What Does Every Island Girl Need?

Well, besides a seaworthy boat, a beautiful sunny day, and the briny blue ocean, she needs to be able to bring her love of the sand and surf back to her landlocked sanctuary. If you’re an island girl at heart, or simply enjoy ocean colors and coastal design, you can easily fill your beach house (boat house!) , city apartment, or country cabin with these wonderfully bright, happy coastal themed beach cottage pillows! 

Introducing Island Girl Pillows! 

Whimsical Blue Sail Fish and Hawaiian Surfing Life Pillows

Golden Vacation Word Pillow

and

Sea Sun and Sand Pillow

My personal favorite!  A Meeting of Seagulls Pillow

Throw pillows are the easiest way to add some fun, fresh color to your beach home to welcome spring. We know you enjoy this new whimsical, durable easy-care pillow collection as much as we do!   (Not limited to Island Girls - don't forget to include your favorite Island Guys)

• Made to Order - Please expect 5-7 Days for shipping
• Made in the USA
• Material: 100% Polyester, pre-shrunk.
• Insert: Poly fill
• Zippered Enclosures
• All completed with coordinated finished piping details

More designs coming soon too - check back often!  Island Girl Pillows

Sea Creature Coastal Pillows

New on our site this week! 

 Love these fun wool needlepoint pillows with their bright primary colors 

and sea creatures.   There are eight of these lovely beach pillows in the series;  mixing and matching a few of these would look great!   They would also add a pop of color, whimsy and fun to your beach cottage room.  

Green Seahorse

Orange Shell

Pink Flamingo

F

Fuchsia Lobster

Navy Blue Anchor

Red Crab Pillow

Blue Octopus

Green Sand Dollar

Still thinking about which ones I would start with, although I am a little partial to a blue octopus...

Photo Shoot at Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Alex at Half Moon Bay

A few weeks ago, my son Alex came out to stay for a few days of beach adventures along our Northern California coast.  Including a sunny (but very windy!) afternoon photo shoot at Pigeon Point Lighthouse, just a tiny bit south of Pescadero and north of Santa Cruz.  He's a pretty darn good photo-website assistant!

Here he is helping me find purple sea urchins for my "Sea Urchin Fascination" post...

Alex and I stuffed the mini-cooper with piles of our new tangerine orange and deep navy blue sea pillows. Not sure how we got them all in there! (greatest car EVER)  Packed up our ham and cheese sandwiches in our beach picnic backpack and we were off, down Coastal Hwy 1.

Pigeon Point is one of my favorite spots on our coast - I could go there every single day and see something different; pelicans, sea gulls, sea lions and of course, chubby harbor seals soaking up the sun.

Just a week before Alex arrived, Tom and I were out on a Sunday drive to Santa Cruz, we stopped here for
a quick lunch break.  SO lucky that day -  we were treated to a display of water spouts, breaching whales, and tails from spring grey whale migration!  Moms and babies traveling very close to shore on their way north to Alaska  for the summer.  Unfortunately, the water was so wild that day that it was impossible to get any good images to share.

At the Las Vegas market in January, we discovered a bright summer collection of pillows from a small manufacturer in the Midwest. I like supporting American made products, and I really liked the care and attention to detail that the owners have put into selecting fabrics and creating the finished pillows.  Bonus - they are affordable at $56-$68.00, depending on the design and size of the pillow.  Many other pillow companies that we looked at put the retail price of similar pillows beyond $90.00 +.   Our online coastal home decor store is the first website that this family-owned company has worked with.  I am very excited about our new partnership.

There is a wonderful circle of benches at the Lighthouse park overlooking Prisoner Rocks -  a perfect spot out of the wind to take the photos.   

For a complete selection and pricing check  "Caron's Collection - Coastal Pillows".  We hope you like them too!

Have a great Tuesday.  Thanks so much for stopping by.

Fabulous design - Liora Manne's LAMONTAGE™ Pillows

As part of our March Pillow Palooza promotion, we wanted to profile some of our favorite coastal pillow designers.  Meet Liora Manne'; she has created an unique process of textile design resulting in affordable, fabulous indoor-outdoor pillows  - perfect for life at the beach!  Tom and I discovered her bright colors and durable, soft cushions at the Las Vegas trade show, and  we were absolutely thrilled about making them available to our customers.  

Born in Israel, educated in the United States and now a true New Yorker, lifestyle products designer Liora Manné has been a study in breaking the rules from early in her career.

After graduating from Georgia State University with a degree in journalism and drama, Liora was anticipating a life in theatre. A textile design class at North Carolina State University changed the course of her career. Intrigued by the dependency of design on cutting edge technology in order to make ground-breaking advances, she pursued a master’s degree in both textile design and textile engineering.

