[sunday 2004.12.26]
happy holiday memories & a (sort of) white christmas

what a wonderful christmas! i posted our christmas photographs this morning.

christmas eve was at our house. i made an array of munchie foods- crab toasts, mini grilled cheese, mini cheeseburgers, brie kisses, roasted pecans, marinated shrimp & bacon wrapped dates. we sipped glogg and watched 'a christmas story' while opening presents.

christmas morning, chad squeezed two bags of oranges for fresh oj, and i made sausage pinwheels. we took these goodies over to my dad & lisa's house, and had breakfast downstairs at his bar.

back at home, we prepared a carrot souffle and some more bacon wrapped dates to bring over for dinner at chad's grandparent's place downtown. there we had a wonderful dinner- barb made prime rib, roasted chicken & asparagus and candie brought mashed potatoes. chad made mulled wine that everyone raved about. next year he'll have to a make a bottle for everyone to take home. when we got out to our car, snow had dusted everything in a thin blanket of white.

back at chad's parent's house, we sat by the fireplace sipping coffee and opened presents while listening to holiday music.

it was a wonderful, happy christmas, and a great finish to the year.

[ posted by beth on 2004.12.26] [ ]

1. champagne - toasting is special. do it often. have bubbly on hand for this activity. if you don't drink it for dinner, drink it the next morning in a mimosa. a good standby is chandon napa valley classic.
2. sprigs of holly - snip a sprig or two of holly from your bush, or a neighbor's bush, or buy some at the store. holly looks wonderful adorning a festive dinner table, or in the bathroom around a candle or tie it with ribbon on top of a present. toss holly branches all around.
3. cards hung on a clothesline - when i was a kid, we had a red & white string with mini clips to hold all of our cards. i like things hung by clothespins. hang them across the wall or hall.
4. holiday music - buy yourself a new cd. bring a cd as a hostess gift. christmas music is happy music and must be played. i am wishing for the O.C.'s merry chrismukkah.
5. candles & white lights - white lights signify peace and you should have lots of them. don't forget natural candle light, and it won't make your electric bill go up.
6. stocking stuffers - this sometimes gets neglected with all the big presents under the tree. do not underestimate the joy of little things, things that can fit into a sock.
7. it's a wonderful life - if you don't have time to watch the movie, then watch it acted out by bunnies in 30 seconds: it's a wonderful life bunny style.
8. popcorn on a string - sit by the fire (or t.v.) and string freshly baked plain popcorn. eat some, too. hang it on the tree or from the chandelier. when the holiday is over, feed the ducks (or backyard critters).
9. candied pecans - these are so fitting this time of year. candied pecans (i add vanilla) are easy to do, and they fill your home with a wonderful smell. an instant air freshner.
10. spiced wine or milk punch - milk punch or warm spiced wine. these are good things for a cold night, and both only taste good with christmas lights in the background. so take advantage of the season and drink up now.

happy holidays. :)

[ posted by beth on 2004.12.23] [ ]

i have found stimulation in a new magazine- paste: signs of life in music & culture. first of all, i like the cover stock. leave it to me to stand in barnes and noble stroking a magazine. next, i like the illustrations, the colour pallette and the artsy (though slightly chaotic) layout of the pages. then i notice the content, not a lot of advertisements or fluff. real articles. real text that i want to read. then i spot two cd roms! one with music, and one with film shorts! stuff for me to play with! the 23 track cd contains a great variety of music. new tunes to hear, almost as exciting as trying a new restaurant! while only a few tracks had me wanting to push fast forward (i did give them a fair chance) they were all pretty solid. and the first three were especially good. the album starts with "every part of me" by sam roberts. the lead in to this is very familiar to another well-liked song from the garden state soundtrack. hmmm... the next song is "first instance last report" by earlimart which sounds strikingly like the late elliott smith. it ends too shortly, leaving you wanting more... feeling slightly unsatisfied yet awakened. the third song is a great sing-along, "eleanor" by low millions (you can listen full length songs from the homepage, "hey jane" is a decent track). i have not gotten the chance to watch the second cd, which contains music videos and film shorts. i'm still reading through all the great articles.

chocolate pretzel rings are something that i make every holiday season. they are easy, yummy, and always well received. i sometimes substitute the milk chocolate kisses for hershey hugs, mint kisses or rolos. the hugs look especially nice because of the swirl pattern... it looks like a zebra when melted. mix it up, experiment, have fun.

after the chocolate & pretzels are heated - it is soft enough to press an m&m into.

