I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation...

- Stanisław Lem

Comfort.

Sometimes on frigid winter days all you want to do is hibernate and eat. Occasionally I give in to those urges. The other day I made oatmeal molasses bread with leftover oatmeal... A LOT of leftover oatmeal. This resulted in eight loaves of bread and a desire to get rid of a few of these loaves and eat something cozy. So I made maple bread pudding with cranberry apple compote. I adapted the recipe from here (less sugar, no praline topping), and made up a topping from leftover fruit that was on its last legs. I am pleased to report it at least temporarily made me forget about the negative two degree temperature outdoors that I woke up to.


The temperature the past few days has been much more mild... but that hasn't stopped me from eating more of this.

Day 12: the final day of packaged with love.

Day 12... a day late, but not a dollar short. At least, I think not. The holidays thus far have been busy: snow shoveling, last-minute packing, hours of driving, and a Festivus celebration that culminated in a Yankee Swap at a strip club... you know, the usual. I hope I can be forgiven the erratic posting. It's been lovely sharing gifts with you.

 There's no grand finale with elaborate over-the-top decoration here, just two last gifts decorated with things I had at hand.

Old botanical illustration that I cut out and attempted to make 3d, plants from my backyard and hemp from my junior high school hemp necklace making days.

Day 11

I'm feeling kind of fancy today so let's go with satin ribbon and a scrap from one of my mom's dresses that I used to play dress-up with in the attic when I was small (it KILLS me that I didn't save the whole dress, which is long gone by now). This is a really easy and fun way to make a fancy package... you could go to a thrift store, find a skirt or dress for really cheap and butcher it to wrap all of your gifts! Just promise me you'll make a decent bow if you do this. There's nothing worse than a sad bow.

I also decided to play around with the gold leaf that I purchased off ebay a few years ago when I was feeling flush and full of big plans to use it in my art. Let me tell you: gold leaf is a PAIN. But relatively easy if you can get over the fussy flimsy factor and exercise a small amount of patience. All you need is spray glue, a brush and painters tape to create golden initials on your gifts.

Day 10

The top gifts were easy: butcher paper and grocery bag, glue stick and sequins. The bottom gift was wrapped with embroidery thread that was horrendously tangled... I don't even want to know how much time I spent last night unraveling it. Too much time. And after I triumphantly finished wrapping, I realized that the remainder of the thread had become tangled yet again. Some things just aren't meant to be orderly, I suppose.

Day 9

Good morning! Two more freshly wrapped gifts... better late than never, right? The top one is my new favorite. It's wrapped with the tissue-thin end paper from an old book about geology that was in an unlocked house with a sign that said "Free. Take anything." topped with one of my favorite things, an ammonite fossil. The second is wrapped in tissue paper and decorated with a metal tree that I found back when I used to volunteer at a children's art studio - we always had neat found objects to create with and I couldn't resist this one. Finished with leftover ribbon scraps. Ps: the secret to beautiful wrap jobs lies with the use of glue. Yes, you heard me... glue. Heavy duty glue like Gorilla Glue or a glue gun for securing objects. When wrapping with tissue or butcher paper, use a glue stick to seal edges and ends rather than tape. (Sometimes weighting things down while it dries or using painter's tape is necessary. It's worth the fuss though. I don't know if glue sticks work with regular gift wrap but I assume it would, as long as you weighted it down to dry.)

Day 8

Oh, hey there. Some more gift wrapping ideas for your viewing pleasure: strange crocheted object that was too small to be a place mat and too thick and lumpy to be a doily, cut and glue-gunned into a pocket. Maple leaf with layer upon layer of acrylic paint, attached with fine gauge wire.

Days 6 & 7

I'm very on the fence about weekend posts. But the gift-wrapping show must go on! See you again on Monday morning, my friends.

More wrapping with grocery bags and cheap colored paper I had laying around. (I crumpled the blue paper to get a wrinkled look.) Decorated with: stones from a beach in Maine and silk ribbon, an enameled vintage beetle pin found in my mother's closet, a shell I saved from a long-forgotten location, satin and glitter ribbon scraps from my former place of employment.

Day 5

Feather found while hiking the Appalachian Trail. (It was a sweltering hot day and the trail meandered along the borders of fields and swampy bits of woodland. Three feathers lay in the middle of the trail, almost as if by magic. I remember clutching them in my sweaty hand, afraid they'd get crushed in my pack. Eventually, they did. I reached the road and lost the trail for a few seconds and wandered blindly, guessing it went further down, waving to 5 young Amish girls of staggered ages wearing pristine pale colored dresses, long braids and bonnets, wishing I could ask them where the heck the trail went. They politely waved back while staring at the strange woman wearing purple zebra striped spandex and a backpack. The wind was whipping wildly and I seem to recall bits of cottonwood sailing through the air like snow. I mailed the feathers to myself from the next post office and never bothered to figure out what they are. I like to guess woodpecker. But that's just a guess.) Plants are dead Indian Pipe (also known as Corpse plant!) White satin ribbon saved from a previous holiday and reused. Brown satin from a drawstring that fell out of the band of my sweatpants.

