Sette Design

Online Painting Class

Painting Course for Interiors, Art and Furniture

Happy Springtime! I am above thrilled to introduce to you my painting class. If you read back in this blog started in 2011 I'm sure I was dreaming about creating a painting class online years back. Wait so dreams do come true! Only sometimes it takes so much longer than you imagine and life keeps happening all the while. Click the image above to learn more. If you like to paint, this course if for you.

Other News

Click on the image above or link below and this will take you to my YouTube Channel Sette Design Painting Techniques where I have posted videos on how to paint and I take you on some design journeys for those who love to think about home decor and design, color and light.

My Youtube Channel for Painting Techniques

Here is one of the first Painting Techniques for this pale pink dresser.

Pretty exciting right? I love YouTube because basically anything you want to learn about you can. I love it for all the mindset and neurological information you can mind there. I am leaning to soar.

Take Care,

Natalie

How to Make Home Made Bread

Before getting to the bread recipe. I want to let you know I am now teaching a Painting Techniques Intensive online Course for Interiors, Art and Furniture. If you love to paint come join me! I have created an amazing course where all levels of painters are welcome. Here is the link:

Painting Techniques for Interiors, Art and Furniture

How To Make Home Made Bread

I love to make home made bread, it warms the heart and the home. When the girls were little, on cold foggy Winter days I used to meet them after school with warm buns of Pain Au Chocolate, wrapped up in a linen napkin. Now with my littlest in High School, she would be horrified to have Mama waiting with warm bread. It makes me giggle to think of doing it. If I were home with my family in California out at the beach house I would be making tons of little "panini" to be served warm with Thanksgiving dinner.

The thing about making bread is you can't really go wrong and you can add whatever you might like to the recipe to make it special.

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Here is my basic recipe:
It only takes about 5 minutes to mix and four hours to rise.
This recipe also works for Pizza dough.

5 to 6 cups of fine white flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup of warm water mixed with half a bag of dry yeast or 1/2 a cube of fresh yeast.
(I think in America it is often called beer yeast. I like the fresh cubes best and you can get them in the refrigerated section of the market near the yogurt. In Italy I use Lievital fresco)

Dissolve the yeast with your finger in the warm water
Add to your flour mixture

Then I get another cup of warm water put it to the side and add it as needed to the mound of flour mixture till the consistency looks and feels right. See photos

Mix the dough into a ball with your hands
You can knead it in the bowl or on a wood cutting board or marble slab, adding flour sprinkled on the board.

Then once the dough seems good I put it in a deep bowl, cover it with a cotton or linen napkin and leave it to rise 3 to 4 hours.

Once the dough has risen you knead it down again and form your rolls or loafs as you choose.

Here is the Fleischmann's dry yeast that I use in the US.

Here is the dough mixed into a ball waiting to rise

The dough covered wit a cotton cloth waiting to rise

Sorry the photo is blurry but you can see how much the dough came up

Here is the fun part, you can add dark chocolate (70% cocoa makes it a super food) a chunk to each roll, push it in the bun and cover with dough.

Glase the top with egg yolks to give a pretty golden effect.

Cut the loaf open on the top and add fresh olive oil and rosemary.

Sky is the limit now.

Have fun Happy Thanksgiving to those of you dear readers in the U.S.

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With affection,
Natalie

Fifth Anniversary Sette Design Blog

It is crazy to think that 5 years ago today I started this blog. Happy Anniversary Sette Design Blog! I remember the day clearly, because I was living here in Italy and we had just had the first snow fall on the mountains that surround our city. Now 5 years later with climate change, it seems there is no snow insight for who knows how long. My girls were 9 and 13 compared to now 14 and 18, huge difference.

To celebrate today I thought I would give you some advice, this I secretly find funny because if you knew my life more intimately you would say (or quietly think) Nat you really are not in any position to give advice. But when you hear the advice you will see that actually is is common, simple, pure and obvious. Plus this way we can look back on some pretty photos I have taken in the years past.

Here we go life advice from Sette Design.

Make home made bread, it will make your friends and family so happy it is ridiculous and strangely it will also make you feel good about yourself. The house will smell amazing.

Light candles it makes everything look and feel good.

Flowers add color and joy.

The sky is the limit.

Go for walks alone,

and with family.

Change is something we can count on.

Paint something white, it will reflect light into a dark space, of course paint something colored too. I love colored walls.

Too much at times can be splendid.

Just as simple and empty is pure and lovely.

Paint something it deepens our souls, or play music, cook, write, sing or dance.

Home is where you make it.

If possible make love on vintage Italian sheets.

Embrace whatever kind of creativity you have that makes you purrr.

If something feels wrong run for it.

Rest assured you are not the only one who is crazy.

Drink lots of coffee and remember love is what matters most of all.

Now I will leave you with a good quote and a cool scene I came across years back.

"Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder."

E.B. White

With affection,
Natalie

Peace - ramps, docks, alleyways and vicoli

It is interesting how little empty passageways can bring us peace. A via waiting to be chosen, explored, journeyed through. Both of these photos are taken in places I know well and have walked through often.

The first is on the docks in Sausalito, CA on the way to my mother's houseboat with Mt. Tamalpais elegantly tranquil in the distance. The alleyway (vicolo in Italian) below was passed through for years, day in day out on bicycles on the way to the Elementary School for my girls.

Do you remember a beaten path from your childhood that even now to think of it brings you peace? You may have one now, in the city that you live, cutting behind buildings, a break in a fence. A secret way to get there faster or to be seen less. In my childhood we even had a name for our path, "Meet you at the top of the Huckleberry Trail".

Today as the hot summer winds down in Italy and in California and where ever you are. I encourage you to find a path to travel that brings you peace, name it, walk it, bring someone with you.

With affection,

Natalie

Graduates and Glass Bottles

June is actually here, the graduates are taking over the world and I am thankful for that! I have Lucia my big girl graduating High School and Elisa from 8th Grade. It is a nice feeling to think of the new one's taking over and possibly doing a better run of it than we have done.

I must confess that I find myself posting to Instagram a lot more than this beloved design blog. Come join me there also, you can easily find me on Instagram under Sette Design and you can look for the purple blue store front logo - instagram.com/settedesign . What I should do is post to both.

So here now is a quick review of Sette Design’s opinions, desires and work.

I am thrilled with the Glass Bottle Chandelier I made out of chain, wire, and vintage bottles .

Gorgeous with mixed colored flowers or just white roses, to decorate as you desire. Available on my shop here Sette Design Shop

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Sette Design Shopn

Happiness note: A smoothie and flowers for a new garden (in the same pallet of colors no less) helps anyone feel good. Right? Does anyone have the courage to paint a wall this berry color of the smoothie drink? I think if the room had enough Southern facing light it could be amazing.

the simple life

Here is the view from a home I have been working on for a wonderful client who feeds me hot American coffee with cream, and a fudgesicle dunked inside, our invention. You can imagine the job has gone splendidly.

A grouping of Vintage Green Glasses also available on Sette Design Shop. I do love to create the feeling of a still life, that can be put under happiness note. Make a Still Life and you don't have to paint it because we are living it.