You know it was a good time if you literally only took one picture of the whole shebang and it was this total WORK OF ART (I suppose I decided that the vision of dear sweet Ravenel deglazing a skillet of aromatic and reducing roux that becomes the base of her incredible cider gravy while a boozy put of mulled cider bubbles in the background and Nick tears bread for apple and herb stuffing and a pecan pie cools off slowly by the woodstove was worth saving for posterity’s sake, and I suppose I’m not wrong). Out here in the world of the internet, though, while one hand laments decorative gourd season and the other pins gilded pumpkin tablescapes that could/should never exist outside of Martha, I sort of like that this was the only snapshot I thought to take. When you’re dancing in the kitchen, there’s no time to stop and stage photographs. But, because you asked, here are a few shots I scooped up from a few dear ones who thought to take a moment and capture some loveliness while I was making sure everyone had enough wine. And that the bird was ready at the same time as my hairdo.
Category: Beauty
And out into the world…
This was our Black Friday. Shaking out the dust and pecan pie crumbs and hitting our old favorite trail. Visions of turkeys and latkes and table settings and crimped-edged pies and luscious hams and champagne toasts and Christmas tree tagging and parlor games and living room jam sessions (perhaps) to follow, but, just like after the heated flush and bustle of a nineteen person ever-thankful dinner surrounded by loving friends and sweetest family needed a follow up chill-winter-air-rosy-cheeked mountain hike to clear the mind, this is now a week of introspection and TCB-ing and preparations for the next bourbon soaked gathering coming in hot in lo three weeks. Wow.
To thanks…
Time flies when you’re having fun. And time also flies when it’s being blown along at a blustery clip accompanied by a 20 degree windchill. Thus this incredible week of my dreams begins. A whirlwind trip of wine and laces up to New York and back down to sweet, cold Virginny, where the leaves have been blown off the mountainsides and the hills look like brushed velvet somehow in the deep pile of their bare branches, and where 22 people are coming to our house for Thanksgiving. Today. It will the best possible time, one marked in between full moons on my almanac calendar, what seemed to be years away back in balmy September, and is now just here at the doorstep like an early guest and I feel like my hair is still in curlers. It’s what I’ve been waiting for…all of my favorite things- dancing in the kitchen, the noise of pots and pans and soul music and laughter and plenty of wine and dear friends aligned on the compasses of time and memory and family reunited-and-it-feels-so-good and pretty plates and feathers and, of course, about a million ham biscuits. And on this never-to-be-seen-again Thanksgivukkah, I’ve just got to say: infinite thanks and mazel tov, y’all. My heart is full.
River Magic
View of the James River at sunset from the second floor window of a house built in 1725. It’s looked essentially just like this for almost 300 years, and pretty similar (minus the formal-overgrown boxwoods you can see in the yard) for all of time, which always feels like some sort of hushed magic.
Le Chat de la Méditerranée
In what is now at least a two-part-series I might as well call “cats make teh artz more interesting“, I’m loving this Balthus painting that Ann Marie sent me this morning. As she said, this Le Chat de la Méditerranée is really the devil hisself. Nice fish rainbow, nice soludos, chat.
Macarons
These are French Macarons. That we made. From scratch. And no, not the coconutty pile of the macaroon (though those have, surprisingly, made their way into my heart via Sweetheart’s mama dipping them in chocolate around Passover … though now thinking about it THIS macaron is the perfect Passover dessert oh my yhwh) but no, not the macar-oon-, the macaron, the delicate almondine fluff and crisp sweet explosion of the world’s most perfect cookie (dare we even call it a cookie? a pastry… a delicacy… a mouth cloud of joy?). Heretofore known, really, only in Paris, coming wrapped in pistache green Ladurée boxes and tied with ribbons as if a simple parcel of macarons was as worthy of such trappings as a brace of jewels (they are). The macaron has always seemed to me like the soufflé or the perfectly poached egg or neuroscience: something probably best left to the experts. But! When one of those experts comes into your very home and pulls back the luster-dusted curtain and shows you the secrets and teaches you the wiles of measuring egg whites by the gram, well, then all of a sudden the macaron ceases to be one of life’s great mysteries and becomes a giddy joy of I can’t believe we’re actually making these and then the five of us are going to eat all. of. them. Almond, Lemon (with a slice of raspberry), Strawberry, and Coffee with Chocolate ganache. Oh my. 
Infinite thanks to resident-macaron-expert-and-sweetheart Miss Lucy (whose instagram is full of positively pornographic pastries, such as, ahem MACAR-OO-N BIRDSNESTS what the what!?) for walking us all through it step-by-step, Miss Maggie for constantly re-filling our coffee and deciding when it was time to switch to wine, Sweet Kitty for lugging her standing mixer (and being ever the perfect-and-slightly-doubtful-guest), and Mama for makin’ it all happen, always.
The leaves are almost too much
At the tail end of this weekend, my mama and I stood in the driveway waving goodbye to our dear old friends that had come down for an incredibly warm and wonderful visit involving a lot of cooking, lolling, eating, wine, and laughing… we were waving until they were out of sight, basking in the surprising late afternoon warmth and marveling at how the light just changes *snap* with dastardly daylight savings time, becomes like amber, crystalline, special. So, we decided to take an impromptu hike, as much to get our blood going and feel the cool breezes on our cheeks before cool becomes downright cold as to get up close and personal with the incredible fall leaf situation that’s happening right now. Per usual, I don’t know if I’m specially attuned to it, or just didn’t notice it before, or whether this year it really does seem more spectacular than ever, but the leaves are almost too much to handle. They are simply incredible. Especially when it’s a last minute thing and you just sort of decided to hike a few miles into the mountains and it just feels like the best luck and most excellent choice-making all in a row. Mama, I love to be here with you.
Easy, Monday
It’s one of those days when you know you should hit the ground running, but the morning light is so lovely and the woodstove is warm and maybe you should just curl up and take a little catnap.
Music All Day
In Nashville the music goes all day. Every morning, the neon starts to buzz and the doors fling open with a gust of that very particular bar-beery-bleachy funk that quickly gives way the smell of cooking breakfast and the sound of a thousand honky tonks tuning up. From 11am, to 2am, music comes from every doorway, a buncha “Friends in Low Places”, a few “Redneck Woman”s, and a whole lotta “Wagon Wheel”s. And while every place has a (pretty incredible) live band, only Robert’s Western World plays the old country music exclusively. Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams… the good old stuff. A recession special gets you a thick-fried baloney sandwich on white bread, a bag of chips, and a beer for $5, the walls are lined with boots, the floor is covered in sawdust, and from morning to midnight it’s absolutely glorious. 
Take that, talking pumpkin
Move over plastic pumpkins, decorative gourds, and automated motion sensor witches that say things like “Witch goul are you!?” when you walk by (seen/vaguely startled by this yesterday at Lowe’s while trying to buy rake hands). Those kind of cheap-o made-in-China disposable decorations? Pshaw. This house, a low-slung shotgun in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood, has it nailed. So simple, so awesome, I’d keep this crazy driftwood-spanish-moss-raven tableaux up all year. 
Thanks to Miss McKay for adventures in spanish moss and for the top picture.
Feather By Feather 