Jah Researsal

My family throws great parties. I love them for this. And by "them," we really need to acknowledge my mom, who should probably have left her CFO position years ago to open a wedding-planning business. Mimi has the vision and makes it happen; the rest of us are just her hard-labor minions. It's a lot of work... but it always, always pays off.

This year my mom had not just my brother Lane's wedding on her plate, but also his rehearsal dinner, which much like our wedding, operated as a big welcome party for all of the wedding guests at the family rental house. Lane told my mom he thought it'd be fun to have a loose Jamaican theme, with jerk chicken and a playlist of his favorite reggae music playing. That sounds like a fun party, right? To Mimi, this sounds like an opportunity for major upgrade. Midly pleasing 80 people is not enough... our family must blow their minds. After months of consultation with the Interwebs and actual Jamaicans, the party started to look a little like this:

• A wagon piled high with chicken parts, put into jerk marinade by yours truly to soak for two days before they were cooked.
• Gallons upon gallons of homemade jerk sauce to accompany the chicken, which involved me fine-dicing jalapeno for two hours one afternoon.
• So.Much.Rice. cooked with coconut milk and beans.
• Sides galore, and a long table with ten different cheesecakes.
• The aforementioned "Love Potion #9.10.11," which was a potent and dangerously delicious Jamaican rum punch. (Did I mention dangerous?)
• Kiddie pools full of Red Stripe... and also a Kid Craft room staffed with a babysitter.
• Tropical-colored decorations galore. True to form, Mimi thought of everything - from lights to tabletops to banners to lanterns to... you get the picture.

And there was one more thing. One more huge, awesome thing that I hated keeping a secret for months leading up to the big night:

• Forget the iPod. Nicole's wedding gift to Lane was secretly hiring his favorite local reggae band Jah Creation to play the party.
  
  (I know!!!!)
  
  
  
  Might I recommend clicking over to Jah Creation's website for the remainder of this post so that their music can set the proper vibe? Trust.
  

So imagine some of us piling into a boat after the rehearsal, knowing that when we pull up to the dock of the rental house, Lane's mind is going to blown when he sees the band there. Lane has no idea, by the way... here he is just chilin', being his handsome groom self.

And here we are nearly bursting with excitement at the big reveal that's just moments away...

As we're getting close, Lisa and I tell him that he's going to get his wedding present when we pull up. So he definitely perks up and starts paying attention. And then he spots them.

 "No way. No way! Is this for real? Nicole did this? They're here?" And Nicole runs down to the pier, and sources say their embrace might have gotten a little dusty. 

And with that, the party was on. We ate and ate and ate, and dare I say drank and drank and drank, and there was silliness and dancing and teary toasts and big laughs, and it was the perfect night.

Remember how I mentioned the danger of the Jamaican rum punch?

Additional romance alert! Lane gave Nicole her wedding present that night... and surely someone I haven't located had a camera out, right? He gave her an heirloom family ring down at the end of the pier, while all 80 partiers cheered wildly at them. It was magical. So is this ring. It's been in our family for ages, but I think it was made for her.

Such a great party. I wish we had an original Family of Five photo from this night, but this one of the three sibs serves the purpose pretty nicely. Our family rocks. Here's to another Made-by-Mimi success!

Addendum

Of course this gem would land on my virtual doorstep hours after I already posted the bachelorette recap. I forgot all about this lady!

She's sort of perfect to send us off into the weekend, don't you think? Have a great one, everybody!

Night of black and gold

All week I've been frantically checking the Interwebs for the official photos of my brother's wedding to get here. There have been some (gorgeous! amazing!) teasers posted on Facebook, but the big reveal hasn't happened yet. What has happened, though, has been a slow trickling of rather hilarious bachelorette party photos. Let's jump in, shall we?

Since my sister-in-law (!) Nicole is originally from Pennsylvania and her oldest friends/half the wedding party had to travel fairly far to get to the wedding, the group decided to fold Nicole's bachelorette party into the wedding week so that everyone could be there. We settled on Myrtle Beach, about an hour south of Holden Beach, the wedding location. Our first stop was nails. Two funny things about the salon:

1. Two straight Caucasian dudes, one 35ish and one 21, did our nails. 
2. The salon mascot was a duck named JJ who wears a charm necklace with his name on it and gets his nails painted by the staff. Here's JJ with the salon's owner, who we think married Straight Dude #1 and is possibly the sister-in-law of Straight Dude #2.

