My younger brother (he’s taller than me so I hesitate to call him my ‘little’ brother anymore), Oscar Lee Riley Parsons lives in Louisville and spends his days making leather, doing some construction, AND making music. All the shy genes went to me and my older brother, James, I reckon, cause Oscar has been a singer and performer for as long as I can remember.

And people listen. His current bluegrass-ish band has backed Bonnie Prince Billy at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, been mentioned in the New Yorker, and now they have released their own EP.

They did a small run of covers. The banjo picker Bradley did the artwork (except for the moonshine jug that I drew and added at the last minute) and I typeset it, and ran them through my press x 250 or so. I think they are really nice… and appropriate for a semi-old timey bluegrass-ish rock band.

As a side note, the band members are in charge of gluing the covers onto sleeves. The ones I received were quite straight because Oscar did them. but I heard reports of crooked gluing. Adds to the charm?

Anyways, it is wonderful to hear my little brother sing. I can’t figure out what song is my favorite, but the first track “Ain’t No Doubt About It” is a familiar story about Daddy and JC racing towards the county line to get some booze before the store closed. We hear that story every christmas from JC. I am not surprised it worked it’s way into true permanence.

I also LOVE “Magnolia” and “Back In Town”. Ok. I love all of them. I will stop listing them… go to their myspace to hear a couple of songs!

I am proud of you Oscar!

If you want to attain a copy, try harassing the band on myspace? I think they only have local distribution out of my brother’s truck right now.

BUT if you want your copy of their release, send $10 Cash and an address to:

Oscar Parsons
713 S. Barbee Way
Louisville, Kentucky 40217

(they prefer cash but checks are ok. make it out to Bradley Reinstedler to the same address)

He will pop one in the mail to you for sure….

for info email: thepicketline at gmail dot com

It really is ALBUM OF THE YEAR. except that it’s only an EP. WE NEED MORE!!

Tis the season. I am working double time to do all the holiday cards and party invitations. It was so exciting to give my 2 cents for a holiday card article about city moms on the Stroller Traffic blog.

Family holiday cards are the funnest way to share your joy with everyone you know… one of my all time favorite holiday cards is this one – a Dirty Byrd Paper bird. I love printing on shapes. This one was for my friends over at Sillapere Events. It’s handmade, It’s green. And it’s a super cool surprise in the mail. 

What ends up happening because I am so busy this time of year, is that Thanksgiving will arrive and I will expect a pile of presents.

But it’s all good, cause I accept pies as presents!  Maple Pecan Pie… yum.

What a surprise to find out that Tiny Pine got a BIG shout out on that fanciest of all wedding blogs.

Thank goodness for Gia Canali and her pretty pictures. And to Yifat Oren for styling (and planning) so so beautifully. I love it when our collaborations get some attention. Its so nice….

Here are some other photos of sweet Dara & Dan’s invitation and save the

date (photos taken from Gia’s blog….)

My only woe about the wedding is that they didn’t need an onsite stationer in the Turks and Caicos. But alas, I had to stay home on that one…

I KNOW that everyone checks this blog daily for photos of new roadkill cakes and sundaes and such. I know that it’s a very popular subject because I can tell when you’uns search for Hillbilly Cakes or Road Kill Ice Cream. It’s just a subject that isn’t covered very often. So I am making a commitment to inform the interweb users that these desserts that I have such a love of creating are based on real recipes.

Just to be clear, I don’t actually put possum or pole cat in the ice cream cakes. They are just SHAPES. Inspirations from nature.

However, I was just in New Orleans and I stumbled in a delightful little shop in the French Quarter called the Kitchen Witch. It was a book store specializing in vintage eclectic cookbooks. I LOVED walking around and scanning the silly local cookbooks from all over the world. Right in front of me was this Cherokee Cooklore book. It was published in 1951 and is full of photographs of a Cherokee Chief’s daughter making bean bread from scratch. They even show the field where the get the corn for the meal.

As I turned the pages, looking for familiar recipes (I am 1/12 Cherokee and my family was from North Carolina where this book was published) and I found my very favorite hillbilly treat, Leather Breeches, which is basically dried green beans that are re-warmed and turned yummy again, but sort of leathery, like the name.

Then I looked further and found this recipe for Yellow Jacket Soup. Ok. I am NOT going to be attempting this one. I walked into a nest of yellow jackets when I was 12 and got stung 30 times, barely making it to the hospital. I don’t think so.

But you guys can try!

Also, on the other page is the recipes for Coon, Groundhog, and Possum.

Let me know if you can’t read these. I would be happy to transcribe them for you adventurous chefs.

Really Adventurous.

As always, this summer I was insanely busy creating some unique wedding invitations. And because I am so busy working on them, I have less time to devote to photographing and posting them. Turns out, sometimes wedding photographers do that. This wedding was shot by Amelia Lyon and I think the event looks so lovely!

One of my favorite parts about my work is that I get to collaborate with clients and event designers to create the perfect mailable communications for each event. And to tell the truth, in the past couple of years, Sillapere Events has become one of my very favorites to work with. Nicole is so artistic and caring about the tiniest details, plus they are super GREEN! everything I do for them is always Recycled, Tree Free or Sustainable.

Here are some photos of the invitation &  save the date and day that we created together to make Dani & Sean’s wedding so special. Thanks to Amelia for posting the photos! If you check out her blog post, there are more Tiny Pine/Sillapere creations as you scroll down….

I think they all turned out whimsical yet elegant…. This was one of my very favorite wedding invitations all year. For Sure!

When Sheila Nicholls asked me to do the artwork for her new release, I was more than happy. She provided the photos and pretty much gave me free reign from there…. She likes the stitched look (she often sews her own clothes which turn out looking girly but super handmade) and she just needed the artwork fast.

