This has been a week of endings. How appropriate that the conclusion of this collaboration should fall on not just any Friday, but the "last Friday." So far no signs of the world according to the Mayan calendar coming to an end, but it's symbolic none the less. I had my doubts.

Speaking of doubts, that's how I'd like to approach my goodbye-summary of this whole experience. A year ago, Danielle petitioned a number of her girlfriends to be repeated guest writers on her blog. I happened to be among the group of women she invited to participate. She asked for a year-long commitment, with the goal of showing our readers that we were "regular" young ladies, all at about the same place in life, with similar interests but very different personalities. Immediately, I doubted her. Worse, I doubted her openly. Yes, I was the Judas of the group. I was concerned about many things. I didn't personally know the other women who would be involved, I was worried about everyone else's commitment level, I was concerned about the quality of the others' contributions. I was just plain doubtful, and sure that it would flop. By the time I felt reassured enough to consider being a "Yes Man" and playing along, she had filled all four slots with volunteers.

I then became a reader. I was already a follower of Danielle's blog; she's my best friend, so of course I read her work. But now, every week day, I was also a follower of her friends. After about three months, I was impressed everyone had stuck around. I was still doubtful about the overall project, though. I kept expecting it to piddle out when everyone inevitably got bored. But week after week, there were your five posts on Sunday Hatch. Reliably fun, educational, and entertaining.

About halfway through the year, due to extenuating circumstances, Danielle had an opening for Friday's guest blogger spot. She gave me - the Judas-doubter friend - a second chance. This time, I didn't doubt and I didn't hesitate. I said, "Yes! Count me in!" You might regret that decision, having to listen to me week after week prattle on about stuff, but I've really enjoyed it. I have been so impressed with these ladies, and so thankful that even though I've never met any of them, I have grown to feel as though we are friends. I have shared their lives for a whole year, as a reader and a fellow collaborator. I am proud. Proud of Danielle, for seeing possibilities, following her instincts, and being a talented leader. Proud of us for all sticking to our commitment. Proud of YOU for following along!

The way I'll tie all of this together is to remind everyone, all of us, that this is the Season to put aside doubt.  Doubt in ourselves, and doubt in other people. Spend time considering we have all been given second chances. We have all been forgiven. We are all free to become better people, to strive for peace, and to see the good in others. Danielle had the foresight to see what common good could come of this project. 

I doubted, but I see it now. And it was so so so good.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from my family, to yours.

With Love,

Pumpkin Gingerbread

I want to share with you today the recipe that changed my life. The first time I made this I shocked myself because I had never baked anything quite so delicious in my whole life. I loved it so much, I had to share it. So I started baking batches and taking them to neighbors, family members, and friends. It was a hit. I shared it on Facebook, and a sort of fan club was created. It is now a staple holiday item that I bake, at least 4-5 times during cooler weather. I had to stop baking it the rest of the year so that it would remain special.

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Pumpkin Gingerbread

INGREDIENTS

3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2/3 cup water
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
3 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground allspice
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

BAKING DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine sugar, oil, and eggs; beat until smooth. Add water and beat until well blended. Stir in pumpkin, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.
3. In medium bowl, combine flour, soda, salt, and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture and blend just until all ingredients are mixed. Divide batter between prepared pans.
4. Bake in preheated oven until toothpick comes out clean, or about 1 hour. Let cool.
5. My tip: serve toasted with salted butter.

This recipe is remarkably simple, spicy, and deliciously good. 

Do not hesitate - run to the kitchen and bake it today!

Good food is meant to be shared.

A Very Felted Christmas

I have been up to my nose in weddings the last few months. It's been a pleasant surprise to have so much unplanned business, but I'm soooooo ready to have downtime, get off my computer, and just breathe in the Holidays.

Speaking of Holidays... I did make a Bourbon Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving.
It went from this:

To this:

To this:

A happy pie, is a demolished pie!

Thanksgiving was lovely! We had all of my husband's family over to our house for good food and quality time. Aaaaaand we all took naps. Naps are one of the best indicators of a holiday, in my mind. Even the puppies napped, while I finished off my Felt Ball Garland. Rudolph dog! 

I felted all the wool several weeks ago, following this tutorial but hadn't had the time to string it. After a big meal and some chitchat on Turkey Day, I decided I was ready to see what the final product would look like. I used red & white baker's twine, and a completely random order for the different colors, and I'm in love with the result. Often I finish a Pinterest-inspired or a DIY craft project, and I hate it and want to trash it. This one, however, was lots of fun, and the final product was something I will enjoy getting out every year at Christmas for many years to come. 

After Thanksgiving was over, the hubs and I spontaneously decided to go get our tree. I've always wanted a "Charlie Brown" tree - one that was sorta scrawny and needing some love. This year I got my wish. We found the perfect little CBtree at the neighborhood tree farm.

