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.

Things that make you hum

I was searching around Spotify for music and stumbled upon this new Christmas song by Sara Bareilles. It's a lovely song with a simple message - one we all know but easily forget.

"Love Is Christmas"

I don’t care if the house is packed,
Or the strings of light are broken.
I don’t care if the gifts are wrapped,
Or there’s nothing here to open.

Love is not a toy, and no paper will conceal it.
Love is simply joy that I’m home.

I don’t care if the carpet's stained; we've got food upon our table.
I don’t care if it’s gonna rain, our little room is warm and stable.

Love is who we are, and no season can contain it.
Love would never fall for that.

Let love lead us, love is Christmas.

Why so scared that you’ll mess it up? Imperfection keeps you haunted.
All you need is your best my love, that’s all anyone ever wanted.

Love is how we do, let no judgment overrule it.
Love I look to you, and I sing.

Let love lead us, love is Christmas.
Let love lead us, love is Christmas.

Repurpose Cereal Containers

My Mom has sent Zach and I several containers of cereal by a company called Me & Gogi (now out-of-business). They come in tall cylinders perfect for repurposing once the cereal is gone. If your cereal comes in a box, don't worry. There are lots of things that do come in cylinders like some brands of tea and coffee, oatmeal (A.K.A "rolled oats") etc. Next time you finish your cylinder of whatever, don't throw it out. Repurpose it into a cool container you can use to store just about anything...pens, pencils, paintbrushes, extra cotton balls. Heck you could even use it for more cereal or oatmeal, but now you can leave the container on the counter 'cause it looks so cool and modern. Okay, enough babbling. Here's the how-to:

I had an old atlas lying around, so I selected some maps from places that are significant to Zach and me. But you could use any decorative paper you want.

Measure the height of your container. If yours has metal rims on top and bottom (like mine do), measure between those metal rims. Wrap your paper around the container and make a small pencil mark about an eight of an inch beyond where the paper meets. This will give you a slight overlap so your container looks neat and clean and none of the container shows from underneath. Trim your height (from that measurement you just made) and width (based on the pencil mark) with an X-acto knife and ruler on a cutting mat (or scissors if that's all you have).

Apply double-sided tape to the wrong side of your paper on all four edges. Make sure you get the tape right to the edge so your paper doesn't curl up or pull away from the container.

Line up the top edge of your paper with the top edge of your container (right underneath the metal band in my case) and gently start wrapping the paper around the cylinder making sure to keep it aligned with the top edge as you wrap. Lightly press down the rest of the paper as you go until you have wrapped the entire container. Your paper should line up on the top and bottom and have a small eighth-inch overlap from top to bottom. Once you're happy with how the paper is applied, firmly press it down all over the container. And presto! You've got a lovely, repurposed container perfect for storing all those things you need but don't necessarily want to look at.

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.