Hope you all had a great relaxing holiday weekend. Back to work already though, huh? It can be quite a drag coming off of the holiday highs, but I guess that is one good thing about working for yourself – the transition from days off to days on is a wee bit kinder.

Mark’s got a killer week coming up though with holiday orders starting to come in and a big show to get ready for on Sunday. He’ll be at the Bust Craftacular which has over 200 vendors and is supposed to be quite a busy event. I’ll see if I can break away from the kids to come down for a few hours, but I’ve got my own deadlines to deal with and have been working non-stop through the holiday. Seriously. I’ve totally plowed though my 2 projects (with a 3rd to start tomorrow) like a freaking rockstar while most of America shopped and ate turkey, just to prevent my upcoming week from resembling hell. All this while trying to fend off the same cough that the girls are still suffering from. I feel like I won some kind of lottery when the heavy feeling in my chest from yesterday just sort of dissipated today (hope it’s not a fluke). Plus it was near 60 degrees again in NYC.

But have you ever had days with relapses and start to second guess the decisions you’ve made? Something seemingly innocent could trigger it, like maybe you came across a snippet of news about someone you know and your mind starts wandering after being curious about what so-and-so was up to, and then you find yourself at the edge of the “what ifs”. I was never a corporate ladder climber, nor did I ever have any real interest in being some kind of big boss lady at an agency, but every once in a while I’ll come across something that will compel me to compare my career choices with that of other people. I suppose it’s human nature to be competitive, and lord knows I can be really competitive, but what’s with being envious of something that I have no interest in being in the first place, particularly in light of recent decisions to shed any semblance of corporate life that I even have? Bizarre.

Update: Spoke too soon. I AM sick. Nauseousness and heaviness in the chest. What is this? This doesn’t bode well for the week.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. It really is my favorite holiday since it is the most food-centric of them all. Still, I have not yet cooked a real Thanksgiving meal myself in many years and this year was no different. I felt I needed to make some kind of a contribution in the kitchen so I made my pumpkin pie and also some braised red cabbage and roasted mushrooms.

A few days ago I saw these absolutely perfect quince at a farmer’s market. For those of you who don’t know, quince is my favorite Fall fruit which is saying a lot as Fall also brings persimmons, pomegranates and kumquats. The only downside to them is that they need just a bit of help to get their wonderful flavor out (that, and also the bumpy ones can be a serious pain to peel). I usually choose to poach them with just a few spices and lemon. A good quince has an almost tropical aroma and a golden yellow color, complete with the little fuzzy bits on the skin that lets you know that you’ve found a good one. The flavor is a combination of a perfectly ripe apple, pear and pineapple all mixed up in one. When properly cooked, the flesh of the quince will darken and turn into a nice shade of pinkish orangey-brown and you can eat them like you would a poached pear. This year I tried something different and made an upside-down cake. Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!

Quince Upside-down Cake (makes one 9-inch cake)

Poached Quince:
3 medium quinces
4 cups water
1-1/3 cups sugar
1 cinnamon stick
6 pieces of star anise
6 whole cloves
1 lemon, thickly sliced

Topping:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter

Cake:
2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup sugar, divided
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 eggs, separated
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon cider vinegar
juice of one lemon

First, poach the quince. Peel each quince and cut them into quarters. Cut out the seeds from each piece. Meanwhile, bring the water, sugar, spices and lemon to a boil. Add the quince, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer the quince until they have darkened several shades to a deep pink or red. Remove from the cooking liquid and set aside.

Now prepare the topping. Butter the sides of a 9-inch cake pan generously. Melt the butter in a small skillet. Whisk in the brown sugar and continue to cook for about 30 seconds. Pour into the bottom of the prepared cake pan and set aside to cool for a few minutes. Now, slice the cooked quince into 1/4-inch slices and arrange decoratively in concentric circles on top of the brown sugar topping. Make sure to cover the entire pan.

Now prepare the cake batter. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking soda and baking powder together in a bowl. Beat in the egg yolks, oil, lemon juice and vinegar. Beat the egg whites separately with the remaining 1/3 cup sugar until they hold soft peaks. Fold a small amount of the whipped egg whites into the flour mixture to soften it, then fold in the remaining whites. Pour into the cake pan over the quince. Bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, or until the center of the cake has risen and feels noticeably firm to the touch. This is a very soft batter and it is important to cook it completely. Cool the cake for 30 minutes or so, to give the topping a chance to solidify a bit. Run a small knife around the edge of the cake so that it doesn’t stick to the pan. Now, carefully flip it over onto a serving plate big enough to hold it comfortably. Slice and serve whenever you are ready.

