Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving was extra special. Alex and I are back at my parents' home, my sister flew in from Northern California, my grandpa was over and Jim and Nadine shared the day with us. I'm also just about 39 weeks pregnant! After our pie baking on Wednesday night, I was absolutely exhausted! It's hard being on your (swollen) feet all day when you're the size of a small whale. 

Here's some of the preparation the day before Thanksgiving.

Pie Extravaganza

Many factors contributed to the Pie Extravaganza of 2014. First, last year I was taught by a lady at church how to make pie. I didn't actually do much of the baking, I mostly observed, but she showed me methods for making crust from scratch, how to measure very precisely and how to put a crust in a pie dish and pinch the top. It was a long process, but I left feeling more confident about trying to make pies myself. Second, in the past year, I perfected Ree Drummond's Perfect Pie Crust. I have made numerous quiches and a pie or two and this crust recipe is my favorite. Third, I have been trying to get Alex more comfortable in the kitchen, so getting him in on the pie making was the first step toward an extravaganza. And finally, Alex and my competitive natures kicked in when we decided to have a taste off and make these pies Chopped-style. 

He was in charge of the Pecan pie and one Pumpkin pie. I was taking the Dutch Apple and the other Pumpkin pie. The plan was for 4 pies. We ended up with more, but I won't get ahead of myself. 

I began with the crust. I made one batch of this crust, which yields either two large, thicker crusts or three thin smaller crusts. I obviously made the two thick ones. I love a substantial crust. 

You can find a step by step recipe here: Pioneer Woman's blog, but I will include the quick version here:

3 cups All-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups Crisco Vegetable Shortening

1 egg

5 tbsp cold water

1 tbsp white vinegar

1 tsp salt

Combine flour and shortening with a pastry cutter (will take 3-4 minutes). Pour in a beaten egg and combine. Add water, vinegar and salt to mixture. Don't overwork, but blend all ingredients. Split the dough in half, ball up each half and put in separate Ziplock gallon sized bags. Gently pat down into a thick disc and place bags in freezer. Let chill for 20 mins and then roll out.

Cat Lady

I've been practicing photography lately, since I want to be taking some (a bazillion) really good photos of Emmett once he's here. Who better than to be my models than Baby Kitty (full name: Trace) and Cooper?! (Can you tell that I get lonely at the house when Alex is at work? I'm sure that won't last long when I have my hands full with a baby!).

For these and other close ups, I've been practicing with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. This lens lets in a ton of light when the aperture is set to 1.8 and will cause a lot of background blur on a photo. This is definitely the look I'm going for with close-ups, especially of the baby. For wider shots, like the ones in the Christmas decorating post, I used my Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II SLR Lens, which does not create the same depth of field as the other lens (so, less blurry backgrounds). I have one other lens that is a super-zoom one, but I rarely use that because I generally am trying to take more close-ups, and I haven't been on a stake-out stalking anyone lately (or, you know, ever). I'm sure I will find a use for that lens someday though!

Just for fun, here are the kitty photos that I thought turned out pretty good. I haven't done any editing of these in iPhoto.. no brightening or adding contrast or changing the saturation or cropping. Nothing! I'm definitely getting excited for my new model, I can't wait to capture every little expression and smile and fat roll of that little man!

DIY Glitter Letter Canvases

When we left Kansas, I was highly encouraged (read: forced) to cut back on my possessions. We had to fit everything in a crate to be shipped, after all! When we arrived in California, I quickly realized that we had a lot more wall-space for frames and art and photos than we had before, and I had just recently trimmed back my wall-art collection. (Not by much, we still had multiple boxes full of frames, but I just love my wall collages!) Our bathroom upstairs had an especially large empty wall, so I rifled through my craft supplies in the garage to see what I could come up with for that space. The result was the following. A super easy, super quick craft that adds just the right feel to our "vintage" (1970's) bathroom, and moderns it up just a bit. 

I started with two large, blank, white canvases. 

I used painter's tape to block out stripes horizontally. I eye'd these and tried to separate each length of tape the same width as the tape, as to create even lines. It's not as hard as you'd think to make these straight. If you start with one end of the canvas, using the edge as a guide, you've got your straight line. And with painter's tape, I would just remove and re-set every time it looked a little off.

I did two canvases, but this project could be done with one or more, and of any size, depending on the space needing to be filled!

