Home Again.

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Joy

The vacation is over and I am back in cold,snow-covered Massachusetts. Though traveling in a snow storm is not my idea of a good time, I was happy to come home to this beautiful view outside my window.

Home to snow in the Fire Pit!

I actually don’t mind the cold and the snow. Dressed properly, running outside can be invigorating. Skiing is one of my favorite sports. And any outdoors activity is a prelude to a warm mug of tea or hot chocolate. Also, I have read that your body burns more calories while exercising in the cold, so it is great for those January weight loss resolutions. I myself never make them. Weight loss seems to be more of a year round endeavor for me and I like to focus on resolutions that are more fun to stick to, like reading more books, taking more yoga classes and baking more brownies (not really, though it sounds good!). And I have also resolved to blog more often in the new year. It is one of the most fun parts of my work as owner of Fancyfirepit.com so why not do more of it??

Happy New Year! Joy

Fantasy Island!

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Joy

Whenever I travel, I look around and think, “now here is a good place for a fire pit”. I don’t worry too much about the logistics of actually getting a Fancy Fire Pit to said location, that would ruin the fantasy. I am currently on a small island off of Puerto Rico called Vieques. This is a place where they have trouble getting planes to land on time and one cannot dependably find a banana or a lime in the little local grocery. Needless to say, shipping a fire pit here would be difficult at best. And yet, it is so beautiful and has lovely warm days and breezy nights.

The perfect spot for a Fancy Fire Pit!

There is very little to do here save go to the beach during the day and drink rum punch at night. Which makes it a perfect place for a fire pit- can we say evening activity!

If you don’t care for rum punch and would like to get into the holiday spirit, they have an island version of eggnog which is rich, delicious and very strong. It is called Coquito and is made with coconut milk and lots of rum.

Recipe for Coquito. A little glass of this stuff goes a long way!

For a Caribbean Christmas celebration, serve chilled Coquito and some toasted coconut shortbread. Even if it is cold and snowy outside, you will be warm inside!

Happy Holidays, Joy

Baking Queen

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Joy

For many, the holiday season means hours spent shopping and mountains of gifts to be purchased, wrapped and hidden and hopefully a few wonderful things to open themselves. For me, I do some shopping and wrapping, albeit on a fairly small scale. But mostly what I do is bake. Each year I bake dozens of small cakes and cookies to pile into baskets for my husband’s best customers and then I bake more cakes to cookies to give to friends and family. I even used to bake for my kids’ teachers but they are now in high school and that would definately not be cool. This past weekend was my big baking bonanza and my kitchen is still coated in a fine dusting of sugar and flour.

Work in progress

Almost finished!

Now that everything in this first round is neatly packaged and off for delivery, all that is left to do is clean my kitchen. And just a little more baking, cookie swap this week! One thing I appreciate about making all these cakes and cookies is that I seem to have lost interest in eating them. Maybe if someone else makes a tart little lemon square it will taste delicious but for now, bring on the pretzels and salt!

Here’s to a sweet holiday season, Joy

Christmas is Coming!

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Joy

I am sure I don’t need to tell anyone what is patently obvious- from the songs on the radio to the frantic emails from every store under the sun, and the garden shops filled with tightly wrapped trees and holiday wreaths. Christmas is coming! I myself will be joining in the fun by lighting a Fancy Fire Pit at Windy-Lo Nursery in Natick and lighting two Fancy Fire Pits to serve up s’mores at the Marion Christmas Stroll. And though it is certainly not a stocking stuffer, a fire pit makes a fabulously original gift! If you celebrate Hanukkah, like I do, it gets into the whole Festival of Lights theme. Give your family a fire pit on the first night of Hanukkah and light a fire in it for the remaining seven nights, so you can enjoy the fire while feasting on sufganiyot or latkes! Every year I pull out a couple of recipes for sufganiyot, which are jelly doughnuts, but I have never actually made them. Maybe this is the year, though I would prefer mine stuffed with chocolate ganache, like a Hanukkah pain au chocolate. Either jelly-filed or chocolate, a homemade doughnut and a cup of tea would make a lovely treat after a long day of shopping. Happy Holidays, Joy

Don't these look delicious!

Vegetable Love!

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Joy

I just picked up my CSA share at the local organic farm. The colors and variety of vegetables were so beautiful that I had to arrange them on my counter and take a picture. It is not exactly Cezanne but lovely, just the same.

Vegetable Love

Now I have to figure out what to do with this bounty. A beet salad will make a fresh, healthy dish for the Thanksgiving feast, one down! Squash soups are delicious and keep for a few days, two down. I don’t even want to cook that purple cauliflower, it is so lovely raw, so maybe a big crunchy salad, that makes three! There are apples and cranberries, and crisp is a favorite in my family, five vegetables cooked and eaten! The rest will have to wait until after Thanksgiving, though I am tempted to turn the pumpkin into pie instead of relying on canned puree. And that will be my week, like so many others. My chicks will be home and I will be cooking and eating and giving thanks for the bounty on my plate and in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving! Joy

Snowy Day, Rainy Night

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Joy

I made the monumental mistake of spending last Wednesday on the road, driving from coastal Massachusetts , where I live, to the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. I had no expectaion of anything other than rain or maybe some wet snow and boy was I surprised to drive into a blizzard. One minute it was raining and a little blustery and then next, there was an inch of snow on the roads and traffic was crawling along. It was a very long day spent listening to books on tape in my car.

