life@home january 2014

Life@H

ome

| Ideas and Inspiration for Living

ww

w.tim

esunion.com/lifeathom

eJanuary 2

01

42014 design trends

Get Clean in 2014

What’s In, What’s Out

Color Splash Inside a bright

Slingerlands home

10 ways

to be happier this year!

Our calendar keeps you on track!

January 2014

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PublisherGeorge Hearst III

EditorialJanet Reynolds, Executive EditorBrianna Snyder, Associate Editor

DesignTony Pallone, Design Director

Colleen Ingerto, Emily Jahn, Designers

Contributing WritersJohn Adamian, Kristi Barlette, Steve Barnes, Caroline Barrett,

Valerie DeLaCruz, Melissa Fiorenza, Laurie Lynn Fischer, Rachel Fiske, Anna Zernone Giorgi, Jennifer Gish,

Alistair Highet, Suzanne Kawola, Kerry Ann Mendez, Tyler Murphy, Lucianna Samu, Cari Scribner, Megan Willis

Contributing PhotographersPaul Barrett, Vincent Giordano, Alistair Highet,

Emily Jahn, Suzanne Kawola, Tyler Murphy, Mark Samu, Megan Willis, Leif Zurmhulen

SalesKurt Vantosky, Sr. Vice President, Sales & Marketing

Kathleen Hallion, Vice President, AdvertisingTom Eason, Manager, Display Advertising

Michael-Anne Piccolo, Retail Sales Manager Jeff Kiley, Magazine Advertising Manager

CirculationTodd Peterson, Vice President, Circulation

Dan Denault, Home Delivery Manager

BusinessRay Koupal, Chief Financial Officer

TimesUnion.comPaul Block, Executive Producer

Life@Home is published monthly. If you are interested in receiving home delivery of Life@Home magazine, please call (518) 454-5768 or e-mail [email protected].

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timesunion.com/lifeathome | 7

ContentsHome

19 Home LifeComing home

36 Design DefinedThe endless search for storage

45 Problem SolvedDon’t empty your wallet to semi-finish the basement

47 DIY DivaChangeable décor to get all hung up in

48 Dollars & SenseTravel tips that are light on the wallet

50 Living GreenEco-resolutions for 2014

52 Down the Garden PathAdventures in fairy gardening

54 Tech TipsThese apps can help you make your resolutions happen!

In Every Issue10 Talk Back

12 On the Web

14 Editor’s Note

20 Window Shopping

In This Issue24 Color Splash

Art and color converge on this one Slingerlands home

31 Welcome, Home Expo!The former Great Northeast Home Show gets a makeover

32 Trend WatchWhat’s hot and what’s not for 2014 home decor

34 Razor SharpEntrepreneur Wesley John looks to create the perfect knife

41 Clean LivingA year-long cleaning calendar to keep your home spic and span

Life@H

ome

| Ideas and Inspiration for Living

ww

w.tim

esunion.com/lifeathom

eJanuary 2

01

4

2014 design trends

Get Clean in 2014

What’s In, What’s Out

Color Splash inside a bright

Slingerlands home

10 ways

to be happier this year!

Our calendar keeps you on track!

January 2014

On the cover: Photo by Vincent Giordano

52

Features

http://issuu.com/action/page?page=21






Children whose sleep was affectedby breathing problems like snoring,

mouth breathing or apnea were40%-100% more likely than normal

breathers to develop behavioralproblems resembling A.D.H.D.

The Journal Pediatrics, Volume 129, Number 4 April 2012

Call or visit us online to request an appointment.

Appointments available in 48 hours(518)439-43261220 New Scotland Rd, Slingerlands, NY CapitalRegionSleepWake.com

Ramez J. Awwad, MD, Diplomate, ABSMSara C. Scheid, MD, FAAP, Diplomate, ABSM


61

68

In This Issue59 10 Ways ...

... to be happier

68 Just a PalmfulMmm, spicy stews on winter days

Features57 Help Me ...

... preserve family memories

61 Kitchen CrumbsTasty tidbits for your cooking

62 DishAt home with Ross Thompson of the Olde English Pub & Pantry

70 The VineyardGo for staff picks!

73 My SpaceMelanie Pores’ favorite spot

74 Photo FinishBlue lagoon

ContentsLife

57

10 | Life@Home

Memory Box Jennifer GishAfter writing about preserving family memories – including scrapbooking – I’m going to give it a go. My 5-year-old twins

will be making custom scrapbooks for their grandparents’ Christmas gifts. They won’t be perfect, but the kids’ handwriting will be a priceless memory. See Jennifer’s story on page 57.

Traveling LightLaurie Lynn FischerIn my 20s, I had wanderlust. I backpacked through Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. I also camped all over

the U.S. and Canada. If there’s one thing I learned from all that globetrotting, it was the value of packing and spending as little as possible. In this article, local travel consultants share their tips for traveling light. See Laurie’s story on page 48.

Join the conversation!facebook.com/lifeathomemagazine

There’s always something happening

on Facebook. Click to add your two cents and enter contests.

We asked ... you answered Here’s what our readers said this month on Facebook.

• What’s your new year’s resolution? Britta: I’ll be giving up sugar and hoping I don’t become suicidal.

Danielle: run a 5k

Jennifer: I resolve to try n stop being a terrible ... PROCRASTINATOR!!! Tips anyone?

Jenny: more family dinners with everyone at the table ... at least 4 days a week. We always start slipping. Even if I feed them at 5 and it’s fake dinner. So: at-

least-symbolic family dinners with everyone at the table.

• What’s the thing you love most about your home?Elizabeth: Sunshine all day.

Tony: The recently-reinvented color scheme downstairs. I have an older house with small windows, so not a lot of sunshine gets in naturally. When choosing bright colors for the living room and dining room, I feel

like we were successful in finding another way to bring the sun inside.

Emily: Love when I eye something online for months and when I finally buy it and set it up in my house it looks just as good as I pictured!

Victoria: When my bed is made and room is spotless, candle lit with my perfect amount of light lamp on so I can read or watch TV before I go to sleep!

Vincent: I love watching a good sci-fi movie with the family in our den!

