How I Survived Thanksgiving...

I'm pretty sure I have residual childhood post-traumatic stress disorder and I mostly attribute it to Thanksgiving.  Yes, it sounds strange and even made up - but it's my blog and I'll make shit up if I want to.  And even curse.  There.  Five years of therapy have taught me a thing or two and this year I decided to put it into practice.

The 2nd Annual Valley Ford Pie Auction
Grady made two cherries pies this year - one for the auction & one for us

I'm starting off this post kind of surly, but I turned all of that around this year.  After a disastrous Thanksgiving last year (no one else knew, but I let if fly after everyone left), we joined forces as a couple, as a family.  We divided duties, made a plan and talked about how to let the steam out of this emotional stress pot of a day.  It worked.

Rare family photo
Grady's "Logo" on top of the auction pie
G giving a whipped cream pie to the face of farmer/auctioneer, Nick

To that end, we decided to help Grady make a cherry pie and donate it to the Valley Ford Pie Auction. We had such a good time last year that we wanted to participate by baking AND buying to help support the Valley Ford Volunteer Fire Department "Save Our Old Schoolhouse Fund".  Grady's pie went for $60 and a total of over $3700 was raised in a few short, fun-filled hours.

Steve even bid on a beef kidney + parmesan pie that came with a mason jar full of lard…for $50!!!  Needless to say, he's not allowed to have the auction paddle next year.

Annual school turkey trot raffle winner = Costco pumpkin pie

We kept our guest list small and I enlisted the help of all of my guests and delegated food assignments.  It all worked out perfectly and relieved my anxiety level big time.  I have the best friends.

Morning coffee + sunrise
table linens + origami cicada place cards

Isn't it funny how our childhoods creep into our adult lives and wreak havoc?  I mean, the thrown away turkey dripping debacle of 2012 was still fresh in my mind - but I pushed it aside and even purchased a gravy base from Williams-Sonoma this year.  I was going to make damned sure that the gravy didn't push me over the edge this year.  One tip I'd like to share is that I used a crock pot and set it up on my buffet table.  I made the gravy ahead of time and added pan drippings in the last 15 minutes.  It worked out just great.  My gravy was prepared and ready, out of the way and super silky and delicious.  I'm definitely incorporating this into any future plans that include gravy.  I think Steve is still my friend after this year's meal and that was my goal.  ;-)

We have a lot to be thankful for and we focused on that this year, as well as deep friendships with the people who we were sharing the day with.  We are lucky and grateful.

Steve knocked it out of the park with his turkey, again, this year.  He brined it the day before and it looked and tasted just right.

Sweet potato pumpkin pie + tablescape

By the time dessert rolled around, we were all so full that we just slowly sashayed into the living room and plopped down.  I had purchased digestifs for all of us to try and those really hit the spot.

Grady "the hands" Hecht
Bitters + Jill

Steve opened up a special bottle of 1968 armagnac, while the rest of us sipped on the remaining bubbly.  Jill + Scott shared with us a special bottle of french champagne, as well as a 2004 Iron Horse late disgorged brut sparkling wine.  It was all a treat.

Pie + Coffee
Lone White Egret on Bodega Bay marsh

The day after Thanksgiving is my favorite, really.  I woke up and put on a pot of coffee and cut a slice of cherry pie.  I watched a horrible movie with Grady (The Addams Family) and went on a seven mile walk in Bodega Bay with my girlfriends.  It felt good to work off the food and get caught up on what's going on with everyone.

Saturday found us relaxing on the deck and catching up on our reading stacks.  I just love watching Grady get lost in books.  Right now he's all about Rick Riordan and the Percy Jackson series.

Our goddaughter, Isabella, decided to turn 12 this year - even with my pleading with her to stay little.  She's just not having it.  She called us and invited Grady to a last minute bonfire birthday party on their private beach in Jenner.  He was the only boy (as he usually is) and had a great time eating hot dogs, roasting marshmallows for s'mores and telling scary campfire stories.

He fell into bed smelling like smoke and his face & hands were still quite sticky.  As I tucked him in and kissed him goodnight, I couldn't help but think about how we re-wrote this holiday weekend and made it a stress-free zone.  I know it just takes a little intention and follow through and I'm glad we finally figured that out because I want him to catalog our Thanksgivings a little differently than I have.

And that's how I survived Thanksgiving this year.

Hockney, Homemaker + Holiday Style

I've been up since 1:46 a.m.  Sleep is going to be elusive, so I put on my felted slippers, cranked up the thermostat and shuffled into the living room.

It's cold.  And dark.