Fortunately we have similar aesthetics so getting a design down fast was not too difficult. She came over with her sweet baby girl, Millie, and watched as I compiled all the pieces in a few hours. I really like how it turned out. I used scans of handmade paper and machine stitching to create the look.

I love working with musicians. My dad played and sang and my brother does now (in the band Thomas A Minor & the Picket Line). I wasn’t so blessed with the ability to create music – or maybe I wasn’t blessed with the patience it takes to learn an instrument really well – so I have to resort to doing graphic design for my musician friends. I have done cd covers for Bonnie Prince Billly, Thomas A Minor, and now I can add Sheila Nicholls to the list of clientele. Slowly but surely. I guess I do have patience for something…

I really like Sheila’s music… check it out here – and I am pretty sure you can purchase a copy of the cd there as well!

When Roger Sterling’s daughter, Margaret, needed wedding invitations in 1963, they called me – in 2009. I know it seems crazy but…..

OK. I will admit that the prop master, Gay Parello (who by the way is totally cool and very on top of the look, as you would have to be to work on a demanding period show like Mad Men) came to Tiny Pine Press because she needed to have a type of printing that was authentic to the period (letterpress) in a type that was of the period (Nuptial Script). AND they needed it FAST. I think I turned this project around in 3 days.  I was more than pleased to help out one of my very favorite television shows!

In the episode they talk about bells, and silver, and maybe blue – I can’t remember – but at the end of the day they didn’t show anything but the type. You will have to take my word for it that the invitations actually did have bells and silver and there were three different versions of them.

But I will take the airtime, with or without those silly bells!

I invited a friend over for morning tea today.  I got up and drank some pre-tea to get enough caffeine to un-morningize enough to bake scones for us.

I LOVE scones. But not always. I remember tasting them at a coffee shop and be confused about why someone would want to eat dry crumbly flour with their hot beverage.

My momma used to bake biscuits all the time. Biscuits are just the yummiest at all times of the day, with jelly or tomatoes or just by themselves with butter. (ohhh butter biscuits) and once I figured out that scones were just sweet biscuits, well, I found my new favorite treat. I can bake a batch and have them all week for breakfast or toss them around to friends and then everyone is smiling. Which is a goal. Smiles via baked goods are so sincere.

Ok, the point of this post is this… I realize there are lots of cooks out there who are afraid of baking because it involves measuring and commitment and timing and chemistry and mostly that once those dry ingredients get mixed with the wet, well, there’s no going back…………

So, say you got up this morning with the intention of baking some blueberry scones for your friend who thinks of you as a really great “bakestress” already. and then you are sort of tired because usually you drink coffee instead of tea and maybe you are used to MORE caffeine than that. and you get distracted doing the substitution for double acting baking powder, that you FORGET to put in the baking soda. all together. 1/2 tablespoon baking soda missing totally from the recipe. hmmmm.

this happens 15 minutes before the friend is due. the friend that thinks you bake so well… too late to make a new batch. the blueberries are in short supply. there are some clementines? what to do? what to do?????

you cross your fingers and hope hope hope that because you remembered the baking powder….. maybe that will be enough to rise them a little. OR you will get blueberry biscotti rounds…..

Guess what. in the end, these were delicious and they aren’t perfect. a little life lesson on a lovely morning.

I realize it’s a bit early for figuring out a halloween costume…. but.

My neighbor Brian brought over this set of fangs yesterday (after I gave him a medium sized piece of homemade carrot cake). I instantly stuck my head inside the GIANT teeth. Then I took them to work, contemplated wearing them as a printing uniform when they reached over and bit my press, verdie! goodness!

In these days of vampire obsession, I am pretty sure these fangs are going to be the HIT of the Halloween parade. I am trying to figure out how big of a cake I can bake to convince Brian to paint me some blood on them fangs. then I can dress up as a mouth from either True Blood OR Twilight……

OR, better yet, I can wear them next time I go to the dentist. That will confuse her!

get a pair of your own from Jaaahws.com

I have been so busy catching up with my day job at tiny pine that I neglected my blog responsibilities (for silly tea parties and episodes of Madmen) to post images from the super fun party at Urbanic Paper Boutique last week… (Fortunately Audrey at Parcel Post and Gia Canali were more diligent with their blogging)

In preparation for the party and because it was at a store, I created a bunch of stationery to sell there that night. It kind of makes me feel like I should open an etsy shop.. that’s next on the to do list!!

It really isn’t my normal style to solicit attention, but when I delivered the album to Urbanic and Audrey thought to combine the Abbott Kinney First Fridays event with the Launch of the Variations collection, then I had to agree… I mean, I couldn’t resist a chance to have some amazing music, yummy snacks AND a really cool Project Social (as they like to call it there at Urbanic when they make crafties on the back patio)

The Tiny Pine sponsored the project social – mix CD sleeves for someone you love or like…. I had a bunch of leftover sheets die cut and pre-glued… I brought a bunch of myleftover materials (leaves, flowers, rhinestones, rubberstamps) to combine with Urbanic’s pile for all the visitors to create their little works of art.

Anyways, that night was really fun. Lots of friends came out to support me and I am very grateful for to them -

Particularly Cheryl & Angelo Catering for creating the yummiest snacks and to DJ’s John & Jeremy- for spinning the music that everyone used as inspiration for the cd sleeves…. also they stayed til the very end, which led to me getting my groove on after everyone had left…

Ok. There’s the report… Any questions?

THANKS EVERYONE!!

xoxojennifer

Photos by Paul Esposito
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