Design TrendsKristi Barlette

Interviewing the different designers for this piece makes me want to redo my whole house. I didn’t realize gray could work so well

as a “color.” Also, the idea that slipcovers are updated to look like traditional upholstery means spills and stains are a lot easier to clean and a chicken wing or red wine incident no longer means replacing the whole couch, or having it professionally cleaned. Refreshing for my wallet, and my family room. See Kristi’s story on page 32.

On the CoverBrianna Snyder I loooooved the fantastic color in the home we’re featuring this month. That harlequin pattern is to die for (TDF!) and the

bright blues and yellows really made for a happy, high-spirited atmosphere. Bold is beautiful! See Brianna’s story on page 24.

Cuttin’ Time Cari ScribnerWesley John took his love of cooking to an entirely new level, and I admire his persistence. After much trial and error, he successfully blended form with function, creating knives that

even top chefs now use. See Cari’s story on page 34.

Beets HappeningJohn AdamianBeet greens are great, and there are so many more things to do with actual beets than just to make borscht or salad with goat cheese. See John’s story online at timesunion.com/lifeathome.

Read below about how our contributors learned new things while working on this month’s edition of Life@Home.

The story behind the story ... from our contributors

Talk Back




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12 | Life@Home

STORIESMake Your Own Cleaner Skip the store-bought stuff!

Food Trends Get with the beets

Moldy Houses What to look out for

Made By Hand DIY crafts for the soul

Home ImprovementFall in love with stenciling

PHOTOSCheck out more photos online from this month’s @home feature (story on page 24).

VIDEOSWant to learn how to make spinach and feta benedict with chef Ross Thompson? Check out our video online.

moreONLINE

Find more at timesunion.com/lifeathome

Pinterestpinterest.com/timesunionmagsLike our photos? Follow us

on Pinterest, where we pin all our original photography and more!

YouTubeyoutube.com/TimesUnionMagazinesWant to go beyond the

pictures in the magazine? Check out our behind-the-scenes videos.

Life@Home Blogstimesunion.com/lifeathomeFollow our 518 blog for great local finds

and our House Things blog for gems dug up around the Web.

LIFE@HOME ONLINE Facebookfacebook.com/lifeathomemagazineLike us! Join in

our conversations! Win free stuff! And stay on top of all our latest stories and news.

Explore more content — photos, stories, recipes, videos and companion blogs — all in once place.

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14 | Life@Home

Janet ReynoldsExecutive [email protected]

Confessions of an unenthusiastic cleaner

I care about a lot of things in my home. Cleaning is not one of them.This is not to say that I am a slob

(although my husband, who could land a helicopter on his desk at day’s end, might disagree with that statement); rather, I have other ways I would prefer to spend my precious personal time.

When my children were younger, the weekends were a time to connect in a slightly less frantic way than during the week. Now that they’re older and — mostly — out of the house, I want to spend time making up for all those years when what I wanted to do was always the last thing on the to-do list. (Read: hardly ever done.)

I of course love the idea of a clean house, a home free of clutter where every item has a place and I don’t need to search for an open spot to put down the mail for fear of losing it. But when it comes down to the actual moment of choice on a Saturday afternoon, I invariably opt for just about anything other than running a vacuum or grabbing a sponge and some cleaning fluid. And since we’ve cut back on our entertaining recently — a prime motivator for a cleaning blitz — things are perhaps a

little more cluttered than they have been in our regularly entertaining past.

This lack of interest in cleaning could be a point of contention between me and my husband — it certainly is for many other couples. Surprisingly it hasn’t been — and not just because we’ve had cleaning services intermittently in our life together.

Perhaps it’s because I made my point of view clear early in our relationship. I remember, for instance, the day my husband made the mistake of noting that the family room floor was not as clean as he liked. “Well, you know where the vacuum is,” I replied as I walked out of the room. “I married you, not the house.”

The more likely reason is that my husband is part saint. As with all couples, you’ve got to pick your battles and somewhere between the stacks of books creating a minefield on my side of the bed and the toys strewn in the family room corner, he decided this was a skirmish not worth tackling.

Of course he does get other things in exchange. I do all the cooking — and I am a good cook. That’s 32 years and counting of tasty meals with nary a cereal for dinner among them. Seems like a good trade-off to me — especially since he does all the laundry.

Maybe he is a saint after all.

Coming Clean

Editor’s Note

Need help getting

motivated to clean?

Check out our calendar

of what to do when

on page 41. Then head

online to see how to make

your own cleaners!

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Coming Home

Home is a place that’s been perched on our horizon for the last six months, a shape

we could see from the swirl of boxes as we packed them, hazy in the distance but there nonetheless. Our compasses have been fixed toward this point as we’ve hung out in limbo, staying with my partner’s par-ents and looking (and looking and looking) at houses in the city we set our sights on long before we knew where, exactly, we’d land. Finally, though, we have found our place. We are finally going home.

To be precise, or practical as the case may be, home is a yellow house. It is creaky and old and, if the neighbors won’t mind, there is space out back for both chickens and the swing we promised our daughter all those months ago as she watched us box up her toys. It has a brick driveway and enough windows to guar-antee that sunlight slips in on even the darkest winter days.

This isn’t what makes it home, though. I’ve spent years yearning for the right house — the right floors, the right kitchen, the right number of closets. I was look-ing in the wrong places this whole time, though. Six months without my own place has shown me something I’m not sure I could’ve seen otherwise: Coming home is something we do over and over again.

I left my childhood home at 19. I was in a bad spot and in dire need of a clean slate. So I left and took the first apartment I could find — and afford. Every night after jiggling

my keys in the ratty front door locks, I’d walk into my room and smile. This was mine in a way nothing had ever been before. The only things on the wall were things I loved. The only food I bought was what I wanted to eat. For a year I hung out with myself, endeavoring for the first time to forge some semblance of peace with who I was, who I’d been, and who I might be. It was a pretty epic homecoming.

And then my landlord sold the building. I had two weeks to collect my belongings and find a new spot. I asked my boyfriend if I could crash with him while I looked for a place and — after making me swear up and down that I would, indeed, find said new place — he said sure. If you’re thinking that I didn’t follow through on my end of that deal, you’re totally right. After a year of climbing over each other in his studio apartment, we decided to take the leap and find a place actually big enough for two.

I’d gone from desperately needing space of my own at 19 to intrigue and excite-ment about the prospect of making a home with another person. And home we made. We painted walls. We got cats. We rigged together something that vaguely resembled curtains. He didn’t put the silverware away correctly or fold his underwear, but after a long day waiting tables and taking night classes, jumping on top of him on the couch was always the perfect end. It was always the end to want. And just like that, he became part of my home.