Thanksgiving is sort of funny at our house. You’d think there’d be the traditional Thanksgiving spread in all its American glory, but turkey is usually just an afterthought. Yes, we did have turkey, but it never made it to the table, hence the missing bird in the photos. It usually goes straight from the oven to the kitchen counter where it gets shredded and put on a platter – there is no formal carving of the bird in a sit-down ceremony (and crap, I now realize we forgot the canned cranberry sauce. We never forget the can!). And if you must know the truth, in the last couple of years, the turkey plus trimmings has been catered in from restaurants. Shocking, huh?

I’m sure now that Mark doesn’t have to work holidays anymore he’d love to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal one year. This is only the 2nd Thanksgiving he’s had off as he’s worked ever major holiday, including Christmas, at his old restaurant job for 5 years (yeah, if you’ve been reading this blog long enough you’ve heard me complain about how much holidays majorly sucked for that reason). But still, there was plenty of other cooking to be had in the kitchen today including 2 desserts, a sort of novelty these days since Mark has had no time for “recreational” baking.

All in all, it was a relaxing day. I got in a full day’s of work, but it was not stressful since much of it was done on the couch with the kids watching the Macys Thanksgiving parade and during the time my dad took the girls to the playground. We took an afternoon family walk and then ate ourselves silly.

And what does a ridiculously picky kid like Claudine eat on Thanksgiving? She had 3 giant slices of Asian pear, an orange juice and a donut. It was similar to her Thanksgiving meal last year. What can you do? At least she miraculously ate some swiss chard this week which was probably the first vegetable her stomach has seen in weeks, maybe even months. Sad, but for that…I am thankful.

It’s what the neighborhood is these past few weekends. Gorgeous weather and even warm enough to sit outside for brunch. We’ve got 3 spots on each corner at the end of our block with either a restaurant or bar with outdoor seating. The 4th corner has a small farmers market on Sundays, usually with live music, lining the fence along the east end of the playground. Needless to say, our little corner of the neighborhood is bustling with activity on the weekends.

Tomorrow is thanksgiving. Do you have any special plans?

We’ll be going to my mom’s where Mark will get a chance to rest up for a few rare days before dealing with holiday stuff upon our return (he’s been averaging only 1-2 truly full days off a month). I’ll be taking advantage of the extra child care and cramming as much work in as I can. I’ve taken the habit of stepping back every so often and surveying the things we’ve got going on. We work hard and it’s a hectic life, but we have so much to be thankful for. Never take anything for granted. Ever.

Yup, that’s me. I just got SLAAAMMED with work yesterday. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t think it was all going to happen on the SAME DAY, gah. This means I’ll be working through the holiday weekend, including Thanksgiving Day just to get my head above water with all 3 projects. While the schedule and deadlines look kind of impossible from where I’m standing right now, in the end I always seem to find a way of pulling out extra hours in the day to get it all done. I’ll find a way.

On the W&S side of things, the holiday season this year will be a bit different than last. We only worked on large corporate gift orders last year and shut down our websites the first week in December because we couldn’t handle anything else on top of the volumes of gift orders. Last year was insane and not so fun. But this resulted in quite a few people emailing us this month wondering if we were going to shut down again. Fear not, fervent cookie lovers, for we will remain open to the public for business! We decided to focus less on corporate gifts this year because frankly, if we shut our shops again for a 2nd year, nobody would ever come to rely on us for holiday gifts and we’d forever be branded as “that shop that closes down during the holidays”, oh no!

And so here we are, at the cusp of another holiday season. We’re not really sure what kind of ordering madness we’ll face after Thanksgiving (busy, I hope, but maybe, just maybe it won’t be so crazy). We had a good idea going into Thanksgiving last year, but this holiday is still unknown at this point. And so, in the spirit of being screwed for the next 4 weeks, here are a few more spiraly vines:

As long as we don’t get tangled up in an unforgiving knot like this vine, we *should* be fine.

So how do you take a good looking kid who I think usually photographs reasonably well primarily because she lives with a camera-happy mother who is constantly shoving a camera up to her face, and turn her into this:

Mia’s first official class photo ever makes her look like a pilgrim-haired boy from the 70s. OK, now don’t get me wrong, because on some level I really do love this photo. Seems like no matter what generation, what year it is, class photos look the same. HOW DO THEY DO IT? Is it the flat blue background (I had a choice of abstract pastel rainbow but I didn’t want to go there)? Is it the exaggerated forced smile? The slightly crazed look in her eyes? The angle of the head? Do the photographers have some kind of magic “school portrait” setting and filter passed down from other generations of school photographers, a secret so guarded that I’d never be able to duplicate it? What?

So yeah…is this the best photo of Mia? Oh, hell no. But am I disappointed? Absolutely not. It’s just a nice reassurance that some things never change.

Class portraits: embarrassing peeps on Facebook since the late-2000s.

