Our Picture-A-Day Habit

WOO HOOO!!! We did it! From August 23, 2008 to August 22, 2009 we took a picture every day and posted it into Flickr. What we’ve been left with is the easiest-to-maintain diary of a year we could ever hope for. As you’ve probably noticed from reading IPB, Gentle Reader, we [...]

25 Days Of Maple Hoo Christmas: Day 1

We are so excited to finally have a really nice camera, with really nice lenses and a moderate grasp on how to use all of them here during the holiday season. As handcrafters and nostalgia-freaks, there’s nothing we love more than all the little decorations and things we’ve made and collected throughout our lives [...]

A Brave New World Of Hot Chocolate

We are huge fans of hot chocolate here at Maple Hoo. Specifically Williams-Sonoma’s peppermint hot chocolate at the holidays, adorned with our own homemade marshmallows. Of course, the peppermint hot chocolate is really only available for eight weeks a year (and we try to be good and limit our consumption of it to [...]

Restocking The Stash: On The Road With IPB Living, Chapter 2

Day Two of our stash-restocking adventure dawned bright and early, around 11:30 in the morning. Yes, that’s 2:30 in the afternoon back home, but back home can suck it. We hit the ground running, lolling around in our pajamas and stitching for about an hour, then headed out into the blinding desert heat [...]

Restocking The Stash: On The Road With IPB Living, Chapter 1

Today was the big day — time to hit the road for our “Restocking The Stash” trip out to The Attic in Arizona! After several weeks of giddy anticipation, we were in a full-on state of high-level pommerdoodling when this morning finally rolled around. All that stood between us and our carefully mapped [...]

Unicorn Kisses, Or Adventures In Cookie Baking

To celebrate that the final piece of the Unicorn Kitchen was put into place on Friday morning — only 14 months after the actual work on the project started — we decided to make something special. Something special that could also serve to kick-off a new series that we’re very excited about here at [...]

4th Of July? Guess It’s Time For BBQ

Here at Maple Hoo we’re not much for making a big deal of holidays. Even our Christmas celebration isn’t normally much more than putting out tons of handmade decorations and opening presents. I kind of have one level of cooking in me: everyday. I think I do a good job of making [...]

A Very Boomer Lunch

Today we had a barbecue lunch for Boomer, and then picnicked on the deck while she opened her Boomer Day presents.

While the presents were really the main course, we were also a bit interested in the food. I decided to give a new recipe (for me) a try: Grilled Chicken with Tamarind-Orange Glaze. [...]

Happy Boomer Day!

Mother’s Day means we pull out all the stops for Boomer, and “pulling out all the stops” means a fancy-schmancy cake from Chez Alice in Princeton.

Boomer selected the “Pink Passion”, which is layers of sponge cake with passion fruit and raspberry mousses. This is kind of an adventurous choice for us, but the rationale [...]