Happy 40th Birthday, Naoto!
Xoxo
kimberly ah
kimberly at home
Category Archives: celebrations
It’s 2014
Happy 2014!
Our New Years Eve was just about perfect–Karen, Naoto, me…Manhattans and steaks at Golden Steer, wine and sweets at home, and an Adami Prosecco toast at midnight…
It snowed in Chicago, making for the perfect wintry backdrop to the festivities. In fact, it’s pretty much been snowing since New Year’s Eve, making for a quiet start to 2014. 
All we did on January 1st was watch Law & Order…it’s kind of a tradition on New Year’s Day to get sucked into TV marathons and Law & Order is our favorite. I should be embarrassed to admit that I watched from 9AM (January 1) until 2AM (January 2), but I also hung up my new calendar and wrote out a few New Year cards, so we’ll call that a productive first day of 2014.
Today, I’m putting Christmas away and trying to get organized for real…a constant battle around here.
I hope your new year has been equally fantastic.
New Year, New Calendars
The new year is catching me completely off guard. Thankfully, I have a few calendars to keep me on track.
I bought the Sakana Saijiki fish calendar for Naoto. It is full of amazing illustrations of sea life and calligraphy that I cannot read. I’m excited to have a grid again. The calendars that I bought last year were all more decorative than functional. The fish calendar will hang in the kitchen, so it will be nice for Naoto to see what we have planned for the month.
The little “Things With Faces” calendar was a gift from Mollie. I’m looking forward to breaking out my colored pencils or watercolors and filling the pictures in each month.
And the Orange Beautiful calendar was a gift from Donovan. The colors and the fonts are perfect.
As far as a datebook for 2014…well, I’m still waiting. After a couple of months of waffling, I decided yesterday to go back to using Franklin Covey. Once my pages come in (MID-JANUARY!!) I will do a little post on my set-up.
Today I am cleaning house and stringing up a garland for our teeny New Year’s Eve party tonight. We are having dinner at Golden Steer and drinking cocktails at home and maybe making a few resolutions…
Happy New Year!
Book Club Christmas Tea
Last Saturday, we had a Pleasant Home Book Club Christmas Tea at Peggy’s house. 
There were so many of us that we had to sit at two different and wonderfully decorated tables at Peggy’s.
We enjoyed ham salad (made by me), egg salad, cucumber sandwiches, cherry almond scones, homemade ricotta, homemade lemon curd and homemade Meyer lemon curd (so delicious, I can’t even explain), Christmas cookies, champagne cocktails, tea…my tiny plate above was the first of many. 
After we ate, we moved into the sitting room and talked about our book–The Cat by Colette. (By the way, The Cat deserves its own blog post sometime in January.)
It happened to be the Winter Solstice, so we got to enjoy Peggy’s beautifully lit sitting room as the sun went down. It seriously is Christmas heaven over there…so many twinkle lights!
Thank you to Peggy for another wonderful Christmas time!
Whiskey Chat
On Saturday night, Naoto and I cashed in our silent auction winnings from the Forest Park Community Garden fundraiser. We hosted a Whiskey Chat and invited friends over to hear Nick speak about the history of whiskey, the different whiskies, the process of making whiskey. While Nick was talking, we enjoyed sampling different whiskeys and eating tasty snacks. 
We had everyone bring a bottle of whiskey so we could have a little variety to sample and Nick (a whiskey aficionado) brought his entire collection with him so we could sample a wider variety…isn’t that incredible? (That’s his collection up there on my china cabinet…plus he brought a ton of tiny “airplane bottles” of mainstream whiskeys and weird flavored whiskeys like Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey–ick). Naoto was really excited to see that Nick had a Japanese whisky in his collection. They spent some time comparing his to our bottle…both bottles tasted pretty peaty to me!
Nick had a powerpoint and handouts so it felt very formal and informative but fun and casual at the same time. It was a small enough group that we were all able to sit around our dining room table. 
In addition to the obligatory pistachios and cheese array, we made “funeral buns“. I found the recipe on Pinterest and they sounded just decadent enough to go with whiskey…a hearty and buttery bite. We substituted turkey for ham and they were delicious! They will be the next party staple. 
Our friend Karen made pimento cheese spread–another future party staple. In our research of things to serve with whiskey, pimento cheese came up…and I’m so glad it did!