After a couple of years we decided we’d

like to stick together. Forever. And since nothing says forever quite like having a kid, we figured we’d shore up the whole deal by doing just that. Oh — but wait — we’d need a second bedroom. So back into boxes went our things and, with cats meowing at fever pitch in the backseat, we hauled our life for two across town and began building a home for three.

And what a home it was. On a fresh June day, with a breeze circling my ankles, I stood perfectly in our back entrance with our newborn baby in my arms. Staring into the house before me, it came into fo-cus in a way it had failed to in the months of living there while waiting for her to arrive. I leaned to her ear and murmured welcome home. I thought I was just talking to her, but as soon as the words left my mouth I understood that I was actually talking to all three of us. And what I real-ized as I spoke was that these people were my home now. The place I stood in was just a house, no matter how much I loved the walk-in pantry.

I lost sight of this moment of course. It eventually slipped back into the recesses of my brain to hang out with all the other things I’m always forgetting, like how badly I need new black stockings. Six months of being between houses has brought it back into focus, though. Home is never any farther from reach than my daughter and my partner’s hands. The yellow house is just what holds us, a guide to bring us back together at the end of each day.

Home Life

Window Shopping

In each issue, Window Shopping highlights interesting and unique

items available at area stores. This month we take a look at some

great local furniture finds.Story and photos by Tyler Murphy

Shop SmartShop Local

Faux Leather Chair and Footstool

Put your feet up and your living room’s clutter away with this recliner/

ottoman set ($75). The footrest opens up to serve as a storage unit. Available at Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

End TableStickley, Audi & Co. is home to a large selection of quality furnishings, including a diverse choice of end tables featuring a variety of designs inspired by antiques.

This round wooden table with inlaid gold design ($2,034) is just one of many great choices.

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Hand-Hewn Chairside StandConstructed of solid hand-hewn pine, this Amish-made piece is one of a complete line of end tables, coffee tables, sofa tables and TV consoles. Available in 3 different colors. $314.95 at The Wood Carte.

20 | Life@Home

Featured Shops

Stickley, Audi & Co.151 Wolf Road, Albany

(518) 458-1846 stickleyaudi.com

Habitat for Humanity ReStore

70 Fuller Road, Albany(518) 275-6638

habitatcd.org/restore

The Wood Carte1063 State Route 9, Queensbury

(518) 793-7655woodcarte.com

Hand-Blown VasesStickley, Audi & Co. also features a range of centerpiece art such as these hand-blown glass vases, ranging in price from $70 to $118 per piece.

Amish-Made Boat Bookcase TrioThese charming pine pieces, made in Pennsylvania, are available in many different finishes — or unfinished for you DIYers. Ranging in height from 32" to 72", they’re great for books, knick-knacks and more. $59.95 to $249.95 at The Wood Carte.

Highlands Double Pedestal Dining setBring your family together around this distinctive dining set, available in solid cherry or oak. The dining table ($4,271) includes four leaves, allowing it to extend to 122 inches in length.

The table-end armchairs ($837 each) are adapted from a 1905 antique model. Side chairs are $743 each. Get the full set at Stickley, Audi & Co.

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Window Shopping

Our Bloggers Shop

continued from 21

Are you a design and décor junkie? We’ve got your fix at timesunion.com/lifeathome. And check out this month’s picks from our local and national bloggers. There’s more where these came from!

We Love Lamp

We’re totally smitten by this gorgeous antelope-horn-inspired lamp. It was made by the South African design studio Source — run by husband-wife team Trevyn and Julian McGowan — and comes with a polyresin base and white linen shade. It’s 6.5” wide and 23” high, and requires minimal assembly. $169 at West Elm, westelm.com.

Adding a little glamour to your foyer just got easier with this gleaming Camellia bombe chest from Pier One. The hand-painted piece is 24"w x 16"d x 31"h so won’t take up a lot of room but will give a lot of panache. Styled after the curved French accent furniture made

popular during the Regency period over 300 years ago, this updated version mimics more expensive silver leafing and would look great paired with a mirror, artwork, candlestick lamps or your accessory collection. Visit pier1.com.

moreONLINE

To stay in our bloggers’ design loop 24/7, go to timesunion.com/lifeathome.

House ThingsBy Brianna Snyder

Home Décor@518By Valerie DeLaCruz

22 | Life@Home

Art and color converge on this

Slingerlands home

Color Splash

24 | Life@Home


When Anne-Marie Gorman-Doyle and her husband, Patrick Doyle, lived in Europe,

they were tipped off to a furniture sale at their favorite French furniture-maker.

“We were moving literally within the next week and we had a half-empty truck to fill,” Gorman-Doyle says. So they filled the other half of their vessel with a gorgeous table, bookshelf, desk and bureau.

Those are just a few of the beautiful pieces in this Slingerlands home that make it interesting and special. The house, which the couple bought in 1999, needed a little doing-over when they bought it. And Gor-man-Doyle was literally weeks away from giving birth when they bought the home. Once that was settled, “The first thing I did was have the baby,” she says. “And then we didn’t do much of anything.”

Gorman-Doyle, who moved from Illinois to London for business school (where she met her Irish husband), didn’t have much experience with home decor. “It took years [to redo the house] because I am just not a natural at this,” she says. “All I knew is I knew what I liked when I saw it. I wanted lots and lots and lots of color.”

Gorman-Doyle’s art background helped direct many of her choices. She’s an active

By Brianna Snyder | Photos by Vincent Giordano

This was just a regular, round table found at a thrift store, but it was converted into a sunflower-shaped game table!

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and enthusiastic artist; she does local theater, the whole family plays music, and every shelf in the house overflows with books. There are four children in this home, ranging in age from 11 to 18; the music room (there’s a music room!) is home to a violin, trombone, and two pianos.

Gorman-Doyle chairs the board of Skribblers magazine — “we publish the writing, poetry, prose and artwork of children 12 and under in the Capital Region,” she says — and those interests in art and poetry are reflected everywhere.

