•it's beginning to look a lot like giftwrap•

Winter is coming, the goose is getting fat. Rather than put my penny in the man's hat, let me introduce you to No New Christmas. Particularly, the rules.

No New Christmas was an effort by my family, put forth a few years back, to gift things of a recycled, made, or otherwise stridently not-purchased variety. When I say family, I mean Troy and myself. It was easy when we began, to include Penn in the fold. At two, he didn't have much of an opinion about NITB vs. No New. That's all different this year, as Lego has tightened its grip. Troy and I have been avoiding the topic. To No New, or not to No New? That is a different blog post.

I've never actually set about creating guidelines for NNX (sounds like a boy band), but I'm inspired by the recent ferver (my own) for advent calendars. You've seen these things–they number one through twenty-five, they help you while away the days until Christmas, they usually involve the popping out of wax figurines that taste sort of like chocolate. I started making a tiny-art shadow-box version last year, then abandoned it for baby socks. Until I get pictures, don't ask. (Ask Pinterest.) Lego has an advent calendar. There is now a Whisky advent calendar, recently admired by Huffington Post. Which brings me back to NNX (No New Christmas): could you D-I-Y a booze advent calendar? Could you keep it NNX? Perhaps. It all depends on the rules I am about. to. set. forth. Right here:

How To Achieve No New Christmas 

(or #howialienatedeveryone)

1) Use these guidelines to help shape your gift-giving season, not everyone else's. Be a good sport, and always be gracious when receiving any gift. From anyone. See Rules #7-8.

2) Gifts must be recycled, reused, repurposed or hand-made.

3) Consumerism is not the enemy–waste is. Feel free to buy something recycled, reused, or repurposed. Feel free to buy something hand-made by someone else. But before you wander into the gray with a plastic-wrapped bar of soap from some small company in Vermont, ask yourself. Is it really No New? (See Rule #8 for wiggle room.) A human hand may have, at some point, touched a set of Legos. Doesn't count. (She said to no one's husband in particular.)

4) Hand-made gifts can incorporate new purchases of ingredients. We need food to live. Seems like it should get a pass. Also, I don't want to be the one to begrudge you your peppermint bark. (She said, hoping her friend would read this post and made that flipping peppermint bark again.) Finally, it's unwise to recycle chocolate.

5) Gift Wrap must conform to Rule #2. But see Secret Rule #10.

6) Stockings must conform to Rule #2.

7) Service Gifts must... these are tricky. Are massages new or made? How about that wine-and-cheese-of-the-month-club? This is a wild card rule. Totally your call, whether or not that heifer is new. (Spoiler alert: you actually get to decide on all of these. It's Choose-Your-Own-Advent, and you're winning!)

8) Bonus Rule: when one of your gifts is made entirely of repurposed/recycled/reimagined items that you did not have to go out and purchase, you gain a little wiggle room. For other items, like the Death Star 10188.

9) Since there is no zero-waste alternative, I hereby sanction use of the USPS.

Secret Rule #10) Gift wrap you purchased at 90% off last year totally counts as NNX. xox

November 19, 2012 update! I finished my sock advent calendar. It was actually as much fun, start to finish, and it looked and sounded. I did manage to get some no-new Legos in there, as well. (Thank goodness for teen-aged neighbors!)

I've always loved Boxing Day. And the absence of the need to do anything on the day after Giftmas. The day deserves its own compartment and surprise.

One Snowy Day gave its life for this advent calendar. All beat-up, beyond-repair books should go to such fine resting places! xox

•not your mama's apple•

Photos taken at Full Belly Farm on October 1, 2011.



A half-assed Happy-o-versary to us, to us! And to you lovely readers, thank you. Our first post was also about pomegranates... in a way... :) Thanks for making all of this possible.

Pomegranates. Not my native apple. A seedy, grainy, medieval French pain in your ass? Maybe. (I know a secret for opening these. Think water birth.) When I was growing up in New Hampshire* in the 80s, pomegranates were expensive and misunderstood. Now they grow like weeds on the walk to and from Penn's preschool.