Christmas Decorating at the Lumberjackson Lodge - Big Bear Edition

A year ago, I posted photos of the first Lumberjackson Christmas! It was our first year of marriage, our first Christmas, our first home. So much has changed since then! Our first home is currently on the market, we've moved back to California and are living in Big Bear. We have a baby on the way, who is supposed to arrive on December 8th, our sweet dogs are in Missouri until sometime early next year, and we are spending the entire Christmas season in Long Beach waiting for our little Lumberjackson to arrive! With all of that, it doesn't seem practical to do a bunch of Christmas decorating... 

And yet, I thought it would be special to put up at least SOME decorations! It's a little early, but as Alex wrote about recently, our season of Advent has been extended this year. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to photograph a clean house and give a little tour of the lodge! So without further ado...

The kitchen! I love the size of this space and the nearly unused 70's appliances and the fact that our dining table fits in the middle of the room. I love eat-in kitchens. They feel so homey to me.

My parents re-painted the cabinets before we moved in here, they used to be a pretty awful wood (I normally love everything wood, but these just did not age well) and now they are bright and beautiful, and I especially love the pop of red on those lower cabinets on the right.

I've put up this little village ever since I lived in a dorm. It's evolved over the years with trees and better lights and glittery cotton for snow. It just has to go up every year!

The Perfect Carrot Cake Recipe

Like all good traditions, I'm not sure exactly when this one started. My mom has always made us homemade cakes for our birthdays. I know when I was younger, some years I would ask for chocolate. On my dad's birthday, though, my mom always made carrot cake. At some point, my brother, sister and I all realized that this was also our favorite birthday cake, and so now for any and all Homet birthdays, there is a perfected carrot cake under those ever-growing candles. 

My sister and I have birthdays 4 years and 4 days apart. This year, my mom made me a beautiful carrot cake for my birthday and a couple weeks later, Laney came down from Northern California for my baby shower and we got to surprise her with a little (belated) birthday celebration as well! This time, I was prepared with my camera. Now that I'm starting my own little family in a couple weeks or so, I am going to need to have this recipe documented somewhere, and where better than my blog? You all are learning this one along with me.... How to make the Perfect Carrot Cake! 

Start with fresh, peeled carrots. You'll need 3 cups of packed shredded carrots by the end of this. 

Finely shred the carrots. The smaller these pieces are, the better! You won't want to be eating big chunks of vegetables in your cake. Trust me.

Baby Shower!

My sister Laney, sister-in-law Nadine, and mom threw me an incredibly beautiful and precious baby shower yesterday! It was at Nadine and Jim's house in Lakewood, which is such a special place to me! I lived there for a couple years and it was on that front porch that I met Alex in person for the first time before our first date.

The colors of the shower were blues, oranges and grey, which are the colors of little Emmett's nursery. The theme was Baby Lumberjackson (of course!) and there were such detailed and adorable decorations and foods that reflected the theme so perfectly. I am so excited that I get to use many of these decorations in the nursery! It's all feeling so real. The shower was on November 8, which is exactly a month before Emmett's due date. 

I've included a ton of photos below, documenting the special day! 

The pinecones are from the backyard in Big Bear, Nadine framed a bunch of photos from the maternity shoot, and my mom found the adorable woodland animals for the table! I love how the flowers are in tin cans and the feathers and moss add so much to the forest-y theme.

Laney loved how the verse in this frame really matched the "birth" theme... "go out in joy... get it?!".

Who Determines When The Snow Falls?

On Halloween night, it snowed. Apparently, this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced snow on Halloween. When I was younger and living in Kentucky there was a freak snow storm while I was trick-or-treating, but I don’t remember it all that well. And being in Southern California for most of my life, snow in October is not a common thing. Snow in general is not a common thing.

We got our seasons from the decorations at Disneyland and the seasonal offerings at the local eateries. “Pumpkin pancakes?! It must be Fall!” I think this is partly responsible for my love of all things Autumn and Christmas. I’m eating pumpkin flavored things the first Sunday of September, just because I wanna be in the spirit. I’m downing eggnog before we’ve even finished the Halloween candy. 

But this year is a little different. Little baby Emmett is due in December, so my Christmas plans are going on the back burner. Kate and I aren’t sure to what extent we will decorate the Lodge in Big Bear because we’re going to be staying with her parents when the baby comes. Since we can’t know for sure when the baby will come, we can’t know for sure when we’ll be heading back up the hill. There are so many questions, and so many unknowns. All because we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little baby.

So, when God blessed us with our first snow on Halloween night I decided to throw tradition to the wind and just go full Christmas. I’m extending the advent season by 100%. No longer will it be crammed into the space between Thanksgiving and Christmas, like Santa trying to fit in a coach seat. We’re moving him to first class! Making the advent last 2 whole months.