Just inside the front door, for instance, the walls are painted

a bright and deep yellow. They were painted by Gorman-Doyle’s friend, the local artist Rae Rau, who did a lot of work in this home along with inte-rior designer Denise Maurer of Denise Maurer Interiors in Troy. A brightly colored harlequin-patterned wall in the kitchen/dining-room area is another of Rau’s contributions and serves as a focal point in the home. (Another fantastic Rau piece is an old table found at a thrift store, which she to-tally refurbished and fashioned to look like a sunflower. That piece is — appropriately — in the sunroom.)

Gorman-Doyle began looking

Local artist Rae Rau painted a harlequin pattern on the dining-room/kitchen wall. (She also did the sunflower table on the previous page.)


for an interior designer in 2006 and found Maurer. “She showed me her portfolio and I thought it wouldn’t work because it was all so formal,” Gorman-Doyle says. “But then she came back and she said, ‘Look over there. Instead of doing a backsplash, let’s put up chalkboard paint and you can write notes to each other. And I thought, ‘OK. She gets us.”

From there, Maurer helped Gorman-Doyle colorize the house — the living room is a deep pumpkin color, the tile in the kitchen is cobalt blue, the sunroom is bright with yellows, greens and magen-tas. Maurer also recently helped Gorman-Doyle redo the master bathroom in bright blues and whites, funky lines and pat-terns and super-contemporary fixtures.

Gorman-Doyle says they’re “done for now” with the house. She got what she wanted: lots and lots and lots of color.

“All I knew is I knew what I liked when I saw it. I wanted lots and lots and lots of color.”

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The former Great Northeast Home Show gets a makeover

By Brianna Snyder | Photo by Dan Cutrona

Welcome, Home Expo!

Get excited! This year marks the first annual Times Union Home Expo.

Formerly known as the Great Northeast Home Show, the Times Union Home Expo is going to be a bigger, better ver-sion of the GNHS, says Jeff Kiley, magazine advertising manager for the Times Union. “We really wanted to expand the focus to include garden, food and home,” Kiley says.

“The word on the streets is [the show is] meant for just remodeling your house, your kitchen your bathroom,” adds Tammy Mortier, event marketer at the Times Union. “We wanted it to be more of a family event to represent everything in the home, not just a focus on remodeling.”

This year, the event will feature all kinds of fun and family-friendly events, including an animal-adoption clinic, a battle of the chefs and a “children’s fun zone,” Mortier says, with a bouncy house and other kids’ activities, a Paint and Sip — where people have drinks and paint — and many semi-nars by home experts, including HGTV’s Taniya Nayak.

You’ve seen Nayak on shows such as House Hunters on Vacation and Restau-rant: Impossible (on the Food Network). We spoke with Nayak by phone recently in advance of her Home Expo talk, called “Taniya’s Best Advice.” I asked her what usually holds people back from redecorat-ing their homes.

“Something people ask a lot is, ‘How do I take the plunge?,’” Nayak says. “How to just tackle the project, that’s the scariest part.

People have great ideas but the execution is what scares them.” Picking a contractor and not spend-ing too much money are two big concerns, she says.

If you’ve seen Nayak at work — YouTube her if not; it’s worth it — you know she’s got an almost magical knack for com-bining style with personal touch. “[This work] comes naturally to me and I feel lucky that it does,” she says. When decorating someone’s home or restaurant, “I choose a lot from what I see in their house already or in their restau-rant. … If you can pick out the wholesome things that are meaningful to them, it’s a great starting point.” That might mean choosing one piece of furniture or maybe a meaningful tchotchke and centering an entire room’s design on that piece.

The mistake Nayak says many homeown-ers make is that they get so excited that they want to start tearing down walls and redecorating immediately. If you decide you want to totally overhaul your kitchen on Thursday, she says, don’t expect to be done by Sunday.

“The most important thing is to start planning,” she says. “Get some magazines, go online, go on Pinterest, Google images or Houzz[.com] and start to pull together just an idea book.” Get quotes from labor-ers — will you need an electrician? A

plumber? — and get multiple quotes. You might find big disparities between what various vendors charge.

And if you have no idea what to do with your house but know you want to do something, Nayak says it’s worth investing a couple hundred dollars to hire an interior designer. “That’ll give you some direction,” she says.

See Taniya Nayak at the Times Union Home Expo on Saturday, Feb. 8 at 3:30 p.m. The Expo runs Feb. 7, 3-9 p.m.; Feb. 8, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Feb. 9, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Times Union Center and Empire Plaza, Albany. Visit timesunion.com/homeexpo.

Taniya’s Top Tip:Some people get the urge to paint

every room in their house a different color. Nayak says that can start to seem

disordered or jarring. Instead, choose one paint palette for your house; grab one of

those paint cards at Home Depot (or wherever you’re buying paint) and use only colors on that strip. “It’s a nice

way to add contrast to small spaces,” she says.

The Times Union Home Expo will include some great seminars hosted by home experts, such as HGTV’s Taniya Nayak, pictured at right.

32 | Life@Home

What’s hot and what’s not for 2014 home décorBy Kristi Barlette

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Trend Watch

Avocado-colored appliances, wallpaper border, shiny brass chandeliers — they are all home

décor trends that had us oohing and ahh-ing decades ago. But, as with fashion, what works at one point, eventually looks dated and has you asking “What was I thinking?”

So if you’re ready to infuse a little 2014 décor into your space, we have tips from experts on everything from color to design and building trends.

WHAT’S IN

Color: It’s all about gray, say experts. Warm grays work well in living rooms, bed-rooms and bathrooms.

“All colorways of gray continue to be strong,” says Brendan Flanigan, interior designer and owner of Brendan Flanigan Design in Saratoga Springs. “It is natural, serene and comes in so many different

shades. You can use [it] to create different moods just by going a swatch or two up on the color chart.”

Design experts also favor lighter shades of earth tones and neutrals while intro-ducing pops of color with pillows, rugs, artwork and window treatments, accord-ing to Stacy Snell, owner of Design on 20 in Guilderland.

Bright blue, Flanigan says, is prevalent in many shades, from Moroccan blue with a touch of green to bright navy.

Another color trend is the use of mono-chromatic color schemes. Flanigan sug-gests thinking beyond neutrals, though. Instead pick a color you love, he says, and layer it on top of itself.

“Yes, this will require an eye for color, a few trials, and/or the nod of a designer, but our clients have been loving this look,” Flanigan says. “It is new, hasn’t been done,

and really shows the nuances in color.”

