FOLK | No. 8

OLK

BEN ASHBY’S

FOLK

Real. American. Living.

Story

A

to

Share

HANDMADE MATTHEW MEAD’S

Holiday

Its 6 am... several days before Christmas and I am up racing around the kitchen. Our adult children have returned home and I

like everyone to awake to aroma of carrot muffins baking and clanking of a wooden spoon against a batter bowl. Lights are twinkling, my 9 pound Yorkie Oscar is underfoot and I begin to water the boxwood topiaries throughout the house. Its the holiday season and while I spend most of the year engaged in all of its intense preparations, it is at home and for my family when I most feel the spirit of the season.

My wife, Jenny and I revel in the holiday season. We close our studio a week prior to Christmas day to be home in the warmth of the house and all the trimmings. There will be forays to friends and last minute shopping but we really love the sounds of Christmas carols, attending to the menus for upcoming gatherings and hand wrapping and trimming all the gifts. Each year we make a list of gifts to craft for friends that have helped with the magazine and different photo shoots. Most items come from the kitchen with Jenny and I drenched in chocolate and batter from head to toe as we churn out special tasty treats.

Our girls are grown and live away from home but they too like all the festivities that go with crafting a “handmade holiday”. They will arrive a few days before Christmas with expectations of baking some cookies for decorating or stitching a silk velvet scarf for a friend.

We engage all kinds of activities and many of the crafts are based on their whims. Last year it was glass, stencils and etching cream to create decanters, glasses and votive holders. This year Jenny has the sewing machine raring to go with all types of vintage linen fabrics for

making dish towels and aprons. They will both help with the baking of chocolate cakes and the making of ganache to top cookies and tortes. We will handcraft napkin rings and centerpieces for the table and make colorful wreaths from items we can still gather in the yard.

We will attend a couple of concerts, wrap gifts as a family and deliver door to door to all our friends ending in a special dinner out at a favorite country tavern that has a big fireplace and serves plates of mini desserts that we can all share.

Our home is ample sized but relatively close once dressed in holiday accoutrements. This past year we decided to renovate our detached garage into a great room where we could entertain a larger gathering then our home can accommodate. The welcome space has a large table for a seated dinner and plenty of room to sit and visit. over drinks. This will be our first year of decorating the “great space” and I am looking forward to peering out the windows to see the snow covered, moon lit landscape.

Handmaking your holiday season is such a wonderful way of making memories. Each year we truly look forward to spending our time together creating something to give to others. .That is exactly what I try to convey in my books and magazines each year, simple but special ways to carve out time with each other to make these unforgettable moments that are etched upon our minds forever.

All the White Horses CHRISTMAS BY THE GIRLS FROM THE VINTAGE WHITES MARKET

Christmas is a magical time, especially in northwestern Montana when the snow is falling. Vanessa and I are both incredibly inspired by the colors and traditions surrounding the season, and we translated that into this bright and whimsical vintage Christmas shoot.

Carousel horses, painted white and glittered, adorned the table. Antique clocks ticked away in the tree, and sweet teddy bears kept us company as we ate. Candles flickered, and the smell of fresh juniper branches and spruce filled the air, rising from under our thick rope table runner. Our linens were wrapped with velvet bows to add warmth to the room. Vintage mismatched china in blue and gold create a warm Christmas tone for dinner. Blue is one of our favorite colors, especially for winter. We love a white winter wonderland, and blues add color without being too harsh or overpowering to a clean white palette.

Nearly every Chirstmas, Vanessa decorates with some sort of blue in a house full of whites.

This year, her Christmas is inspired by the vintage dishes she found, patterned with a very unique blue wheat print. While searching for vintage finds in a thrift store, Vanessa came across a carrousel horse and had a vision of one under a tree. That vision sparked

the theme for the tablescape, and she later realized that the vision stemmed from the classic movie White Christmas, when the lead character opens a gift and inside is a beautiful white horse.

We used thick rope to create a runner that added great texture to the table. Simply trim a piece of cardboard to the length and width you want your runner to be, and hot glue rope strands to the cardboard until it is completely covered. You can vary your thickness if you want, but we love the look of thick rope in contrast with the soft, navy velvet bows.

