Photo Play

I had fun taking a couple of quirky shots at the wedding, so these are for people who enjoy something a little different.

The top one is just so tender. I really like it. Those little moments and details can just make me so happy.





I also got this one of the veil and dress. Not a complicated shot but I like how it came out.









The bride was so beautiful, I love this one of her Greek dancing ... it reminds me of a Sargent painting ... I love the shapes and color.




















And then here below is some fun on the dance floor. I think you get a real sense of the pulse in this one.

A Lovely Pittsburgh Wedding: Don't Forget Your Cookie Bag

We had a great time at Tina and David's wedding. I don't think you need me to say much, just get to the photos, right? It was a gorgeous hot September day and of course the bride was stunning. The look of joy and relief on both their faces, so lovely. I remember that same feeling walking back down the aisle. Whew!

I like this one of Tina laughing:


And oh my goodness, I do love wedding cake. I can stare at photos of wedding cake for inappropriate amounts of time.




It's lots of fun taking photos at weddings. Now that I've been through the craziness of planning a wedding myself, I especially enjoy the details that I know the bride has agonized over for the past 8 months. Each of the tables had a fun photo of all the parts of Pittsburgh. Cool!



And speaking of my earlier post about Pittsburgh food, we have a very proud wedding tradition in Pittsburgh called The Pittsburgh Cookie Table. It's so ubiquitous at weddings in Pittsburgh that people at the wedding didn't even understand when I called it, "The Pittsburgh Cookie Table." It would be like referring to a "French Baguette" while in France: it is somehow ridiculously redundant. Whereas anywhere else in the country they are asking you the question, "Why are you having cookies at your wedding?" Of course we had one at our New England wedding, and it made me very happy as a true Pittsburgh Bride.

Anyhow, this was the mother of all cookie tables. It streched on for miles and had so many varieties I'm not going to list them all. Sufficient to say it was cookie heaven. My photo does not do it justice, but does demonstrate there were so many that everyone there packed up baggies to take home (and some unnamed bloggers may have packed more than one bag but only because the cookie makers told her to).

Pittsburgh Food

One of the many pleasures of Pittsburgh is its variety of exquisitely delicious-but-bad-for-your-arteries food. As I show Mr. Right around town, it's been important that he learns about these options. So far he has been an enthusiastic participant in my tours.

In town last weekend, to my great joy, we hit the Pittsburgh culinary jackpot: a Polish Food Festival! We had one of everything. We Have No Shame.

I took a photo of our tray. We've got stuffed cabbage, pierogie, haluski, and kielbasa (in the bun). I'm looking at the kielbasa and I'm thinking, yikes, my husband does love mustard. That's what those squiggles are. You can't even see the sausage. Well, it's one of the things that brought us together, our shared love of condiments. Salsa Girl, meet Mr. Mustard. What else could follow but true love?

And of course we went to Primanti's. I tried to get a shot that shows the french fries on the sandwich with the ubiquitous Iron City behind it. Pittsburghers put fries on sandwiches and salads. It's just what you do. I am proud to be from such a great city.

And Dillard57 Roars Back to Life

Roaring might be a bit of an exxageration, but I am returning to life on this blog. I was momentarily distracted by a little event back in June when Mr. Right and I tied the knot. Here is a photo from the day. If you want to read all the dorky details, feel free to do so at www.cooper-ayles.blogspot.com. To sum up: It was a good day, beautiful and sunny. We are incredibly blessed with wonderful friends and family who joined us in Plymouth. We are very happy.

And so, back more or less to our regularly scheduled programming.

We spent this last weekend in Pittsburgh for my dear friend Tina's wedding. I'll blog more about the trip in a bit. But this post is just to say, well hello old friends of dillard57!

