this past sunday we celebrated the resurrection of jesus christ. this is the most important holy day in the christian faith and one that has always been dear to me — obviously for the significance of historical events as well as the ways i’ve celebrated it in the past, both with my family, with jp’s, and with our little family of three. this year, taking stuff from both our pasts, i was really able to make it our own; jp and i worked together to create a powerdriver-feel to celebrating this high holiday that i’m excited to see continue and evolve in the coming easter sundays.
1. church: having vowed never to miss an easter sunday service after sleeping through it last year –or tending to a wee one, it’s all cloudy– we pulled ourselves out of bed and headed over to nearby church. ramona had on her easter finest and there were so many other families, young and old, gathering to worship and proclaim: christ is risen! he is risen indeed! though we do not have a church of our own that we attend regularly, it felt good to slide into those pews and crack open the hymn book and sing praises on high with the congregation.
2. family brunch: swedish pancakes. my mother has a recipe that she has been making since as long as i can remember. my memories of rolling these paper thin pancakes into tubes after pouring some maple syrup on them is brought back when i see my niece and nephew do it themselves around my parents’ breakfast table — each weekend, when my brother’s children stay w my parents, they get swedish pancakes. so i did my best to make these sweet, light, eggy pancakes in my own kitchen and this attempt was met w success! ramona gobbled down half and refused our offers of adding maple syrup or peanut butter to them. i took that as a compliment since this girl would bathe in those condiments if she could. jp, requiring savory w his sweet, invented his own way to eat the cakes: rolling up ham and cheese inside. and i ate mine simply, with a tad of syrup.
3. easter egg hunt: every year my mother does an egg hunt for the little ones present at her easter lunches. as we got older, this hunt turned quite competitive — so much so she had to give us our own color of egg so we’d leave each other alone. this year, our closest friends came over with their little ones and baskets to “hunt” for the eggs i had “hid” around the yard. with four children under two this just meant convincing them to pick up the brightly colored plastic eggs strewn visibly about the yard and put them in their basket. the twins and little max rocked the house and filled up their baskets. mo? after successfully placing two or three eggs in her basket, that girl just wanted to sit and eat the one stray piece of candy she found. (without wikipedia-ing it, i have no idea where the tradition of easter eggs and hunts came from but i love it).
4. community supper: the thirteen adults sat down to a long table on our back patio with five babes playing musical laps. jp and i roasted lamb and others brought delicious dishes (asparagus, beets, orzo salad, garlic cauliflower, falafel, rolls with honey and salted butter, oh my!) and tasty beers and wines. after a prayer of thanks we feasted.
5. egg boxing: a tradition that jp’s family introduced me to. you take hard boiled eggs and smash them into another that another person is holding. one will break and one will stay intact. you go around to everyone smashing your egg into theirs (or holding your egg while they smash theirs into yours) and the last one with an intact egg is the winner! each time i think i’ve found a maneuver to win, i lose — my egg smashed so badly and pathetically. while the adults were getting into this, the little ones stripped down to their skivvies and started running around the yard in a sugar-induced crazy. a perfect end to a great day.
jp and i are truly blessed with an amazing community of friends here in denver that i have never experienced before in my past. it was an honor to sit down and break bread w them to celebrate the freedom in life and love christ gave to us through his sacrifice.
and now i leave you with some photos taken by my dear friend, lashley rhodes:
Hello A Denver Home Companion Readers! My name is Rebecca I’d like to send a big thank you to Emily for having me here today. I’d also like to congratulate Emily and Jonathan on the opening of their new restaurant – very exciting – well done guys!
This weekend marks the grand kick off to the holiday season and I’ve got gifts on the brain. My husband John and I call the first of December ‘Game On’ as in, let’s get the celebrating started. For the month of December we leave little treats around the house in unusual spots for each other. Picture me opening the refrigerator to find a new scented oil or opening the medicine cabinet to find a chocolate bar. In preparation for this tradition I put together a gift guide of things I am thinking of gifting John this year.
one :: two :: three :: four :: five :: six
thanks, rebecca! i’m making sure jp reads this bc i’d sure love to find little treats hidden throughout the house 
you’ve given me great ideas of things to hide for him.
also, rebecca makes some beautiful jewelry that’s on MY christmas wish list.