The past 10 days have been full and satisfying.  I feel like I need to get the images and thoughts about what's been going on down here in this space.  It's less like a chore lately to come here and write.  I guess that's because I've taken the blog to a private-invitation-only status, so me and my family are not quite so exposed online and I have somewhat mastered the photo editing site I use (ahem, finally) for my collages.

Persimmon harvest + newly arranged living room

Our home is feeling really good right now.  I've been tidying up, purging periodicals and loose books, hanging art and rearranging furniture.  Somehow, this always brings me a little bit of inner peace.

I've got a confession to make.  I've kind of been on a book binge this week.  After all the touching and rearranging of Grady's bedroom bookshelves and perusing my dozens of magazines, I needed more.  I hit the local library and independent book store several times last week and even picked up my library book haul from the mobile librarian in Tomales.  Grady and Steve stopped by the new elementary school library to find out about their new after school family hour(s).  I just can't get enough of the printed word lately.

To help satisfy my love of letters, words & fonts, I attended a poetry letterpress workshop at iota press in Sebastopol this past Saturday.  Walking into that studio is like getting a fix.  Grady ended up having to go with me and I'm so glad he was there.  The workshop was about 4 hours long and he was my assistant.  Good thing, too, because he has really good, young eyeballs and helped me set the type for the poem I wanted to letterpress.  This poem was one that he wrote five years ago after getting a prompt from his former preschool director (who was teaching the kids about Langston Hughes) and was recently published online here.

It was very important for him to add his name in small italic type and put the age he was when he wrote it.  He is a little embarrassed by the poem, but I think he feels really proud of it now that he selected the font, set the type and used the Vandercook Press to print same.  I know I just absolutely love it and can't wait to gift it to friends and loved ones this holiday season.

The David Hockney exhibit at the de Young in San Francisco blew my mind.  Seriously, Hockney's 12 foot paintings of trees, landscapes and portraits of people were out of this world.  I wandered from room to room and was in awe of his prolific body of work.  My favorites were actually his portraits with pencil and white crayon, using the camera lucida technique, and were the very last images I saw before I wandered out of the museum.  I felt like I needed a nap after taking in all of that beauty and grandeur.  I was absolutely exhausted visually and physically.

I must take Grady back to see this exhibit.  When I got home and told him all about it, he shared that the best painting he has ever done is Forest (above middle) and asked if I would frame and hang it in our home.  He will love this show and appreciate the paintings done using an iPad, of all things.

1,000 hand-crocheted doilies using 100 different color pathways

Later that same evening, I met up with a fellow/former blogger, Amy (aka - The  Hip Homemaker) from Montana.  We met at the opening reception for artist, Lisa Solomon's show Sen at the Fouladi Project.

1,000 hand-drawn cranes

We joked about how awkward it was to be meeting and that it sort of felt like a blind date.  I was nervous before meeting up and she shared that she was too.

We ended up taking in all of Lisa's amazing pieces and then walking across the street to grab a cocktail and some yummy pizza.  It's weird when you meet someone that you kind of already know through their writing and sharing on a blog.  I mean, you don't really know them, but you definitely get a sense about a person.  My sense about Amy was spot-on.  She is a smart, witty woman in transition, she has two sweet kids and she has a desire to find out how things work and what makes people tick.

I feel honored to have met her and it gives me hope that this big bad world isn't so bad after all.  Kind people are out there.  You just have to take a step and you will most likely be met and accepted for who you are.  I can't wait to go to Montana one day and have a cup of coffee at her kitchen table and meet her little ones.  Yes, I just invited myself, Amy.  Let me know what I can bring. ;-)

Two Crabs or Four Crabs?

Dungeness crab season opened without a hitch this year and we shared our first two this weekend.  There is nothing like fresh crab.  We buy it live, boil it up and serve with hot melted butter.

He stole your grandpa's style, right?

Grady has a new holiday outfit and he is really happy with his look.  I picked up this bow tie for him at J.Crew and wasn't sure how it was going to fly with this guy because he has been super picky about what he wears and how his hair looks lately.  He put together this outfit on his own and asked me what I thought.  I love it.  What do you think?

This weekend was spent sharing meals with friends, watching movies, reading and planning Thanksgiving.  I had a lot of really good heart-to-heart talks with Grady, as we have been working on how we talk to each other these days.  His tone (and mine) need a readjustment every now and then.  We finally figured it all out and he asked if he could spend some of his own money to take me to get a frozen yogurt in town.

Just the two of us.

Bananas! Art Show

Back in January, we sat down and made a list of resolutions for 2013.  On Grady's list was to have another art show (see his first solo show here), this time with friend, neighbor, surfer & photographer, Scott Van Cleemput.

