celebrations
jumpinginartmuseums.blogspot.com
Lately, readers who have seen our ongoing, increasingly obsessive postings of people leaping – an obvious and beautiful metaphor for taking a leap – have been sending sightings on the theme of leaping and jumping. This morning, Cynthia Allen alerted us to the fab Jumping in Art Museums.
Sometimes, while visiting art museums and galleries, people get so excited by what they see that they have to jump for joy. They send photos of their Art Jumping to me and I post them to share with the rest of the art-loving world.
These are people jumping for pure joy, which great art can give in one big, often unexpected dose. It made people like Katie from Saginaw, Michigan jump for “The Divers” by Fernand Lèger at the MoMA in NYC (above) and read more…
06.11.12 |
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in art, celebrations, inspiration blogs + sites, leaping + flying, paths + processes, people, sightings |
This photo of members of the Seattle Tubing Society in full float made us WANT to be invited to a tubing party. If we were near a river or lake, we’d give one ourselves…What could be more delightful than lazily bobbing along with friends on a warm summer day? It seems that tubing parties were quite a thing in the forties and fifties…
…dig this flotilla of happy souls… read more…
05.24.12 |
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in celebrations, entertaining, family + friends, nature, outside |
ohjoy.blogs.com
If you didn’t get it together to send plastic goody-filled Easter eggs by mail, or sprout little plants in egg shells, we thought we’d offer some solutions for last-minute Easter egg decorating:
There’s still time to make your own plant-based dyes for truly gorgeous Easter eggs (it’s totally fun). We especially dig the moderne neon dip-dyed egg above, which you can do with neon food dye
available at the supermarket; here’s how to.
And don’t forget, eggs are a blank palette; you can just write or paint right on them with markers. read more…
04.06.12 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, food, how-to, materials, projects + play, strategies |
We’ve been so impressed with Jim Denevan’s amazing sand and snow creations, that we forgot he’s also is the mastermind of a fantastic traveling food project. Outstanding in the Field is a “roving culinary adventure” meant to connect people to the land where their food originates and the people who work hard to produce it.
Outstanding in the Field creates pop-up food happenings at farms and ranches (and other scenic delights) across the country. They set up a long table that sits over 100 guests, and local chefs work their magic to prepare four-course meals using entirely local meat and produce. There is nothing like the experience of sitting down to eat on the land from which your food has come. Their 2012 schedule has just been announced, so you can check and see if they will be coming to a town near you. read more…
03.26.12 |
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in celebrations, community, entertaining, family + friends, food, nature |
Recently, a reader sent us link to an interactive wine-and-food-pairing website called Italian Wine Pairing 101 wondering what we thought about it. You choose a food group – say beef, or shellfish or fruit tarts – then recommended wines appear in a list below. (It’s one of many food-and-wine pairing charts and sites on the internet.) So we asked our very astute food and wine contributor Anthony Giglio to give us his take on it. As usual, he gets to the deep and essential heart of the matter (bold-faced below).
The opening line gives anyone who knows grapes pause: ‘Italy produces the most wine in the world. But Italian wine can be intimidating for beginners due to the unfamiliar names — it’s more Nebollio (sp) & Verdicchio than Merlot and Chardonnay.’ [More succinctly, it's place names more than grape names that confuse...]
The simplicity of matching is safe and could certainly work — if one has a really open mind (keep reading). read more…
03.23.12 |
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in celebrations, entertaining, food, learn, resources, resources blogs + sites, resources books + zines |
giverslog.com
We’d figured we had alt-easter gift covered for this year with our seedling-filled Easter eggs, when Cynthia from 50Years50Recipes sent us ANOTHER swell, novel gift. She stuffed plastic eggs with goodies and sent them through the mail, as an invitation to her her niece and nephews to come for an Easter visit (She got the idea from Giverslog.) We were under the impression that the increasingly restrictive postal system had banned oddly shaped packages years ago. Writes Cynthia:
The eggs did arrive, but it took 10 days to get from one end of Mass to the other and two weeks to get from western Massachusetts to upstate New York. So the good news is it works-the downside is that even with first class postage it takes a bit of time.
I also tried the filled bottles mentioned on Giverslog read more…
03.19.12 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, family + friends, how-to, materials, projects + play, resources |
DrinkEatTravel
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we thought it fitting to reprise the Stout and Ice Cream Float post we published a year or so ago. It is a one line equation-of-a-recipe adapted from Coleman Andrews:
Into a big glass, spoon really good vanilla ice cream like Haagan Daz’ Five Vanilla Bean, then pour over Guinness or any really well-made RICH dark stout beer; then eat with a spoon.
The possibilities for using different stouts are vast. Check out Beer Advocate’s list of 750American Stouts.
If you are not a Guinness fan or a fan of America’s version of St. Patrick’s Day, you will be once you’ve tasted the float!
