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Create: Sugar Spun Gifts

We’ve been baking, roasting and stirring at our house in a mad dash to get treats off to friends and family. The common ingredient among the cookies, nuts and body scrubs I made is sugar. So if you need some sweet, last minute gifts here are three easy ideas.

Soren made his very first batch of Christmas cookies this year by following my new favorite holiday recipe for Chocolate Thumbprints. We started with a double batch of dough–half which was used to form the chocolate thumbprints (tip: baby spoons make the perfect dent), and the other half we rolled out to make shortbread shapes with our mini cookie cutters. A classic sugar cookie dough would have been better for shaping and sprinkle adherence, but as a last minute baker with a two-year-old pastry chef I only had time (and the patience) to follow one recipe.  The buttery mixture mimicked play-dough, so Soren had fun re-rolling and manipulating it. And chocolate thumbprint or not, they were still incredibly delicious.

 

A big hit from last year was the spiced nut recipe which Adam Miller shared on GHG. I roasted a batch of his family’s savory/sweet traditional gift and packed them up in decorative cones I found at Ikea. You can’t go wrong with these any time of the year.

 

I also made a sugary body scrub concoction based on an easy tutorial from Prudent Baby. The lavender and grapefruit essential oils I picked up seemed a bit weak, so I just kept adding aromatic drops to the jars. I’ll have to await feedback on this one to find out if I went overboard on the fragrance.

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Gift: Make it Personal

Table display at Shutterfly Home for the Holidays event. Photos by Trey Hill.

Growing up I wore many a sweater embroidered with my initials, as a result the latent preppy in me is still drawn to monograms. A soft baby blanket with the initials of a brand new little one. Lovely stationery all your own. And jewelry, like the timeless art-deco charm my parents gave me in high school or this silhouette charm that I currently covet  from Love&Victory. My mom ordered monogrammed shortalls for my son and nephew for Christmas, and I can’t wait to dress the boys up in their matching outfits just like my sisters and I were dressed. It appears that I’ve become sentimental (or just plain regressed) as a parent.

So I was intrigued when invited to a Shutterfly event in New York about personalizing spaces for the holidays. In a light-filled loft they staged a whole home experience from nursery to kitchen with a range of ways to incorporate photos, cards and photos displays into every room.

My thought is that photos and personalized items should be sprinkled about with restraint, so choose a few meaningful photos or personalized things for your home. There’s no need to be plastering initials on everything to mark it as if it were going off to camp. As with most things, a little goes a long way.  So, with that in mind following are a few thoughtful customized gift-giving ideas sparked by the event.

Another surprising thing happened when I became a parent: the urge to start an ornament collection for Soren like I had growing up. Who knew? My tree tells the story of hobbies, family vacations, favorite characters (I have two Annie ornaments) and yes, there are engraved and hand-painted ornaments with my name too. I’m a nostalgist when it comes to these things, which is why I think this classic ceramic photo ornament would make the perfect gift for grandparents or as a keepsake for your child.

Another more useful idea for those who still put pen to paper, is stationery or a notepad. Having it personalized is an extra thoughtful touch. I really liked this idea of custom cards doubling as elegant place cards and a sweet gift too. And it’s something that could work for so many occasions from showers to a milestone birthday party. In this instance, it’s ok to make it personal.

 

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Create: DIY Dishware

My friend (and the designer behind this little blog), Susan, is about to embark on a  kitchen renovation project. As a pre-demolition kick-off, she had a little “before” brunch at her place. While we weren’t pressed into service with sledge-hammers, she did have some  work in mind for us.

Susan set out stacks of simple, white side plates, black permanent markers and directed us to grab a plate and draw–anything, whatever doodle sprang to mind. Inspired by James Victore‘s “Dishes Dishes” series, Susan plans to display these mini works of art in her newly renovated kitchen.

Even those claiming zero artistic ability had fun with it. And no need need to be gutting your kitchen as reason to take pen to plate either. This would be a perfect project for artists of all ages. Pick up small plates in various shapes and sizes. You can add pop with permanent colored markers. Design keepsake dessert or appetizer plates to use all year, or pack them away for special occasions. Or, give your kitchen a mini-update by displaying your very own dish exhibit. Insta-artwork!

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Create: Grateful Pie

This “rustic” apple pie, with visible fault lines and less than impressively crimped edges, is my first attempt at a crust from scratch. I was emboldened enough to finally try and make my own crust after seeing this detailed (without being intimidating) post on Design Mom.

While straightforward, it was still a process. But then, so is the entire prep and build-up to a Thanksgiving feast. It’s a labor of true love. With that in mind, I wanted to make something special, to move beyond my comfort zone and express in some sugary, buttery way how grateful I am for those I’ll be sharing Thanksgiving with this year.

If I could, I would cut cold butter into flour well into the wee hours to yield enough pies to fill tables miles long. I’d gather all of the family and friends whom I am lucky enough to know, love and who remind me on a daily basis all I have to be grateful for.

So, until I figure out where to host my grateful-pie-fest, Happy Thanksgiving to friends and family wherever you sit, and thank you.

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Ps&Qs:Good Advice

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Food Republic, a food culture destination for men, recently asked me to impart some etiquette and entertaining guidelines for the upcoming holidays. I was referred to as a “lady friend”–a title alone which was was worth the assignment. New moniker aside, I truly had fun dispensing advice on everything from stocking your bar with the right glassware and what to pour in those highball or birdbath glasses.

