Cake & Homemade Perfection.

A piece of our wedding cake.
Owen & I were married five months last week.
I meant to write this post for Valentines Day, but, you know, the puffballs arrived.

9.24.2011: Red Velvet Wedding Cake. 

Like everything on the blog, & in my life, our wedding was homemade, a collaboration, & we made use of what we had.
We got married on the beach down the road from where I grew up, & had the reception in my mom's yard. One of my mom's friends & co-workers, a Unitarian minister, married us.
Two of my favorite people (Rin & Jed, my old DnD compatriots) & my very most favorite person, my dearest sister Ali, were our wedding party. Our ring bearer was four & charming & the son of another old friend.
Everyone stood in a circle on Cold Storage Beach at Sesuit Harbor, Dennis Cape Cod,  one of my most beloved spots on earth & we were married.
Our families made the all food & Owen brewed all the beer & there was swimming in the afternoon in our pond, even though it was late September, & dancing to Jay-Z & Kanye in the basement.
Our entire outfits (well not my very special treat, my wedding Lucchese boots-a girl needs gorgeous boots to get married in!) came from a thrift shop. 
Then off to our honeymoon in New Hampshire.
Which was another amazing present.
I hate to say perfect, but it was. Owen & I laid in bed that night afterwards & couldn't sop saying, but "that was so perfect."
Sometimes I complain too much, but I get that "it's so perfect" feeling a lot lately.
I love that guy.
I'm a very lucky girl to have found a man who cooks as good as me, sews much better, can fix cars, can fix anything in fact, loves trashy dance music & even trashier contemporary country & is happy to wear a Britney Spears T-shirt & cowboy boots & cares as much about having a garden & chickens & the rest of the farm stuff as I do.
DR liked him from the very first day. 
He also brews a pretty decent beer, which is nice to come home to after farm chores.
The completely brilliant Rin made the cake. It was red velvet, & it too was perfect. A very wonderful friend donated the eggs since we didn't have chickens then.
There's still a piece in our freezer, which I have almost accidentally thrown out about fifteen times but thankfully I have a better half to stop me from such foolishness now.

Bacon Honeymoon (or bacon makes a good thing even better).

You know. It's always all about bacon around here. Even on my honeymoon, apparently.
We received, at least for us, a very fitting wedding present, which was the use of a beautiful house in a breathtaking setting in which we could spend a week with just us & our sweet hound dog. We have never lived together without at least two & sometimes four roommates. Alone time is very valuable to us. We love to cook, we love hiking & mountains, & therefore being out in the woods with a fabulous kitchen at our disposal & a fireplace & a mountain in the backyard was pretty much perfect (thanks deb & cate!).

September 2011: The Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich + Gift Lasagna. 

Some people would take their wedding cash & go out to eat, but we didn't. We were really excited about being alone in our own (temporary) house for once. Our own house is our biggest dream right now. so, yeah, cooking by ourselves! ! ! That said, we hate to waste food, so we didn't go crazy grocery shopping. Basically, we started with wedding leftovers (onions, potatoes, butternut squash, crackers, cheese, eggs, & butter) & we locally purchased really good bacon, a steak, broccoli, & bagels.
Two themes immediate emerged: the need for a serious breakfast if you begin every day hiking up a mountain with your dog, & lasagna, which a very sweet wedding guest (thanks jim!) brought us for "the cabin." (it really wasn't a cabin, it was a gorgeous six bedroom redone farmhouse that even Martha would be jealous of.)
So we, discovered bacon, parmesan, & onions on a bagels is a seriously kickass breakfast sandwich.
I consider a good breakfast sandwich a life staple. Eggs & meat & cheese on a bagel please me. 
& although we didn't actually want to bring the lasagna with us (all we wanted to do was cook) there was definitely a night (after a long adventure in New Hampshire auto mechanics & pouring rain) that we were very content to curl up by the fire & reheat that thing. Obviously, we were unable to resist making it a lot better with additional cheese, broccoli, ample garlic, & of course bacon. I really can't totally not cook.
So, yeah, our honeymoon, bacon, mountains, dogs. That happened.
Oh, did you hear we in Western Massachusetts had a serious snowstorm before Halloween & the power went out everywhere for days & days? Next: EnD cooks breakfast sandwiches on a propane burner in the snowy driveway. True story.