It is a perfect grown-up dessert, anytime.
Photo from Drink Eat Travel‘s feature on Kern River Brewery.
Related post: amontillado and other grownup milkshake(s)
quick homemade tropical ice creams (banana..mango…)
smoky, bacon-infused spirits for holiday cocktails
cream biscuits: easy, foolproof and divine (recipe)
the potato chip improvisations + recipe: real onion dip
03.16.12 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, entertaining, food, recipes |
Last Easter, we posted Ambatalia’s extensive how-to on dying Easter eggs with natural dyes. We have that essential Easter item covered. What to do THIS year? There’s egg-shaped stones painted a la Max Ernst…
Then an image we saw in a Remodelista post about cold frames got us thinking about another kind of ALT Easter eggs. We discovered that halved egg shells are sometimes used as starter pots for seeds to sprout in (supplying the plant with a nice dose of calcium). We thought: wouldn’t a carton of eggs with little seedlings growing in them be a wondrous and surprising Easter gift? Why not?
The process is pretty simple: crack and empty the eggs*, fill with potting soil, add the seeds… Instructables has clear directions and a PDF. If you start planning now, we figure you’ll have some charming little shoots in time for Easter, on April 8th. (See packages will give you a sense of how long a particular seed takes to sprout; beans and cucumbers only take a few days.) read more…
03.15.12 |
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in celebrations, d-i-y, garden, gifts, how-to, materials, recipes |
“Read a Valentine heart shape from top to bottom. and it says the two can become one.
Read it from bottom to top, and it says the one can become two with the two still connected.
Read a Valentine heart shape as a whole, and it says wholeness is a place to live with room inside for the liquid of life and many adventures. read more…
02.14.12 |
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in celebrations, family + friends |
Early this morning we received an email from a friend who was about to make chocolate truffles for her Valentine, and wasn’t sure how to transport them. The email was sent in the wee hours of the morning, and we realized that for many, today means a last-minute scramble to get ready for Valentine’s day – TOMORROW. So here are some suggestions we’ve found in our morning surfing, or that we include in our personal arsenal.
We love the cut-and-fold d-i-y cards Made by Joel came up with. They are meant as a kid’s project but we think they’d make a swell grownup valentine: the template ever-inventive Joel Henriques generously included as a pdf has an appealing abstract look that is great unto itself… read more…
02.13.12 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, food, gifts, projects + play, recipes, resources, resources blogs + sites |
photo: sally schneider
Just before Christmas, I posted my best-ever butter cookie recipe: Ethereal Brown Sugar Butter Cookies, along with many variations. The versatile cookie dough recently inspired yet another improvisation on the basic theme. Actually, it’s an improvisation on my Tuscan Herb Salt Recipe, that I then used on the butter cookies, to make a double-improvisation: Brown Sugar Butter Cookies with Thyme-Rosemary-Lavender Salt…
I used the essential Herb Salt method to make a fragrant salt using classic Herbes de Provence: rosemary, thyme and lavender (instead of the usual garlic, rosemary and sage). After I cut out the raw cooky dough, I sprinkled each disk with some of the aromatic salt, hoping that the combination would make for a subtle, surprising and delicious cookie. It did, and has become a new favorite.
That’s what happens when you start improvising: one idea links and layers with another, until you have improvisations made of improvisations…
The basic method is simple… read more…
01.27.12 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, entertaining, food, how-to, recipes, strategies |
photo: library of congress
“Monday’s a holiday” we were told. “What holiday?” we asked. Since we work for ourselves, we’re not really in sync with regular work days.
It’s “Martin Luther King Jr Day.”
Even though we’re working today, we’re thinking a lot about this great man, and all this country would not have were it not for his efforts…and what we would not have; his teaching and activism and way still reverberate… read more…
01.16.12 |
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in celebrations, community, inspiration, paths + processes, people, principles, quotes |
We’ve been so busy, we haven’t given all the gifts we’ve had in mind to give to friends and family. Our fridge is still stockpiled with mason jars of Prunes in Armagnac we plan to give friends we meet up with in the next few weeks. And our favorite gift for this year, the extraordinary book Tantra Song by Franck Andre Jamme, sold out of its first printing after we’d gotten to send only two copies out. So we’re going to wait a month or two until it’s back in stock, THEN we’ll give it as a Christmas – or anytime – gift. The book is a rare collection of powerful modernist Tantric paintings from Rajasthan, done on salvaged paper: “things of beauty used to awaken heightened states of consciousness.” The book, and the story behind it ia SO remarkable that it is a well-worth-waiting-for-bargain at around $25. (It will be available here
from Amazon, or through the publisher.)
We’re just following our Philosophy of Late Celebrations: read more…
01.03.12 |
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in art, celebrations, cheap + great, gifts, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, principles |
