Well, it is snowing and it is a Saturday.  This means that unless you happen to have a weekend job, you have a perfect excuse to just.stay.home.

I think we can all agree (unlike presidential elections) that the best thing on a snowy day is fresh chocolate chip cookies and some hot chocolate.

This is Pierre, my red mixer.  I love him.  He’s french and he does whatever I ask him too and a lot of stuff I don’t even know about yet.  He’s a good man.  Don’t tell Justin.  I don’t want him to get jealous of Pierre.

Piper hung out for a bit while I was baking, but then ran up to take a nap.  First thing this morning, while the roads were still in good shape, we took Piper and Neum up to the dog park to run them.  I was having visions of being stuck in the house with them all day today and it was not pretty.  It is for the best. Trust me.

I’m mostly just showing you these pictures because I’m practicing with the photo editing software on my phone.  I do love looking at Pierre and doesn’t he look so nice with my aqua bowl?

I’m trying this new thing where I don’t eat the cookie dough.  This is obviously hard for me, but I wanted to see, for the first time in my entire life, what the cookies taste like if I haven’t already filled up on cookie dough while I was baking.

It was worth the wait.

I hope that my New England buddies are all enjoying this day to stay in.  Sometimes nature conspires with the universe in the perfect way and makes you slow down.  Stay warm!

-Kate

I’m hoping to learn how to make furniture and get over my fear of power tools.  I am so excited. 

Do you want to know a secret?  I have always wanted to make chairs.  I dream about chairs.  When I come to your house, I look at your chairs, especially if you happen to have any Hitchcock chairs hanging around.  I’m a sucker for good construction.  My biggest hope/wish is that I finish the woodworking class with the ability to make my own chair(s) to go with my planned dining room makeover in 2012.   How cool would that be?

etsy.com

My parents have been kind enough to hold my Great Grandmother’s dining room table for me until I could bring it over to our home.  When my grandmother and my great-aunt Susan gave their mother’s table to me, I had to swear that it would always stay in the family (on the family bible, no less).  That’s a lot of pressure for a furniture junkie like me, which is why Justin and I waited until we were completely ready to have it move in with us!

This is what our dining room looks like now:

We have a bistro table set that has been great for the last few years, but has taken a beating with two dogs who were both chewy puppies.  This might sound weird too, but it  is hard when we have more guests than seats because the chairs are so tall.  You can’t really substitute anything else in, like a folding chair.  That’s always bothered me.  With a shorter table, that wouldn’t be an issue.

pinterest.com

Obvious size differences in room aside, the table in the picture above is similar in color to my Great Grandmother’s table and I really like how it looks with the white chairs.  I would want to do something similar.  I’m not married to the idea of having all matching chairs, so I’ve kept an eye out on Craigslist.  So far, no luck though.  I’ve missed painting, too.  So it would be fun to get out a paint brush for either something I build or buy.

Justin and I both really like to eat week night dinners at the counter in the kitchen, so I’d love to get these gorgeous chairs from West Elm, too.  Just a pair.  They would tuck in nicely on either side of the floating shelves.

-Kate

In that vein, this is the kind of stuff I’ve been listening to:

It reminds me of the kind of music we listened to at my grandparents’ house.  For an English group, they have a bit of a brogue. 

I really love the whole damn album (Sigh No More), but some of the songs have become so personal to me, that picking certain ones and posting them online feels akin to putting up naked pictures.  

One more to share for today: 

 

 I listened to this endlessly in 2011, after my grandfather passed away.   My Dah loved to sing after a few cocktails.   Having songs like this to listen to keep him with me, especially when I’m slaughtering the gaelic verses in my car by myself. 

-Kate

We packed up the car with our two fuzzy friends, Piper and Neuman and some snacks!  They are both great in the car and did well with ferry ride (in full disclosure, we left Neum in the car with a bone and took Piper up into the passenger area).

If you are in Connecticut/NYC/NJ, you must go check out the Long Island wine trail.  We tried so many delicious wines and met a ton of really great people.  It was the perfect way to spend New Years Eve.  While we were celebrating the potential of a new year, we got some great news from our friends Jessica and Michael, who had just welcomed their beautiful baby daughter, Leah, into the world.  The day really couldn’t have been any better.