The Painting Is Done Now the Next Thing

I've switched some these days from painting canvases to painting walls. After some seriously arduous wallpaper stripping, we finally were able to lay down a very nice coat of pale green paint in the kids' room. It looks nice! We were just amazed at how much it transformed the room. I know, this isn't revolutionary. People Paint Room! It Looks Nice! Details at 11:00!!! Nonetheless, we were proud, and I wanted to document the moment so here's Mr. Right, changing a room that looked like a warzone into something that looks like a bedroom. I mean, the walls really were that weird brown color you see underneath there.

That's what blogs are for, right? All of these random moments that no one really cares about but us. But who doesn't like to see the photos??? He's working so hard that his roller painter thing is a blur! Or it could be I used to low of a setting on the camera. Whatever. The rooms are done!!!

And of course, now the quest for matching bed spreads begin. Sigh. What have I become? Oy.

Old Dog New Tricks

Not sure if I count as an old dog yet, but I'm learning new tricks with my new Pentax. There's this cool thing called depth of field that makes things close up look in focus and further away items look soft and out of focus. It's just a neat trick, but it can make a simple shot much more interesting. The photo above shows what I mean.

The salt shaker is in focus, the pencil can is not. You can switch so the pencil can is in focus and the salt shaker is not. Or so that they both are in focus. It all has to do with how open or closed your aperture is. Anyhow, that's it. My new trick. More soon and fewer salt shaker photos I promise.

Watching Paint Dry: An Update

At this point, I'd be thrilled to be watching paint dry on the bedrooms, but at least we got the wallpaper stripped (thanks again to Ian and all those home blogs out there). The walls are pretty hideous underneath, but we're going to risk painting and see how it goes. It has been fun learning about paints -- just when I thought I was all set with Behr, Consumer Reports comes out with a whole new article about inside paint so I have to think about patrionizing the products of the Evil Box Store that Shall Not Be Named (click link for a cool site) since they were so highly rated for their paint. Hmmm. Even more alarming: there is one not far from my gym. Paint and politics may not mix, we shall see.

And just wondering, does anyone else enjoy paint chips as much as I do? I don't know what it is, but they are such fun little pieces of paper. I also had a pretty fun time on this site that lets you try out colors in a room. We humans like our pretty colors.

The quests have changed

I'm tired tonight so I'm not sure this will be an interesting or groovy blog entry. I was just pondering how my quests have changed. I've been here 10 years now and I'm not getting to know Boston as much now I have figured out my way around, nor trying to find the ne plus ultra brownie since I would argue I've found it. Now the big quest is finding the perfect seashell stamp for the Big Event. Is it this one? And then there's the garden lantern. Will it be big enough? Not to mention bands and sound systems and officiants and don't even get me started on figuring out what to put on the registry. For someone who likes to research whether or not she's using the best mayonnaise or trying to make her own from scratch, making this many decisions in a short amount of time is both wildly fun and incredibly exhausting! The internet is such a blessing and a curse for informational gathering.

Not to mention I'm not sure if people are as excited to talk to me about rubber stamp options as they were about talking to me about the best place to find hot chocolate. But hey, that's what internet discussion boards are for, right? To find people out there as obsessed with flush settings as you are so you don't bore your flesh and blood friends to tears.

So. Back to looking at stamps. Thanks CF and Bowl of Cheese for the leads on these! And once again I marvel how life has changed for me since Bonita the Duck.

Holiday Barn

I'm a sucker for barns. I can't remember if I've covered this in the blog before, but when I see em, I get all warm and fuzzy. My theory is that it comes from all those trips to Indiana through the Ohio Cornfields. (note to self, use the search feature and find that indeed, I am repeating myself).

Anyhow, if you like them too, here's a nice one for you, right near my parents home, taken during our Christmas visit home to Pittsburgh.

