A day in the mandarin orchards

Wintertime in our region means bountiful citrus in the form of a delicious little superfruit called the mandarin orange. I'll eat three in a row without hesitation every day in December. No joke. Last year, Andrew and I checked out the Mountain Mandarin Festival for the first time, and this weekend, we toured a few farms during Orchard Days. Mandarin farmers in five towns open up their storefronts, barns, homes and fields to the public, to offer fresh fruit by the pound and other mandarin goodies like mandarin-enhanced honey, chocolate sauce, barbecue sauce, olive oil, you name it...

View the grower map HERE, and read on to see our adventure...

How to make a wreath of leaves

Sometimes Sundays feel like a "last chance" day. I'm cramming in errands, baking, getting a head start on the work week and catching up on things around the house. And of course, we're supposed to relax and watch movies and generally do nothing in between there as well, right? 

On Saturday, we went on a hike in Auburn along the river and on the way back stopped for lunch at Ikeda's Market. Out front, they were selling these beautiful leaf wreathes for like $15.99 each. I was tempted to buy one, knowing our front door was sullenly bare, but I resisted, listening to that voice that says "you could make that!" ...or the one that shouts "no more spending money this month!" We all know that last voice.

I was out in the front yard yesterday noticing all the beautiful leaves from the neighbor's maple tree that had fallen to the ground. They were just too beautiful to waste....read on to see how to make your own wreath...

Secret banana "ice cream"

Fall is here!!! Kinda...I'm dying to slip on my boots again, and the forecast still shows temps in the 70s. So, with warm California weather still hanging on, I thought I'd share my new favorite frozen dessert recipe. And listen up! It's the easiest recipe in the world. No, really. It has two ingredients and results are the consistency of Wendy's frosty. Ok, now you're listening...

DIY wedding guest (photo) book

I knew I didn't want a traditional guest book for wedding guests to simply write their name on a line like an attendance record. I wanted them to do a little work and to write us something nice and heartfelt or funny we could look back on for years (Andrew and I are both writers, after all). :) But I wasn't into the Jenga pieces, thumbprint trees, river rocks and other off-beat guest books you might see at weddings nowadays. They are awesome and creative, but it was hard for me to imagine them lasting a long time or being displayed after the wedding. I also wanted a way we could keep a small album of our engagement photos. So, I decided to make a photo album that guests could sign...

Our wedding

I'm sure you've heard many couples say that their wedding day was the best day of their lives. I've had many best days, but all I know is I've never been as happy and had as much fun as our wedding weekend. And even when you try to breathe and soak it all in, it still flies by too quickly. It was magical summer night with sunlight gleaming through the trees long into the evening, laughter everywhere we turned and a super moon shining overhead as we danced. 


It's funny how everything you planned so intently, everything you scheduled and thought out and mulled over for months can all wash away in your mind as you get caught up in the day. It's easy to just go through the motions and worry things won't go as planned. But it's better to just kick back and let it all happen. Not everything went just as I had planned it to a tee (the guys forgot their boutonnieres, my dress bustle ripped), but looking back it all went as perfect as a wedding day can go. Because in the end, as a friend told me, it's really not that day that matters most, it's every single day afterward. 
 

And there's a little white church on a hill in Bodega that will always remind us of June 22, 2013.

Here are a few of my favorite moments...

The red bookshelf

When Andrew and I moved into our house in Sacramento, we inherited an old bookshelf my parents had in their "to donate/sell/get rid of now that the kids are out of the house" pile. :) It was stained wood and a had a little wear and tear from over the years. So I went on a journey to the bright-chandelier-lit, mega hardware store that is Home Depot and sought out the perfect shade. 

I decided red would make our living room pop. I bought some sandpaper, a paintbrush and a pint of Glidden's "Red Delicious" paint. The guy at the paint counter warned me: don't be surprised if it goes on pink first.

And it did.

I sanded it first, slapped on a rough first coat and polished it off with a more detailed second coat. 

A little tip: When you're buying paint, step outside of the store with your color swatches to see how they look in natural sunlight. You'll be amazed how different color looks compared to under those florescent store lights. 