DESIGN TRENDS

Increasingly people are getting custom-fitted slip covered sofas because they are easy to clean, especially for those who have pets or children, says Maggie Fromm, the selections coordinator at Hodorowski Homes In Schenectady and a design consul-tant at Pottery Barn.

Bronze and brushed nickel hardware, such as cabinet knobs and lighting fixtures, are also popular. “The most upgraded feature I see in selections appointments at Hodorowski Homes is the upgrade from a chrome faucet to a bronze or brushed nickel finish,” Fromm says.

Texture is popular with homeowners now, too, and complements the neutral hues seen in so many homes, according to Snell. This can be highlighted in everything

Gray is in!


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What’s out overall

• Light hardwood floors

• Stained trim

• Stained fireplace mantels

• Separate formal dining rooms with a fine china cabinet. Instead, try one open floor plan that includes a kitchen with an island or counter space for bar stools, a dining area and a living room. “People want to be all together in one big room for family events, and not stuck in a

formal dining room,” Fromm says.

• Garden tubs with jets for master bathrooms. No one uses them and they take up space and col-lect dust, according to Fromm.

• Overdone window treatments

• Matchy formal dining rooms

• Oversized floral patterns.

• On the other extreme, ultra-modern styles have been replaced with clean lines in natural finishes.

Modern furnishings are shying away from metals and are now avail-able in warm wood, Snell says.

• Cabinetry covering your appliances. The simple industrial lines of applianc-es are the perfect complement to cabi-netry, resulting in an authentic culinary look, Flanigan says. Stop covering your appliance, but do opt for stainless.

• Over decorating: Is every room in your home a theme? Even in consulta-tions where clients take a bit to

see their wares aren’t showing well, they love their homes after a purge, according to Flanigan. It can be as easy as loading some boxes, rotating your stock, and taking down that window treatment you painstakingly selected the fringe for 13 years ago.

• Contrived design: Make it your own. Add personal effects, buy something vintage, build something or show a col-lection. If your home looks like a major store or showroom (that you are not in love with), it’s time to switch it up.

from wood furniture and leather accesso-ries to mercury glass lighting and linen and velvet fabrics.

Metallic finishes are becoming warmer with lots of antique brass, brushed gold and copper on the market, says Snell. Sparkle has found its way into all design styles with the use of large mirrors, crystal lamp bases and acrylic furniture and accessories.

“Mid-century modern is a huge trend,” says Snell. “Reproduction furniture styles with a nod to iconic ’50s modern.”

Clients are looking for a cohesive flow from room to room, but still enough varia-tion to create interest, Flanigan says. You want it all to coordinate and flow.

Dining rooms are a great space to do something strong and edgy that complements what you’ve done in the rest of the home. “Dining rooms are like lining on a jacket,” says Flanigan. “You wouldn’t want it everywhere, but that little bit of expression is just right to complete the canvas.”

Another design trend is paint-ing an accent wall with a color on the same paint strip but darker or lighter tone.

HOME BUILDING TRENDS

Fromm says dark hardwood is the going trend. “Every cus-tomer I’ve had in the last month has been interested in darker

woods,” Fromm says. Customers also prefer white, wider trim

and window casing. That white hue is extending to fireplace mantels and kitchen cabinets. Cabinetry is either very light (white) or incredibly dark.

“I’m not seeing any stain finished in the middle,” says Fromm.

Flanigan says he’s seeing an upsurge in large-scale renovations to historic homes. Clients love the cachet of being in historic towns and neighborhoods, but want all the comforts of a new home, including a custom kitchen, built-ins, more storage,

energy efficient windows and appliances, he says.

“We’re tailoring the space to the way people live, while bringing the historic architecture and modern design [and func-tion] to balance,” says Flanigan.

The large open space and floor plans of new construction have been refined into more separation, although not necessarily with walls. Use of double pocket doors, archways, pillars, built-ins and fireplaces are architectural details that give some separation while still preserving an open feel, and adding flexibility.

Open floor plan

Warm wood

Mid-century modern

34 | Life@Home

By Cari Scribner | Photos by Leif Zurmuhlen

Razor Sharp

An aspiring chef with culinary classes under his belt, Wesley John of Albany was quickly dis-

satisfied with one of a serious cook’s most valued tools: his knives.

And so, after shopping around and test-ing what was out there, John took a step most gourmet cooks wouldn’t take on – he designed, built a prototype, tested and is now marketing and selling (as well as us-ing) his own line of knives.

Called Macklin & Company after John’s middle name and also the family’s Welsh name, the collection includes the flagship line, the Legacy Series. The series includes two chef’s knives, paring knife, pot fork and a leather knife roll to carry the tools.

The story of how John became an entre-preneur in such a specialized market be-gins when he was growing up in the home

of a superb cook: his mother. “My mother was an inspiration to me; some of her dishes I have never been able to fully dupli-cate, despite their simplicity,” John says. “I had toyed with the idea of becoming a chef but never really pursued it. While in college I worked in a restaurant part time. I read cookbooks voraciously.”

With a thriving career as a commercial lender in the banking field, John put his cooking dreams on hold until five years ago, when he enrolled in culinary school at Schenectady County Community College. “I worked by day and took classes in the evening,” John says. “Classes were a joy; I loved every minute of it. My goal is to become a chef once I retire.”

But the tools he tried were lacking, so John set about making better knives, with help from his sister-in-law, who’s a profes-

Entrepreneur Wesley John looks to create the perfect knife


sional chef. “The problem was, the spine along the back edge wore out, so I did methodical re-search; there was a lot of trial and error,” John says. “It took more than a year to make a prototype. Now, I can slice a tomato so thin you can see through it.”

Macklin Knives are constructed with high-grade, stain- and wear-resistant steel that allows them to retain their sharpness longer than traditional knives. It’s a much more difficult steel to work with during the manufacturing process, which is part of the cost of the collection. “I learned more about metallurgy than I ever care to know,” John says with a laugh.

The spine and heel of the blade are rounded, which provides comfort during longer use. The stabilized, double-dyed Box Elder handle is a Native American wood that has a beautiful grain, making it distinctive and unique. John describes the design as “the best of Japanese and American-European style.”

John chose the name Legacy Series because the knives are des-tined to become heirlooms. “These are knives that will be passed down to their children,” John says. “I want a person to buy a knife and leave it as one of their wonderful belongings. These knives will last longer than one lifetime.”