What's weird to a native New Englander is that *apples* don't do well in Northern California. Macintosh at the grocer are bruised beyond recognition, and there are no real tart options beyond Granny Smith, and her tarted-up cousin, the (unbelievably hued, yes) Pink Pearl. Pomegranates, on the other hand, grow magnificently in the Mediterranean clime. They're everywhere, including hedgerows meant as boarders. Throw-aways. In the same way rosemary is grown as a landscape feature, pomegranates are low-maintenance shrubs. They don't like much water. They love sun. And pomegranates are ripest when they split (and look over-ripe). Kinda a cool signal: they flash their ruby jewels to the world. That means you need to live near a tree, for close monitoring. Lest you miss it. (All the poms in the pictures above are still ripening. Note the one with the hexagonal flower opened, vs. the closed-flower orbs...)

Now, a simple recipe:

Maple Pomegranate Cocktail

rum
cognac
pomegranate juice
maple syrup (grade b works)
a lime
a few pomegranate arils, if you have the means

In a shaker, put 3 ice cubes. Cover with one ounce cognac, one ounce rum, about a half-cup of pomegranate juice, and 1-2 teaspoons Grade B maple syrup. Squeeze a quarter of a lime o'er top, and shake the beeejeeezus out of it for at least 7 seconds. Strain into an up-glass, with pomegranate seeds in the bottom. It is worth making one serving at a time, but I'm sure a pitchered approach would work.

Currently in the oven: granola with pomegranate pulp. There's a company based in Sacramento that makes granola using fruit juice in place of oil, and I've wanted to try that at home ever since I sampled the results. Pomegranate juice yeilds a lot of pulp: the chown up bits of aril and seed casings, plus bits of juice. What a perfect reason to stir with oats, maple syrup, vanilla and...?? I don't think I included anything else. Although pecans would have been nice. Stay tuned! Update: that granola was spectacular. Next time, I'll add unsweetened coconut!

xox

A Small Confession and a Care Package

The confession is that I never did manage to see the small boy this week, and therefore, I finally just took it upon myself to choose a name for our little blog-o-versary game.

(Don't worry though--I adhered to the highest ethical and technical standards in making my choice.)

(Well, okay. The highest ethical standards.)

And the winner is...Gisele! With whom I've been in touch already. But thank you to all of you who left us comment love! What a lovely group of people this blog has helped to gather around us this year--it's so nice to know you're out there reading.

Off to make a care package! (Not really. Off to get some work done. But soon! Soon, we will make a care package.)

•birthday photo essay•

colour

salt

god

neighbor

flavor

blue

•rise•

[This post is part of a tag-you're-it game, designed by Amanda Blake Soule. Check her out! And leave a link to your own moment in the comments, if you wish!]






xox

•a very merry HA birthday•

Turns out the age for which you must get the birthday cake right is 4. Any variation on the theme, no matter how delicious, will be rejected--nay, rewarded!--with apocalypse now, toddler edition. Complete with hyperventilation, and outbursts so simultaneously piteous and hilarious you will be unable to stop laughing. Which won't help matters.
But there are no strawberries!!!! < sob sob sob >
Where is the....fraaaaaawwwww-ssssssting!!!!?
The earnestness. The confusion. The terrifying (if it weren't so adorable) rage. To be fair, it was his last night of toddlerdom. Perhaps he realized he ought to go out in style.

What I did next was, perhaps, not my finest flourish. But it had been a week of napless, back-to-school madness. And we were celebrating with an all-adult birthday dinner (save the guest of honor, of course) in our friend's extremely echo-y, amplifying living room. Oh, honey, you thought cake and candles were tonight? Actually, that's tomorrow. We'll have cake with frosting and strawberries and candles on your real birthday (thankgoditsnottoday). Tonight's cake is just a nice dessert for after dinner... That's right. I groveled.

And then I regrouped.


