A Longwood Gardens Christmas with Hipstamatic

Last Thursday evening, Zach and I drove down to Kennett Square to check out this year's Christmas displays at Longwood Gardens. It was magical, as always.

Here's some shots I took with my iPhone using the Hipstamatic app:

Around the Table: Pumpkin Parfait

I made these pumpkin parfaits (recipe from Simply Organic) the other night. The pumpkin puree was a little bitter, so I definitely had to add all the sugar (I usually cut sugar amounts in half when baking). This would also be a great addition to your kids' lunches (or your own!). Just package the puree and yogurt layered together in a sealable container and add the granola when ready to eat. Here's the recipe:

10 minute prep time
Serves 2 (I doubled it to make 4 parfaits)

1/2 c pumpkin puree
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp milk (I used almond milk)
2 tsp sugar (possibly more - I can't believe I'm saying this)
6 oz low-fat vanilla yogurt
1/4 c granola

In a small bowl, stir together pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, milk, and sugar. In parfait glasses or ramekins, layer the pumpkin mixture and yogurt. Sprinkle with granola.

Show Me Your LOMO

There's been a major surge in the popularity of old Instamatic-type cameras originally designed by Kodak and made popular in the 60s and 70s. A lot of people from my generation seem to be rather nostalgic right now, me included, and we just can't get enough vignetting or solar haze. Happily, there are a plethora of apps, like Hipstamatic and Instagram for the iPhone that allow you to simulate the qualities produced by many of these retro cameras. If you want to take it one step further, you can buy reproductions of some of these cameras (here and here are two good places to start.), like the LOMO LC-A, a camera so popular it inspired the creation of an entire society!

Produced by LOMO PLC in St. Petersburg, Russia starting in 1984, the LC-A produced strongly vignetted images in vivid colors reminiscent of the way Technicolor made everything pop in the movies. Supposedly, back in the 90s, a bunch of people got really excited about the fixed-lens camera, and it has enjoyed a cult following that still carries on today. People just couldn't resist all that vignetting and super-saturated color!

Of course, if you don't have an iPhone or you're not nostalgic enough to drop 225 beans (or more) for a repro, fear not, you can create similar LOMO effects with some photo-editing software, like Photoshop. I stumbled upon this tutorial a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty helpful, so instead of recreating the wheel, I'm just gonna give you the link.

Here's what I ended up with:

If any of you try this tutorial with one of your photos, I'd love to see it. leave a link to it in the comments. Happy LOMO-ing!

The Season of Advent

As anyone who has ever worked in retail knows, Christmas has become rather commercialized. Heck, even if you haven't worked in retail you know this. I'm always trying to escape the commercialism and focus on the hope and peace of Christmas, which is one of the reasons I love Advent so much.

The word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus meaning "coming." It's the time of year Christians wait in hopeful expectation for the coming of the Christ Child.

As a kid, my church always celebrated Advent. It traditionally starts four Sundays before Christmas day culminating with a special Christmas eve service. It always felt sort of magical to me when, at the end of the evening service, we sang Silent Night with only the light from our candles to illuminate the hymnals. There's such a peace and stillness produced by candle light.

The celebration of Advent involves a lot of symbolism. It starts with "the hanging of the greens" where evergreens of different shapes are hung at the front of the church symbolizing everlasting life through Jesus Christ. Purple, sometimes royal blue, is the color of Advent. It represents royalty as well as penitence and fasting. But the most notable and meaningful part of Advent for me has to be the Advent wreath: an evergreen wreath holding four tall taper candles, one pink the other three purple. In the center of the wreath is a large white candle, the Christ candle. Each week one of the four colored candles is lit culminating with the lighting of the Christ candle on Christmas eve.

Although there are variations in meaning depending on the church or denomination, each candle is typically represented as follows:

First Sunday: Hope (1st purple candle)
Second Sunday: Peace (2nd purple candle)
Third Sunday: Joy (pink candle)
Fourth Sunday: Love (3rd purple candle)
Christmas Eve: Christ Candle (center white candle)

Today I thought it would be nice to show you how to make your own Advent wreath that you can light at home as you celebrate the coming of the Christ Child.

You will need...
- fresh pine bows or other evergreens (you can get these at many home improvement stores and Christmas tree farms, or your back yard - FREE!)
- a pair of pruning shears (or something that will cut the branches)
- floral tape
- floral wire
- a pack of Advent candles (available at most craft stores and online as well.)
- a white pillar candle
- 4 candle holders
- a small circular tray

Start by clipping small, four-to-six inch sprigs of evergreen.

Bind several together with floral tape to make a slightly larger sprig.

As you're making the taped sprig bundles, lay them around your tray to estimate how many you'll need. Once you have enough sprigs, you'll need to bind them together to make the wreath.

At this point, you may be asking, "Why no wreath form?"
You can use a wreath form if you prefer, but I like to just bind the sprigs to each other because I find it makes a less bulky wreath. It also means you can use whatever size tray you want (or have on hand). If you use a wreath form, you'll be limited to only a few specific sizes and will have to find a tray that matches in size. Of course, it's totally up to you.

You'll notice that each sprig bundle sort of has a flatter side based on how your taped them together. They sort of want to fan out a little. You want to bind them together so the flat side is resting on the tray. Grab a couple shoots from each sprig and bind them with wire to the taped section of the bundle below.

You always want to lay your next sprig bundle on top of the taped section of bundle of the previous wired bundle.

Once you get them all wired together, your wreath should look like this. You may want to trim any extra long sprigs from the wreath to tidy it up and make it look neater.

Now it's time to add the candle holders and candles. At this point, I realized my candle holders didn't fit on my tray, so I had to dig up another tray (hence the switch from silver tray to white tray) that would accommodate them. Lesson learned?...Make sure you place all your candle holders plus the pillar candle on your tray before you start, so you know they fit. Thankfully I had a larger tray on hand that worked.

Here's the final wreath with candles.

I realize we're heading into the second week of Advent tomorrow, so this tutorial is a bit late. If you do decide to make a wreath, I'd love to hear about it! It's never too late to start a new tradition! Anyone have any special Advent traditions? Please share them in the comments.

You can learn more about the season of Advent here.