Another tip: don't forget the underside of the shelfs! I did. Saving that project for another weekend!

And here's the final product... every house should have a red bookshelf, right? :)

First summer storm

We had our first storm of the summer yesterday. It poured up in Grass Valley when I was home and then again down here in Sacramento around dinner time. 

Our patio flooded, the cats stared out the back door in awe...and then the sun came out...that amazing orange-gold glow that can only happen after a good rainstorm. I ran to get my camera in the bedroom because the natural lighting was too good to pass up. 

When I came out to the backyard again and looked up at the sky, a huge rainbow had appeared. Don't you just love nature?

Summer fruit tart

I probably should be blogging about my wedding and showing you honeymoon photos, but FIRST, a recipe. Summer is one of my favorite times to experiment with cooking. Blackberries and peaches and everything yummy is in season, and the days are longer so the oven can come on when it cools off at night. This galette recipe comes from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook (a Bible of baking tips and drool-worthy photography - shout out to Erin for gifting me this as a wedding present!). 

The actual recipe uses apricots and blackberries, but I substituted for what I had (peaches from the Natomas farmers market and plums from a neighbor's tree. I also used Martha's regular pie crust recipe, because I didn't have cornmeal for the pâte brisée recipe. So, it's a total adaptation - I can never really truly exactly follow a recipe to its exact specifications. I blame my mother for this trait. :)

Ingredients

For the pie filling, mix the following:

- Ripe or overripe summer fruit (peaches, blackberries, apricots, plums, etc.), sliced 

- A handful of sugar

- A few tablespoons of flour (or more depending on how wet your fruit is)

For the crust:

- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

- 1 tsp. salt

- 1/2 tsp. sugar

- 1 1/4 stick butter 

- 1/2 cup ice water (very cold - this is the secret!)

Mix the flour, salt and sugar. Cut in the butter until the mix is crumbly and not lumpy. Pour in the ice water to form a dough.

Roll out the dough in a large circle and place in a pie plate. Pour in the fruit mix and bring in the edges of the dough in overlapping folds. Brush the edges with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar (optional but a really good idea). Bake about one hour or until the crust is golden brown. Let set at least 10 mins before serving. Serve with vanilla ice cream (also optional and also a really good idea). 

This tart is also really good the next day after spending a night in the refrigerator. 

Yum, yum, yum. I want to make another one...

Hello again

at our rehearsal dinner June 21 (the longest night of the year!)

Well, hello, friends. I’ve been MIA for a while as I planned my wedding and went on my honeymoon. Now I’m back, a married woman and fully back into the routine of life and work.

Everyone keeps asking me if being married feels different. And I keep saying it doesn’t. It feels the same. It feels right. Just as it should feel. 

More posts to come...including some wedding photos, crafts and stories.  

Little traditions

Do you have a funny little tradition with your significant other?

Andrew will sometimes bring home library books for me unexpectedly. When we first started living together, he began going to the library during the day. He’ll pick one out for himself and then find one he thinks I might like – usually with some antiquated looking cover and involving a romance or some kind of traveling. (We totally judge a book by its cover – don’t you?). His latest pick is Ken Burn's Dust Bowl book (I'm fascinated by that time period and Dorothea Lange), his last pick The Postmistress turned out be a riveting novel, and the one before that is now one of my all-time favorite stories.

But he will laugh at this post because sometimes when he brings a book home I go into a fit of "I-don't-have-time-to-read-this!" and try to ignore the book that sits oozing with guilt on my nightstand. It seriously stresses me out. Books have feelings, don't they? But I love seeing what he’ll bring home. It’s always nice enjoying something that someone picked out especially for you. Even if it's as simple as a library book.

*Photos from Moonrise Kingdom. :)

Echoes: A true friend

This quote makes me laugh. It's a perfectly honest encapsulation of friendship. Happy weekend, everyone! 


*Photo (don't remember who took it) from that long-ago summer when licking ice cream cones, wandering around small towns with thrift stores and taking pictures with my film camera was customary.