If you are an iPhone owner, I spent the day playing with my new lenses, from Photojojo (fish eye, telephoto and macro mostly). They attach right to the back of your phone with a magnetic ring.  $50 for three.  I’d say it is worth it.  Plus they give you a small plastic dinosaur.

We had a lot of fun going from vineyard to vineyard.  I love this shot of Justin.  This was at Lenz vineyard, which also had some of the best staff.  Great people.  What are you waiting for?  Just go!

Happy New Years!

-Kate

We are normally big New Years Resolution people.  Justin usually stiff arms me into doing something dramatic, like giving up pizza or burgers for an entire year.  He believes that a resolution should be significant, disciplined and a reminder of how lucky we are, by giving up something that we really enjoy.  It is kind of like doing Lent for an entire year.   I would imagine that we probably seem pretty smug in November.  ”Look at those two, they gave up burgers/soda/fast food/pizza”….haha.  Even I’m sick of us.

This year we aren’t giving up any food items and instead focusing on our meals.  There is always room to cook more meals at home.  A few weeks ago, we purchased a share of a local, grass-fed cow.  It has been fun coming up with recipes and trying out new cuts of meat that we wouldn’t normally buy, with the added bonus of eating healthier meats.  We’re definitely going to do that again in 2012.

We don’t usually cook meals together, but tonight, while Justin was getting our dinner ready, I started cutting up the veggies for a crock pot meal that I’m going to cook tomorrow.

Nothing crazy, just some carrots, red potatoes, onions and a cut of beef (with a splash of whatever wine we have open in the house).   I’m still on the fence about whether to cook it tonight while we sleep or while I’m at work.  I’m a bit of a worrier, so if I use the crock pot while I’m at work, I set up my laptop webcam so I can watch it.  I’ve declared it the most boring web cam in history.  Piper the dog does occasionally make an appearance to sniff, so I can tell when it must be starting to smell good at the house.

Crockpot Cam

I threw everything into gallon sized plastic ziplock bags.  If we decided that we didn’t want to have a crock pot meal tomorrow, I could easily just freeze everything.

While I was cleaning up, Justin set the counter for our meal.  We try to use our china as much as possible.  We also put it in the dishwasher.  Why wait for a special occasion and baby it?

And of course, no new year meal would be complete without a delicious, fresh salad!

-Kate

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There is something to be said about the hustle and bustle of those last few days leading up to the holidays.  Trying to get all the shopping, wrapping, cooking and decorating done with enough time left over to just soak it all in.   It doesn’t have to be impossible.  

This Gingerbread Cookie is trying to fit it all in.

I’m there.  I’m ready to eat home-baked cookies, drink good wine, spend time with family and catch up with friends.   My internal battle to come up with one or two more stellar posts to try to reach my goal of 10,000 page views before year-end will have to be extended (we’re very close though) and that is okay!

I want you to sit down in that comfy chair by the fire, the one with the ottoman and put your feet up.  I’ll pour you a big, steaming mug of hot chocolate or apple cider, your choice.  We’ll put on a few songs,  quietly in the background.  Yes, you can have that soft throw blanket to snuggle up.  Oh, look, it is just starting to snow.   Nope, you didn’t forget, you picked up and wrapped that last-minute gift a few days ago.  Time to relax…time to just enjoy…Happy Holidays!

-Kate

Obviously the long-term plan is to find a home for everything we need and pare down stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time, but probably doesn’t have to be in the kitchen all the time.  In which case, we have storage shelves in the garage to hold the special occasion stuff.  Not a big deal.

The prettiest cabinet in the kitchen kind of proved the most difficult.  Think about it, what would you want everyone who comes into your kitchen to look at?  If we didn’t have our china, I’d probably pick out some items in our accent colors and pair that with our regular white dishes.

My only regret is that we didn’t get our electrician friend over before the cabinets went up to put lights in there.  That would have been very pretty.