Following are select posts:

Know Your Glassware

How to Seat Guests

Good Guest Basics

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Create: Wild Things (and other characters)

Are these the most incredible paper bag puppets you’ve ever seen? I thought so too. Our friends Sarah (creative visionary with a deluxe craft room) and Justin (artist and musician) kindly made them for Soren. He was amazed when S+J arrived with two of his favorite Where the Wild Things Are characters in 3D. Max’s private boat is a reoccurring theme in our sidewalk chalk drawings, and we’ve read the book so many times that Soren recites Max’s lines as if they were his own. As great as his affinity is for this classic tale, the reading with supporting puppet show that night might have been even more fun for us adults.

The DIY power couple claim that the puppets inspired by Pinterest boards were easy to make. They used heavy duty paper craft sacks, foam trimmings, felt, fur and lots of imagination. A paper bag character (Curious George, Madeline, Babar) coupled with a favorite book really brings a story to life, and would make for a perfect shower, birthday or holiday gift.

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Create: Community

I (Heart) NY concept sketch, Milton Glaser, 1976

I was grounded under clear Midwestern skies while Sandy was grinding her way like a flinty toothed saw through entire communities, slicing power lines, felling boardwalk traditions generations deep, and sloshing down streets and into living rooms. Having not witnessed the fury it was surreal to return to a subdued and stunned New York City.

Other than my sister’s car pinned beneath an uprooted Oak tree, we returned to a home and neighborhood otherwise intact. We had heat, power and a roof still firmly over our heads. But you didn’t need to travel far to find neighbors experiencing a completely different reality. A reality which nobody around them could deny. And they didn’t.

I returned to a New York where every person I knew was baking, cooking, pumping out homes and businesses, shoveling debris, providing warm clothes, carrying cases of water up flight after dark flight of stairs in powerless buildings, taking shifts at shelters full of evacuees and using their last gallons of precious gas to deliver supplies. What’s more amazing still is that many of these efforts were self organized as people connected over social media and sprung up with a force to rival the storm itself.

At the Park Slope Armory, a temporary shelter for 600 adults evacuated from three assisted living facilities in the Far Rockaways and lower Brooklyn, I bumped into many neighbors and friends (and made new friends among the residents too). But what really surprised me was meeting so many volunteers from outside of New York. Like the group of kids who drove for four days from Washington state to help round-the-clock and Rebecca from Philadelphia who was stuck here without gas so she decided to just pitch in.  I asked Nicole, a young woman from Rio, why on her vacation she chose to volunteer. Her very matter of fact reply: “I love New Yorkers, they are my neighbors too.” Such a decent, kind and human perspective.

So neighbors, with Governor Cuomo estimating that anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 people have been displaced due to the storm, efforts will be ongoing to help our neighbors not just rebuild but to feel at home again too. Here are a few organizations helping to do just that, let me know of other effective, reliable ones you’ve found too.

Rockaway Help

Occupy Sandy

Brooklyn Recovery Fund

Food Bank for New York City

New York Cares

Red Hook Initiative

SILive.com

 

 

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Create: The Scene

Bash Please Movie Night// Photo by Brandan Kidd

I recently had the chance to interview the two brilliant event planners, Paige Appel and Kelly Harris, of Bash, Please. They shared their smart, original ideas with me for a Martha Stewart Living series about party tricks. You might want to check out the story before your next event.

These two inspired me to think about making something more of my next gathering, and they also got me thinking about two people who knew how to throw a really great party: my parents. My mom would always weave a cohesive theme (farm trip, day at the movies, aerobics/workout–hey, it was the 80s!) throughout all of our birthday parties. Even family gatherings like a First Communion had all-tied-up-with-bows details that made it more than a get-together, but an event. Not flashy or extravagant either, just thoughtfully planned and creatively pulled off.

However, it was the imaginative parties thrown for their friends that had me up all night spying, peeking around corners and marveling at serious grown-ups having so much fun. I loved when my parents rented a jukebox loaded with 60s and 70s hits for a nostalgic summer dance bash on the patio. And the more elaborate Valentine’s Day 1920s costume party, a play on the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, a shoot out between Al Capone’s South Side Italian gangsters and a North Side Irish gang.

Women came as flappers, there was a cigarette girl and one woman channeled her elegant great Aunt. The men rented zoot suits and a couple even tricked out a flower box to disguise a toy-machine gun. All this roaring 20s pageantry transformed our suburban home into a stage for one very memorable night.

I would love to have attended that party as an adult; maybe I’ll just have to re-create it myself someday.

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Create: Apple Everything

Here’s the thing about a day spent eating cider doughnuts and plucking apples: you will end up with several sacks of the rosy cheeked beauties that you then need to consume. I remember my mom boiling up countless batches of apple sauce in a effort to lessen our teetering piles of fruit, and assuage her guilt about letting it go to waste.

Despite the many hours of labor, we never ate all that apple sauce. Which is why I thought it was really brilliant when my friend Sarah showed up for dinner and gifted us with her homemade applesauce.  The presentation in a mason jar with a hand-stamped tag made such an elegant, simple treat for fall.

Sarah adapted this recipe from the canning blog Food in Jars by leaving out the sugar and sweetening the apple sauce with a teaspoon of honey. Just perfect.

I’ve been grabbing apples at the greenmarket and baking crumble based on this Bon Appétit recipe. I use the one cup of the sugar for the crumble and sprinkle a little sugar (not a 1/2 cup) on the cut fruit. I’ve mixed plain and flavored oatmeal (maple, cinnamon) which went over well. Also, because I can’t resist all the apple names, I use a jumble of varieties and slice just enough to fill the baking dish, which is certainly less than the four pounds called for in the recipe.

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