My brother and I used to play this German card game with my grandmother and our uncles. It's called "Mau Mau"- I have memories of playing it evening after evening...exactly what we did around here this winter.

Rules: The game is played with a regular deck of playing cards. The players are dealt each a hand of cards- in my family we start with 7.  The rest are placed face down as the drawing stack. At the beginning of the game the topmost card is revealed, then the players each get a turn to play cards.

One can play a card if it corresponds to the suit or value of the open card. E.g. on a 10 of spades, only other spades can be played or other 10s. If a player is not able to, he draws one card from the stack. If he can play this card, he may do so, otherwise he keeps the drawn card and passes his turn. If the drawing stack is empty, the playing stack (except for the topmost card) is shuffled and turned over to serve as new drawing stack.

Our new catalog is printed and I wanted to share my favorite photographs. ( Download the full pdf at the end of this post. ) Alll images were taking in the our studio by our amazing photographer friend Patrick Voigt. Check out his work at patrickvoigt.com

For the third year now Jarek and I have been spending Easter in Coloma, Michigan at our friends Teddy and Bonnie's family house. Nestled in the woods, overlooking a little valley it has been the perfect get-away and back drop for oh! so many times and seasons. Easter up here though is the most magical.

This year we did exactly what we did last year:  we ate, we dyed and we hunted.

Under Sarah Steedman (Scrappy Nation) watchful eyes this time we we also made terrariums. Those and Sarah's latest creations, very beautiful paper mache birds, were the center pieces of our Easter meal: 3 fantastic pork loins, following a recipe of ( who else?) Jamie Oliver...( Slow Roasted Spiced Pork Loin, on page 245 in his book "Jamie's Dinners")