In the kitchen, we had a little “bar” set up with ingredients for Old Fashioneds and Manhattans. I typed up the recipes on little cards so people could help themselves. I think most people ended up drinking the whiskeys straight, but a few of us enjoyed the classic cocktails.
Oh, what a night!
In case you’re interested, here’s a list of the whiskeys we all shared:
Cedar Ridge (my personal favorite bourbon, from Iowa)
Old Overholt (a $15 rye, recommended by Kathy, that has been my Manhattan staple lately)
Breckenridge (a Colorado bourbon)
Eagle Rare (a Kentucky bourbon)
Koval (a Chicago bourbon)
Our Thanksgiving 2013
It’s not too late to share our Thanksgiving, right?
Naoto and I hosted my parents for Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday afternoon. As usual, we had a grand time with them, cooking, eating, drinking and cleaning up the massive kitchen mess. And as it has been for the past seven years, Naoto did all of the cooking (except the cranberries!) and I did all of the cleaning and decorating. 
In honor of his Thanksgiving duties, I gave Naoto this apron that I bought from Nourishing Notes during Show of Hands. He rocked the apron with his pajamas all day long. (It was a very relaxed holiday.) 
Ever since I made the vintage ephemera Thanksgiving invitations, I had visions of incorporating some more ephemera into the table centerpiece. And, since I was using old paper, it only made sense to get vintage colors and vintage dishes into the mix. The wonderful thing was, other than the flowers, I had everything I needed right in my china cabinet and buffet. (It pays to be a dish hoarder sometimes.)
I was excited to use my vintage Taylor Smith Taylor dishes. My mom and I found a whole set at a thrift store for $10 a few years ago and I bought them with the intent of using them for Thanksgiving. They were perfect for the table this year. (And thanks, Mom, for hand washing them after dinner!) 
Naoto’s turkey was perfect, the stuffing was amazing (in spite of a close call with an almost-forgotten egg) and, along with the cranberries, we enjoyed fluffy mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted cauliflower, Hawaiian rolls and a tasty caramel apple cheesecake that my mom made. There is a reason I look forward to this meal every year. (But man, am I ever ready for pizza after the long weekend of leftovers!)
The chef was glad to have another successful year under his apron belt. 
Today I am (finally) putting away Thanksgiving for another year, and hopefully dipping into the Christmas decorations. We are hosting two small parties the next two weekends, so time to break out the Christmas spirit. It’s one of those years when retailers make you feel like you’re running behind…cheers to enjoying the season!
If you’d like to relive Thanksgiving 2012, go here.
Vintage Ephemera Thanksgiving Invitations
I am happy to report that my Thanksgiving invitations are done and in the mail! Seriously, where is this month going? At one point I felt crazy for starting to think about these invites so early, then they barely made it into the mail in time.
They aren’t super complicated, but I had a lot of fun putting the mini collages together. Everything on the invite is vintage except the little strip of washi. I needed another metallic element to complement the gold seal. Once I saw the old BINGO cards in my stash, I knew I wanted them to be the base. I love the yellowed paper and the graphic numbers as a background. And of course I had to use my typewriter since tags don’t feed into my (non-existent) printer. I typed out my message and played around with the placement of the vintage postage stamps and gold seals (from a Saturday Morning Vintage Thanksgiving paper pack and fall ephemera bundle) . I pasted everything on with my favorite glue stick because, as I learned at the Halloween Mail Art Workshop, glue sticks work best with delicate vintage papers. The invitation above is the one I sent my parents. The maroon stamp on the bottom (with the gold star) is in honor of railroad workers. My maternal grandpa worked on the railroads, so I think my mom will appreciate that little detail. 
I had the fig-colored envelopes in A2, which was 1/8 inch too small…so I had to go out and buy some roomy A6 fig envelopes. I made another collage on the front of the envelope with papers from from my ephemera packs (the leaf is a playing card!), some MT washi tape, an old gold border label and a new sticker (Paper Source). 
I lined my envelopes with marbled paper from Blick. I love this paper. It had a gorgeous mix of maroons, greens, golds and silvers…so dreamy. (And it was in my paper stash ready to be spent out!)
So there they are…done for another year. Now it’s time to work on ideas for the table and…clean!! 
For more Thanksgiving shenanigans, go here.
Have a good weekend! I’ll be busy today and tonight cramming for book group! The Sea-Wolf here I come!
Easy Thanksgiving Invitations
I’m still finishing the real Thanksgiving invitations. I had to go out and buy a bigger envelope size (defeating the purpose of using up my stash, but I’m really excited about how the invitations turned out so I needed the just right envelope color!)
