Frills and Flowers and Buttons and Bows

I'm so delighted to share these. I've been dreaming of such headbands since late last winter, and now that holiday festivities are approaching once again I gathered up lengths of ribbon, a handful of feathers, a vile of beads and three plain old plastic headbands. The outcome was a trio of new adornments. One is a tiny garden of silk, satin and crushed velvet. A second is a simple black band with antique button. And a third in deep green velvet is plumed and specked with gold. I think these would make lovely handmade presents - for the gals on your Christmas list or of course, for your bridesmaids and flower girls. The complete tutorial for these is up over at Project Wedding.

Apple Week: Apple Cider

It's the final day of Apple Week and this last recipe is especially apt for the wintry months ahead. It'll cozily fill your kitchen with the scent of cloves, citrus and cinnamon as it simmers. This series has been such fun - I really enjoyed experimenting with photographing food and I hope you've enjoyed these simple classic recipes. Next week I'll be back with the usual crafty, photographic fare. Until then!

Ingredients:
4 cups cider
1/2 an orange, sliced
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1-2 tablespoons brown sugar, to taste

Combine ingredients in medium saucepan and stir over medium heat until sugar has dissolved. Bring to a boil then reduce heat a little and let simmer for about 20-30 minutes more, stirring occasionally. Strain before serving.

Apple Week: Candied Apples

For today's dose of apple I must direct you to Martha's recipe, which we followed with much success last year. These seemed a little intimidating at first, namely because I feared I'd never see the bottom of my saucepan again. But I'm glad we didn't let that stop us - hot water will dissolve the mess away quite easily. And the reward couldn't be sweeter - a batch of homemade candied apples, all an enchantingly glossy red.

Apple Week: Caramel Apples

We made caramel apples to celebrate Halloween this year. Brett came over and helped dip them before we settled in for an evening of Alfred Hitchcock. We made mostly plain caramel but I dipped a few of mine in melted milk chocolate and crushed peanuts. Without any further tarrying here is Apple Week recipe No. 2! Read the recipe after the jump.

Apple Week: Apple Crisp

We always made apple crisp growing up because our tiny apple tree would drop pails and pails of apples in September. It's simple, yet delicious and it has the potential to use up lots of apples. It's only shortcoming is that it doesn't keep well (which is a problem here at school in our two person residence), so I started making ramekin-sized portions, which are just enough to enjoy while still warm, crunchy and right out of the oven. This also means the apple to topping ratio is tipped toward the sweeter side. Click to read the recipe after the jump.

Apple Week

In honor of colder days, earlier evenings, warm kitchens and of course apples may I present the first ever "Apple Week" at A Field Journal. Get your apple-a-day with a new photo + recipe Tuesday through Friday. See you soon!

Slide Projector: Portrait of Isabella Coymans

After a long break through the summer I think it's time I resume the Slide Projector Series - there are some favorites I've had noted for a while to share. Last Spring I took a seminar on the Dutch Golden Age: glassy oils of still life canvases, coils of lemon rind and pewter pitchers so perfectly real, tables set with plentiful bounty, fruit and floral, all so exquisitely lush. And the genre scenes, with their interiors so wonderfully calm, the figures within so well poised. Amidst all this I can't say pure portraiture was my clear favorite, but this Frans Hals hasn't left my memory. There's such a delicious tension between restraint and gaiety. And the costume - the silken folds of deep black, the cream lace of the scalloped collar, the gray violet bow - is magnificently accented by cranberry blooms, like the rose that trails out of the frame. All of this, cast in a radiant light against the tawny dusk of the background, has almost a wintry quality about it, doesn't it?

Sugar and Spice

I've been enjoying an usual anticipation for Halloween this year. Buying carmels and granny smith apples for some weekend confections. Reading Sleepy Hollow instead of textbooks. And - on a weekend visiting home - driving out to the farm off of Woods Valley Road for its annual pumpkin patch. From the road you can see the distant pumpkin pickers, wandering past great clusters of orange orbs. To the east a fine dust coats the white barn on the neighboring land and to the west giant pumpkins dot the dried fields, their burnt red hide decaying sweetly in the heat of California autumn. Back at school, these miniature pumpkins were sensible. Since I didn't have the array of glitter colors to make these, I "adjusted" the natural pumpkin colors by giving each a coat of acrylic craft paint before covering them in sugary, iridescent white glitter.With all this talk of pumpkins and November just around the corner, I'm already awaiting Thanksgiving. The scent of cloves and allspice, the warmth that emanates from the oven, and to borrow a phrase from Washington Irving, "the most luxurious of pies."

