white smile: Mantle Free For Now.... and My Mom's Cinnamon Roll Recipe

Hello!

I hope you are all enjoying your week....

I haven't had much time to blog the past couple of weeks....

Hopefully I can get back into it.....

I wanted to share a few images of my living room today.

The above image is an image I shot of my living room last summer....

Last month I decided to take the mantle and the clock down.....

I decided it was time for a change....

I am going to sand the mantle down and repaint it.

I actually never painted it properly in the first place, I want to sand all the old paint off and give it a fresh coat of white paint, then I will put it back to use....

That mantle is probably the only piece of furniture that has stayed in one place for so long.....

The clock will go in my son's room....

I decided to put the framed chalkboard in our living room for right now....

I was trying to achieve a french farmhouse/schoolhouse vibe.....

I actually have other plans for this area, however it might end up being a year before we complete that project : )

It is fun to see what a large chalkboard will do for your kids' creativity.....

My kids can spend hours drawing on the chalkboard....

We also now love to do school in this room since we moved it into the living room....

The chalkboard is made from reclaimed molding from an old Victorian House in San Francisco.

A favorite find!

We wrote my favorite French Bread Recipe on the chalkboard....

I posted about it here....

Bethany came up with the idea to put the chalk in this vintage french apothecary jar.....

I love that you can see all the pastel colors through the jar....

The nice part about chalk art.... It is so easy to clean up....

I stacked some of my favorite books in a pile....

One of my favorite homes featured in the Domino Magazine had stacks and stacks of books on the floor....

I didn't want to use antique books, instead I wanted to use my favorite collection of decorating books as well as cookbooks that have some color....

I topped the pile of books with my favorite vintage french alarm clock....

I will take some more pictures of the wall with the blue door in the near future....

These apple green vintage french bistro chairs are my favorite chairs....

They help add a splash of color to the room....

I am hoping to find more of these....

This pillar gets moved around the house a little too often....

For right now it sits in this corner of the living room.

This is also one of the rooms my husband added antique tin to a section of the ceiling....

I hung my favorite vintage oil painting from the 1920's....

I have had it for quite a few years.

It originally came with a frame, I took the frame off and discovered that it was a painting of a school in California.

I am hoping to finish photographing the rest of the house soon.....

On another note......

I wanted to share my mom's cinnamon roll recipe....

My mom is known for her homemade rolls....

This recipe truly is a family favorite....

Keep in mind this recipe is for a family of 12, you might want to reduce the recipe according to your needs.

I always make the entire batch and freeze some of the cinnamon rolls...

1 cup of shortening

1 cup of sugar

2TBL salt

4 C. of scalded milk

2 cups of warm water

6 cups of flour

6 eggs

1 1/2 cups of warm water

4 1/2 TBL yeast

15 cups of flour

Filling

Brown Sugar

Butter

Cinnamon

Mix yeast and sugar. Add luke warm water and let stand for 5 minutes until yeast is frothy.

In a saucepan scald milk. Remove from heat and add Crisco to the scalded milk. Let cool to same temperature as yeast water.

Mix together scalded milk mixture and yeast mixture.

Add 2 cups of flour and whisk well.

Add eggs and whisk well.

Add salt to 2 cups flour and then mix into dough mixture.

Add remaining flour one cup at a time mixing and kneading well as necessary.

Dough should be sticky at the end of the process.

Cover dough and let rise for one hour.

Once dough has risen, roll out into rectangular form on a floured surface.

Spread melted or softened butter generously over the form.

Spread brown sugar generously over the butter.

Sprinkle generously with cinnamon.

Roll the rectangular form of dough lengthwise and pinch seam along the edge and ends.

Using a piece of sewing thread, cut the roll into sections.

Place the cinnamon rolls into a greased jelly roll pan.

Let rise for 15 minutes.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes
I used my favorite Emile Henry pie dishes to bake my cinnamon rolls in....
These work great for baking more then just pies in.....