People like to tell you all the horror stories about having a baby, the sleepless nights, the crying, the spit up. But what they don’t mention is the wonderful sunrises you get to see when your baby suddenly becomes an early riser. I’ve certainly seen my fair share since the birth of my baby in February. The photo above looks out across my backyard and it is my favourite sunrise so far.
this post is a contribution from alli, an aussie lifestyle blogger over at The Girl in the PJs, and one of my sponsors. thanks for filling in for me, alli! that photo makes me miss springtime already.
Greetings A Denver Home Companion readers! Amanda here from The Petrichor filling in as “Emily” for the day.
I think it’s safe to say that autumn came and went. Here in Denver, we got to enjoy a little bit of a longer fall. I feel like the leaves were changing for over two months! It’s my favorite time of year, so I won’t complain.
As winter begins to settle in, I thought I would make a promise to myself to enjoy the outdoors more during the cold. The thing about living in Colorado is that we do get all four seasons. I’m originally from California so I need to take advantage of this. Winter is a wonderful time to go outside, sled, visit mountain towns, drink hot cocoa during a snow storm, and just sit and bask in the night glow reflecting off the snow.
To give myself an extra reminder this winter, I made myself a new desktop background to decorate my home and office computers. Hopefully this serves a little reminder to go outside and appreciate the season. You can download the wallpaper by saving the image to your desktop. Hopefully it’ll give you a little extra motivation.
i am not the only one who is busy with small business ventures. lovely readers, click through to see what is keeping amanda so busy these days: The Kin Collective (her design company that redid my blog!) and Our Mutual Friend Malt and Brew (just down the street from The Populist!)
thanks, amanda! that wallpaper is definitely what is on my mac’s background right now.
Hello, I’m McKenzie of Oliver and Abraham’s. My husband and I are part-time sheep farmers. I also draw, so with the slowing-down season this year, I decided to focus my energy on opening an Etsy shop to sell some of my art, and eventually, we’ll be able to offer handspun yarn from our sheep and alpacas.
Over the past couple months I’ve learned a lot about my own creative process, and I thought I’d share a little bit about it here. I would say the most important aspect of having the inspiration to draw lies in my surroundings. The view from my desk is full of sheep. Grazing sheep, sleeping sheep, thirsty sheep, headbutting sheep, humping sheep… From my window, I am always able to get a little dose of reality, no matter how wrapped up in my head I get.
When I start drawing, I rarely have a goal in mind. But when I do, I use pencil to sketch out the symmetry. I prefer diving right in with a .005 Micron pen though. Then I erase my pencil lines and start filling in with watercolor using these tiny brushes. I’ve had the same old watercolor paints for years now, but these seem to be pretty close. I usually mix the colors up on the side. Adding gray to any color gives it a softer look. I also recently discovered the most perfect 5″x7″ watercolor block. The nice thing about it is that there’s no grainy texture. That used to bother me a lot about other watercolor papers. It’s pure white and is glued together on all four sides. One corner is free so you can tear out the image when it’s dry. Because of the tightness of the paper to the pad, there’s no warping.
A lot of people have told me that using watercolors is hard. I guess in the sense that if you have no initial lines to define your image, it would be challenging to create them using only watercolors. But filling in Micron pen lines is relatively simple. It’s time consuming, but if you consider it a form of meditation it becomes addictive. You learn as you go. I remember the very first watercolor painting I did. I must have been three or four years old. I painted a cottage in the woods on a tiny square of paper. I remember being sofrustrated that the lines in my head were bleeding together on paper, but there must have been something appealing to me about the medium, otherwise I wouldn’t have picked it back up.
Today, I find it fun to experiment with color and texture. I also love to finish a painting with white India ink. It adds a much needed sense of dimension and brightness. You have to practice with it first though! It spreads really easily so you have to control your hand to the max. But don’t be afraid! Sometimes your mistakes can turn into the best part. In the birth announcement you see above, the flowers with the big black centers were a mistake. I opened up a pen and the ink came spurting out. At first, I was devastated (read: threw the pen across the room in a fury) since I’d spent the entire day working on it. I stepped away, came back to it calmly, and at second glance realized the dots had fallen among the leaves in a beautiful way. I think art should be embraced with the Japanese philosophy of “wabi-sabi.” Finding beauty in life’s imperfections…
Emily, thank you so much for having me over to your blog! I can’t wait to see your new restaurant grow! 
welcome
