Alaska Christmas

 

Davin got a Kindle Fire for Christmas in Alaska and the next day we hopped on a plane to visit our families and friends in Idaho and Washington. Travel photos to come.

Josh and Davin watch a movie on the iPad while waiting for our flight in the Anchorage airport.

And we shall name it Triceratree

We put our Christmas tree up Sunday. I have fond memories of driving to every tree lot in the greater Tri-City area as a child to find our perfect tallest, Charlie-Brown-y-est Christmas tree possible — only to return to the very first lot and buy the very first tree we saw. But since moving to Alaska there are not billions of tree lots on every corner. So we simply go to Home Depot, because it's cost effective.

This year our tree had three tops. So we appropriately named it Triceratree. One was taller in the beginning, but it had to be lopped to fit in our living room.

My sweet mom made us some very special hand-beaded ornaments this year, including the one above. The beaded wreath frames pictures from our wedding on both sides. She has a similar one from hers and my dad's wedding which makes it extra special.

 Triceratree in all her glory.

Davs and I made paper snowflakes out of coffee filters while watching Elf and the Christmas episode of "Glee."

3-D movie glasses are so much cooler than when I was a kid. Pop the lenses out for a fashion statement.

Snowy days

Davin played in the snow until it was dark yesterday. After a failed attempt to make a snowman on my part — snow wouldn't pack — I gave up and took pictures.

Golden Birthday: 28 on the 28th

We went to the Whale's Tale for wine and food Saturday to celebrate my birthday. This is the fabulous new wine bar in the bottom of the Captain Cook with wine vending machines. Yes, you read that right. SO fun. My husband gave me that awesome bedazzled birthday cup for the occasion.

 Crayons on every table. For the kid in all of us.

Oh goodness, scary eyes.

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas

I jumped the gun and started to put up Christmas decorations last Saturday. But I thought I would spare you the sight of them until today, the day after Thanksgiving. I love decorating for the holidays, especially in a new place. My dining room/kitchen area is already super colorful: An orange wall, orange, red and blue tiles in the kitchen, and bright tiles inset into the table, so I thought bright red and green might be a little jarring in that area. Instead I went with blue, gold and silver this year. 

 Upper shelf of the wine rack.

That pretty little genius was eating the gold berries on my garland moments earlier. This troubles me. Garlands hang in all my front windows this year.

My "pre-Thanksgiving" dinner table. We were visiting on Thanksgiving Day, so we had our special family dinner with a couple friends on Sunday. Those are handmade napkin holders: A spool of ribbon and leftover ornaments from the centerpiece.

Now when to get the tree?

I am thankful

I have a ton to be thankful for this year, so I'm bringing back the theme from my Thanksgiving post from last year and sharing a pictorial with a few of the things I'm thankful for. First and foremost, I'm thankful that I'm so lucky to wake up and roll out of bed to head 10 feet to work right here. I'm loving the freedom and fun of freelancing and the fact that I get to collaborate with some wonderful people keeping journalism alive and well in the 49th state.

I'm thankful I got the awesome opportunity to redesign a newspaper and take over as the visual editor as a huge part of my freelance business. I'm so excited to be a part of the Cordova team. That town loves it's local newspaper.

I am thankful that my husband got the awesome opportunity to get back into sommelier work. Not only for the plethora of wine on our wine rack, but to see him excelling in a field he's passionate about. He's be networking the Anchorage wine community for about 5 minutes and already we can't walk into a wine bar or fine-dining restaurant without a personal greeting from another sommelier or restaurant manager.

I'm thankful for my sweet little family for their love and support, even when I make them stand knee deep in snow and sweaters on a 15-degree day for Christmas card portraits!

I'm thankful for this lady, Meghan, for believing in me. Hiring me to shoot my first wedding and for starting Entrepreneur Alaska with me. We are having a blast with this project.

I'm thankful for this young man who brings so much joy, love, music and laughter to my home.