Armed with her dual credentials in art and engineering, and sparked by an insatiable curiosity she headed to New York City to test her creativity. Her first stop was to design textiles for the fashion industry, but she soon found herself challenged to explore something more creative and non-traditional within the textile industry. Liora gravitated toward home fashions, and rugs in particular. Her entry into the area rug business truly changed the directions of the industry. Bold, contemporary colors sparked a revolution in a category dominated by traditions. Today, Liora Manne's LAMONTAGE™ products are featured worldwide.

Liora continues to travel the world to unearth inspiration from sites off the beaten path and to develop both product and technology before it hits the mainstream. The versatility of the products coupled with their international design appeal make them at home in institutions such as the Rubin Museum and Radio City Music Hall in New York City, the Mondrian Hotel in California, Brown University in Rhode Island, and some of the most exclusive nightclubs around the world. They are also in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Each one of her pillows is hand crafted using modern technology of 100% antimicrobial polyester - made to be low maintenance and durable. 

We love the brilliant pops of color and the details!  All come in either 14 x 20  lumbar or 20 x 20 square sizes.  These are only a few of the designs that we carry - all can be found in our new and improved Liora Manne collection.

Scallop Skillet inspired by Chef Staffan Terje and Coastal Living Magazine!

Scallop Skillet with Bacon, Endamame, Basil and Creamy Grits (we skipped the grits!) 

So... since I have had all of this time  (ha ha ha) to be creative,  I am teaching myself to cook all over again.  And, you all will be happy to know that I am not half bad at it either!
.
I saved the March Issue of Coastal Living, just for the scallop recipes.  I have not really ever cooked anything with scallops, thought I would give it a whirl, as we are trying to eat healthy and eat more seafood.  If this turns out bad, oh well, lesson learned!  Thank goodness Tom is not a picky eater.....

Step one: Rip the recipe out of the magazine and head over to the local Safeway seafood counter for some advice.
Step two: Refer to the recipe at least 20 times before leaving the store and still forget stuff...

What you will need: 
5 slices of bacon (I used thick sliced)
2 lbs of sea scallops (the big ones)
3/4 tsp salt - divided
1/4 tsp black pepper - divided
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup chopped sweet onion
2 garlic cloves
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1 cup frozen edamame (soybean)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup grape tomatoes (I sliced mine in half, but you don't have to)
1/4 cup fresh basil, thinly sliced

P.S. this recipe serves 8, I cut it in half for just us.  Still too much food, but I didn't want to ruin anything by trying to cut it even more.

Here's my best advice - follow the recipe exactly. Especially when cooking the scallops, they can easily be overcooked and become little rubber balls if you are not careful. I don't recommend a non-stick pan, it doesn't seem to work right. Also, have everything chopped, diced, measured and within reach so that you don't accidentally overcook any of this delish dish.

1. Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp, remove bacon, and drain on paper towels, reserving the drippings in the pan. Crumble bacon and set aside.

2. Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper. Heat bacon drippings over medium heat until hot. Add scallops, 3 minutes on each side, then remove from the pan.

3. Add butter to the pan. Add onion and garlic, saute', stirring often, 2 minutes. Stir in bell pepper and edamame; cook 2 minutes or until crisp-tender, Add wine, and cook 30 seconds, stirring to loosen particles from bottom of skillet.  Add bacon, salt, pepper and the grape tomatoes; cook stirring constantly for 5 minutes or until tomatoes soften.

4. Return scallops to the pan; cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated. Remove from heat and stir in the fresh basil.

Coastal Living served this with creamy grits, we simply made some nice linguine (saving calories) and arranged the linguine with the scallops on top.  I think it would be wonderful with couscous too.  We served it with some sugar snaps and mushrooms from our local farmer's market....

(sorry-difficult to get the photo just right!)

And while I am on the subject... we have a lot of pretty "scallop" merchandise on our site! Don't forget to check out all of the wonderful serving pieces - 

New on the site today!

Recycled Alabaster Scallop Shell Serving Bowl - 100% recycled with a swirling white water pattern

More food safe recycled glass - I love these small scallop bowls for collecting treasures too! 

How about this elegant serving piece? Scallop chip and dip all in one! Beautiful and manufactured by another one of my favorite companies concerned about sustainability - 

Big, bold bright - and absolutely perfect for this spring! Our Lime Green and Caribbean Blue Scallop pillow...

Thanks again for stopping by - have a great week and I will see you soon at the beach!