Next up, our everyday cabinet.  What used to take up two, we’ve consolidated into one.  Our glassware, mugs, plates and bowls!

We picked up a space divider from a certain big box store to create a second shelf.  Tremendously helpful.  That pink mug on top is a “grab in case of fire” owl mug from one of my dearest friends.

This was also a great time for us to put together a cabinet of our entertaining pieces.  Instead of having to pull from a bunch of different places when we have guests over, one place, closest to the living room so that you can easily access it from either side of the counter tops.  Wine and martini glasses, our ice bucket and our vegetable shaped dip dishes, just about everything you could need to throw a pretty darn good get together.  Justin and I both come from a long line of party throwers.

Do you know what drives me nuts?  A spice cabinet that is up so high that I can’t see into it.  For now, this hot mess is going to have to do.  I tried my best to layer the smaller spice jars in the front and as potential solution for the future, we picked up some magnetic spice jars to put on the side of the fridge.

I know that you all wanted to see what my drawers look like.  Ha.

I like that the idea of a junk drawer is universal and that we all probably have one or even a couple.  However, with this new kitchen I wanted to start organized.  Justin and I picked up metal containers in a couple different sizes and picked out the few things that actually should live in a utility or junk drawer.   I think after a few cocktails at the Festivus party, I actually made guests look at it.  Yup.  I was that proud.

Are you a newly wed and you aren’t using all of your new stuff yet?  Don’t sweat it.  The silverware you see above were wedding gifts, but up until the kitchen remodel was finished, we hadn’t been using it for everyday.  In fact, we were only using it for parties.  I kept it all in a cutlery basket in the scary pre-makeover pantry (over share).

We also decided to split our most used kitchen/baking utensils between the big center drawer and the single drawer on either side of the sink.  We’re still grabbing for forks and knives in that smaller drawer, where they used to live, but boy is it helpful to have everything so easily accessible.

And I think that this post wraps up kitchen posts for a good long time.

-Kate

Pinterest works by allowing you to grab screenshots of images that you like and when you click on them later, it takes you directly to the website where the image came from.  This is huge for DIY folks who want to save a project idea for later or for shopaholic who want to remember that cute outfit.   As you can see from above, it is also a OCD paradise for folks who like to keep their visual lists organized.

I find that I am pretty consistently shocked at how useful Pinterest is.   You would never think, or at least I wouldn’t have, that looking at fitness inspiration pictures would be enough of a push to get you back to your regular work outs, but it is!  Or alternatively, how quickly you could spiral back down the path of glutton with all the great recipe ideas.  In fact, my entire Festivus food menu this year was based on stuff I had seen on Pinterest (with the exception of the buffalo chicken dip from Ryan’s Megan). 

Your boards become insightful about what really moves you aesthetically, too.  I probably could have told you that I like soft neutrals, classic touches like picture frame and crown molding, but when I look at my board as a whole, it is pretty obvious from what I was drawn to when I was poking/pinning around the internet.   As my friend, Erin, pointed out, it seems like I’m never completely satisfied with how our home looks, but when I look at my For The Home pinterest board, I see the future potential for fun tweaks and not drastic changes from what we now enjoy.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do have a love of clothes and have a pretty distinct personal style that has evolved from my days of 15 layers of oversized boy clothes.  (Trust me when I say my  teenage years were NOT cute.)   I love that I have at my finger tips, access to great images of outfits on which I can put together my look.  You don’t have to own everything in the pictures, but if you can take the concept and run with it, then that is fantastic. 

I’m probably heading a bit too far down Navel Gazing Lane at this point, but I’ve leaned pretty heavily on Pinterest this year for quotes and images that soothe my overactive brain.   In a tribute to the great Miles, I named my favorite board “GreeninBlue” (backwards from his track, Blue in Green on the album, Kind of Blue, of course).  Even now, while I’m typing up this post, I find myself getting sucked into the quotes and thinking about what was going on in my life when I pinned them.  There is so much wrapped up in the words and images.  Memories, good and bad. 

