
- Stop and say hello to Margie at Millport Landing if you are ever driving through Millport, NY. It’s super-close to all of the tourist areas of the Finger Lakes and she is so supportive of local artists. And she has cookies. Fresh baked daily. Yum!
Be sure to post or tell me about your beautiful finds in the comments!