Stripping the Walls

And now for the home improvement blog. Mr. Right and I are starting to get his house ready to put on the market. Don't talk to me about timing -- we know. But we've got good reasons to move forward with the sale, so we have the get this 140 year old farmhouse ready for the rest of the world. So we are tackling the wallpaper in the bedrooms. In the kids room, it wasn't terrible looking paper, but there were some peeling areas and some completely blank areas. First photo was how it looked when we started. Then we proceeded to strip that layer (with the help of Ian's blog as well as a little This Old House). Well, there turned out to be four layers. Yikes!

As you strip those layers, you can't help but wonder who picked them out and who has been hanging in the room, staring at the cabbage roses or the snowflakes. Were they happy here? What were their lives like, here in the southern suburbs of Boston? You can't help but be nostalgic when you look at this old paper, hidden for so long.

The next step will be adding the new paper -- I'll share that when we get there. It's a satisfying project, if kinda messy.

Vermont Again

One of the great things about Boston is its proximity to everything else. Mr. Right and I decided on a mostly spontaneous trip to Vermont this weekend and it was just what we both needed to escape from all the regular weekend chores after a regular hard week of work.
As is the tradition now here at dillard57, some photos to share of our idyllic escape to the north.


This is the Simon Pearce Glass Blowing facility, built right on the Queechee River. We had a great meal here, looking right out onto the falls.

And here is a view of Mount Pico near Killington, Mr. Right's old stomping grounds.

During our road trip, I brought along Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which is about her family trying to eat for a year only on local foods. She talked about a visit to The Farmer's Diner in Massachusetts where they served as much local food from local farmers as possible. I was tickled to be able to find this place the next day on our trip. I guess those little hand held internet devices do have their uses. We had a fun meal of great burgers made from local beef, local cheese and a big glass of local chocolate milk. Mr. Right is pointing to the "Time to Eat" sign.
And here's me with the local chocolate milk. Yum! (I know, I know, the chocolate wasn't local).
The final photo is one of three covered bridges we saw during our trip. It's an old cliche but who isn't a sucker for these things? They are beautiful.

A Human Absence

I get home today to find a large envelope in my mailbox from UUWorld with several copies of their latest issue, each of which contain one of my photos and a little blurb about me as an artist. Wow! Here's a link to the article, but of course I very egotistically think it is much better seeing it in print. UU World is the quarterly magazine published for members of the Unitarian-Universalist church.

I'm still a new artist by pretty much anyone's definition. So it's such an odd but lovely feeling to see that your work has travelled out there in the universe on its own. It must be just a tiny bit what it must feel like to have a child moving off into the universe without you. My work is this little bit of myself and it goes and does its thing in the world and other people take it and make it part of their lives in their own way. Then I unexpectedly re-meet it elsewhere and am always floored by it. Grateful and amazed that people other than my mother think it's cool (hi Mom!), and re-inspired to maybe make it happen again and to encourage others to do the same thing.

So there I am, published with the photo that started this whole crazy art thing. And for all you UU World readers who stop by because of the article, well, hello to you! It has been such a joyful thing in my life to discover the UU church. I feel very fortunate today.

Harvest time

I love this time of year. Summer has slipped away, but it is still warm and bright with the skies such an intense blue, especially in contrast to the leaves which are slowly reddening.

I love going to the farmer's markets where the tables can barely contain all of the produce, the tomatoes, the nectarines, the apples, the zucchinis and the brand new pumpkins.

And I love that my knight in shining armor arrived one year ago. Then one year later he asked me to marry him.

Ah. Happy sigh.

Very Vancouver Vacation

Hmm, not so many v words I came up with. But Vancouver and Victoria, the sites of my most recent vacation, deserve some warm and enthusiastic verbiage. But enough of the travel talk. Let's get in some photos.
Such a beautiful city. Ocean, mountain, forest and city all in one place. It really is as gorgeous as this. One night there, I had sushi on the beach with Dave and Claire. It felt very exotic and actually not very Canadian, but everyone was happy.