This holiday has me very much infatuated with homemade-looking ornaments, and particularly felted creations. It's the Swedish craze.... Does anyone spot a certain polar bear ornament in there? In fact, there are several that I mentioned featured on my tree.

The best thing of all was this tree took me less than fifteen minutes to decorate (can't you tell), and I will probably change it multiple times before Christmas even arrives. But I love it.

Hope you're counting the days, right along with me!

As always, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.

Gobble Bourbon Gobble

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I totally jumped the gun last week by getting all hyped about Christmas decorations, and practically skipped my favorite food holiday of the year: Thanks-TURKEY-giving! This year, what I'm most excited about is reprising my Bourbon Pecan Pie. 

MMMMMMMMM....

However, I have a bad habit of never remembering what recipes I use for anything. I do have a recipe book, and a myriad of cookbooks, but I often find things last minute on Pinterest or allrecipes.com, and then also make my own alterations to those recipes which I don't write down. Last year, my pie was - literally - a slice of heaven. I was not alone in this feeling, so I think it's okay to say it here publicly. 

So I said to myself: "Self, How am I going to reproduce it if I don't have the recipe? "
Self responded: "The only option is to find a recipe that HAS to be even better."

After some searching, I found this recipe: Maple Bourbon Pecan Pie. I'm not sure I'll do ALL the steps, like toasting the pecans, etc -- those seem a little tedious -- but I do like opting for maple syrup over corn syrup, for sure. I mean, if we're going to put good tasting stuff in our body, let's at least make it with good, quality ingredients instead of highly processed ones.

But let's all be honest here: really this recipe won because the pictures make you want to eat that heaven right now.

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Am I right, or am I right? 

What's on YOUR thanksgiving menu?

As always, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.

Ornamental November

via Pinterest

Once upon a time, I used to be a total Grinch. Like people had to wake me up on Christmas morning afternoon, to open presents. I was that (un)excited about it.

These days I can't wait for the holidays. Mostly, because it marks colder weather, warmer clothes, and a less sweaty me. It also seems to be a time of year where my creative generator starts humming, and I get the desire to be very crafty. (I'll be sharing some of the craftiness I hope is coming, soon.) I do however, support Thanksgiving as stand alone holiday, and it does irritate me that it seems to get glossed over. Usually, I try to busy myself with giving thanks, rather than with being irritated, but I'm not always successful. I mean, who would want to skip my awesome Bourbon Pecan Pie. You wouldn't, trust me.

This year I'm just so excited about all the Christmas goodies that are out there that I can't help my eagerness to prep for decorating, and it's barely November! By goodies, I do mean the awesome decorations I am already seeing in my favorite stores. This is a once a year opportunity to decorate your house, but not have to worry about getting tired of anything you buy or put up, because it's going to come down in a month anyway. A decorator's heaven. 

In the meantime... I have to show you all my favorite Christmas ornaments I saw around town this week! The following were spotted at Anthropologie. Those people should seriously pay me to promote their products. I'm that serious about their overpriced clothing and home goods items. And now their holiday decorations. They could pay me in ornaments! Brilliant.

Recently, I've fallen in love with sea-faring themed "stuff." I'm loving the ships, whales, seahorses, and mermaids I'm seeing everywhere. This little ship was so cute and handmade looking, and I thought the whale would be a beautiful complimentary ornament for the tree.

I almost cried this polar bear was so cute. And then I saw his little polar bear tushy, and I did cry! Oh dear. As if that weren't enough... he's caught a fish, so he's not starving. This little bear doesn't survive on a diet of coca-cola alone. That, in and of itself, is refreshing. *pop* Ahhhh!

Then at West Elm I really hit the jack pot. I could have bought almost every single ornament in there. I'll spare you viewing what you could see on their website, but here are a few of my favorites that might show their faces on my tree this year.

These glass pine cones and acorns were so dainty and pretty. What a great way to add some traditional wintery nature to your tree, but in a fancy-schmancy, bright and shiny way! Those gold pinecones were also pretty, but I think I could make my own with pinecones left over from last year and some gold spray paint. *craft project*

On that same note, you could probably make this cute little twiggy star, as well, with sticks from your back yard and some baker's twine. They also have a version that acts as a tree topper. Super darling. And I love these gold and silver metal leaves for some bling.

Last year, my younger sister gave my mom, older sister, and me a different woodland animal ornament like the ones on the left. I got a hedgehog - my favorite! I guess they were so popular that stores are still carrying them this year, and I think I might just have to add to my collection! I loved this little fuzzy bunny and his sweet little smiling face. Handcrafted felt gets me every time, apparently.

Looking back, I'm seeing a trend - handcrafted, animals, and gold shiny things. Sounds perfect to me!

What will you hang on your tree?

As always, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.