I Spied October

Color, lovely dark and deep is how I think of October. Golds and red and umber. And warm nostalgia for autumns past - maple trees and east coast vacations, brown suede shoes and school years not yet devoid of their newness. I photographed a collection of papers and trifles that seem to capture the month and they rather reminded me of the "I, Spy" books my brother and I had as children. For some reason those slight hardcovers only came down from the shelves in winter; we'd sit on either side of my mother and see who could first spot the be-riddled objects each time she turned the page. So in the spirit of colder evenings and old fashioned indoor pastimes, I created a handmade "I Spied October" booklet.
After taking the picture, I wrote a riddle to include all the objects. For the book I printed it in dark brown ink on kraft paper.Bay leaves in bronze, a spool of gold thread.
Deep olive velvet and words to be read.
A farmhouse facade, a still life emblazoned,
Floral and fiery, luxurious and brazen.
In chestnut and ivory, two bits of down,
Five pins and a ribbon in taffeta brown.
Tiny bouquet of glass petal and wire,
Sepia valley with lonesome white spire.
Lady in linen and black satin brim,
Antique brass button, tarnished and dim.
Papers, a snapshot, a glittering four,
In a deep maple orange, one button more.
A gentle winged beauty called to watch over,
And the muse of this poem, a gilded October.The front cover is printed on vellum. The back cover is a pocket created by sewing the short sides of the last two pages together - inside the pocket I tucked a mini craft envelope with a tiny magnifying glass enclosed (from an eye glass repair kit - I added gold paint to the rim and a seam binding bow to the handle).Beneath the vellum front cover is a thin layer of sewing pattern paper. You can just see through to the "I, Spy" photograph beneath.A page instructs the reader on "How to Play."And of course no game is complete without a solution.A page printed on vellum breaks the riddle down into numbered objects. Then the following page shows the original photo with corresponding numbers on each of the objects.You can commemorate October by making a book of your own. Find the download and instructions below.

Click the button above to download the printable pages of the book. Pages are 4 inches by 6 inches - you can cut papers to size and print on a photo printer. For the look above, print pages one and five on vellum. Pages two and six are best printed on photo-friendly papers. Print the remaining pages on papers of your choice (card stock or even kraft paper!). You can also add additional papers to customize your book - I added a page cut from an old sewing pattern between pages one and two. If you'd like to have a pocket in the back cover of your book, place pages six and seven back to back and sew short edges together using a zigzag stitch. Now align all the pages of your book together and sew with a zigzag stitch along the spine. Enjoy!

Five in Gold

Above, figures one through five in gold. Gold frames, that is. An old and mismatched assortment, all of them somewhere between gilt and tarnish. Inside them, crystalline windows of convex glass, numbers painted bronze. And the papers - the florals seem as though they could have covered antiquated walls, peeling down through centuries, in graceful sloth. This arrangement is for Project Wedding, made from vintage frames and store bought scrapbook papers. Get the how-to and lots more photos at Project Wedding!

Meet Me at the Fair

In my home county, the fair came in early June. Just after the weather warmed and just before the horses ran at Del Mar. The time suited it. The Ferris wheel was at the far western edge; from its height you could look down on a ribbon of two lane highway or out beyond, where two low, tawny hills gave way to beach and sea. It was place wrapped in the promise of summer.I suppose that's why I'd rather forgotten that the fairs of storybooks are autumn affairs. Places for prize pigs and blue ribbon pies. Calico dresses, golden hay bales and cloud streaked harvest skies. Where storybook children run through carnival light in in the briskness of late September air, leaping from carousel horses to spend their nickels on gluttonously dipped apples, bright red and caramel. Such things are best in fall, so I'm quite glad the early days of October brought us to a new county fair and its amusements. Lanky-legged lambs, rambunctious pigs and brown spotted calves. The dust kicked up by hooves in paddocks. The slow spin of the Ferris wheel overhead. The midway lights by night. Folded quilts. Jars of honey. Corndogs from stands. And a three minute wait for photobooth prints."Don't tell me the lights are shining any place but there."

A Housewarming

In the spring, the gingerbread trim got a final coat of varnish, tiny paper buds bloomed in the window boxes and the last waif of a shingle met that gabled roof. All through the summer the Buttercup Cottage patiently waited for a housewarming, and at last here it is. With bunting over the threshold and all. It belongs to an old fashioned breed - building model planes or constructing a tiny railroad. The kind of hobby with no terribly necessary ends and no particular deadlines. Worked on intermittently, dreamed about often and delayed oftener. Leaving saw dust on the work bench, paint on bristles and sweet contentment in the not-quite-finished.
But not-quite-finished is not to say neglected. Of course the Buttercup will need some furnishings and lamplight. Curtains perhaps. A braided rug. Oh, the possibilities for all things small! Which brings me to second surprise I made - a desktop in two colorways. "The sweetest things are the smallest things," it reads. Always true in a dollhouse; on occasion, true in life.
If you'd like to use the desktop in Peach (above) or Pink (below), click the button that corresponds to your screen resolution. Right click the image and select add as desktop background. These desktop designs are free for personal use and enjoyment and not meant for commercial purposes of any kind.