[ posted by beth on 2004.12.20] [ ]

tried to holiday shop this weekend, both in chicago and geneva. no luck. i found myself a purple floor cushion from london. saw the marshall field's windows, they are snow white this year. did try a new restaurant however. 'kitsch'n on roscoe', at roscoe and damen in roscoe village. the menu is big, with the focus on comfort foods with a twist. i had a cup of mac & cheese alongside crab cakes topped with eggs and hollandaise sauce with a side of cornbread hash. we sat outside on the back patio which is under a tent and heated for winter. the food was reasonably priced, and creative and colourful yet down to earth enough where i'll be coming back.

three years ago, chad & i went to galena for the day and chilled at a wine bar for evening cocktails. while sitting in the back room, i admired a cute vintage champagne poster. i thought it was so cute in fact, that i took a picture of it. well much to my surprise, a big present was under the tree wrapped in brown paper. since christmas is about the "season" of giving not the day of giving, i got to open it the other night. it was that poster! the 1910 piper-heidsieck french champagne poster. and to top it off, he got is professionally mounted by an area police officer who mounts posters as a side job. it is glued down to a black wooden floating frame. i hung it in the office over my desk so i see it every time i'm on my computer.

photos from the wine bar in galena, and my very own piper-heidsieck on my wall!

onto more champagne. several years ago, i was into pommery pop, tasty champagne in little blue bottles with matching blue straws. cost plus world market use to carry it, and select wine shops around town. now i have discovered something even more fun- babycham. babycham is not new, but a revived drink from the 1940's. it is a sparkling pear champagne in small, personal sized bottles with a darling fawn design on the label. i think the fawn is a terrific brand image. this brand has not disappeared, but went under some changes throughout the years, changing the bottle size and design. now, they have gone back to their original roots and revived the originally babycham. unfortunately, i cannot find this drink in the states... it is popular over in the UK showing up at nightclubs and even adding a boy's drink called bucks fizz. and to add to the fun, they have a clothing line which is hot.

i just got done writing up the page for our island camping trip, which is my favourite travel page so far. and i might add in some video later, i think there are a few small video clips from that trip floating around somewhere so check it out.

[ posted by beth on 2004.12.12] [ ]

last year i made a family cookbook for my mom's side of the family. this was a pretty time consuming venture. i wanted to create handmade books containing all of our family recipes to give as gifts. i used multiple paper stocks- a black ribbed for the main cover, layered with several other papers including a black and white inked floral pattern. these layers were all held together with 4 simple eyelets that went through the metal frame. then i folded sheet after sheet of paper for the inside body. using a template i created, i aligned the photo corners one by one and adhered them with a water-soaked q-tip. next, i used bookbinder's linen thread, a fat needle & thimble to sew the pages into the cover. after the main structure was complete, i printed and cut all the recipes and then carefully placed them into the photo corners.

this all sounds simple enough, but there was a lot of planning involved and even more production time. i could have easily printed all the recipes out and just stuck them in a three-ring binder, but i wanted this to be special. each one is a double section book and is unique in its paper color variations and other small details. i taught myself binding from the essential guide to making handmade books which i recommend as a great starter book for binding techniques.

tonight, i finished off three additional cookbooks that i did not get a chance to complete last year. so now this project is finally done and i have a great sense of completion! it was a fun project and i would love to try another binding style in the near future... perhaps a pop-up illustrated book.

in total, 600 photo corner mounts were hand placed, 150 recipes were individually cut with an exacto, 24 eyelets were set by hand and 6 complete cookbooks were hand-sewn with needle & waxed linen thread.

the final three books, ready to be wrapped and given away.

[ posted by beth on 2004.12.08] [ ]

saw the twisted 11 show last night, and it rocked! snow patrol, the hives & franz all in one place. the acoustics at the aragon are amazing... a real boomy bass sound. it has been awhile since i've been to that venue... last time was paul oakenfold in '00.

the aragon has a slight aladdin casino feel to it. here is an old illustration of the inside of the theatre. the whole main level (where we were) is standing room only, with some seats up in the balconies.

we went with rhonda & erik who are the sweetest couple. we got there a little late, and as soon as i walked in the door, i heard the start of 'how to be dead' playing. i could not tell if it was the actual live sound coming from the band, or if it was being piped in through speakers on the lower level. the sound was resonating through the hall, and i practically ran up the stairs and around the corner and there they were. real, live snow patrol playing as perfectly as they do on their album.