Destruction

Over the last week I've been considering the topic of DESTRUCTION. 

Several things happened:

ONE: I pulled out the entire contents of my closet to reorganize it and then got overwhelmed.

TWO: I decided that before I could put everything back in, I had to finally "get around to" peeling off all the ancient - and I do mean ancient - wallpaper, seal all the cracks, repaint the walls, add new shelving, sort through my clothes, unpack my winter items, pack up my summer items, and reorganize everything for accessibility.

THREE: I spent three days wishing I had never started destroying what was there to begin with.

My closet looks like Hurricane Sandy swept through.

We rent our home in Austin. However, we have gracious landlords who pay for any projects we're willing to do. Our home was built in the 1920's, so there are  LOT of projects that could be done. With my type-A personality, germaphobia, and revulsion of all things dirty, mildewed, and infested, I'm constantly finding projects and I just can't resist. The state of the closet has been hidden for over a year by my clothes, which got shoved in there when we moved. I was sort of scared to go all the way inside it, so I just jammed the storage bins in toward the back and tugged them out as needed. Finally, last Friday I got sick of digging for shoes, so I pulled everything out - literally hurled it all out of the closet, and what faced me was nothing short of scary. My clothes were homeless, but it was like I couldn't help myself. Once I got started, I had to finish. I had to systematically destruct the closet, before I could put it back together again.

And really . . . we are absurdly entertained by destroying things. 

JOY OF DESTRUCTION from Xaver Xylophon on Vimeo.

Remember Danielle's theraparty, where she got to do something she'd always wanted to do and break plates? Destruction can feel like therapy. It's risky and fun and a huge adrenaline rush. It's the clean up that I hate the most, but in the end you always feel so much better. It's human nature to destroy, but also to rebuild. You can't have one without the other.

And then there's the type of destruction we can't control. Like our pal, Sandy, who overnight hurled the contents of thousands of people's lives out into the street, and shook them upside down. Here in Texas we weren't really affected at all, so it's quite easy - as it is with any natural disaster - to feel oddly removed from the whole catastrophe, but we've all seen the pictures. Please don't think for a second that I'm comparing my minor closet disaster to the magnitude of Sandy's wake. We just both happend to self-destruct at the same time.

Now here's to rebuilding.

As always, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.

Chalk it up to Talent

I always wanted to have cool handwriting. My cursive always sucked, there was never any hope for it. Over the years I created this hybrid of script and print that to this day still varies depending on the type of writing utensil I'm using. No hope.

Last weekend, the Hubs and I visited Danielle and Rob in Katy. We got to see their new house, brand spankin' new kitchen, and have really good married-couple conversations. Danielle also took me to brunch at Tiny Boxwood's (thanks, friend!). Aside from the delightful, tasty food, and dangerous bottomless mimosas, the setting was also idyllic. We both admired the cute chalkboard signage, which is sooooo everywhere these days, but I still love it sooooo much. So much. And we both woe-is-me'd that neither of us has stylin' handwriting.

Then I remembered about a chalkboard artist I had read about, Dana Tanamachi, in Brooklyn, New York. Like this is her legit job -- she hand-letters chalkboard signs. Check it out. She's amazing.

 

Nagging Doubt Viognier from Dana Tanamachi on Vimeo.

There's no hope for this hopeless hand-letterer, but her's is true talent!

As usual, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.

Greece via Instagram

It never fails to surprise me what cool photos you can take with an iPhone. We dropped almost a grand on a brand new Nikon DLSR before our recent trip to Greece, and yet some of my favorite pictures from the trip were taken on instagram.

Thanks to my stupidly choosing to do the software update Apple released without backing up my phone first, I lost a lot of those pictures when we got home. However, the ones I'd uploaded from the road to instagram were safe. Let's experience Mainland Greece via instagram!

Country side between Athens & site of Ancient Delphi.

Treasury of Athens, restored at Delphi.

Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Tholos at Delphi.

So the site of Ancient Delphi was life-changing. First of all, it's set in a majestic mountain range - such an amazing backdrop. Secondly, it's one of the better preserved ancient sites, so there is quite a lot to see and you don't have to strain as hard to imagine what it must have looked like when it was a thriving place of worship. In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, and a major sanctuary of the god Apollo. It was thought of by the Greeks as the center of the earth (the "navel"), and it was our first stop on a roadtrip of the mainland, and an incredible way to begin our tour of the ancient sites.

Just one question: why have Americans not thought to season potato chips with oregano?

We ate many bags of these along the way.

I cried at Epidaurus. Yes, I know I'm a nerd. Aside from being a celebrated healing center, the ancient city of Epidaurus is also home to the best-preserved Classical theatre.  It was amazing and so . . . ALL THERE - just like it hadn't been thousand of years since it was carved out of the mountainside. This was one ancient site that was thankfully almost empty and we just sat (like in the picture above) and took it all in. I'm sitting almost all the way at the top of the grand theatre, and I could hear the tourist you see standing "center stage" talking in a whisper. Incredible.