Nicole has such a great group of girls. Eight of us had nails done at JJ's and stayed overnight in Myrtle. I knew I was the going to be the oldest of the crew, but I was apparently also "Most Barren." Eight girls here with an average age of 27... representing seven kids! Crazy.

Being barren and devoid of other responsibilities and all (kidding), I was in charge of accommodations. I found a great deal at the Anderson Ocean Club online, but you never know how these things are going to work out... needless to say, its largess and amazing views made me happy.

We piled into cabs for our first stop of the night, where the top of my dress might make you think I was wearing something pretty risque...

...until I straightened up and you realized, Nope! GRANNY LENGTH ALERT!

This group has had SEVEN KIDS, remember? (I declined to post the group shot in bikinis on the beach so as not to depress all of you.) So back to these dresses... my fellow lady in knee-length black Megan and I discussed that acquiring new "practical" black dresses that we could wear again and again would mean longer hemlines but also a longer closet lifespan. This is well and good... but couldn't I have at least hemmed a couple of inches off? And in Megan's credit, satin + strapless offers a little more vavoom than jersey scoop neck. Moving on! (By the way, that was the "attitude" shot... in case you didn't get that from the pouting.)

We had a truly terrible dinner, but who attends bachelorette parties for the food, anyway?* Another half dozen of Nicole's friends joined us for the evening, and in our group shot after dinner, our waiter decided to work for the first time all evening and pose with us. Your tip is your inclusion in this photo op, sir!

Our first stop (and last stop for some of us) was Crocodile Rocks, a dueling piano bar where we were seated front and center and the object of much piano playing-attention. Nicole was stunning in her gold sequins, and pulled on stage for things that will remain protected in the Bachelorette Code of Honor.

I love this shot of Nicole with her Maid of Honor Kristi:

Here's me, looking surprisingly bright-eyed. First, becuase we're deep into the night. And second, because I'm notorious for "are they or aren't they?" closed eyes in photos.

This recording of events would not be complete without a discussion of my dear sister Lisa. As some of you might recall, she has been pregnant and/or breastfeeding for the last three years. So while the primary goal of our group was to show Nicole the night of her life, the second goal of the group was to enable Lisa in her need to get a little crazy. Due to her concern about appearances, I will not include the photo here of her happily drinking at the hotel while the breast pump worked away, but I do want to salute its cuteness. Never has a girl so deserved a night on the town. We asked, and Lisa delivered. Gamely.

Here's where the night ended for the siblings of the bunch. I won't get into details (Bachelorette Code of Honor and all), but suffice it to say, my sis gave the night everything she had. While the rest of the girls went dancing, I packed up my over-mommed and over-served sis and took her back to the hotel. (Lisa has no recollection of this photo being taken, by the way. But isn't she cute?!)

The next morning, a Myrtle Beach sunrise... and a whole lot of work to do back at Holden Beach to get ready for the Reggae Rehearsal Dinner. To my sis: even if your Thursday meant that you could not help me with Friday's manual labor under the direction of Mimi, I'm so very glad you had a great night.

 And to my shy and unassuming sister-in-law, you rock my world.

*Full disclosure: my bachelorette party was at Nobu.

9.10.11

Oops. I completely meant to blog before I skipped town for my brother Lane's wedding. But it was one of those fun/crazy weekends (in between nearly killing my paper cutter as I finished making all the wedding programs, that is). And then I ended up leaving a day earlier than planned. And then I left in my usual mad rush of To Do's and Did I Forgets.

But now that I'm in the family rental house, there's nothing to do but relax.

HA!

Weddings in this family are madness. We laugh more than most and enjoy each other to the fullest, but that's despite our labor camp pace and the exhaustion that comes with artfully completing a million tasks that together produce an effortlessly crafted look. If you were reading me back in my own wedding planning days, that will sound familiar. If you weren't, see this.

I wish I were exaggerating, but take a peek. This is the staging area not for the wedding, mind you, but for the rehearsal dinner. My mom could open a party supply store.

Today I achieved many things. These did not include enjoying our pier on the Intercoastal Waterway, or hitting the beach, or finding earrings for tomorrow night's bachelorette, but they did include dicing 30 jalapeno peppers, painting directional signs, making and bottling rum punch, putting an entire wagon full of chicken parts into bags of jerk marinade, testing a beans and rice recipe for Friday night, squeezing what felt like 400 limes, and more. So we're busy. But we're smiling. How could we not with these two in the mix?

The official wedding events begin tomorrow with Nicole's bachelorette party. Then Friday, a reggae-themed cookout to kick things off (yes really). And a wedding on Saturday that's sure to be gorgeous, mostly because my mom was involved, but for me personally because I get to walk down the aisle with my groom again.

There's so much more I wanted to write about my brother and my soon to be sister-in-law. How she found her shoes because they were profiled in the issue of Brides that featured my wedding. How great she is, and they are, and their daughter is. How happy everyone is to be here, for them.

I'll take pictures, and I'll report back. But until then, I'll be b-u-s-y. Very, very happy. But busy. And maybe also sipping quite a bit of our patented "Love Potion # 9.10.11" toasting punch for Friday. (Please tell me you get the pun. I keep telling my mom... everyone will get it, really.)

Cheers, everyone!

I heart this.

So, Chipotle. Fast food, yes. Used to be owned by McDonald's, yes. But sources its pork from Niman Ranch (mmmm, carnitas). And tries to be better than the rest. And tastes delicious. And is coming to my neighborhood.

And now, brings us this.

The one and only Willie Nelson, recalling for me the Coldplay I used to love. This I can applaud.

Big drama outside, very small happenings inside

Oh, so that's what 11 hours of sleep feels like! Every now and then I get these glimpses of what it would be like to get an appropriate amount of sleep each night - which I'm convinced that none of us do - and I think maybe lack of sleep is the reason why we haven't yet achieved world peace or cured cancer. At any rate, I'm hopeful that 11 hours with a pillow will heal me in ways that days of meds and even green chile could not. Although yesterday's conference call muting while I hacked up a lung was productive, I can't do the same in my in-person meetings later this week, so this gunk needs to pack its bags and get outta my system.

It wasn't a bad weekend to be locked indoors on the couch, though. A little lady named Irene blew threw town, after all. It was a strange couple of days. I was home alone, half delirious from cold meds, frantically watching the storm ravage my homeland and checking in with the folks down south. Then I'm hunkering down while it's blowing my own neighborhood around. Then I'm frantically watching points north to see what the thing would do to our loved ones up there. Exhausting, and sad. We've had about enough of natural disasters this year, don't you think?

The next day I went for a walk around the neighborhood - the most physical activity I'd done in days, or have done since - and this is what I saw.

 

This is nothing compared to points south or north, of course... but certainly enough to make me feel humbled. And two houses down from ours, seeing a tree resting against someone's bedroom windows, that's enough to make me feel damn lucky. 

And so it was a hunkering-down weekend, as predicted, which involved eating the food that I (very oddly) found the energy to cook on Friday, meant to last a few days. (Perhaps expending all that energy in the kitchen is why it's taking me so long to get mine back?) I roasted chiles and made green chile chicken casserole. I made an ice cube tray of fresh pesto before the storm wreaked havoc on my basil (I only lost one branch, it turned out). I made more caponata. I made chicken piccata. I was so bored I even had an egg-poaching contest against myself (hint: I won). 

 

And then I collapsed. And fell in love with this television show. And confirmed that I never should've watched this movie. Which pretty much brings us up to date. How did you all fare in the storm?

Hunkering down (and not minding it)

I'm high on DayQuil right now, which is helping soothe the pain of a too-brief visit from my Dallas pal Kate. I adore her with everything I have, so it was wonderful having her here. We were supposed to see other during my Dallas trip, but then her house flooded, which would have been a friendship tragedy (in addition to the WTF-style home tragedy it already was) if not for this trip on our agenda. It was so fun to see Kate with a little quesito growing in her belly, and this time I could congratulate her properly, since when she told me the happy news she also happened to be wearing a bathing suit and rain boots and standing knee-deep in water in her living room. There were more pressing matters at hand than the contents of her uterus that day. This time, though, plenty of happy vibes and uterus talk! I'm also happy to report that Kate did a full inspection of our house's toilet supply lines and there is not a faulty plastic nut to be found.

Kate brought an amazing housewarming gift with her, which had me thinking about other lovely gifts I've received lately, and basically feeling pretty lucky even though I'm home alone during hurricane weekend and can't breathe properly.

From Kate, a gorgeous cheeseboard (or cutting board if you're some sort of anti-cheese freak) that she found in Italy. (Displayed with a table runner it turns out we both own)

From The Culinary Couple (I told you they were adorable), this goodie bag filled with foodie treats from Pennsylania.

And from our eccentric but well-meaning neighbor, who strings purple lights in the trees for "good energy," affixes glass marbles to anything that'll hold glue, and basically maintains a crazy person's front yard, a handful of bulbs that turned into these gorgeous plants, just by me ignoring them.

Not bad at all! T is attending my brother's bachelor party this weekend, so I'm going to focus on getting rid of this yucky cold and getting lots of R&R while he's gone. I do have a secret breathe-again weapon sitting on my kitchen counter, though:

The plan is to roast these babies on the grill before Irene gets here, then spend all weekend curled up with a book and eating green chile stew. I'm as pumped as this medication will allow.

Stay dry and safe, everyone!

Splish, splash, sleep

I think my crazy summer pace is finally catching up with me. I feel positively... spent. Ready for fall. Ready to slow down. In my mental calendar there are only a couple of weeks until summer's over... I'm using my brother's wedding as my marker.

We had a fantastic time in Connecticut with the fam, as always. Fenwick isn't my kind of beach exactly - the water's cold, there's not much sand, but wow is it pretty. Here's the pool at T's stepfather's family house, where I clocked in quite a bit of time this weekend. I'm not much of a backyard pool person, to be honest, but this pool? This pool is my favorite backyard pool ever.

Why yes, the pool does back up to a golf course. As well as the church where T's mother and stepfather got married... which people drive to every Sunday morning via golf carts. And yes, that was me happily swimming while the blonde masses went to church.

Heathen, I am. A tired one.

Friday I'm in Love: LOL Letterpress Edition

Last night, while I should have been packing for the weekend (oops!), I instead got lost in the wonderful world of pretty paper on Etsy. Given my love for cheeky paper, these three pieces earned gold stars. Letterpress that makes me laugh out loud? Paper perfection in my book. 

Beautiful/Easy

Seriously? This is genius. Art from Dear Colleen.

 

Maddow Love

"If elected, she WILL run" is so my kind of humor. Big props to Big Wheel Press for egging on my perennial Rachel Maddow crush.

Buffalo Pride

The thing is, I actually adore Buffalo. My pal Tracy (waaaaay overdue at bringing her little girl Brenna into the world right now, by the way!) is a Buffalo native, and I'd never been there until her wedding a few years ago. The city flat-out rocks, just the kind of place I like to nerd out to. The architecture and history alone are enough to make me swoon. Add in great bars, old industry giving way to new ideas, and a fantastic sense of realness, and well... I was hooked. At any rate... everyone gives Buffalo a hard time, which is part of why I was so happy to genuinely love the city. This piece, then, speaks perfectly to my faux Buffalo native pride. Thank you, Western New York Book Arts Collaborative!

That's it from me this Friday. I'm off to Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania for a few days, for fun with my in-laws and a little work, too. Have a fun weekend, everyone!

Caponata: A late-summer gem

It's easy to be sick of cooking by mid-August. Maybe our grills are played out, or we're sick of salads, or just the sight of more caprese makes us roll our eyes (okay personally, I never tire of caprese... but I've heard this August complaint from others). If you can bear to turn on your oven (maybe a random cool breeze, blowing in from the future one night?), make this dish to spice things up. It's the best of August's produce, deepened into something that promises cooler weather ahead. All at once, this caponata is somehow bright and deep, light and substantial, sweet and savory, zesty and earthy. It's delicious eaten cold the next day, when it'll probably be sweltering again. I might recommend keeping the leftovers in your refrigerator and regularly opening them up just to smell them. You know, if you're into that sort of thing. Whatever you're into, see if this dish doesn't help you bid summer adieu beautifully.

Eggplant and Pepper Caponata

Adapted from Cookthink

Ingredients

3 small eggplants, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
4 bell peppers, cut into 1/2-inch squares
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons capers, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
10 fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 500F and put a roasting pan in the oven to preheat. Toss the eggplant and peppers with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Put them in the oven to roast, turning occasionally, until they're tender and brown in spots, 30-45 minutes.

2. Let the eggplants and peppers cool a few minutes, then toss them in a large bowl with the remaining olive oil, vinegar and basil. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm, room temperature or cold.