Favorite Homemade Mac & Cheese

Alton Brown's Baked Mac and Cheese

When you find a great Mac and Cheese recipe, you stick with it! I've been using this Alton Brown recipe for a while now. The best part about this recipe is that you can make some modifications and play around with it. For example, I always add ham and the spice turmeric to give it a deeper yellow color and enhance the dish's cancer fighting qualities. Learn about the benefits of turmeric here. I've also tried the recipe with the onions and mostly choose to omit them. I find the flavor to be too overpowering in this dish.

If you've never made a roux before, this recipe was probably my first introduction to it. Just go slow and make sure the heat isn't too high. You'll do just fine!

You can find a link to the recipe here.

But here's the gist of it:

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 tablespoon powdered mustard
• 3 cups milk
• 1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 large egg
• 12 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh black pepper

Topping:

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and mustard and keep it moving for about five minutes. Make sure it's free of lumps. Stir in the milk, onion, bay leaf, and paprika. Simmer for ten minutes and remove the bay leaf.

Temper in the egg. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Fold the macaroni into the mix and pour into a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with remaining cheese.

Melt the butter in a saute pan and toss the bread crumbs to coat. Top the macaroni with the bread crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and rest for five minutes before serving.

Remember to save leftovers for fried Macaroni and Cheese.

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Will Always Remind Me of Home

Taken with Instagram, Day After Thanksgiving 2011

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DIY Brick Fire Pit in One Weekend

Here is a consolidated post for our DIY Brick Fire Pit. To be fair, you'll probably need a "3 Day Weekend", unless you are able to avoid some of the pitfalls we experienced! Another tip, make sure you seek out your materials ahead of time. Please message me if you have any questions! Hope this can help!

Day One Post

Day Two Post

Day Three Post

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Customizable Valentine's Day

Even though we've just packed up the Christmas Tree (ok, that's next on the list), it's time to think about how to make Valentine's Day really special for your amour. My husband and I have a tradition to not fall for the typical Valentine's Day hype, mainly, our philosophy is to do something special and thoughtful, but it shouldn't be expensive. Here's a way you can tell the story of your love, recall the things and places that are meaningful to you, and stroll down memory lane through art. ReStudios offers word art of various geographic locations, landmarks, and more that you can customize with your own colors and words. See more here.

My sister at ReStudios was kind enough to give my readers 20% off the price of a print for Valentine's Day with code NYC20. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

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2011 Projects in Review

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Handmade Holiday Gift Guide

1 /Black Dog Mistletoe Company $140
Gemini Studio Art

2 /Santa Owl Plush $62
Hibou Designs

3 /Joyeux Noel Banner with Snowflakes $13.75
5280bliss


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Buy Handmade This Holiday Season!

The only problem with Thursday night's Etsy + West Elm event was that I wanted to buy way more than we were selling thanks to the other talented Etsy shops present. Here are a few items I spotted while I was there. You can visit the seller's Etsy shop for your own shopping pleasure!

I couldn't get over how real Aubrey's soaps look and how yummy they smell! Here are a few favorites, although there are plenty more inspiring treats in her shop. Remember, 0 calories!

Aubrey Elizabeth Apothecary

1 /Macaroon Soaps
http://www.etsy.com/listing/81511385/french-macaron-soaps-2-macaroons-55-oz

2 /Cinnamon Bun Soaps
http://www.etsy.com/listing/81491496/cinnamon-bun-soaps-2-buns-4-oz-of

3 /Popsicle Neopolitan Soaps
http://www.etsy.com/listing/78096707/popsicle-neapolitan-soapsicle-seconds



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Etsy + West Elm Handmade Holiday Workshop

Last night I attended the Etsy + West Elm Handmade Holiday Workshop at the Burlington West Elm (just outside of Boston, MA). What a great event! My sister's Etsy shop, ReStudios, was invited to attend the event and able to sell prints from the shop. Since she's currently living in New York, I was happy to attend the event in her place.