Anyway, if there are any of you out there who have not jumped happily on to the Pinterest bandwagon and wanted to give it a try, email me.  I’d be more than happy to shoot you in invite and do a quick tutorial to get you started!

-Kate

I bought these birch log candle holders on Etsy.com.

My favorite decorating elements stay pretty consistent year to year.  I have used the same bag of tea lights that I bought at Ikea about 4 years ago.  I secretly think that they are bunny candles and that they breed and reproduce when I put them back into the closet.   I have also picked up an epic amount of plastic silver ornaments in various shapes and sizes over the course of a couple of years .   Last year I hung them from the balcony with fishing wire.  Very pretty and a ton of work, both during and after for clean up.

As you can see from the picture above,  I dump a good chunk of the ornaments into the fireplace.  This year I left the decorative birch logs, but it also looks pretty spectacular with pillar candles of various heights.  If we hadn’t just made it to the finish line on the kitchen, I would have liked to have done that again this year, but alas, I just ran out of time.

The new element this year was cranberries.   I bought a couple of bags and went to town with them.  Above, I grabbed my blue Mason jar collection and threw in a handful of cranberries with one of the Ikea tea lights on top.  I put these guys in the bathrooms.  You could also do a beachy version, by layering sand, then cranberries and a candle.  That would be very cute.  (Remember for next year, Kate!)

Our kitchen serving pieces do a lot of double duty in our house.  These guys are actually dessert dishes that we received as wedding gifts (from the Press Family).  Here, I’ve used a slightly larger tea light, still from Ikea and layered the cranberries around it.   The richness of the different shades of red really pops once you light the candle.

We used our living room console table as a serving station for coffee and hot chocolate at our Festivus party last weekend.   In this instance, I just used some pre-lit garland, added a few of the aforementioned silver plastic ornaments and left out the crystal candle sticks that are always there.  I found one large glitter ball and popped that into the Waterford vase.  Bam!  Another perk of using cheapy stuff, no worries about people breaking them.   I don’t know about you folks, but I love minimizing stress during the holidays.

I happened to be watching the tail end of Glee when I snapped the picture.  Oh that Rachel and Finn!  Anyway, here you can get a sense of what it looks like all lit up.  I’m not doing a tree this year, so this is just the right amount of sparkle and in an easy enough location that I don’t mind plugging it in when I get home.

We don’t have a traditional fireplace mantle, although we could (some day…), so for now, I swap out our wedding pictures and regular year decorative elements for my homage to nature.   Or something like that.  I snagged the pine cones from the tree in our backyard after a particularly windy storm, the cranberry theme repeats from above and in the center of the bottom shelf are a three-er of birch log candle holders that I purchased earlier this year.  I love them.

If you look closely in the lantern, I’ve thrown in some of the silver ornaments as well.  In the past, I’ve used a smaller candle, greens and the silver ornaments.  That also works!

During a quick and dirty stop at Christmas Tree shop over the summer, I purchased their entire stock of river stone mats with the intention of using them on the fireplace surround.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough to do that, so I’ve used them in different parts of the house, as seen above.  Here I took our all-purpose white platter (and as I’m looking at this picture, I’m hoping that the cranberries aren’t staining it, YIKES), two of the coffee/tea cups from our china collection (told you everyone does double duty) and two of the birch log candle holders.   Basically, this was where I joined all the elements together in one.  TADA, Kate makes a centerpiece.

And that pretty much sums it up, folks.  The secret to decorating without making your non-Christian spouse feel like Christmas threw up all over the place.

-Kate

When we were putting our stuff back, we kept the basic set up pretty similar to how we had it in the past.  Our beachy blue bowls are the same color as the pantry closet!  Synergy!  We also picked up red in two of our countertop appliances.

And we totally love the glass cabinet.  It breaks up the room and makes it feel airy.  Plus we get to keep our china out, which means we’ll be reminded to use it more often!

So now I need to figure out what my next project will be.  Too bad it has been so cold here in the Northeast, I’ve been thinking about refinishing our fiberglass tubs, but you need to have some serious ventilation and you all remember how silly I got with the granite seam glue.

-Kate