When I was playing around with ideas for Thanksgiving invitations (before rediscovering my stash of vintage ephemera) I came up with these as an option. We don’t have a home printer. (Ours broke over a year ago, and I after sifting through thousands of online reviews, I couldn’t make a decision. At this point, I question whether we really need one.) So I decided that my typewriter would be my printing method. I found these leftover paper leaves in my fall decorations bin. The leaves come in a variety of colors, but the ones I chose are shimmery gold. It’s not a perfect paper for the typewriter, especially since my new ribbon is pretty inky, but they worked out okay as long as I didn’t smear the ink with my fingers. The oval-shaped leaf was easy to work with but the “oak” leaf gave me problems because all of its little bumpy edges kept getting stuck as I typed each line…it’s fine though…the little tears just look like texture.
Once I was done typing, I pasted the leaves onto some shimmery antique gold cards and topped them off with a little piece of washi tape. I’m going to put them in some leftover fig envelopes (from Thanksgivings past) and send them to my brother and sister and their families. They don’t join us for Thanksgiving, but it’s always nice to be invited, right?
Blush & Gold Gift
My mom’s birthday was in October. We got her a gift card (booooring!) and I picked up a pretty handkerchief for her in Japan. Such a tiny gift deserved a pretty package, so I whipped up a little decorated paper bag for her present. I love packaging things for my mom because she takes time to notice the little details. It’s a fun way to celebrate the special mom that she is. 
I started with a little flat kraft bag and layered on anything blush and gold from my craft cupboard (aka the hardware cabinet TV stand–those drawers are awfully handy!). I always have a variety of supplies on hand for mail art, scrapbooking and other projects, so once I collected everything I needed, putting the gift bag together only took about five minutes. It was a happy accident that the pink label fit perfectly on the doily…once that happened, I cruised along layering each piece. I cheered when I discovered that my favorite glue pen was strong enough to hold the tiny gold sequins. (I see more sequins in my future.) I finished off the gift with a little piece of washi tape on the back. Quick and simple. Now if only I could get my act together to fancy up the pile of Christmas gifts…
Supplies used: kraft bags, doilies, peach & gold washi tape, vintage sequins, Rifle labels (these are my favorites!), kraft flags, Quickie glue pen, Souffle pen (not shown), flair button (not shown in supply picture, but shown on package picture).
P.S. Thanks, Mary, for inviting me to the Celebration Link-Up!
Oh Presley…
Last year, I celebrated Labor Day by mentioning Naoto’s hardworking spirit. While that is important, Labor Day has another special meaning around here. It is the day we got Presley.
Seven years ago today, our friend Bonnie gave us a tiny, scared, stray kitten that had been born in her barn. Bonnie didn’t ask us if we wanted a cat…she knew we needed a cat. 
The first few weeks were rough. Presley was (is) quite a handful. She didn’t want to cuddle. She hid out most of the time. She didn’t really like us. She only sat on my lap when I went to the bathroom. (Weird!) For those first few weeks, Naoto and I considered giving her back. We didn’t feel like she was happy, and we weren’t sure if we were truly cat people. (I had cats growing up, but Naoto never really had pets.) We didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings (especially Presley’s), so we mustered through. And gradually, we all got used to each other. Presley started coming around more, cuddling more, playing more. Naoto and I accepted our roles in care taking. (I told Naoto that ANY woman should not scoop the litter box, not just pregnant women. By the time he learned the truth, he was so used to scooping the box, he’d accepted it as his job for life.) We started accepting the fact that cat hair is forever.
Now we cannot imagine our lives without this little beast. Presley is still a little wild and she’s terrible with guests (oh, if only they would just leave her alone!) But with us, she’s sweet and charming and only misbehaves if she feels she’s lacking attention and play time. Since I’m home more, Presley has become “my” cat, often favoring me over Naoto. (It’s okay, because most people favor him over me.) She spends time at my feet or napping nearby on her scratching box. We play mid-day fetch and chase each other around the apartment. We open the mail together in the condo hallway. She comes to bed with me and sleeps at my feet at night and wakes me up with creepy stares in the morning. (Sometimes I do wonder if she’s planning to kill me.)
I feel so lucky that Bonnie brought Presley into our lives. 
And, even though you might consider them “frenemies”, I know Naoto is thankful for Presley, too.
kimberly ah 