An old, painted dresser made a perfect buffet in the dining room. Since it is smaller than a buffet or hutch, it is the perfect match for a snug room. Store linens and silver in the drawers, and hang a wreath or garland on the mirror.

Presents wrapped in craft paper, ruffled crepe paper, and velvet make for a beautiful landscape under the tree. Ribbon strung through an old watch adds a unique touch to the wrapping. Leaving bigger vintage toys unwrapped under the tree reminds us of the childlike joy and happiness of the season.

I’ve spent a majority of my winters in the northwest, which means plenty of cold

FOLK | 87 | 2012

weather and big winter coats. I remember the first year my family moved to Montana, we couldn’t see out of the windows because they were covered in snow. We had nine feet that year, and could sled off of our roof on to the thick piles of snow below. I can’t remember a Christmas where my parents didn’t do something special for us. They never start Christmas morning without a pot of coffee, thick pieces of bacon, or fluffy pancakes. For my brothers and I, this was torture because we had to wait until they were done eating before we could open presents. Everything was always wrapped in gorgeous coordinating colors, which inspired ideas for wrapping presents for this shoot. We always had a note from Santa hidden in the tree, and often one more surprise after all the gifts were unwrapped. I’m so thankful for the things my parents did to make Christmas special for my brother and I, and I am so excited to pass those things along to my kids one day.

Bringing the past to life with vintage touches made this shoot one of our favorites, and we were honored to use decorations that someone cherished years ago. Whether you’ve inherited or collected vintage over the years, recreate a Christmas from days gone by for a special holiday season! Wishing you and yours a merry Christmas from Vintage Whites!

Scones THE BASICS

Walk into a tearoom in the UK and order a scone, and you will be given three options— plain, sultana (with golden raisins), or cheese. Google “scones” here in the US, and you will find that the flavor options are limitless. There are recipes for everything from the traditional plain (or cream) scone to a wide and creative variety including blueberry, cranberry, pumpkin, gingerbread and countless other flavors and combinations. We Americans have taken the traditional British teatime treat and added our own unique twists and creativity to that simple little quick bread.

TEXT: DEBBIE ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY: KIMBERLY TAYLOR STYLING: NADIA DOLE

When I first started baking scones, I began by working my way through a book of scone recipes. Each recipe was specific to a particular flavor of scone and seemed to require significantly different ingredients than the previous recipe. It actually became fairly annoying to have to go on a search through the pantry to find out if I had all the ingredients needed to bake a particular flavor of scone. Many, many of those early sconebaking sessions resulted in the neighborhood birds and squirrels enjoying a scone feast—for countless recipes resulted in dry and tasteless scones.

As I became more adept at scone baking, I began to understand that the secret to flavor variety was not going to be found in a cookbook of 100 different scone recipes. Rather, the key was to find a good base (plain) scone recipe (or scone mix) and then learn how to adapt that scone into a multitude of flavors. If the plain scone wasn’t good—then no amount of additions and toppings were going to improve its flavor.

And so the quest began. I finally found a scone recipe that met all of my criteria for the perfect scone, and over time I learned how to change it to create distinctly different flavors. Sometimes that adaptation was born of necessity—I can’t tell you how often I stood in front of the pantry frustrated that I was out of sugar—or chocolate chips—but I had brown sugar on hand, or canned pumpkin—and suddenly a new flavor was born. It does help, I learned, to have completely honest and captive guinea pigs—in my case, my then-teenage children and their friends, who were always in and out of the house and more than willing to sample a new scone flavor.

FOLK | 169 | 2012

FOLK | 160 112 | 2012

Lingering Sweetness

You know that majestic and awestruck feeling you get when you’re driving down a windy road early in the morning, just after a snow storm, and all the branches on the trees are covered in a flood of white, glittering, in the morning sun. Then, all of a sudden, out of the corner of your eye you spot a bright red dot and you turn your head to see a cardinal flying through that flood of white and you’re reminded in that moment just how beautiful life can be.

FOLK | 113 | 2012

BY: RIKKI SNYDER

OLK

BEN ASHBY’S

FOLK

Real. American. Living.

Story to Share

A