Day 4

I have a holiday party to attend tonight and these are two of my most favorite ideas yet... I feel festive just looking at them! (Which is a good thing, because the weather is decidedly unfestive - wind and driving rain and gloom and gray.)

Wrapped using bookcloth, decorated with hemp string and an oversized vintage pearl button,  satin ribbon and a gold frog that I found in my mother's old jewelry box from when she was in her twenties.

Color and texture...

is what I've been working on lately. Details:

Day 3

Wrapped with: cheap colored paper, grocery bag. Decorated with: clip-on earring from thrift store, broken piece of brooch from thrift store, old silk ribbon.

Day 2: packaged with love

Wrapped using: inside out grocery bag. Decorated with: swatch from a local fabric store (free, but this will only work with very small gifts, for larger packages you'll have to buy yardage), vintage photos from my great-aunt's photo albums & wire.

ps: take a look below to see my future home options. I think the best of both worlds would be to combine each concept and have a log cabin tree house on a tiny island.

Packaged with love: 12 days of gifts.

Despite the fact that I am currently making a conscious effort to scale back my material possessions, I still love giving gifts. (Fun fact: I used to make a living as a gift wrap designer before I quit and gallivanted off into the woods.) This year rather than buy gifts I'm attempting to make things, and I'm extending my efforts to the packaging as well. I've been brainstorming and have come up with ways to decorate a gift using only what I have at hand. Now granted, I do have a very well-stocked art studio (although not all of it has been squeezed into my current tiny living space) and I do frequent tag sales and flea markets pretty often (hoarding my finds comes in handy at times like these)... but most of these gift wrap ideas involve using nothing fancier than butcher paper or a brown paper grocery bag and things I have scrounged from my grandmother's craft supplies, my own backyard, and left-over scraps from previous projects. (Keep in mind that all of these ideas involve tiny boxes for the sake of both frugality and ease of photographing... but can easily be translated to larger packages!)

For the next twelve days (in addition to regular posting) I'll be sharing different ways to decorate a gift with love, beauty and objects found no farther than the local flea market or your backyard. Consider it a gift from me, to you!

Decorated with: vintage buttons from my grandmother's button box and a scrap of satin ribbon. Ribbon drawstring from a pair of sweatpants and a bit of branch from a bush in my parent's backyard. (Wrapped with bookcloth leftover from binding my senior illustration thesis long, long ago.)

Gingerbread mountains.

Spearmint and grapefruit forests. Pretzel logs and bridges. Waterfalls cascading with mints. Paths paved with sweets and mountains topped with rock candy ice and iridescent sugar snow.

I volunteer with Big Brother Big Sister. This is what we made today. It's a little more free-form than the creation from last year... we didn't think we could top that masterpiece, but I'm really liking this delicious alpine environment. I've already decided that it's the stretch of trail from Galehead over to Garfield. Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm perpetually unavailable as a Big Sister (a long distance hike, plus two months in another country, plus living/working in another state for the past two seasons ='s us not hanging out very much) but I like to think that at least I'm showing Olivia that you don't always have to follow the traditional route of gainful employment. There's options. And adventure. I think the fact that she opted to make gingerbread mountains (her idea!) shows that I'm definitely rubbing off on her, at least a little. And check out that sweet waterfall... these mountains are pretty epic. Yeah, I'm definitely rubbing off on her a little. 

Last year's gingerbread Appalachian Trail Shelter, complete with privy, bonfire, and a not-so-true-to-scale shelter mouse with peppermint top hat.

A Thanksgiving recipe

I'm actually not celebrating Thanksgiving this year... at least, not in the traditional sense with family. Instead, I'll be working. But the nice thing about this job is that when I'm not hiking or doing less interesting things I have lots and lots of time to bake. This is one of my favorites; it's a really flexible recipe with lots of room for creativity in ingredients and not being exact with amounts (which is how I like to bake). And, it looks incredible but is oh so forgiving in terms of making a crust (you don't even have to make one!) and laying out the fruit. Although I'm sure most of you have already finished your baking ahead of time, if you're last-minute like me, this is what you should make! It's rich, buttery, and really lets the flavors of the fruit shine. When I make it with just apples, it's like a pared-down essence of apple pie that, in my eyes, is even better than apple pie. Yes. I said it. Enjoy!

 Cranberry Apple Pear Rustic Tart with Cranberry Glaze 

Adapted from Orangette

Healthy alternate version coming soon... but I could not resist sharing my favorite comfort food!

I made these.

I can't say that this idea completely came to successful fruition... but I do like them. Maple leaves and acrylic. Maybe some day this will evolve into a series.