Honeymoon: Wine & Cheese & Love & Gorgeousness.

Greetings, y'all. Happy Fall, officially the favorite season here at EnD. Fall is the season of cooking, so hopefully, as promised, I will get back on the drawing horse & show you some of mine. Starting with this quick glimpse from my fall.

9.26.2011: Jackson, New Hampshire, First Night Of Our Honeymoon.

Oh yeah, we got married.
Turns out planning & having a wedding is a lot of work, if you are into making everything by hand like us, & Hurricane Sunday was the last time I picked up my sketchbook until it was all over. Our wedding was like something beyond our wildest dreams, & maybe someday I'll process it enough to make some art about it.
But for now, a moment from the first night of our honeymoon in Jackson, New Hampshire, sitting outside in the last sunlight of a perfect late September New England afternoon, listening to the brook running behind the incredible house where we were staying & the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.
We drove all day from Cape Cod to the White Mountains, unpacked the car & went straight to the terrace where we enjoyed some of our fine wedding presents: a really good bottle of New Zealand Marlbourgh Sauvingon Blanc (actually that was a birthday present-my birthday was the day before our wedding) & an assortment of cheese from Murrry's (A cooler of cheese! what a wedding present!)& leftover crackers from the reception.
We both got out of the car & said at the same time: "Let's sit outside with drinks & snacks!" We have a terrible yard here in Noho. Up there on our list for a future idea house is a nice place to sit outside in the evening & talk & have a glass of wine & read & or draw or whatever.  My favorite Cape Cod meals all take place on the deck over looking the lake & I want that for myself someday.
I guess that's why I keep holding on to this blog, even though I terribly neglect it mostly & the general idea of drawing my meals, even though I really have no time & I feel guilty about doing this with it sometimes: it preserves beautiful moments like that one: Wine & cheese, an amazingly breathaking place, a brand new husband, & a hound dog tied to a bench going crazy with the joy of all the new wild New Hampshire smells.
Well, I'll try to spend more time on this blog. At least finish the wedding story. There was an abundance of my favorite things: good food, family, friends, wine, beaches, & of course dogs. Thanksgiving is coming up & obviously that is the sacred holiday of EnD. In fact, last year we spent Thanksgiving in the same house where we spent our honeymoon, & I just found those unfinished drawings this morning.
But right now my husband (amazing!) is cooking me a chicken pot pie in our kitchen, & I'm gonna go draw him do it.

We Now Return After Our Summer Hiatus.

I suppose that I should just accept it, since this happens every year on this blog. All winter long I paint soups & meat & then spring comes & I get excited about painting vegetables all summer, & summer comes & I subsequently spend all my time outside & lose interest in indoor projects entirely. I am always so innocent, in May, planning all the gorgeous tomatoes I'm gonna paint, & instead I just eat the tomatoes & go swim with the hound dog in the river.
I guess in the future, let's make a deal-we will agree to take the summer off for garden time here at EnD, & meet up again in the fall in time to cook the first of the autumn squash harvest. Done.
Oh, & I guess there is another reason on top of gardening & swimming & enjoying summer that the blog has not crossed my mind in about four months.

Invite: Liz & Owen 2011.

Yup, Owen & I are getting married, in about four weeks. Hence, lots of time spent gluing glitter to things, & less spent on watercolors & collages & blogs. Apparently when one decides to get married, a bulk glitter & glue purchase at Michael's is required.
As befits us, being us, we & our families are providing all the food ourselves, so if I get any breaks from covering tiny fake birds with spray adhesive & glitter, I'll try to draw some of it (no promises). If I were you, I'll expect my wedding posts to show up on this blog sometime next January when I suddenly find myself with a lot of snow related free time on my hands.
But all that aside, we are having a semi-hurricane in Massachusetts, I have an expected day off, & fall & fall cooking is just around the corner. So I'd say EnD is back. I mean, right now I should be working on our bridal registry & instead I'm doing this, that's a good sign, right?