If you like salmon, Vancouver is the place for you! It's in everything and in every form, raw, cooked, dried, candied, smoked, on salads, in sandwiches, even in pepperoni. I kid you not. It's delicious but a bit much to handle.



Vancouver has one of the largest Asian populations in the world outside of well, Asia. This was a beautiful garden in the middle of the city.


Emily Carr became famous for painting totem poles as part of trying to record them in the tribal lands they were built before they all were destroyed or, um, jumbled all together into parks and museums like this. Sigh.



I thought this particular part of the totem pole was very cool from the whole universal Madonna and Child perspective. Art is cool that way.

A big reason for my visit was to see some old friends who have been up there for years. Another reason was the third leg of my "pilgrimage" to see the homeland of the third in my trinity of amazing North American women artists: Frida Kahlo (Mexico), Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) and Emily Carr (Canada). Emily Carr worked around the same time as Kahlo and O'Keeffe. All three women produced art that contains similar themes around nature, religion, spirituality and indigenous peoples. You can learn more about their similarities on this website. The website around an amazing art exhibit was the first place I accidentally stumbled upon the three women together and I've been fascinated ever since. So now I've been to all three of their homelands and seen where they painted and it has been a very satisfying and enriching journey, especially as a woman artist myself.

Anyhow, there is lots on the web about Emily Carr so I won't go into more detail here, but she did a lot of wonderful paintings of forests and of totem poles that are very worth seeing.

I had a great time getting to know this beautiful city.

New England Reminders

I've lived in Boston for, oh, 9 years now this summer. And I still feel like a brand new resident. That's a good thing in some ways -- I feel like there is still so much I have not seen or done here, being at most two-three hours away from anything from ocean to mountains to NYC to Canada to just an incredible amount of beauty and culture. But I'm also still considered a newbie by all these locals. There is even a name for us, barnies, which is short for barnacles, those who cling onto something but aren't really a part of that place. Well, nonetheless, I can't deny that somehow New England has become home, despite my own wanderlust and despite any New Englanders' aversion to outsiders.

One of the biggest reminders of where I am is the Boston accent. I actually kinda like it. A lot of people think it's horrific. But as a girl growing up in Pittsburgh (with its own accent), when I heard people from New England speak, it seemed so terribly sophisticated and exotic. Especially because most of the New Englanders I heard speak were very intruiguing, cute boys from Worcester on whom I had crushes. It's kinda funny now when I go to Worcester, but I still have a soft spot for the accent. Although I don't try to imitate it because then everyone from here makes fun of you for not getting it right.

The other thing that reminds you unfailingly of your new geography is this occasional whiff of the sea. I only actually encounter the ocean maybe once a week or even less frequently. But sometimes the sea air is unmistakeable, rolling in from the east and enveloping you in cool saltiness.

And then you see lighthouses, and you also know exactly where you are. This one above is near Duxbury Beach and is R's favorite place in the whole wide world.

Oh and don't get me started on canned brown bread. I have to explain it to people who are visiting my workplace all the time because it is frequently donated and how am I supposed to explain bread in a can? Half the people from this area can't explain it. I've tried it. It isn't terrible. That's not exactly high praise, but it really isn't too bad.

So, here I am. New England still. Looks like I'll be around for a while longer too. Who woulda thunk it.

Those Western Mass Shakers

Slowly, slowly I'm catching up on my posting here. I wanted to share some photos I'm very fond of from a visit to Hancock Shaker Village, out in Western Massachusetts. R and I had a great time poking around the village, followed by what seems to now be a tradition -- lots of bbq.

Can you tell I have a weakness for a good barn? Comes from all those years of driving across Ohio on the way to Grandma's house. Lots and lots of corn fields.

This historical site is definitely one of those photographer's paradises, especially in the yellow light of a fall afternoon.
R even surprised me at Christmas with this amazing book about these visions of Shaker women which they captured so beautifully. I was admiring the book in the store and after much deliberation about the state of my wallet, very reluctantly put it back on the shelf the day we visited. Lo and behold, I opened up a present from the sweetest man in the world and there it was. The artwork is really fascinating.