Crazy. 2 years down. This weekend is the last weekend of the outdoor Flea season and it’s hard to believe that another year is over. Mark was at the Fort Greene location yesterday on one of the most gorgeous Fall days of the year, and we’re happy to say that we sold out of just about everything, with our Hot Spiced Organic Apple Cider going first and the Pumpkin Ginger Sandwiches selling out soon after. The Brooklyn Flea and Flea organizer Eric Demby will always have a special place in our hearts as many of you know that it’s where we publicly launched our business back in April of last year. Eric has been a great champion of small businesses and we’re always blown away at his press-savvy ways, his ability to organize a huge number vendors to ensure that the Flea is smooth running, and his support of all Flea vendors. It’s quite admirable.

You may recall that I mentioned that a special guest was filming at the Dumbo Flea location last month. It was indeed Martha Stewart and we were all invited to that taping a few weeks ago. The whole show was on Brooklyn, with the Flea being a segment, and while Martha didn’t have time to cover all the food vendors, we did get a nice closeup of our Pumpkin Cookies and we were shown on TV as part of the studio audience. Can you spot us? You can watch the entire episode here.

The Flea has since grown into 2 outdoor locations and this year, a full fledged indoor holiday market called Gifted will be open daily from Black Friday (November 27th) to Christmas Eve in a Manhattan location (a first) – E. 4th street and Lafayette in the East Village. Should be interesting. We’ll be heading into our busy holiday shipping season right after Thanksgiving and so we’ll be at Gifted the last week, December 21-24 after we push out the last of our orders. This means that we’ll be wrapping up our holiday business a full 5 days later than last year, but we can’t NOT be at the Flea! Even if it means a few more sleepless nights to make enough products to stock the booth 4 straight days (a first for us – we’ll see how that goes) we love the Flea! We wouldn’t miss it and we hope to see some of you there!

It’s hard to be all pissy on life when we are having THE most perfect stretch of Fall weather ever! Seriously, does it get any better than this? Mild enough so at times you don’t even need a coat, the golden daylight hours almost makes up for the darkness that creeps up on you at 5.

For some reason the girls have been getting up pretty early these days. Not the kind of early that makes you curse at the world and wonder what you did in a past life to deserve such unfairness (I spent 2 yrs doing that as Mia woke up daily at the ungodly hour of 5-5:30 am when she was a toddler), but early enough. This morning, however, I briefly woke up while it was still dark out, but heard laughing and toys being knocked around the floor. I glanced at the clock: 5:52. Holy hell. What were they doing to us – I mean we had both just gone to bed 4 hours earlier. I tried to ignore the sounds of activity in their room and went back to sleep.

When you become a parent, you learn to sleep with one ear open. Maybe it’s a learned behavior that comes from night feedings when you become so attuned to your sleeping baby that any little whimper, squeak or grunt wakes you up, no matter how quiet. I distinctly remember drifting in and out of sleep for the next hour and a half, catching snippets of conversation from the girls here and there: something about breakfast…and peanut butter.

When we finally woke up an hour and a half later (“Daddy, can you wake up?”), we emerged into the kitchen to find the dining room table littered with the remains of breakfast – an empty yogurt container, a loaf of bread left open, 2 cups of water, some plates, a jar of jam and peanut butter, and a whole lot of crumbs. Well folks, seems as if we’ve finally arrived. For the most part, the girls have been keeping to their rooms in the morning the past few months, playing with their toys until Mia sends Claudine in to see if we’re awake (“Miaaaa, Daddy says 5 more minutes”), but this was the first time that they fixed themselves breakfast. “It’s so that you can get more sleep”, saids Mia. “I know you’re still tired”. Thanks, kid.

No matter what you decide to share with the world, there are countless other people going through the same thing as you. You can count on that. So now what do we do? It’s not like I have a plan or an idea – just a desire. You know, I wish there was 1 thing I was really good at or something that occupied a life-long obsession, but I tend to be all over the place. I always have. I remember as an art student at the Cooper Union, meeting this guy a few years above me who had a whole sketchbook filled with drawings of Grover. It was a little bizarre, yes, but so utterly fascinating. I always envied those people who had laser sharp focus and an unwavering vision. Hard to believe that after all those years of art school, a music degree and a graduate degree I’m still searching.

But I should take a lesson from the pages of our own experience building a business from scratch. W&S came about in a way that is so unlike the way I normally operate. It was lightning fast – we didn’t have time to think much or second guess any of our decisions, from product to packaging. We did little market research and aside from feedback from 1 friend, didn’t even take our cookies or marshmallows for a private taste test. We sprinted from the start line and didn’t stop to look until our first official sale. AND we did it in less than 2 months – the business was registered, papers filed, identity designed and printed, photos taken, website up and ready to launch with 8 products that we felt good about, all in less than 60 days. But, when it comes to “my stuff” I tend to belabor over everything endlessly. So why, WHY is it so hard to figure out a way to do this again?