Prepping for the show

I met Scott when he showed up to hang G's preschool art show at my former shop.  He expertly hung the show in less than an hour, was super friendly and had the coolest wife in town, Jill.  We all became fast friends, they bought a house from my realtor husband and currently live at the bottom of our lane.

Scott is a kid at heart and loves to play around and get G riled up.  A mother's dream?  Sometimes.  At other times we have found that G needs a safe word to really tell Scott to stop goofing around.  God, this sounds bad as I'm typing it!  In any event, the safe word is Bananas! and so the title of this show was really an inside joke between the two of them.

G + Stacy, his first art teacher
G + Jean, his current art teacher

Grady perused Scott's photography and selected seven images that spoke to him.  He then took these images to his private art lessons, prepped canvases & fine-tuned his watercoloring skills.  The result?  Seven really beautiful paintings interpreted from Scott's art form, hung side-by-side.

The guys decided to donate 10% of their art sale proceeds back to the Pastures Preschool Art Program to bring it all full circle.  It was a smashing success.

The most fun Grandma in the world

My mom flew in for the big event and quickly (and expertly) assumed the role of proud grandma.  She helped me get everything set up, schmoozed with our friends, handed out G's business cards and snagged a few pieces of art to share with her sisters back in Arizona.

G invited his best friend, Calvin, to join the show and sell his original comic books.  He also asked classmates Abbey & Livia to come and perform their original music for the crowd.  It was such a treat to see these talented kids do their thing.

Fairy Godparents, Tony & Cheryl purchased G's original painting - Bubbles (above-center)
Origami demonstration table

In the end, Grady sold five of the seven paintings, lots of prints and several art transfer monster t-shirts. He also demonstrated how to make origami and invited attendees to take a piece of the folded paper goodness home with them.

All in all, it was a beautiful, sweet event.  The guys showed off their work, got to hang out with friends and talk about art.  I got to revel in the fact that so many amazing adults are in my son's life.  Teachers, friends, mentors and family.  It's not lost on me how many people love my son and it really touches me to know they are helping to raise this amazing young man.

The show will be up until the end of November at the Tomales Deli 2.

And this kid?

Bananas!

Big Sur

Big Sur is pure magic.

Morning coffee steam rising with the sun
Post Ranch Pumpkin
SL reading on the deck

We honeymooned at Post Ranch Inn and celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary here.  By a strange twist of fate, I have been consulting for the past five years for the company that manages this amazing luxury resort property.  My boss and his wife let us borrow their private home for a long overdue family getaway.  All of us needed to slow down our feverish everyday pace and check out of real life for a few days.

Making art on the deck

It's interesting to me how much place can affect our mood.  Our family rhythm is pretty entrenched at home with morning routines, chores and work.  We choose to live where we do because of the views, the community and the fact that nature is constantly accessible to us just outside our doors & windows.  However, we've been slaves to our calendars for months upon months and this weekend was the first time in over a year (or more) that we had NOTHING on the calendar for two whole days.  I felt giddy with the possibilities of there being nothing we had to do.

We needed a break from our daily to-do list and some unscheduled time with each other.  We really needed this and I planned it out so that it could happen.  As the mom and social secretary for our household, I needed to carve out a pocket of days where we could clear our calendars, as well as our heads.

Sunset over the Pacific Ocean
An unexpected power outage really forced us to slow down

The stress started to melt away as our car was winding down Highway One and entering Big Sur.  The views made me pause and think about how small we are in the grand scheme of things.  We checked in, so that we could check out.

Morning glow
My new favorite family photo

Each of us retreated to our own little corners to read, write, make art, nap, eat, drink and start it all over again.  We had discussions we have been putting off about holidays, family celebrations and Steve's big five-oh.  We listened to music, took photographs, watched movies and got a little work done.  There was no pressure, just an expansive stretch of hours that seemed to move a little slower for us while we were here.

Rainbow Squirt Gang (front & back)
G created these and played with them for HOURS while we were here

There is something restorative about being in this sacred place.  The simple A-frame home was a work of beautiful design and provided just the right amount of modern conveniences to help us unwind and cushion us from the outside world.

Morning view from the master bedroom loft

Appreciating the sunrise and sunset is a twice daily ritual I always enjoy, but made more special here by the quiet, unhurried pace and the company I was keeping.  Grady had us laughing a lot and I feel grateful that he still likes just hanging out with us, his parents.

This morning I feel rested and full, connected to my husband and son, nature, our life.  Our family needed a squeeze and I feel like we are leaving a little tighter, more on the same page and recharged.

Thanks for the hug, Big Sur.