Italy

In saucepan, cook onion with garlic, oregano, and thyme in butter until tender. Stir in soup and water; cook over low heat 15 minutes. Stir now and then. Meanwhile, dip luncheon meat slices in egg, then in bread crumbs. In skillet, brown meat on one side in shortening; turn and pour sauce over. Top with Mozzarella; sprinkle with Parmesan. Cover until cheese melts (about 3 minutes).

Call it the unicorn problem: beautiful, alluring, magical, and totally non-existent. Social commerce, according to the latest Monetate e-commerce report, is almost as elusive. In fact, social media referrals represents just 1.55 percent of all traffic to major e-commerce destinations. And when that tiny trickle of traffic arrived, only .71 percent of it actually resulted in any kind of sale. Email marketing, by contrast, generates twice as much traffic as social media, and has four times the conversion rate to sales. Those are not good numbers for social. Source: MonetateConversion rates by traffic-referring sources The darling of the omnipresent social media gurus on Twitter, social commerce was supposed to totally disrupt e-commerce. And, because people trust other people’s recommendations and spend a lot of time on Facebook where they meet other people and read what they say, social commerce was supposed to be huge, turning social media influence and shares into sales and revenue. Unfortunately, there’s a problem: “The challenge for social media — and for its big brother, word of mouth marketing — is that they are inherently additive pieces of the conversion funnel, rather than causative,” Monetate’s new report states. But Monetate says that the problem isn’t in the social. It’s in how companies are using it. Loyalty isn’t about clicking on an offer, report author Mitch Joel says, it’s about building a relationship. And a relationship goes far beyond “do you want to buy this.” Which means that social is not short term, social is not transactional, and social is not the same as direct response. In other words: shocker, social media is, well, social. Taken in that context, social can still be very valuable for brands, as marketing firm Syncapse found just a few weeks ago, valuing some Facebook fans at over $1,600. But it’s the relationship that’s valuable, not the episodic communications per se. And that relationship can be very valuable. When an actual sale is made from a social referral, it’s often valuable, with the average Pinterest-referred sale clocking in at over $80, and the average Facebook and Twitter sales at about $70. Source: MonetateAverage order value by social-referred sale photo credit: zoomar via photopin cc Filed under: Business, Enterprise, Social

Sooo wishing I was in LA for the @domainehome launch party ???? Congrats again @katherinepower…

So much fun today @LanceBass @TheVeronicas @wearebadflower @randoutwest @dustyinla-thank U @DJLisaFoxx @siriusxm …

Thank u @poojadhingraa you're an angel

Yes indeed I'm here at the office & on your radio sets baby!! Power 105.1!! 12am I'm doing that "Way…

Late night s'mores attack ????

We are joining with Jonesie, now that Chey knows all about gardens to do a Thursday gardening post. I am not sure if we will get every Thursday (especially in the winter) but we’ll see. Although Chey did the interviewing, she does not go in the garden. However, she said we should start with some before shots so you can admire the after shots when they happen. This is the front of the house: Our Dad does not want to have to mow so there will no more grass here. Don’t worry! We have a pot of cat grass in the back already growing. Mom says that hopefully the new landscaping will help to hide the service stuff on the edge of our lot. Here are three photos of the backyard, one looking to the right  and the other to the left and one straight ahead from the sliding door. This is where Gemini and I go outside. So anyway, here we are examining a new butterfly bush that will go where the ugly vegetable planter thing that Dad has. Gemini and I find it interesting. He thinks it’s neat and Mom thinks it’s ugly. Yeah, okay so I did try a taste of the dirt there. Gemini thought that was rude. Now, here I am checking out a blueberry bush that will stay around: And here’s Gemini checking out the planter. I think she is pleased that the fertilizer sitting there is fish poop fertilizer. I just wish it were fish! And here I am, smelling the California Lilac. Dad really liked this when he saw it at Jonesie’s house so he made sure to find one. This is supposed to be smaller but Mom isn’t convinced it will be. If this means I can go wander around the yard regularly, I’ll be a happy cat! This was fun!

photo via Tartarus PressOnce Tartarus Press publishes their new edition of Robert Aickman's Night Voices at the end of the month, they will have brought all of Aickman's short stories back into print. (The new Night Voices will also include Aickman's "An Essay", written when he won the World Fantasy Award, his various prefaces to the volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories that he edited, and Ramsey Campbell's remembrance of Aickman.)I just wanted to take this moment to publicly say thank you to Tartarus for doing this. I can't imagine that they're getting rich off of it. The books are pricey, but so beautifully designed, bound, and printed that I expect the profit margin is really not all that high. Over the years, I've bought most of the collections that contained multiple stories I didn't already own, and they're among the most beautiful books on my shelves. I seldom resist walking past them without touching them. Despite not having a whole lot of discretionary income these days, I've never regretted buying these volumes. Tartarus makes elegant books.But ultimately it's the content that matters, and it is the content that causes me to write this post. Aickman classified his writings as "strange stories", and that is truly the best description of them. Sometimes they are supernatural stories, but not always (at least not unambiguously). Some of them fit somewhat comfortably into the realm of "horror stories" or "ghost stories", but also not. They are unique and marvelous and unsettling and beguiling, and they richly reward rereading, which is really my only criterion for whether a piece of writing is great.Night Voices contains my single favorite Aickman story, "The Stains", and, according to the website at least, will also have Aickman's short novel The Model added. If you've never read Aickman, or never picked up one of Tartarus's reissues of his collections, then this is an excellent one to start with. (If you're looking for another to start with, you can't go wrong with Cold Hand in Mine. But really, you can't go wrong with any of them. Aickman rarely wrote a story that was mediocre, and never, to my knowledge, wrote one that was ordinary.)Thank you to all the folks at Tartarus for bringing Aickman back to us in such excellent form.

Yes I said June.  Yikes.  I'm worried summer will be over before I even realize it began.  Anyway, we have a peek at our June label club.  We were inspired by the table runner we had at Quilt Market- the one everyone signed.  We thought it would be fun to do the same idea in a pillow.  Only when you had guests at your house, you could have them sign it, kind of like a guest book.  Or even better, you could use it at a party, graduation or house warming event as a special memory.   For more information on the label crew, click here. Just wanted to clear something up about Monday's post.  We won't actually be blogging less (well, we will try really hard not to blog less).  Some of you have expressed concern that you may miss out on something because we are now on Instagram.  Don't worry.  We aren't abandoning our blog.  But if you want to find out more of what we do, what inspires us, see where we live and catch a few pictures of the most adorable kids in the world (ok- I am a little biased), you can follow us on Instagram.  For those of you who aren't on Instagram (because those of you who are on Instagram already know this), I will give you a quick explanation why. It is sooooooooooooooo easy.   That's it.  It is quick, easy and to the point.  Blogs are great for telling a story, showcasing fabric and patterns and highlighting the big stuff.  And even though I love doing it, you still have to get out that big expensive camera, search for the best light, download the photos, select the best ones, put them in photoshop, edit them, save them to the computer, upload them to the blog and write a story.  It takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. With instagram, I can post 5 photos in the time I wrote that last paragraph. Which also means, we can't really go into depth about anything- just a quick photo.  Which is why we will continue to blog.  So don't worry.   Ok.  I'm done with raving about Instagram for awhile.  But if you try it, you will love it.  Trust me!