Now, I have my selfish reasons. I want to listen to Christmas music before it will be interrupted by newborn cries. I want to enjoy the smells of Christmas before they’re paired with fresh dirty diaper stink (read: stank). 

But I also think that this time of Advent is important. And this year may be the year that I understand Advent the best. Not just am I anxiously awaiting the celebration of the birth of our Saviour, I’m also anxiously awaiting the celebration of the birth of my first child.  

Our Maternity Photo Shoot!

Our dear friend Lyndsey took these photos for us when I was just about 34 weeks pregnant. I feel so immensely blessed to have gotten some intentional maternity photos, because the past 8 months have been so full of upheaval and change and moves and tiiiiight budgets that I knew I wouldn't be able to hire a professional photographer and pay hundreds of dollars for a session. When I thought about that, it made way more sense to wait until after the little guy is born and get those awesome photos with his sweet little face in them! But spontaneously, our close friends Josh and Lyndsey, were coming up for a visit in Big Bear and even more spontaneously, I asked if she'd be ok with taking a few photos of Alex and I, like a maternity shoot. I knew she was awesome at taking photos, and she had a fancy camera, and she took most of our wedding photos a couple years ago, so I was PUMPED when she said she would! 

I am so grateful, Lyndsey, and these photos turned out so beautifully. They hold an even more special place in my heart because I genuinely did not think I would be having maternity photos taken, and it means so much to me to have some last professional quality photos of Alex and I before our little boy enters the world. I think next time I need to start paying you! :)

Butternut Squash Soup from Scratch Recipe

It is probably a faux pas to post this recipe, since I only took two iPhone pictures of the process, but it was so good, you're going to have to forgive my lack of pictures and just make this soup. It is easy and healthy and delicious, and does not require precise measurements, which is nice. Heck, it doesn't even require adding the specific ingredients I added, there is a lot of room for spontaneity.

I originally made this soup last fall because I really wanted butternut squash soup, but when I went to the grocery to buy some, it was SO expensive for 2 servings. And I was having company over and needed at least 6 servings. This option is much less expensive. In the fall, butternut squash is usually around $1 a pound!

I started with about 5 pounds of butternut squash. In the past, this has meant one large squash, this time, I got two smaller ones. I wear gloves to peel the squash because my skin reacts negatively to the raw butternut squash flesh. It's pretty common, some people are allergic to touching the insides of the squash, and my hands get red and peely and pretty gross. If this happens to you, don't worry. It goes away after a couple hours. But if you want to be safe, just use normal kitchen rubber gloves. Clean ones. For peeling, I just use a normal vegetable peeler. It's kind of a work out, just so you're prepared.

After the squash is peeled, cut it into 1-inch(ish) cubes. You can set these aside for a little bit.

In a large pot (I used the largest one I had that wasn't a broth pot), melt 4 tablespoons of butter. I used salted, but we add salt later as well, so it doesn't really matter if you use salted or unsalted butter. Cut up either one large onion or two small onions (I used a brown onion, I think either white, sweet or brown would be fine. Maybe not a red onion, it could throw off the color of the soup at the end!) and throw into the melted butter. You can cut these roughly and the pieces can be fairly large. You will blend these later, so your onion chopping does not have to be perfect. These will cook in the butter until they start to become translucent.

Oh, painful night.

I got punched in the face tonight. It’s the first time in my life that has ever happened. And it was done by a very old, very drunk woman. 

I learned something. Getting punched in the face sucks, but not as much as getting a B- on a Book Review for your New Testament Introduction class. It falls somewhere in between stubbing your toe on a coffee table and having a really bad migraine.

I work as a bouncer at a venue on the weekends. Typically it’s pretty laid back. I stand there and look intimidating while I tear tickets and tell people there are no “ins and outs”. Occasionally a drunk person does something stupid, keeps things interesting.

But some nights they bring in a Country/Hip Hop artist. As in, both country and hip hop… at the same time. It’s not my cup of tea. It sounds like rap music without the rap or the music, and with a fiddle thrown in over it. But that’s not the worst part. It’s the confederate flags that seem to be plastered everywhere. It’s the big guy in the pit wearing a cowboy hat made out of a Bud Light box. It’s the amazingly drunk people doing amazingly ridiculous things. It’s not without its entertainment value. It’s certainly exciting, but as I said, it’s not my cup of tea.

I take these muscle-relaxers for my back when it flairs up. I know, I’m an old man. Being a bouncer means standing for 7+ hours straight, so I took one about halfway through my shift. No more than a minute after I take my pill my manager comes running up to me. “We need you in the pit. Now!”