All of the materials and labor to produce Macklin Knives come from the U.S. The knives are handmade in Shelburne, Mass. The oil-tanned, 8-pocket knife rolls,

impervious to water, are made by hand by a woman at Jenne Leath-erworks in Saratoga Springs.

John’s assistant is his daughter, 15-year-old Elizabeth, who’s in charge of the company’s social media marketing. “We’re expect-ing a really great holiday season,” Elizabeth John says. “We’re not overseas yet, but we’re hoping.”

Next up for Macklin Knives is a line of Japanese knives. Who knows what John will cook up after that.

“It took a huge investment of time and money to get this far, and we’ll keep going,” John says. “This was truly a labor of love.”

moreONLINE

For more photos, go to timesunion.com/lifeathome.

Wesley, of Macklin & Company, and his daughter, Elizabeth.

36 | Life@Home

By Lucianna Samu | Photo by Mark Samu

The Endless Search for StorageAsk any builder for the top five

must-haves in new construction and you’d have your response

without hesitation: Kitchen with a walk-in pantry, two sinks in the master bath, large walk-in master closet, hardwood floors, me-dia room, tons of storage. The very idea of homeowners coveting a list of must-haves is a relatively new phenomenon, and one I was recently able to put to a test thanks to a little mishap with (off) a ladder.

Nursing a pair of dislocated ribs and hoisting the white flag in surrender, I begrudgingly agreed to follow my doctor’s order for bed rest. Using my time to watch around-the-clock home improvement pro-

graming, I learned a great deal about the modern American homeowners must-have list, and calculated the probabilities for what I believe will rise to the number one item on everyone’s new build list of de-sires: Storage, storage, and more storage.

It’s serendipity really, that once I leave the comfort of my nonstop home improve-ment extravaganza, I’ll be returning to work on two new construction projects. Fine tuning the space planning for new construction and renovations alike is my specialty, and my newfound design compa-triots are providing me a wealth of creative solutions, in response to the dilemma it appears everyone faces at the moment:

Where can we put all the stuff?I’ll spare you my opinions, on the whys

and what-the-hecks, of how it is every-one claims to be feeling so pinched for storage or closet space. Let’s agree this is partly a result of our wish to keep organized but mostly a function of our penchant for coats, and hats, and boots, and holiday decorations, shoes and more shoes, stuff, stuff and more stuff. As a design mandate, carving out a closet everywhere the opportunity exists isn’t necessarily difficult, but like every good design solution, a little planning can transform even the most mundane solu-tions into space planning triumphs.

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Beginning with what is truly the mousetrap of storage — the common hook — making space for our daily needs is easily improved with a little ingenuity. Like me, my televi-sion friends have an affinity for using multiple hooks. Depend-ing on what will be hanging from them, hooks affixed to lengths of wood can be stacked in rows, making space for a row of coats, then a row of scarfs, maybe another row of purses.

Second only to the common hook in usefulness is the com-mon hanger. I prefer the wood-en kind and hang them, too, from the hooks. Belts, bags, scarves, tights, jewelry, towels — the possibilities are endless. All the hook and hanger stor-age scenario requires is a tiny bit of extra time.

Recently, I outfitted an entire closet with boots hung from wood tension hangers. Not only did this idea keep the boots from flopping over, but it placed them all within easy reach and full view. Tension hangers are becoming difficult to find but are well worth the effort to source. Measuring a mere 8 inches wide, they make for the easy storage of table cloths, bed linens, and boots as it turns out, inside a shallow closet, or sim-ply from a closet pole that can be hung wherever space allows.

The dream closet of the moment is costing many who own older homes a bedroom. I’ve pondered the limits of 1950s-era closets, wracking my brain trying to recall how many coats and shoes I myself owned growing up. I was relieved to be reminded, during my bed rest television festival, that modern era house hunters are unwilling to compromise when it comes to a big master

bedroom closet. To achieve this must-have when the actual closet is nowhere to be found, setting built-in closet shelving flush against the bedroom wall is gaining momentum. These arrangements, while similar to including closed sub-closets within the confines of a walk-in closet, are offered up in endless configurations to those who shop catalogues. Available now in pretty colors and serviceable finishes, what could have once been perceived as an ad hoc storage solution is instead a perfectly acceptable approach to gaining space.

Another design element that’s fast becoming a boon to those on the hunt for concealed stor-age is “real” barn door hard-ware. Fitted with this by-pass style hardware, doors can be hung to conceal any recessed space, and travel along a track affixed overhead or from the ceiling. Taking stock in whatever space an older home may have to offer, sometimes cutting off one end of a room entirely, and lining the width end to end with doors on a barn hardware track, is a ready made spot for this type of setup.

I can’t recall the last time I didn’t install at least one barn style door in a renovated home, and I’m pleased to see all my daytime television design compatriots appreciate the flex-ibility of this ingenious means to found storage. Like the pocket door, these barn door systems require less space than a door that swings. And so, another idea comes to mind — that hooks can be placed on the doors, and hangers can be hung from the hooks, and more stuff can be stored where once there was none. Think it’s time for me to get back on my feet!

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A year-long cleaning calendar to keep your home spic and span

By Kristi Barlette | Illustrations by Emily Jahn

Clean LivingForget waiting until spring to start your household cleaning. Instead, keep your home clean year-round with our monthly calendar.

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH

APRIL MAY JUNE

1. Empty and clean out all closets, cabinets and

the pantry. Remove everything, wipe it all down

and vacuum the floor. This will also give you a

chance to discard expired or unused items.

2. Designate one area to

be your list spot. Whether

it’s on paper or on your

phone, it should always

be with you. Some

common lists: shopping,

books to read list,

errands, home to-do list, work to-do list, music

to download list and a kids to-do list.

3. Organize your home paperwork and files

by Jan. 31. Get your taxes in early.

4. Make a resolution to get organized by the end of

the year. Set yourself up for success with some

easy and obvious progress. Take a walk around your

home and purge the obvious trash and unnecessary

items. Was losing weight also on your list of

resolutions? You just lost several pounds of clutter.

1. Clean your window screens.

First, vacuum the screens from

the inside (make sure to cover

your floor). Remove the screens,

squirt them down with the

hose, and let dry in the sun.

