Christmas in the Country

Jonathan and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary yesterday. I have never had regrets about our Christmastime wedding, as December is our favorite time of year. It also happens to be the first full month that we spent as a couple (back in 2003), so many of our relationship firsts took place around the holidays. For our sixth anniversary we decided to take the weekend back to the basics. We cooked at home on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and ate things we never buy (baked brie in puff pastry with honey, pecans and apple; pizza margherita with real mozzarella and fresh basil; organic strawberries; chocolate; pink champagne). On Friday night, we lit our fireplace and had a picnic on the living room floor. On Sunday, we had a candlelit dinner in our dining room. Coincidentally, it was our very first meal in that room.

For several weeks, we had planned to spend Saturday in Arlington and Covington, two towns we discovered in the summer and wanted to revisit at Christmastime. Our first stop was Arlington, which has a really quaint downtown with an awesome antique shop housed in an old general store. Next we drove to Covington, which has an amazing town square with several coffee shops, antique stores and two old theaters. When we arrived, the first thing we saw was a horse-drawn carriage. Next we saw several people dressed in 19th century clothes. Then we saw kids dressed as characters from A Christmas Story, out promoting their play at the Ruffin Theater. Once we were inside the first antique store (and saw more people dressed in 10th century garb), we realized we had stumbled upon Covington's Dickens' Christmas. All of the shop owners were dressed up, and quite a few of the townspeople were as well! It felt very festive and fun. We finished off the day with a visit to the Collierville Square to see their Christmas lights at night.

Here are some iPhone photos from our adventure...

In the Kitchen: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Confession: When the windchill dips into the 20s, I feel like baking cookies and making soup.

I did both of these activities over the weekend after we raked what seemed like 2.5 million leaves from our front and back yard...and then fished at least 1.2 million leaves out of our pool.

When pool water feels warmer than the air temperature, you know it's cold outside....Well at least by Tennessee standards. I can tell you that our Southern bones are not made for this cold snap!

After two days of raking and fishing, we had earned our cookie bars.

I'm not sure we have earned our Thanksgiving week dinners though. Darn.

Maybe it's a good thing we still have a few leaves left to rake...

Now onto the recipe. I was short on time this week, so I didn't put together the recipe card art. I'm not sure anyone really cares about that anyway. The recipe itself is what matters, right?

Please note -- this recipe is technically vegan, although some vegans would require vegan sugars, etc. You can always substitute real butter and eggs if you want, but I don't think you'll notice a difference. Corn starch is a wonderful egg replacer, and Earth Balance can be found at most grocery stores.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars (Vegan)

-1 cup of Earth Balance Vegan Butter

-1 cup of packed brown sugar

-1/2 cup of granulated white sugar

-3/4 tsp of baking soda

-1/2 tsp of salt

-2 tbsp of corn starch / 6 tbsp of water (egg substitute)

-1 tbsp of vanilla (we buy vanilla in bulk at Costco)

-2 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour (Kroger brand)

-1 package of Baker's semisweet chocolate (cut into pieces)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 2. Mix together the butter, sugars, baking soda and salt until they are thoroughly combined. 3. Add the corn starch, water and vanilla to the mixture and beat together. 4. Pour a half cup of the flour into the mixture at a time until everything is combined. 5. Cut your chocolate bar into small, irregular pieces and stir them into the mixture. 6. Spoon the dough into a shallow baking dish (I used a 9 x 13 inch Pyrex dish). 7. Using your spoon (or spoons), press the dough into the dish until it fills the pan. 8. Bake for 15-20 minutes. 9. Enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Styling The Southern Bookcase

We recently moved into a new home and have been slowly unpacking and making the space our own. This past week, I inherited a white Crate and Barrel bookcase from my sister. Even before we brought it into the house, I knew it belonged in our sunroom. I had some ideas on how to style it, but before I started moving things around, I surveyed the room and considered the personality of the space. A very comfortable couch (which arrived the same day as the bookcase) beckons us to lay down with a good book and a glass of sweet tea while two ceiling fans whirl overhead. Three of the four walls are covered almost entirely by windows that offer a great view of the backyard. The wall and floor colors are muted and soothing.

As the room feels soft and beach-inspired, it would have been easy to fill the bookcase with jars of shells, but instead I decided to focus on sweet tea and ceiling fans and devote the bookcase to Southern writers -- several of whom who live or have lived in Oxford, Mississippi, where we fell in love. By choosing a specific genre for the bookcase, we were able to highlight some of our very favorite authors as well as the South's rich literary history.

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Gathering the books was the most challenging part of the styling process. Some of the authors aren't well-known Southerners, so I checked inside the dust jacket of every book in question. After piling them up, I arranged them by color and then by height. I stacked some in rows and others in piles. This particular bookcase gives us room to add some future titles, but in the meantime, I placed a few vanilla candles and a porcelain urn on the middle shelf. Glass vessels filled with seashells serve as additional placeholders. After all, the beach is an important part of Southern life, especially this time of year.

I was pleased with the results. The bookcase immediately became a collection and added personality to the room. More importantly, it will inspire us to spend more time reading and writing instead of watching TV or checking Facebook on our phones. After all, if our home doesn't inspire us, what will?

sneak peek #1: inside the studio

With only a few weeks under our belts, the new Gerald & Joan studio is most certainly a work in progress, but we're excited to finally have a dedicated work space that is solely designed for dreaming and creating.

When we first saw this place, we immediately recognized its challenges -- it's an attic addition, so the ceilings have weird angles, it's warmer than the rest of the upstairs (a ceiling fan helps keep the temperatures down) and there isn't a window in the room itself (which explains the awful lighting in the photos). We knew it would never need to be a bedroom, which meant it could always be our dedicated room for building our creative endeavors, for making messes and for logging quiet time at our desks.

Despite its shortcomings, we fell for the space because it was situated at the back of the house in a place that could be closed off if we wanted to forget about work (or home). It also offered a separate staircase to the downstairs, two large built-in book cases and easy access to our home gym, which is located just past the studio in a slightly smaller room with a big window. To enjoy the natural light, I leave the door open during the day, but I don't spend time staring longingly out the window. It's a win-win.

While the space itself is still coming together, it is anchored by a large white desk and the white built-in bookcases. The desk will hopefully stay clear of clutter (eventually!), and I have filled the bookcases with books, childhood trinkets, old photos and vintage postcards that are all designed to inspire. The bookcases are also the home of our samples and crafting materials, various awards, collections of shells and dried flowers and branches.

So far, we have created a gallery wall over the desk and hung vintage movie posters along the stairs. Over the next few months, we will add another desk, better lighting, some vintage and industrial storage solutions and more family photos and treasures to the gallery wall. We look forward to sharing another sneak peek when it all starts to come together. In the meantime, we're thoroughly enjoying our new space!