TIME Magazine covers

Do you know what was happening in the world when you were born? TIME Magazine's archives allow you to search by your birthdate to see the cover of the magazine for that week when you first entered the world. (See the search bar on the right hand side). The archives go back to the first issue in 1923. It's fascinating to see what was new and hip, controversial or newsy back then, from Charlie Chapman and my favorite TV gal Lucy to the rise of the computer and the demise of the Challenger space shuttle. 

My birth week cover from June 1988 (shown below) rants about Russia's under-appreciated women! Interesting comparison to this week's European cover. 

Love and country

I have many shining examples of love and great marriage in my life...mom and dad, my grandparents, Miranda and Blake... ;)

Congrats to both of them on their ACM wins last night. I loved the part right after Miranda delivered her speech for receiving Female Vocalist of the Year. She left the microphone still in tears and the camera cut to Blake, who was hosting the show. He was clearly touched by her emotion and kept shaking his head and going "Phew! Phew!" before he could talk. For such a power couple, they seem so completely down to earth. Like Tim and Faith. Those hotties...

Other highlights from the awards show: 
Crazy dancers, AMAZING song. 
And this has been stuck in my head all day. 

Ok, this is about as "celebrity gossip" as I get. :)

Wedding colors

Let's talk about color! Our palette for the wedding is pretty simple: Seafoam for the nearby ocean. Pale yellow for the wildflowers like those that grow on the hills in Bodega. Ivory for classic lace. Coming up with wedding colors wasn't hard, but finding bridesmaids dresses, decor and stationary to coincide can be. Thankfully, I've never been too matchy-matchy...and we're being creative. More DIY projects and planning to come in the next few months! We're off to Bodega in the morning, in fact. Excited to see that beautiful sea.

Thanks for checking in! Life has been crazy. Same ol' story. But Tori has plenty of stories, so I'll be back and blogging more regularly again soon. :)

California love

Felt an earthquake today. Around 4 p.m. in downtown Sacramento, our office on the 9th floor of one of the city's oldest buildings started swaying. Yikes! But I'm thankful earthquakes are just about the only thing we have to worry about here in California...no crazy blizzards or hurricanes or tsunamis (only in those awful "the-world-is-ending-in-L.A." movies). It's our land of milk and honey, movie stars and sunshine and yoga fanatics and the freshest produce in the West. It's the only place I know where you can drive to a beach, a snow-capped mountain, a desert and a forest of the tallest trees in the country within a day. It's home. I didn't even have to move away for more than a year to realize that. Here's one of my favorite songs about California. And another classic. There are plenty. :)

Do you read books twice?

Right now I'm reading Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd, who also wrote The Secret Life of Bees. In the former book she talks about her experience leading up to writing her best-selling novel about young Lily Melissa Owens.

It made me remember how much I loved that story when I read it several ago, and I thought, why not read it again? It's been so long since I've picked it up that it would feel almost new once more. And I'd probably view it differently at a new stage of my life. Then I started thinking--have I ever read a book multiple times? For as much as I love stories, I couldn't recall a time that I had. 

So, do you read books twice? Three times? More?

Here's my list of stories to re-read some day soon:

The Secret Life of Bees
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 
The Hours
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
The Great Gatsby
Their Eyes Were Watching God 
The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You (college requirement shout out. If you've never heard of this book, go check it out!)

Ode to cats

There's something wonderful about a cat that can make you feel warm and fuzzy and relaxed (just like they are), smiling and rolling your eyes at their sense of entitlement and invasion of your personal space, wondering what they're chasing, chewing, staring at on the wall or out the window like they've just seen a ghost. If curiosity killed the cat, it surely created the cat as well. Yup, there's something wonderful about a cat. As Charles Dickens once said, "what greater gift than the love of a cat?"

Thanks for keeping me company on this rainy winter night, little Solly. :)

Vintage opera posters

Aren't these old opera posters pretty? They would make some great wall art for a kitchen or bedroom. 

Did you know that the word "opera" means "work" in Italian?

That is all. Happy New Year!