2. If your windows fold in, wash the exterior windows

and sills. If they don’t fold in, try to reach first floor

windows and wash the exterior. Try newspaper

or coffee filters for streak-free windows.

3. Usually, by the end of April, the snow and mud

have dissipated. At this point it would be good

to get your rugs and carpets cleaned. You can

rent cleaning machines or schedule a service.

4. Wipe down walls and doors for fingerprints.

1. Vacuum shades and blinds when they are

still up. Next, wash in the tub. Let them dry

thoroughly before rehanging. This will also give

you an opportunity to see if the high areas of

your windows are dust- and cobweb-free.

2. Dust all light fixtures, ceilings

and ledges. These should

be places that aren’t dusted

on a weekly basis and need

a step stool or ladder.

3. Vacuum and wipe down

your washer and dryer.

Naturally, your lint drawer should be cleaned

out after every other drying session (or so). If

you think your dryer is not performing at full

capacity, you might want to disconnect the

exhaust duct and remove any blockages.

4. Wash seasonal linens and bedding.

5. Wash all baseboards. Use a dryer sheet to clean;

the dust clings to them and they smell great.

1. Prepare for summer: Get lawn care company quotes,

pool maintenance quotes, and research kids’

camps. Decide if you want to participate in a CSA.

2. If you have indoor plants, dust the leaves and

clean the floor or shelves under the pots. If you

really love your plants, bring them into the shower

and lightly rinse them. It’s easy for indoor plants

to get dusty and dry during the winter months.

3. Prepare for spring cleaning: Make sure you have

enough cleaning solutions (glass cleaner, furniture

polish, all-purpose cleaner, bathroom cleaner,

Magic Erase sponges) and cleaning equipment

(vacuum bags, rags, paper towels, toilet bowl

brushes, rubber gloves). If you

do your spring cleaning yourself,

create your list room by room

so you don’t get overwhelmed.

4. Clean all light fixtures.

1. Clean your garage. Organize tools, sports equipment

and make sure your lawn care items are ready to go.

2. Clean patio/outdoor furniture.

3. Now that the weather is nicer, it’s easier to

thoroughly clean your car. Get out your shop vac

and clean out all the little pebbles and such that

have collected all winter. If the dirt is minimal,

you can probably use your home vacuum. Or,

if you want to use a powerful vacuum, collect

some quarters and go to your nearest carwash.

4. Store winter items, donate

what you didn’t wear this

season, and re-arrange

for spring and summer.

5. Vacuum under and behind

beds and bedroom furniture.

1. Clean walls and touch up paint where necessary.

Remember touch-up paint should be light and

shouldn’t require you to repaint the entire wall.

2. Switch warm bedding to

light bedding. Use this

to easily add a different

color to your room.

3. Organize your bookshelves.

If you have kids, store away

seasonal books and books

that are too easy for them. Remove books from

bookshelves, dust shelves and books. Donate

any unwanted books to your local library.

4. Organize linens, linen closets, bathrooms and

guest bedrooms. Purge your guest bedroom of

old clothing and donate, and go through and

toss old medications, toiletries and makeup.

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42 | Life@Home

JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

1. Clean the inside of all your

garbage cans and trash

bins. Bring everything out

to your driveway on a nice

day, put a few drops of

liquid dish soap in each

one, and use the hose

to power wash them.

2. Re-stock your medicine

cabinet. You might have done this in January

but you should go through this twice a year.

Make sure nothing has expired and that you

are stocked with Band-Aids, pain medications,

toiletries, allergy meds, cold medicine, etc.

3. Clean the gutters, organize your shed, make

sure your grill is being consistently cleaned.

4. Don’t forget the clutter that gathers on porches

and other outdoor spaces. Tend the garden.

5. Scrub grout in shower with an old toothbrush;

also works great on toilet hinges.

1. Fire Protection Week is

this month. Make sure

your smoke and monoxide

detectors have fresh

batteries. Also, dust the

detectors to make sure

that the units stay clean.

2. Replace lighter bedding with warmer bedding.

3. If you have central air, change your air filters every

30-60 days. You might want to do it more frequently

if you have allergies or pets, or less frequently if you

have no pets, single occupancy or a vacation home.

4. Change the setting on your humidifier

from summer to winter.

5. Clean out the garage, so as the weather turns

cold, you can fit your car in the garage.

6. Sweep off steps leading to home

and clean exterior doors.

1. Most homes have a “collect all” spot for keys, mail,

loose change and random items. Make sure you

only have one spot and keep it as organized as

possible. If you have a junk drawer you can organize

that using a utensil tray/organizer to separate items.

2. Make sure all your Tupperware have matching tops.

3. Prepare a monthly meal plan. Either get a recipe

magazine or go online.

Print recipes, put in plastic

packets that can go into a

three ring binder, and divide

by each week. This makes

things much easier when it’s

time to go food shopping

and prepare weekly meals.

4. School and work schedules are more regular come

fall so establish some good daily routines now.

5. Clean all vents and registers, replace old filters.

6. Organize your office. Label items and

purge or shred old paperwork.

1. If you have window A/C units, remove them or

cover them for the winter. If you remove them,

clean the filter and drain the unit of water.

2. Clean random appliances and furniture — coffee

maker, stove hood vents, china cabinet, knick-

knack cabinet.

3. Organize your kids’

homework area,

backpacks, lunch boxes

so everyone is ready

for the morning rush.

4. Clean inside all

appliances as well

as behind.

5. Defrost freezer.

6. Clean dishwasher: Run an empty cycle with a

cup of vinegar inside a measuring cup; then

sprinkle baking soda around the bottom of

interior; this will help freshen the smell.

1. Prepare for holiday guests. Move all your furniture

and clean underneath. Vacuum in between cushions

and under beds. Leave no ottoman unturned.

2. Clean rugs/carpets. Yes, you

may have done this back in

April. Twice a year is typical if

you have people in and out

of your house, kids or pets.

3. Thoroughly clean out your

refrigerator and oven. If friends

and family are visiting they

will most likely be opening

one of these appliances.

4. Organize your food storage containers since you’ll

be handing out or receiving holiday leftovers

and baked goods in the coming months. Clear

out outdated food; don’t forget the freezer.

5. Clean laundry room. Create a cleaning

bucket with all of your needed cleaning

supplies that you can carry from room to

room; this uses your time more efficiently.