Mass MOCA 8 months later

I have plenty of excuses for not posting, but there's no point in listing them here. So I think instead it is now time to just share some photos.

These posts will catch you up on some trips to Western MA. First batch is Mass MOCA which R and I thought was amazing in both a weird and a good way.

The difference between a museum in a big city and a museum like this outside of the city is the huge amount of space you get to play with. These are football fields worth of exhibition space.



Our favorites were the little jars that you had to categorize, the video footage of the miner's strike in England, and the mustering exhibit combining elements of civil war re-enactments with civil rights. We also liked the shopping cart in the canal. Our brains were pretty full by the end of wandering around this place. For me, a successful art trip makes the whole world look like art, and Mass MOCA definitely has that effect.



It's definitely worth a visit -- a beautiful drive and an amazing site. Pack a picnic! After looking at art all day, I highly recommend two things to follow all of that cultural stimulation. First, Natural Bridge State Park is just one of the most unexpectedly pretty things you could ever stumble across. If you follow that by dinner at a local BBQ joint with every table holding pig shaped salt and pepper shakers, well, I'd call that a perfect day.

La Vie En Rose, Part Deux

Here are the second batch of photos. I'm hoping it will give you the feeling of doing a little Parisian window-shopping. In French, window shopping is "lecher les vitrines" which means, literally, to lick the windows. I certainly can understand the urge.




The first is a cheese shop that had so many stinky cheeses that you could smell them outside on the sidewalk. Next are three photos from the home of the macaroons, La Duree.


Even though it's a cliche, whenever you glimpse the Eiffel Tower you can't help but stop and smile. And I did pop my head into Notre Dame just to get a whiff of the incense and the ghosts of the millions of pilgrims who have worshipped there.
The last photo is my last night there, taken on the Champs Elysees. It was one of my few visits to tourist Paris, which really is a whole different world than the back streets and nooks and crannies that are what makes the place so wonderful.

La Vie En Rose

Okay gang, so maybe the posts now are going to be quarterly. But I've promised to post some of my photos from my recent trip to Paris. So here they are. You will not be surprised to see there are lots of food photos. I am amazed to report that it is indeed possible to grow tired of pain au chocolat.

It was a great trip -- one where I wasn't trying to see all the sites since I'd already seen them. It was more about "being there" and experiencing Paris, staying with a friend who lives there. Occasionally I'd buy a baguette and walk back to her place with it under my arm, pretending I lived there. It always made me laugh.

The top photo here is of a famous art deco building. Why, oh why, do we not have more of these floating around in the US? I think there are people out there who hate Art Deco, but they are just silly.

To the right: famous hot chocolate at Angelina's. Not the included whipped cream, an item that is laughably superflous in adding additional richness to the hot chocolate. The hot chocolate is practically melted butter and chocolate anyhow. Yeah, I know. It was a fun place to hang out anyhow, very historic and crammed with all kinds of fashion-world people who were there are some sort of exclusive show taking place across the street.




Above, the ubiquitous market shot. Springtime in Paris! To the left, the sailboat guy near the Louvre. And below are the fabulous macaroons of LaDuree. These are cookies in such quirky flavors as rose petal, olive oil (odd but not bad), black pepper (blah!), and passionfruit. So, so, so good. And quite expensive, may I add.
This post will only let me do five. Let me see if I can add a few more in the next post.

The Ubiquitous Holiday Post

I thought you'd enjoy a few pictures from the past month or so. It's been busy -- trips to London, Pittsburgh, and back to Pittsburgh again soon.

Both photos are from Liberty's in London -- it was like an Anglophile's fantasy Christmas shop. The lights in the first photo are just strand after strand hanging from the ceiling -- really beautiful. And the tea and scones were lovely there too, no surprise.

Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season.