A Wedding In Ireland

My friend Nichole (Amy's twin sister) married her husband Andy at the Bellinter House in Navan, Ireland this past fall. When my roommate Megan, one of the bridesmaids, returned from Ireland I couldn't wait to hear all the details—the house, the scones, the wellies, and how amazing Cholie looked in her Vera Wang gown.

Their lovely Irish wedding is featured today in two posts on OnceWed. There's lots more photos in the OnceWed post, but these are some of my favorites.



















Congrats, Nichole and Andy!

All photos by Cooper Carras via OnceWed.

The dough also rises

Baking with yeast is intimidating to bakers and non-bakers alike. I mean, we're talking about something alive. That is serious stuff. But when yeast does its job (instead of, say, stealing your evening and giving you flat, dense rolls better suited for a game of hockey than being nestled into a bread basket) the process is simpler than you might think. If it didn't require so much time, it'd be easy to convince yourself that a magic wand was responsible.

So when my friend Amy, newlywed and novice baker, announced that she was going to attempt my favorite sticky bun recipe to have waiting for her husband when he returned from a weekend away, I jumped at the chance to convert a yeast-phobe to (at the very least) a yeast-liker. Full disclosure: I may also have jumped at the chance to use their brand new Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

{ingredients, ready to go}

{Amy, prooving that she did most of the work herself}

So we spent a sunny, cold afternoon in January in Amy's kitchen with the mixer and a packet of thankfully cooperative yeast. I thought I'd share the few tips I shared with Amy that day, the few things I've learned that make baking with yeast less intimidating:

• Rapid Rise Yeast: though it requires a few tweaks to most recipes (heating the liquid ingredients), they may as well call it "Never Fail Yeast." Use this to get the hang of how yeast should behave in a dough, then try the recipe with regular yeast. 
• Elasticity: A lot of recipes have you knead the dough until elastic. Which means what, exactly? When you press a finger into the dough it should 1) not stick to your finger and 2) bounce back quickly. If it bounces back lazily and the dough feels somewhat hard when you poke it, keep kneading. 
• Warmth: No matter the season, my apartment is never warm enough to encourage yeast to rise at a normal pace. So to help it along, I preheat the oven to a low temperature then turn it off before putting the dough in to rise.
• Moisture: Yeast likes warm, moist heat. So sometimes I'll put a pot of boiling water in the oven with the rising dough to help it along. The added moisture in the oven also helps to keep the dough from drying out.

{sticky buns, ready for their final rise}

{success!}

Amy and I did most of the work the day before she planned on baking them. The next morning she let them rise a final time before baking. Judging from the photo she sent, it looks like they turned out perfectly. And if it weren't for the photo evidence of the baking process, I'd bet you could convince her husband that a magic wand was involved.


(Pardon the dorky literary pun in the title, I couldn't resist.)

Barton Hollow

You guys, the new album by The Civil Wars came out yesterday and you should probably get it. Well, you should if you like beautiful things. And a little bit of country twang. That pretty accurately describes most of my music taste, really.



And be sure to get the version with the extra bonus tracks, they've included some fun covers. Like this one:

The weekend in pictures

I tend to go through phases with photography. One week I'm lugging my camera around everywhere and taking pictures of everything, and then I ignore it for a month. Or, I'll only take pictures at memorable events, ignoring the everyday in favor of weddings and trips. So, to try to be more consistent I'm going to try to do a "weekend in pictures" post most Mondays. Here goes...

{snowy backyard, friday}

{snow covered chelsea, friday}

{iron & wine, saturday}

{sunlight, sunday}

{coffee and reading, sunday}

{make that lots of coffee, sunday}

Iron & Wine

I'm so, so excited to get to see Iron & Wine perform at Radio City this weekend. I've been listening to their new album nonstop in preparation, and also a few of my old favorites. Including a lovely cover by blogger Kate Miss and her brother, that she posted quite some time ago (but I always think of this version when I hear the song).

Cinder & Smoke from karmaticoma on Vimeo.

Have a lovely weekend, folks!

An impromptu hot cocoa party

After trudging home through the beginnings of Snowprahwinfrey ("You get a blizzard! And you get a blizzard!") tonight, I ran into my roommates and two of our neighbors, a can of Reddi-Whip in hand, ready (reddi?) for a hot cocoa party.



In as much time as it took all five of us to remove our scarves, hats, gloves, and snowboots, Megan had whipped up a pot of hot cocoa. Five friends + a blizzard + hot cocoa + whipped cream = a party.



I love having friends for neighbors.

Parties and Polaroids*

I went to a fun engagement party this weekend and wanted to share this great photo booth/guest book/gift idea that the clever hosts came up with.



They bought a mini instant camera and set up a simple photo area at one end of the party. Everyone could pose for a photo, then write a message to the bride and groom and affix it to the back of the picture.



The finished photos were hung with clothespins on twine, making for instant party decoration. And the best part is, the couple got to keep the camera at the end of the night! Such a great idea.







Congrats Bryson and Angela!



*No, these are not technically Polaroids. But I like alliteration.