 A better shot of just how big Theatre at Epidaurus is really.

Along the way I became addicted to fresh Greek olives. Canned olives just can't compare. I do not recommend, however, trying a green olive off the tree - which both Tim and I did at Delphi when no one was looking. They are the most bitter little buggers you can imagine.

This is the stadium at Ancient Olympia. If you're any fan of the Olympics, you should try to go here one day to pay homage. . . it was also incredible (I'm running out of words that mean "incredible"). There was no real "seating" even in ancient times so this stadium is pretty much intact. Thousands of men just sat on the lawn to watch the foot races. You can even still step on the marble starting and finishing lines, which is what this tour group was doing when I snapped the picture. We arrived at Olympia at about 8:30 in the morning, and by some stroke of genius I suggested we hurry out to the stadium first, to see if we could catch it before hordes of people showed up. We were so thankful we did so -- we had it all to ourselves! Well, with the exception of these two precious pups who were having their own race . . .

After a few days on the road, we stopped over for two nights in the harbor town of Nafplion. It was a beautiful old town with Venetian influences, as you can see with all the old Pensions (mansions). Unfortunately, it also had a cat problem, and the whole town smelled like a cat box, if I'm to be totally honest.

Harbor in Nafplion.

Church in Nafplion.

Old pensions (mansions) in Nafplion.

Peirene's Springs at Ancient Corinth. It was said to be a favored watering-hole of Pegasus, sacred to the Muses. Poets would travel there to drink and receive inspiration. The legend goes that Peirene became a spring because of the tears she shed in lamentation for her son Cenchrias, who was unintentionally killed by Artemis. What was really amazing is there is STILL RUNNING WATER BACK IN THERE. Um, yeah.

Last stop: Athens, the dirtiest city on earth. There were dogs roaming everywhere. We couldn't tell if they were all strays or not, but they all acted as if they owned the place. There were even dogs and cats on top of the Acropolis! I liked how this dog was lying in the middle of the street like he was Boss.

World Traveler check point. Check!

One last glimpse of the Parthenon before we head home!

Thanks for taking the journey with me.
This is my last post about Greece.
Seriously.

As always, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.

Absolute Bliss

Since Sunday I've been suffering from PTSD: Post-Trip Sadness Disorder. 

The ferocious heartburn/ulcer I seem to have brought home from Greece as a souvenir and the relentless jet lag aren't helping, either. What's strange is I was ready to come home. We were both ready to come home. We just weren't ready to go back to life!

Greece was unlike any other place I've been. We were there for 10 days and merely scratched the surface of a country that's so old you have to use your imagination to imagine it.

We started our trip on Santorini Island for three days. It was absolute bliss. Here are some photos from our three days there. We want to go back.

Our hotel was Altana Traditional Houses & Suites.

This is the view from our hotel suite. We got a free upgrade to their private suite. 

In our opinion, it was the best room at the hotel and cost twice as much as the one we reserved!

View from the rooftop pool. Our hotel claims to have the highest pool on the Caldera. 

We had almost a 360 degree view of the island.

Sunset view from the pool.

There are so. many. steps. in Santorini. 

 There are so many steps that donkeys take people up and down steps that lead to the ports. 

We refused to ride because according to the locals they are malnourished and mistreated. 

Poor Donkeys.

Sunrise view from our hotel suite.

Breakfast every morning in Santorini out in front of our hotel reception.

Breakfast included spinach pies, nutella pastries, cheese, yogurt, fresh melon, 

and sour cherry juice.

Sunrise and Breakfast was our favorite time of day on Santorini.

Red Beach on Santorini. One of the beaches we visited for a swim. 

The water was perfect in temperature and clarity.

None of these beaches have sand! 

On Santorini - because it's a volcano - all the beaches are pumice or pebbles.

Even though Santorini was supposed to be our three days of lazy lounging, 

we hiked A LOT and it was super hot. These are our not so happy hot faces.

Because it's an active volcano, there's no fresh water on Santorini. 

The only plants that grow naturally are ones that do so without needing water.

Naturally, I was in succulent heaven.

We met this precious pup on one of our walks. He so wanted to come play! 

This was the only dog we saw penned up the whole time we were in Greece - 

there are so many strays and wandering dogs!

Another Sunrise.

Our cozy little bed nook.

We ate lobster spaghetti at this little seaside (literally) restaurant. 

They were unloading the fresh fish catches right below these tables.

Another sunset.

The rest of the trip will have to wait. I can't handle any more bliss this morning. 

Happy Friday and Happy Weekend!

As always, you can find me the other days of the the week at alittleWhitenoise.