I love the partnership between West Elm and Etsy and first noticed when West Elm began to feature some Etsy sellers in their catalogs. A few brands humanize and localize their presence well and I think West Elm does a great job of this in the home decor field, as Whole Foods does with community events in their markets. This latest extension of the partnership included a Mini-Market so West Elm shoppers could also check out unique handmade items from Etsy sellers in the store's local market, while also tying in a charitable component, with gifts and a tree being donated to a local charity called Little Wanderers. Shoppers (as well as my husband, who came out to help for the evening) were even encouraged to get crafty and create origami ornaments that decorated the tree that would be donated to Little Wanderers.

Here's a look at the ReStudios set up. Many fans of the Fenway print, although that was to be expected considering the market!

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Oh Halloween.

Ohhh Halloween! This Halloween has been ridiculous. Ok ok so maybe it was just the weekend. We didn’t get much snow but we did get a lot of wind and literally, a hardy sneeze in Norton is enough to knock the power out- so there we were powerless from Saturday night until ---Monday a.m. A few towns over (and certainly in Western MA/CT) did get quite a bit of snow... as you can see here.

Merry Halloween!

Love, The Carriers

On top of it, a woodpecker has made it his mission to peck itself into our bedroom so we now have to find a woodpecker exterminator and someone to plug the decent size hole he has pecked into the side of our house. Now, I didn’t stay at home last night because we had no power but I’m fully expecting to find this thing lounging in my bed reading magazines when I return tonight. Unless the cat got it first and then it’s a win-win for the Carriers/Fifi.


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The Fire Pit Project [Day 3]

By Day Three we were ready to be done with the Fire Pit Project. We really thought we were in for a quick and easy day. Just the top left!

While Day Three wasn't nearly as challenging as Day Two (at least we didn't need to make any trips to pick up supplies), the top did take us much longer than we anticipated. 

One. last. brick. to. go.

Done!

Once the mortar had a few days to dry it looks much lighter. You'll also still see the hang brick supports... we took those out after 3 days to ensure that the mortar was completely dry.

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The Fire Pit Project [Day 2]

On Day Two we woke up with a little less skip in our step, but were ready to tackle masonry for the first time. The first thing we did was to layout the fire brick on top of our now dry concrete ring.

 Here we weren't quite pleased because we realized that our Masonry Supply Company shorted us a few fire bricks. Then we realized that the masonry cement that they sold us required 4 bags of sand to mix each bag with. Wait. FOUR bags per bag! At this point we realized that this would be enough cement to construct a brick house and made our way back to Home Depot.

Ahhh, that's better. Manageable Quikrete (the bags are still heavy though!) and a few make shift fire bricks for the overhang sections. Not ideal, so really try to get the correct amount of fire brick in the first place.

With supplies on hand, we finally got to get down to business. The refractory cementing was actually pretty easy. In the instructions, the consistency of this product was described as "peanut butter-like" and it was! It was smooth and easy to spread on the concrete ring and the sides of the brick. It was a little trickier to get the cement between the bricks, but nothing compared to our experience with the mortar.

 Next up, time to mix some mortar and get cementing. I have to admit that I though this would be the most enjoyable part of our project.. Matt and I mixed our Quikrete and buttered up a brick. The second I tilted that brick to get it into place- all of the mortar slid right off into the pit. Damn! I tried it again with nearly the same results. At this point we realized the the consistency of the mortar wasn't quite right so we added some water. Ahhh, much better! Still not as easy as it looks, working with mortar and bricks went more smoothly once the consistency of the mortar was workable.

 Around and around we went, hours later we finally finished. What you can't see here is that by the time we were laying the last few bricks, the mosquitos in our backyard went on a rampage and tortured us in the precious moments we were 1. trying to finish the last overhand (not an easy task) and 2. losing daylight by the second!

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