The next morning, I gathered my triage materials. Frozen cake, leftover frosting a friend made, strawberries, jam, old cereal bag for piping on accents. Things were looking good. And then I started to go a little nuts. Turns out, there are a great many images on the Interwebs of various "bus cakes." Inspiring. Could I free-style a bus that would meet with the child's approval? Could I, in fact, half-ass it?


Fortunately, my ambition knows no bounds. And I had a few hours o' free time.



I started to lose it a little with these strawberry "bushes." Not an essential feature, but...



It worked in my favor. My son appreciated the sugary offering, and accepted the whole monstrosity as a "fire bus." He even forgave its chocolate exterior. (Note to parents: white frosting is like gold. If you attempt a four-year-old's birthday cake without enough of this stuff, tread lightly and prepare for war.)

Turns out, if it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing. Within half-assed reason, of course. xox


©2011 Lis Harvey

•you up?•

whatcha thinking about

are you dreaming of
a tiny frog, or a very, very,
very long fishing line
and a golden fish?

or a lego house so big you can sleep in it
or a house with trampolines for floors
or a bed made of kitten fur

or a common meal
cooked by Leila and Tatum
and cleaned up by Freija, or
a banana that tastes like raspberries

and breakfast made of ice cream, or
pancakes made of cheese

or a birthday cake made of kisses
and kisses that taste like frosting, or
a moon who laughs and sings songs to you

like the mama who always loves you
and the daddy who always loves you
and all the cuddles to come
in your fifth year
while you're four
and we three
are too busy to notice how we've become
one.



Popsicle people in the park (party picture), after the jump.

Read more »

Birthday

The other night, Penn arrived at my birthday dinner fairly bursting with excitement to give me my birthday present, and who could blame him? I love my new Chicken (uh, yeah, it looks like a rooster, but Penn tells me his name is Chicken), and I took quite a number of portraits of him with my new camera. So count yourselves lucky I'm only posting one. But come on, he's fabulous, no?

For a while last year, our group of friends celebrated so many birthdays at our house that every time Penn came over, he would ask, "Amy, do you have cake?" Here, he had just asked me whether we were going to eat the cake, or just look at it, and I was confirming for him that we were just going to look at it. I like a three-year-old who laughs at my dumb jokes.

Here, having discovered with relief that I really was joking, Penn hurries to consume his cake before I can change my mind. (Credit for both these photos goes to our wonderful friend Kathryn.) (And can we talk about his awesome robot t-shirt? Not as awesome as Robot Penn, but pretty darn awesome.)

On Friday, Brian and I took the dogs on a little overnight trip to Truckee, California, and we stopped for doggie swimming at Martis Creek Lake. Tigger loves to swim, while Annie...prefers to linger at the edge of the water, hoping she won't get too wet and that Tigger will soon bring the ball back into stealing range.

While we were there, Brian got some terrific shots of the Spiced Pumpkin Sweater in action. (There you go, Lis!)

And then we went on to Truckee, a town I'd never really been to before, but which is lovely and low-key this time of year when the ski season hasn't yet begun. And the Cedar House Sport Hotel is highly recommended if you're traveling with a dog. Technically, you can only have one dog with you, but they very, very kindly made an exception for our two, because it's off season and we asked nicely. And everyone there is incredibly nice, including Baxter, the resident pooch. Our dogs were welcomed with a bowl for eating and drinking, plus a bed for each of them, on top of each of which sat a gift bag of freshly baked, organic doggie cookies and a fresh tennis ball (plus several discreetly rolled plastic bags with which to clean up the inevitable).

Actually, Truckee is possibly the most dog-friendly town I've ever been to--every business we went into had a dog! And there were tons of dogs just out and about, having adventures with their people. As they should. It was lovely. And besides that, Truckee is absolutely beautiful this time of year. This shot of the Truckee River was taken from the bridge in the center of town. Aspen trees, people--like as if we're really in the mountains of the American West or something!

Truckee is at about 5900 feet above sea level, way higher up than Davis, which is at something more like 59 feet or so above sea level. This means that a mere two hours from our home, everything about the weather and growing seasons is different, which is still mind-blowing for a girl from the East coast. There were several apple trees just hanging out in people's yards, dropping windfall apples among the leaves. And perhaps waiting for someone to turn the fruit into harder-than-rock apple products. Or not.