during the song 'run', when they got to the chorus part of the song that goes "light up, light up, as if you have a choice", the stage lights casted their rays outwards onto the crowd like some sort of heavenly glow. the warmth of the lights blocked the stage, cutting through the thick smoke and wrapped its breathy, white warmth around me. you could hear the band play, but it was so bright that the faintest of shadows could be made out on stage. it was as if they were aliens exiting their ship in the middle of winter with the glow of the spaceship silhouetting their unworldly forms. and franz ferdinand was hot, they opened with 'michael'. it was a hot, sweaty and fabulous way to spend a sunday night.

since we missed the first part of the show, chad bought me the live at somerset house dvd. some older songs like 'an olive grove facing the sea' which is a slower one. and clips from their US travels centering around a gig at amoeba records (the l.a. one). not a big fan of the style that show was filmed in, but it is a great addition to my collection and makes me wish that i were there.

the only update to the site is that i added an about page. it has a brief description of why i am creating this site. in addition, i created little icons in photoshop for both my ipod & camera to use as headers for the left column of this page.

took a small break on the ornaments project to work on the family cookbook that i made for christmas last year. i am making three more for additional relatives and will post pictures soon.

[ posted by beth on 2004.12.06] [ ]

smashing pumpkins was on the radio tonight. it made me happy.

i'm very excited to be using polymer clay for the first time in almost a decade! with holiday ornaments on my mind, thought this would be the perfect project to explore in this medium. i decided on the theme of "santa" while riding behind an old rusty pickup truck. right there in front of me, just above the license plate, i saw an old santa's face in the pattern of flaking rust & paint. it was just like virgin mary's face in a grilled cheese sandwich. so that decided it for me right then and there. this year i would be making ornaments with santa's face. after about a dozen sketches, and tossing the idea around of making an actual jointed clay santa doll, i've decided on a design. i plan on using the image transfer technique to transfer my illustration onto the clay. the ornament will be made up of several overlapping layers of clay- one oval with santa's face on top of a rectangle with a holly pattern and then finished off with a raised border and perhaps some holly accents. keeping on the theme of old (just like the old truck) i wanted it to have a somewhat vintage feel. hopefully i can achieve this by using a beige clay base and working in some tints of colors with paint. also, i want to hand letter the words 'merry x-mas' in a similar style that is used in old victorian calling cards.

now i did a practice run tonight, testing the clay and how it would receive the image. i first took my original illustration and photocopied it. then placed the photocopy toner side down on top of a piece of rolled out clay. then i took a paper towel soaked in a bit of vodka and rubbed it on the back. next, burnished it a bit with the back of a spoon & then peeled the paper off. voila, the vodka helped move the toner from the paper onto my clay. cut out the oval with a rib and then baked it for 15 minutes. now i'm going to play with coloured pencils, watercolours & watered down acrylics to determine what will be the best to tint/colour the baked clay. once i experiment a bit more, i'll post photos of my progress and lessons learned along the way.

my original quick sketch. i want to base the ornament off of this drawing. and the transfer with vodka was a success! (but i forgot to reverse the photocopied image so it is backwards)

[ posted by beth on 2004.11.29] [ ]

turkey day pictures! had three complete thanksgiving meals over the course of the past week. the leftovers are getting a little overwhelming. thought of making turkey enchiladas with some... but got lazy and went out for mexican instead. sigh.

a small amount of progress has been made on this site. i started the travelogue section and have several of our trips completed... or at least completed as far as i want to go for now.

today was a rainy day which called for a trip to b&n for coffee and knowledge (as chad would say). bought a new food magazine called chow. it is their inaugural issue, and while short on substance for a first edition, it looks promising. reminds me of readymade... except it is about food. it has that same uber hip, designy, urban vibe. and it is about food, and wine, and more food and wine. how can you go wrong? some things from the issue- how to pair wine with christmas cookies, illegal cheese, a gift buying section including a ganesh lunch box & teaosophy's indian tea sampler in cute little pyramid boxes. oh, and an article on how to host a chocolate tasting party. something i really ought to do.

went to michael's to buy some things for the holiday ornaments i plan on making this year. i want to start a tradition of making a new one every year. chad needs to get me some tools from his parent's house, and i hope to get started on them in the next few days.

and i hope to spend a little time each night working on getting this site complete. it has been a long time since i've had a live, working site of my own and i miss it.

[ posted by beth on 2004.11.27] [ ]

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