Snow covered trees in Connecticut!

I did have lots of time to think and plan. I neglected to pack any car snacks and was starving so mostly I thought about food and dinner parties. I love to plan and throw parties of all kinds. When my children were small, I loved doing their birthday parties. One year, clearly suffering from post partem brain freeze, I baked and decorated huge doll shaped cookies as party favors and attached a cookie cutter in the shape of each child’s first initial. Plus, I ignored the very good rule of one guest for each year of your child’s life. That would have made 4 guests but I think there were more like 15.

Thankfully, my children are much bigger now and have no interest in the kind of party I might plan for them. They do have some interest in the adult parties I plan, but I digress! I am hoping the weather will hold for another week or so by which mean brisk and cool but not cold and snowy! If it does, I will have drinks and snacks around the Fire Pit before we move inside to dinner. The pile of leeks from the CSA will be turned into little fritters served with creme fraiche and the winter squashes will be roasted and stirred into a warming risotto served in smallish bowls or maybe even coffee cups. And sticky toffee pudding with a side of softly whipped cream will make a delicious dessert. Thanksgiving is next week!! I can hardly believe it and I can’t wait to make (and eat) turkey!

Happy Fall, Joy

Nature’s Flame

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Joy

The leaves are flame colored and the harbor is slowly emptying of boats. It is that time of year. As much as I love the autumn with its changing leaves, cool temperatures and bright blue skies, it can get to be a little over the top. Apple picking is fine as long as it is followed by apple pie baking, but I can live without pumpkin donuts, pumpkin lattes, fake leaves decorating the tabletops and all that orange and brown. I spent last weekend with my brother and sister-in-law in Highlands, North Carolina and it was almost too beautiful! Even the day we were fogged into the mountain had its own misty, windswept charm. And damp fog meant we could go shopping instead of hiking!

The Mountains after the Storm

I have to admit, it was a pretty great fall weekend, kitschy seasonal stuff and all.

Inspired to cook and nest, I came home and whipped up a batch of Roasted Butternut Squash Soup. I didn’t write down the recipe but here are the basics. Roast a whole, peeled and cubed butternut squash in a 450 degree oven, covered with aluminum foil, until soft, about 45 minutes. Add three whole peeled cloves of garlic for the last 20 minutes along with a peeled and cubed granny smith apple. Then sauté a chopped leek and a diced carrot in a little olive oil and some butter and stir in a tablespoon of curry powder, a large pinch of cumin and a small pinch of cayenne pepper. Pour a cup or so of vegetable broth over this and dump the whole mess, along with the roasted squash et al into the food processor. Add another cup of broth (you could use water), some salt and pepper, and voila, delicious, harvest orange, soup! I am eating it as I write this- yum. It will be perfect to serve at a gathering around the fire pit, with or without the candy corn and spiced apple cider.

Happy Fall! Joy

Tools of My Trade

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Joy

Custom Designed FirePit | Fancy Fire Pit | Design Tools

Tools of the Design Trade

When I graduated from college several years ago (ahem, maybe more than several years..) I never imagined that I would be using my degree in English Literature to design and manufacture fire pits. The degree is useful when I sit down to write this blog and I loved my years at college studying Chaucer, Shakespeare and Faulkner. But the tools of my current trade are not novels or computer keyboards (mostly) but plastic templates, Sharpie markers, soapstone “pencils” and a tape measure.

Making a fire pit is a dirty job, and noisy too, since I make them in a steel fabricating plant where there is lots of welding, grinding and steel cutting going on. But it is also creative and gratifying, especially when I can work with a customer to design a fire pit, help them come up with a design that they like and then make it into a beautiful fire pit that I know they will use and enjoy for many years.

Being in business for myself and by myself also means that I wear lots of different hats and have learned over the past year to do many different things. Coming into this venture, I was a true “techno-idiot”. I am still pretty much on that side of the technology fence but can now do at least a few things on my computer. Most of it is fun, some of it is hard (for me at least) and some of it is not so great, like accounting. I hope the IRS doesn’t come after me anytime soon!

And when it gets to be too much, I come home, pour a glass of wine, light a fire and enjoy my handiwork! Check out the cool Texas Longhorn that I made for a customer. Some of my custom work can be seen on my website Fancyfirepit.com .

Custom designed Texas Longhorn Fire Pit

Happy long weekend! Joy

What I Did This Summer

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Joy

It was a very busy summer for me, what with my teenagers home and my little business to run. Alas, the blogging fell by the wayside, but I’m back! While I was busy keeping an eye on the teens- truly, it is as bad as having babies, no sleep and you have to watch them every minute lest they hurt themselves- I made a few great custom fire pits. I have not been able to see this particular fire pit with a fire in it. I guess I will have to make up some snacks and mosey on over to my customer’s house for an evening by the fire. Do you think they will mind if I bring the camera?

Shells and Seahorses make a cool fire pit for the beach

And while I wasn’t looking, summer became fall. I do love the heat so I am sad about the cooler days but not about the cooler nights. It is better for sleeping and perfect for building fires! Although we use our fire pit nearly every night in the summer, there are some days, particularly this past scorching July and August, when a fire just wasn’t the thing. So here is to September and October- bring on the chill!