A whole new look for The Cordova Times

Today I am so pleased to share my latest project — a complete re-design of The Cordova Times. When the editor of The Cordova Times bought her own newspaper in August I shot her an email wishing good luck. But I never expected three months later I would be staying up all night putting the finishing touches on the re-launch of the newspaper complete with a new look.

In the process leading up to the redesign we talked a lot about the tight-knit community of Cordova and what it wanted out of it's newspaper. Even though it's a small weekly tab, we decided to create faux section fronts for Schools, Fisheries and Lifestyles. As well as a weekly standing doubletruck called Around Town. The whole paper is big on local content and big on advertising too, for a publication of it's scale. The community really stepped up and told the editor, "we want our paper to survive, how can we help." It re-invigorated my faith in the future of journalism. Local, local, local.

We did something unusual. There were companies in who care about Cordova's access to local news, but didn't necessarily have a huge stake in advertising their name in Cordova. And some who simply wanted to support the newspaper above and beyond their regular advertising commitment. So we offered "sponsorships" of sort. Yearlong advertising commitments that included logos directly tied to content like tide tables in the Fisheries section and Kid Corner in the Schools section. We tried to keep it strictly to somewhat neutral content.

We completely re-mixed the Classified with big headers, a splashy Photo of the Week and free listings under a certain word count — on a space available basis — for newspaper subscribers. The old Cordova Times commonly had no Classifieds at all on any given week, and often had only two or three listings.

I'm completely proud of this project and think it looks even better in print that on screen. What do you think?

Kern This: First Alaskans October-November edition

Check out what's new on Kern This Studio: Some of my favorite pages from the October-November edition of First Alaskans magazine. I'm so proud of this one because we pulled it off in a crazy short timeline after Calista decided to liquidate all it's publications. Then First Alaskans Institute swooped in and saved the magazine by purchasing it and putting together a kick-ass team to keep it going. Things are moving along on the next edition and I'm so thrilled to be a part of the action.

Also, it's T-Minus one week until the official RE-LAUNCH of The Cordova Times. We are hitting the streets next Friday with a fully re-designed newspaper. #ilovemyjob

New locks

I had all my hair chopped off today. Normally I wouldn't post such a thing, but it was a dramatic change. I've always kind of been a short-hair girl, but it's never been this pixie. What do you think?

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween. Davin did pretty well on his Trick-or-Treat adventure. He was a penguin, but people kept asking if he was an "Angry Bird." Sign of the times?

If you look back, you'll notice there was no snow when we carved our pumpkins just Thursday. That is no longer the case.

 Over the weekend we went to the Monster Ball at the Museum where our friend dee-jayed the event.

Can you guess what our costumes were?

And it begins

Just when we were all thinking Anchorage kids might be lucky enough to have a snow-free Trick-or-Treat this Halloween — this happened. Anchorage got it's first measurable snowfall last night. Goodbye green. Hello white for the next six months.

The cats didn't know what to make of this strange cold stuff.

 The pumpkins looked a little distraught too.

Carving pumpkins and roasting seeds

Halloween is Monday so it's pumpkin carving time. We drove all over town looking for the perfect pumpkins after early release from school today and ended up getting these beauties at the Carr's [Alaska's Safeway] down the street. Bell's Nursery, which advertised a pumpkin patch on the radio only had discounted, tiny, Charlie Brown pumpkins left.

The ones at Carr's were huge and of course Davin wanted the one at the bottom of the crate. So we rearranged nearly every pumpkin in the stack to get to it.

Above, the victims before carving.

We also toasted pumpkin seeds, at batch of sweet and a batch of savory. The savory were coated in olive oil, garlic salt and cayenne pepper. The sweet were coated in olive oil, cinnamon, nutmeg, savory and a spoonful of brown sugar. Just spread on a baking sheet at pop in the oven at 400 for 20-30 minutes. If you do sweet, watch that sugar, it will burn if you don't pay attention.

Happy Halloween.