Handmade Portraits: Rob Ryan

I watched this lovely little Etsy video over the weekend (found via A Little Hut). Rob's exquisite work conveys a genuineness that is rarely seen.

Handmade Portraits: Rob Ryan from Etsy on Vimeo.

At Home: Changing It Up

Surprise! The master bedroom is now the office and the office is now the master bedroom. Bet you didn't see that one coming. I barely saw it coming. The thing is, the master bedroom is the largest of the three bedrooms in our home. One of the other two bedrooms serves as our office and the third one serves as a guest bedroom. The room we were using as our office only measures about eight feet by eleven feet, which is pretty small. Scratch that. VERY small. This meant that a lot of office-related furniture started spilling over into our bedroom. Zach suggested we swap our bedroom with our office so we would have more space. I thought it made sense. So we did it.

Here's how it all went down
We moved all our office crap, minus the furniture, into our guest bedroom.

We moved some of the office furniture into what would become the new office.

Then the room looked like this (note the hideous blue rug):

We left the rest of the office furniture in the old office for me to trip over and walk into while I painted that room in preparation for it to become our new bedroom. I didn't want to spend more money on paint when I already had a million gallons leftover from other painting projects. I'm exaggerating. I probably only have about nine-hundred thousand leftover gallons. To avoid adding yet another partially-used gallon of paint to the mix, I did just that - mixed. That's right. I mixed about three different paints together. I found a whole gallon of a creamy white paint left by the previous owners and I added a bit of teal and black to it, to get a bluish-grey color.

After I finished painting, we moved some more furniture and waited for the nasty paint smell to dissipate so we could move our bed into our "new" bedroom.

While I was waiting, I hung some curtains, centered the rug, and vacuumed.

A few days later...
At this point we got tired of waiting for the paint smell to completely dissipate, so we disassembled the bed in our old bedroom (the new office) and reassembled it in our new bedroom (the old office).

And now our bedroom looks like this:

I told you the room was small! I still have to hang some art and decide if I like the dresser in front of the bed. Here's my pile of art waiting for me to do something with it. Note the ugly blue rug again. Man I hate that rug.

The Heirloom Harvest Dinner: Part 2

I said I'd be back again tomorrow. Are you surprised I actually followed through?

The Decor
As I mentioned yesterday, Sunday was spent decorating the barn in prep for the dinner that evening. Because I attended the dinner, I only got a couple photos of the main event, but I did have an amazing opportunity to photograph the pre-dinner transformation.

The Food
Ten local chefs paired up (two chefs per course) to produce five unique courses made from locally-sourced foods with a focus on heirloom varieties.

The five-course dinner started behind the barn under a tent where guests were served a selection of hors d'oeuvres paired with local aperitifs including Throwback Brewery's Raspberry Wit made from Jean and Josh's raspberries.

We then moved into the barn were we were served the remaining four courses which ranged from Grilled Maine Sea Scallops to Muskmelon Gooseberry Gazpacho Shooters. The main course consisted of lamb prepared four different ways. My favorite of which was braised with, what I think was, some sort of red wine reduction. Throughout the meal, we enjoyed Flint Cornbread and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread with Peach Butter and Herb-whipped Cultured Butter, both from Vermont Butter and Cheese. We ended the evening with a selection of small desserts including a Poached Reliance Peach with Mascarpone Sabayon. It was an amazing spread. As I type this, I know I'm not even beginning to do it justice.

We spent the joyful evening stuffing our faces and chatting it up with friends. Even now, it brings a big smile to my face. I feel really blessed to have been a part of the day.

You can learn more about the annual Heirloom Harvest Dinner here. You can see all my photos on the Seacoast Eat Local Flickr stream here. You can read Part 1 of this post here.

The Heirloom Harvest Dinner: Part 1

I've been wanting to write this post for about a month now. I'm not sure if it was the idea of blogging about such a monumental experience or just laziness that has caused me to put it off until now. Probably a little of both. But I really wanted to give this experience the props it deserved, and I knew that was gonna take time.

It all began with a quick trip Zach and I took to NH in mid September for the third annual Heirloom Harvest Dinner at Josh and Jean's (Zach's brother and sister-in-law) farm in Stratham, NH. We drove up on a Friday afternoon and home again the following Monday morning. It was a whirlwind trip, to say the least. But what an amazing weekend full of new experiences, gorgeous weather, delightful people, and delicious food. Because the dinner was in the barn of the house Jean and Josh live in, my camera and I were able to get a behind-the-scenes look at everything that goes into making this dinner possible.

Rumor has it Saturday morning a bunch of volunteers showed up to clean out the main part of the barn in preparation for setting up tables for the dinner Sunday evening. Zach and I had work to do, so we headed off to Panera Bread in the morning to work on our laptops. When we got back later in the afternoon, the barn was spotless. These volunteers are amazing! And fast! You can see the barn is ready for tables here...

Speaking of volunteers, they were coming out of the woodwork all weekend. People were scurrying about all day Sunday setting up tables and decorating the space to the nines. Then more volunteers showed up late Sunday afternoon to serve the five-course dinner to all us lazy, non-volunteering folk. In fact, this event is so popular, they actually have a waiting list for volunteers! What a fabulous "problem" to have. It's really encouraging to see how passionate people are about local food.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, as I said, Zach and I got back to the farm in the afternoon to find the barn clean and ready for decor the next day. Since everything was done for the day, we all decided to go check out the pigs. Here's Jean and Josh with their happy-as-a-clam pigs.

Then we went for a walk in the woods down to the pond. The light was beautiful.

That evening, we had dinner with some of Jean and Josh's neighbors and friends. Since we had already set up the tables on the second level of the barn, Jean suggested we eat dinner there. So all fourteen of us gathered around and enjoyed a delicious spread of homemade casserole, roasted eggplant, mixed greens salad and a decadant desert from a bakery in Boston. And lots of wine and beer too, of course. Everyone was so generous and lovely.

After dinner one friend brought out his stash of paper lanterns. I had never seen anything like them before and grabbed my camera as we headed out across the street and into the dark field. By now it was around 11PM - perfect for lighting things on fire. Everyone got a lantern and we passed around a lighter to light them. Then, one by one, we released them into the sky. It was a magical evening.

Stop by tomorrow for the second installment of our barn dinner weekend experience, where I'll share lots more photos.

And the award goes to...

Me! See that lovely little green box over there? To the right. Under the Awards section. It looks like this:

Yep, that's my very first blogging award. Tammy from Small Pond has graciously awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either, but I'm super excited to have received it. But it's not all rainbows and unicorns. From what I've learned, there are certain rules and regulations the recipient of such an award must follow.

First Rule: I have to thank the person who gave it to me and link to their blog.

Done!

Second Rule: I'm supposed to share seven things about myself. Okay, here goes...

1. Strawberries are my favorite fruit.
2. I love rabbits.
3. I don't have any wisdom teeth. They weren't removed; I just don't have any.
4. I've never broken a bone.
5. I do my best to follow Jesus.
6. I'm a bit of a perfectionist.
7. I don't tan very well, which is just as well since it makes your skin wrinkly and leathery. Unfortunately it means I have the complexion of a milk jug. Oh to have golden skin that doesn't wrinkle. It's a conundrum.

Rule two, done!

Rule Three: Pass along the award to fifteen newly discovered bloggers and tell them about the rules that accompany said award by leaving a comment on their blog or linking back to your post about the rules (if you write one.).

Rule Three is gonna take a little longer to accomplish. Stay posted.

Thanks for teaching us to think different Steve Jobs