I’ve gotten emails from some of you asking how we started. My advice? Once you have an idea and a plan, don’t over think. If you think too much you start over analyzing and that’s when doubt seeps in. We have our cards stacked up against us already (statistically a great percentage of businesses don’t survive past 2 years), so we don’t need to add ourselves to the fray of doubters and negativity. Just do it and go, even if you think it’s crazy. If you feel scared out of your mind, but find the whole process thrilling and it makes you feel alive, then you know you’re onto something. You can chew on that. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here mulling things over. Ideas, I have. Ideas that make money? Hmmm…this is gonna be a long ride.

There’s something going around. No, not an illness, though there is some of that too as the girls have been coughing incessantly and it doesn’t seem to be going away. I’m talking about a slight shift or maybe even the start of something bigger for people like me, of this age, in a similar situation who is feeling a desperate need to change their careers and lives. You’ve heard me express my general feelings of indifference towards graphic design which has been my “career”, but while I’ve often had passing thoughts about breaking away from client-based design work, I have never felt the pull so strong as I have in the last few months. I’m not exactly sure what flipped the switch (and that is exactly what it feels like), but I’ve been having the same conversations with other people who are experiencing something similar.

Is this what an early mid-life crises is (or am I already there? yikes!)? I don’t know, but the friends that I’ve talked with all happen to be around the same age. When you think about it, 15 years is a long time to do something that you’ve fallen out of love with (or that you never completely loved in the first place). Projects are different, clients are different, but in the end, the design process is the same. I don’t feel excitement or inspiration when I start a new project. I mostly see the stress of deadlines, creative struggles, client critiques and rejection, and general boredom. Pretty bad.

I was taken by this article which I read yesterday, about a successful graphic design firm that decided to close its doors after 20 years in the biz, not because of the downturn in the economy, but because the 2 principles had lost passion for the business and started to dread coming into work. I respect those who recognize when it’s time for a change and actually have the courage to work towards that goal. And so, my friends, in the upcoming new year, I will attempt the same. I have no idea (really, NO idea) what it is that I’m attempting to transition to (that would help, huh?), but in a way, I feel as if I have little choice if we’re talking about happiness here. The industry might be changing too. There are more and more stock design sites and templated website services popping up and it’s hard to compete with them for small business pitches (Check out Point 3 on this site). And so what is left? Agency work? But it’s also hard to compete with the many hungry and talented young designers who are willing and can work for much less than someone more experienced. Part of my desire to transition out of design work is that I don’t enjoy it anymore. It’s enough. The other part is that I want to get out before it pushes *me* out. In many industries, age matters. I think that is in part, what happened to Mark when he got laid off from his new job of 3 months way back in February last year before we started this whole adventure. His replacement was younger, unmarried, without children and Mark had to train her before he left. Whether you knew this or not, the restaurant industry is also a young industry. Mark was often one of the oldest in the kitchen and we’re not even that old so we’ve been through all this before. We made that push and now Mark is on the other side.

But you may be asking…you already have…a business? Yes, but we started W&S so that Mark could be employed while unemployed and while it is most definitely a collaboration of both our skills, Mark is the baker. That’s the product. One thing I have always talked about is expanding the brand to include products I can design. This is one possibility. I’ve been talking with a few friends about other ideas. I don’t know where that will take me, but it gets the mind working. There will be challenges, of course. I still need to work and I still need to support the family, but my mind is more at ease as we move into our 3rd year of business next April (O.M.G.). What does this all mean?? I don’t know what it means, but all I know is that I need to figure it out, even if it means a slow transition out. I can’t not work and I don’t have the luxury of time or money, but as always, I’ll document whatever happens, here. Funny how the blog started as we launched one business, maybe it will continue as we launch another. Or not. SO confusing!!

I’ll leave you with this: the trailer for Lemonade (thanks martha!), the documentary about former ad professionals who were laid off in this recession. Interesting conversations follow in the comments, but I’ve pulled one out from the filmmaker that I feel describes our situation to a tee last year:

“Those in the film who started their own business did so because starting their own business was the only option. This isn’t about silver spooned-advertising brats with nothing better to do with their money. This is about people who found the balls to pursue their dreams out of necessity.”

And this, which I feel somewhat describes me now:

“I’ve been in “the biz” for 20 years. And for the past? 19+ years, I’ve sat around with co-workers trying to figure out what else we can do. During the last big down turn, a ton of friends became teachers. I’m now (of my own accord) a freelancer but still search for life outside of adverteasing. I always said I needed to make the change by the time I turned 40…”

Work hard, people. But there is no reason why we need to be unhappy in what we do. I hear Tim Gunn in my head a lot these days. “Make it work”, “Go go go!”.