Mini Fruit Pizza

Emily Thompson - Follow @emmariedesigns - Tuesday, September 07, 2010

With the cooling weather, the beginnings of changing leaves, and pumpkins at the farmer's market, David, Lily and I had our farewell to summer a couple of days ago with some mini fruit pizzas.

I found the original recipe that these minis are based off of several years ago and is a favorite among my friends and I. Over the years the recipe has been altered until I'm pretty sure I have found as close to perfection as I can get. These are really freakin' good.

Mini Fruit Pizzas

1 tube sugar cookie dough (or feel free to make your own)
1 package cream cheese, softened
a few good long squirts of honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
strawberries
rasperries
blueberries

Bake the cookies as directed.

Meanwhile, blend together the cream cheese, honey and vanilla extract.

When cookies are done (and ideally cooled, but really? who can wait that long?) smear on some cream cheese mixture and top with some berries. Shove into your mouth.

Try not to moan too loudly. It could get awkward.

Really, these are fantastic, cheap and oh-so-easy. Do yourself a favor though and do not get reduced fat cream cheese. Some things simply deserve all the fat. MMmmm.

Also, make them as you eat them. That way, if by some act of insanity not all are eaten in your first sitting, you can throw the cookies into a sandwich bag, the cream cheese into a fridge container and the berries in a bowl and save for your midnight snack. If you make them all and then need to refrigerate then the cookies get kind of ickily soggy.

Serve with a super chilled Riesling, like Blufeld (a current personal favorite), and you're good to go. Enjoy!

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Weekend Guests and Things This Week

Emily Thompson - Follow @emmariedesigns - Monday, September 06, 2010

Last Wednesday I got some crazily exciting news: we were going to have weekend visitors. The last year and a half or so of our time in Florence was filled with dinner parties with a few friends of ours.

After having Lily, David and I obviously weren't able to continue with our run-of-the-mill college experiences, and that suited me just fine. So we went from late nights at the bars downtown to dinner parties with yummy food and even better wine (usually). One usual attendee was our geography friend Brent, and later his girlfriend (and then fiance) Lauren. Lauren was also a fellow geographer, and we went to middle and high school together. They're a fantastic pair.

About the same time David found out he got into App State's graduate program, Lauren and Brent found out they got into Virginia Tech's grad program. Everyone was so excited, and not only because they got into grad school, but also because we were all going to be able to live fairly closely. There's only about 2 - 2 1/2 hours between us.

This past weekend brought what I hope is the first of lots of weekends with Brent and Lauren. They drove in on Friday and we spent the weekend eating and sipping and shopping and sight-seeing. Our late nights with Brent and Lauren always consist of endless gabbing and/or board games. Like the new one pictured above, Bananagrams. Or our old favorite, Cranium. The wine and apple cider (spiced and spiked) are just huge bonuses.

This week is all about playing catch-up, as David's first two weeks a school have put me behind a little more than I would like. Most importantly, tomorrow we'll be checking out preschool options for Lily. This has my stomach in a huge knot and feeling kind of guilty. She won't be attending everyday, but it is certainly time that Lily get socialized. And I need time to breathe and work.

Now for that endless to-do list.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Pocket Guide

Emily Thompson - Follow @emmariedesigns - Thursday, September 02, 2010

I spend an insane amount of my time pitching to potential and current clients the sincere essentialness of search engine optimization. If I design a fancy new website for you, and the proper steps are not taken to optimize your site to be found in search engines, then, really, what's the point?

Spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on a nice website can easily go to waste if the right elements are not put into place, and then built upon, to get you found on search engines (think GOOGLE!).

I ran across this handy, short and really easy-to-follow ebook via Note and Point from Forty Agency that describes the elements of SEO (the things that I do for you, my dear client), and better yet, how to maintain it (the things that you do for yourself (or maybe I do this for you too)).

I feel like I should make this required reading, but instead I'll just whole-heartedly insist. It's short. I promise. (Ahem, pocket guide.)

Pocket Guide to SEO by Forty (633 KB)