After summer camp ended, which was amazing yet again, I headed back to San Francisco where I met up with Gavin and a couple of friends before we made the journey to Mendocino to join our dear friends, Eve & Jesse, at their wedding. It was beautiful. Lots of love, beautiful views of the luscious California North Coast, and plenty of good dance moves. Eve & Jesse are clearly very happy and we are so happy for them because they’re pretty much the raddest. Congratulations again to Evie Waffles & Jesse Blue Eyes!

Here’s a quick craft project for you that I came up with in putting together their wedding gift… To go along with the funky-delicious cookbook we gave them, I picked up a couple of sweet oven mitts and decided to personalize them. To do that, I stitched an ‘E’ into one and a ‘J’ into the other (for the first letters of their first names, in case you didn’t catch that) with colored embroidery floss and a good stitching needle, all of which you can find at any basic craft store. Upon witnessing the oven mit high five that took place after they opened their gift, I decided it was a good one. But it’s also a great, simple way to personalize pretty much anything made out of fabric.

I left San Francisco and drove back down to LA for an extremely short but very sweet visit with my loved ones before embarking on a journey to the Midwest that I had been anticipating for quite some time. I went to visit one of my best girlfriends from college, who is living in Des Moines, Iowa. It was my first trip to the Midwest and, consequently, would be my first State Fair… I just happened to be there while the ten-day Iowa State Fair was in full effect. And I loved it. It was a gigantic whirlwind of fascinating Midwesterners, a variety of artery-clogging food on a stick, and stunning contest displays (think quilts, lots of cows, dollhouses, butter sculptures, very fat pigs, and so on). Instead of trying to describe it further, I will simply say that if you have not yet attended a state fair, you must. And if you have, well, you know just what I’m thinking.

The State Fair was not the only thing I enjoyed during my trip to Iowa. At the top of the list is the time spent with Stephany at her beautiful Des Moines apartment, particularly the chatting on the balcony overlooking the tree-lined street that hosted a handful of beautiful, old, colonial-looking, brick houses while listening to the symphony of cicadas that characterizes an Iowan summer. And then there was the Des Moines Art Center, which houses a small but impressive collection of amazing prints by Japanese printmakers, a unique Lichtenstein piece called Three Pyramids, and much more.  Joined on this list by a picnic, swimming in the very hot&humid weather, a visit to the farmer’s market, dinners with family, a bladder bust at an awesome dive bar, and a stroll in downtown Des Moines (Highlight: East Village and it’s many, very cool boutique stores. Favorite Store: Smash, a t-shirt store with an attitude, check out their website.)

So to wrap this all up, my visit to Iowa was everything I’d hoped it would be and I feel better about myself now after having had a proper Midwest experience. I left Des Moines a couple of days ago and am now back in Oregon with Gavin and his family. We’ve got several fun things on our agenda for the coming days that I won’t reveal just yet but I’ll give you one: the Oregon State Fair. And with that, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite photos from the Iowa State Fair…

written by Gavin

Producing the brew of the Gods (beer) has kind of consumed me lately.  The sound of several billion yeast cells happily processing sugar to produce a delicious elixir, that perhaps has never been brewed before, never fails to tickle me pink.  So being that it had been nearly a month (gasp!) since I’d heard that lovely sound, and that I just happen to have everything needed to brew a batch of beer with me here at StoneLake Farm, I decided to brew a farm beer.  yes.  delicious.

Giselle and I decided it fitting to brew this batch outdoors.  And seeing as there were no other options, that’s what we did.  We used an independent propane burner on a picnic bench and it went swimmingly.  I would have liked to have brewed over a campfire, but as that presents a number of issues (and it happened to be raining), I decided against it.  The brew is a liberty pale ale with a couple of twists.  The first is that, due to unforeseen circumstances, our arrival at StoneLake was postponed for a week.  I did my best to keep my little vial of pale ale yeast happy but to no avail.  Three days after pitching there was nothing doing.  Meaning that through negligence I had killed my poor defenseless little yeast.  I did not realize this though until a day or two after the beer was brewed and in the primary fermenter. Luckily, our comrade and (one) owner of this lovely farm, Melinda Stone, had some champagne yeast which I immediately pitched.  This was followed by a week of vigorous fermentation that made me very happy indeed.  The second twist on this otherwise run of the mill (although delicious) pale ale is that we made sure to include our hosts’ intuition of flavor in the recipe by adding their homemade Elderberry Syrup to the mix as well as a tincture of local herbs and spices.  yes.  delicious.

As I sit writing this the brew resides next to me bubbling away.  She sends her love, as I do mine, confident that few humans have ever produced or tasted anything like her.  We’ll bottle her in a week and after a month or so of aging, she’ll be ready for action.  We hope this letter finds you well, and know that the sound of yeast at work is keeping us tickled and pink here in the woods.

Love,
Gavin Lord, Giselle Kennedy, and The Elder Stone Pale Ale.

p.s. yes. delicious.

We’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff since we’ve been up in Oregon. That’s one of the many things I love about being in ‘the country,’ there always seems to be something to do.  First, we fixed the chicken’s nesting box so it would no longer be filled with chicken poop and eggs… Just eggs. The eggs now stay in the box and the poop falls to the earth. Who knows, maybe the ground below the box will soon be the host of a beautiful bundle of wildflowers because, after all, chicken poop is a superb fertilizer.

Then, while Gavin was working on his brother’s basement with his brother, Carson, I spent a couple of afternoons painting some little wooden chairs. And that’s what I really want to talk about. That’s what the Old is New title is all about. Let me start by saying that one thing that really frustrates me is the inclination to throw out the old and buy something new. Of course, that does not apply to everyone, especially in this new Craigslist era (which I am thrilled to take part in) but I still do see it a lot. So when Colette (Gavin’s sister-in-law) asked me to help her paint the little chairs that Gavin’s mother had given her for their new basement/playroom (chairs that Gavin and his siblings had sat on in in their youth), I gladly accepted. And since Colette is the busy mother of two of Gavin’s beautiful young nieces, I took it upon myself to paint the chairs while she was doin’ her thing.

It was quite simple. My materials consisted of some sandpaper, a few sponge brushes, white primer and some leftover indoor house paints – all things we were able to find around here. I sanded the chairs just enough to get rid of any weird texture, then I primed them with just one coat of primer (for good aging), then I painted them each in a different color. I had to give them a few coats but I let them dry between coats by rotating between chairs. And, well, I hope you agree that they look super cute!

Thing is, these chairs are sturdier than any kid chair you’d find these days at, say, Ikea, they were free and Colette & the girls love them! Colette and I talked about how great it was that these chairs had a history with the family and about the fact that she was more excited about these new-old chairs than she would have been about any new chairs.

And I got to spend some afternoons listening to the sounds on the farm, getting paint on my pants and thinking about how everything old has the potential to be something new. This particular project was very simple but the possibilities are endless if you are so inspired. Just check out some of the projects on Design*Sponge, one of my favorite crafty blogs, to see what new-old furniture you might like to create…

That said, I urge you to resist the temptation to throw away that old, sturdy dresser only to buy a new one and instead decide exactly what you would like your new dresser to look like and turn it into a fun and fulfilling project. I promise you will not be disappointed!