The Right Tools

I'm convinced that having the correct tools for a job pretty much always makes a difference. A job that might have been difficult at best suddenly becomes not only easier, but potentially joyful. But I'm also slow to upgrade, even when the job I'm trying to do is pretty important to me. It's not just that I resist spending the money (though that's often the case, and that's a whole other discussion), but frequently, even when a task feels overwhelmingly difficult, it simply doesn't even occur to me that there might be something that would make it easier. Or that maybe I'm not just naturally terrible at whatever I'm trying to do.

For several years now, I've been meaning to get my jewelry up in an etsy shop. But the picture taking has sort of been killing me--I started out trying to get good shots of my tiny, shiny, glassy, silvery pieces with a little Canon Powershot thingy, and it did not go well. At all. A friend loaned me his Nikon digital thingy (as you can see, "thingy" is clearly a technical photography term--I apologize if my professional jargon is intimidating to you). The Nikon digital thingy was taking less than great shots, and since the camera was Big and Important Looking with many functions and features, I assumed I was just having serious operator error issues. (Frankly, the operator error issues remain uncontested.)

A kind new friend came over one day to try to figure out how I could get some better shots of my stuff with the Nikon, and she definitely helped me. (And she's still owed a necklace of little bronze leaves as a thank you! Yikes!) We figured out how to change the white balance on the camera, and that was helpful, and she showed me a few other tricks, and by the end of our hour together I had enough confidence to take some jewelry outside and squeeeeeeze a few halfway decent pictures out of the camera. I found Picnik for editing purposes, which also helped, and there was no denying the pictures were way better than I'd been getting prior to that day.

But. They still left a lot to be desired. And I've generally felt a low-level, background interference sort of discouragement and anxiety about the whole thing--like I was going to have to gain an enormous new artistic skill in order to sell my jewelry. A skill I'd very much like to have, but you know, I don't want to have to drop everything to become a photographer just so I can throw some stuff up on etsy.

Then tonight, my lovely sweetie gave me an astounding early birthday (Chanukah, New Year's, Valentine's, President's Day...) gift--a Canon EOS Rebel T2i (for those of you who are not intimidated by jargon and camera geekery). Mind you, I still have utterly no clue what I'm doing, but somehow this thingy feels more intuitive than the thingies I'd been using, and in addition, I'm quickly developing a suspicion that you actually can't take a terrible picture with it.

I give you two pictures of my jewelry--taken at night, indoors, under a mixture of compact fluorescent and daylight tube-type fluorescent lights. No editing to speak of. (Except to shrink these babies down, because the camera? It's an 18 megapixel monster of clarity. Even on the lowest quality setting these pictures are ginormous.)

It may be that something of my excitement will be lost on you if you didn't get to see the abysmal and then slightly less than abysmal results I was getting from the other cameras I was using. I realize the shots below aren't brilliant photography or anything, but you're gonna need to trust me, the difference is sort of jaw dropping already. I can't wait to see what I'll be able to do in daylight when I actually know how to work the darn thing.

Silver clay moon and tree pendant imprinted with a photopolymer plate

Silver clay twig with fused glass cabochon and bronze wire

Digger

A few weeks ago, on my husband’s birthday, Lis asked Lovely Toddler whether he wanted to do something fun for Brian for his birthday.

“Yeah!” responded Lovely Toddler, “Maybe, get him a digger.”

“Okay.” said Lis. And then she asked where they might begin to look for a digger.

“I think…” Lovely Toddler thought about it. “We could go to a yard sale for a digger present.”

Lovely Toddler has clearly internalized both our particular community’s commitment to the reduce, reuse, recycle ethic, and also that old chestnut about giving people presents that you would want to receive. (Lis tells us that a clarifying discussion ensued about how yard sales are generally not held on Tuesdays, and a thrift shop might be a better bet.)

And then, this past weekend, Brian and I were at a yard sale, and look what turned up: