Holiday Wishes from Our Farm to Yours

Dear Colorful Friends:

We have made it around the sun one more time, haven’t we? Thank you all for reading along and supporting my creative efforts and our farm family. My best wishes for the upcoming 2023. I hope you will enjoy the holiday season and take some time out for yourself to do something you have been wanting to do but have never found the time.

Time….. that is the gift that everyone needs to clear their heads of the daily chatter and clatter. This year I’ve had some time to make some Christmas cookies to share with friends and family. It might not seem like much but I grew up in a family that waited each year for our Gram’s Christmas day arrival with a platter of cookies and a homemade stollen. I have never found the time to make cookies like many people do but this year, due to unforeseen circumstances, I had some extra time and made four different recipes. I’ve linked to them below.

As I was mixing and baking in the quiet of the early morning, I couldn’t help but think back to the early days of my life and the influence my grandmother had on my sisters and I. I started going down memory lane. Maybe you too think back to earlier times in your life over the holiday season. Here’s a photo of Gram holding one of her stollen holiday breads which would be sliced, slathered with butter and the annual taste test Christmas morning would occur.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming PBS Masterpiece third (and final) series of the re-incarnation of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small in January. Which leads me to this clip from the original series of an annual cake test similar to our yearly stollen tasting. Priceless.

Here are the cookie recipes I have made:

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

Eggnog Iced Oatmeal Cookies

Apricot Jam Crumble Bars

If you have the time or inclination, leave a link in the comments section at the end of this newsletter to cookies you have made this season. The comment section is for everyone who reads this newsletter to read and learn from — like the old days of reading blogs.

So here are today’s links to interesting things……

• I really enjoyed this chat on the Cherry Bombe Podcast with Ina Garten aka The Barefoot Contessa.

• Ideas on How to Make a House a Home.

• Ceramicist Carol MacNicoll’s unconventional home/studio. There’s a textile connection.

• I’ve always wanted to try making Paste Paper. Now here’s a video to help out.

This is a recipe for making the paste you will need from Penland School of Crafts using items you have in your kitchen. Paste will keep for 2 weeks in refrigerator. You mix it with any acrylic paint and then get to creating. Artist Mark Hearld uses paste papers in many of the collages he is known for. See his work here.

• A recipe for making Homemade Irish Cream. I remember when this was popular. Have bought the stuff. We’ll see if I get to it.

• I have never purchased fabric online but I know a lot of folks do. Here’s an article about Fabric.com’s closure. Did you know they were owned by Amazon?

• I was never much of a rocker chick (to say the least) but I really enjoyed this article about Patti Smith in Bazaar Magazine entitled The Radical Hope of Patti Smith. She has a new book out and also writes a Substack which you can read here.

• And lastly, Julia is really into Hallmark Movies and she likes me to watch them with her. One came on that I thought would be pretty lame and it ended up really interesting. It was called The Most Colorful Time of the Year. You can watch the trailer here. It focused on colorblindness and how a new type of glasses brings color to people who have never seen it before. Check out the Instagram account of one of the companies that makes these glasses. As a person who has lived and breathed and worked with color all my life, I can’t imagine not seeing colors.

I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season. I so appreciate your support of my ceramics, writing, knitting and stitchery design. Thanks to all who have purchased patterns and pottery. I love thinking about my work in your home and hands. I’ll be back to you after the New Year.

And if you have time, leave the links to your favorite cookies below by posting a comment.

With best wishes and love,

Kristin Nicholas