1. Go through your basement closets, and rooms to

organize clothes, toys, and other items. Organize

by three piles: keep, discard and donate. Keep

track of your donated items for tax purposes.

2. Prepare for guests again: Make sure you have

plenty of nice towels, bathroom supplies and

thoughtful items in the bedrooms. You can find a

small basket and fill it with shampoo, conditioner,

contact solution, a toothbrush, toothpaste and

dental floss. They may not need

it but if they forget something

it would be nice to have.

Make sure the bedrooms have

are tissues, working lights,

extra bedding, extra pillows

and some water bottles.

3. Take down your holiday

decorations in a timely manner.

Sources: Erica Gray, office manager, The Maids in Albany; Debreen Oliva, owner of D.O. Organize in Saratoga Springs; Katie Whitt, owner of Albany Home Cleaning in Albany.

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You don’t have to empty your wallet to semi-finish the basement

By Brianna Snyder“After” photo by Emily Jahn

Pole Problems

PROBLEM

Those ugly support poles are usually just an unfortunate feature of an un- or semi-finished basement. But Denise Maurer, of Denise Maurer Interiors in Troy, had a solution for her clients in Niskayuna. The homeowners wanted to turn their partially-finished basement into a family recreation room, Maurer says, so she suggested some “inexpensive, quick, fun and non-traditional ideas.”

SOLUTION

They sprayed the basement ceiling white, “including all the duct work and wiring,” Maurer says. On one wall, they had a mural installed, and then they put down vinyl flooring. And those pesky poles? Those were wrapped with bamboo poles to add a funky vibe to the basement and obscure the obtrusive poles.

Top Tip “Think outside of

the box and consider adapting inexpensive

materials — like bamboo — to create one-of-a-kind

looks,” Maurer says.

BEFORE

Problem Solved


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Changeable décor to get all hung up in

Vintage Clothes as Art

Do it yourself

• Go through family trunks and boxes; handmade family heirlooms are great.

• Infant clothes are nice in small kids’ rooms and let you hold those babies a little longer.

• Vintage coats and ties draped on wood hangers work the Mad Men vibe.

• Doors are great for hanging and framing a treasured garment.

• Keep clothes out of sunlight as much as possible. They fade quicker than you’d think.

• Photograph fragile garments, experiment with filters and hang the pictures.

Story and photos by Megan Willis

Megan Willis has a life-long passion for turning trash into treasure. Her blog, The Davenport Chronicles, can be found at blog.timesunion.com/davenport.

Vintage clothes (especially ones with oceans of sequins) have had a hypnotiz-ing effect on me. I’ve been hanging prized

pieces around the house for about as long as I can remember. Some garments are picked up from thrift stores. Others, like the plaid pinafore pictured here, were hand sewn for my mom-in-law by her mom. I’ve staple-gunned a stranger’s sailor uniform to my wall and once saw a bride and groom’s attire festoon a fireplace mantel in a magazine. It looked magnificent and infinitely better than it ever looked in storage.

DIY Diva

48 | Life@Home

Travel tips that are light on the wallet

By Laurie Lynn Fischer

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Traveling Light

Cabin fever sets in. It’s time to take — or at least plan — a vacation. Whether your idea of a getaway

means hitting the slopes, the beach, or some other destination, here’s how to hit the road without hitting your bank account too hard.

1. TRAVELING LIGHT“Pack light and carry on,” says Cindy McKeehan, president of McGeary’s Travel in Pine Bush. If all you have is a carry-on case, you can save time and money. You’ll avoid per-bag and overweight expenses, plus you won’t have to wait at the baggage carousel or worry about your luggage get-ting lost.

Most airlines now charge a fee for checked bags, says Amy Gerling of East Greenbush Travel. She has more than 27 years of experience as a travel consultant; she’s known on Twitter as TravelGerl.

“Pack your suitcase and then remove half,” she suggests. “I use this myself. You can always wear the same outfit more then once. Try to coordinate, so you can wear same pants or skirt with different tops. Remember: you will never see these people again, so who cares if you wear the same outfit?”

2. BOOK SMARTHow you make your reservations can

make a big difference in how much you spend, says McKeehan, giving these sug-gestions:

• Travel is like shopping; book when things are on sale.

• Book a package instead of making reser-vations piece by piece.

• Booking is like the stock market — here today, gone tomorrow. When you get a great price, pounce on it. Don’t wait!

3. TIMING IS ALLBe flexible. If you’re willing to work within a window of time or depart from home at the drop of a hat, you can score some great deals.

If you travel mid-week, tickets won’t cost as much, says McKeehan. “If you’re traveling for a few days, avoid the weekend,” she says.

It’s also less expensive to travel at the beginning or end of the season, suggests McKeehan. Not only will you save money,

you’ll miss the crowds.“Everyone wants to ski or go to Hawaii

in the winter,” says Gerling. “Consider this type of vacation in off-peak times — going skiing in the springtime, for example. If you can avoid the weeks that the children are off school, you can save a lot. I have found going the first week in December or right after New Year’s is a great time to travel.”

4. FRUGAL FOODEconomize on eating, starting at the air-port. “Bring snacks along when traveling with your children,” McKeehan says. Air-port food is expensive; plus, it’s probably not as good as what you supply, she says.

Once you reach your destination, patroniz-ing local bakeries, markets, and cafes that are off the beaten track can save expense and expose you more to the local culture. “Go to a local grocery store and purchase water and snacks,” recommends Gerling. “It’s much less expensive then eating at the hotel.”

Dollars & Sense

When you get a

great price,

don’t wait!

If you dine at restaurants for every meal, you won’t have as much time or money left to spend on sightseeing or snor-keling. Instead, Gerling says, “You could eat a big breakfast, skip lunch, and then have a large dinner or you could have a large lunch, late in the day, and then snack for dinner.”

Consider renting a villa or condo, suggests McKeehan. “Bring along food, have a barbecue and enjoy your sur-roundings,” she says.

If you stay in a hotel, pick one that offers free break-fast and WiFi, she says. And if you do go out to eat, try someplace that’s “off the main drag,” she says. “So many travel writers have inexpen-sive recommendations.”

5. GETTING AROUNDIn London, they call it the Underground. In Paris, it’s the Metro. Taking subways, trains, buses, jitneys and ferries gives you a chance to get a feel for the locals. You’ll save money if you use public transportation instead of renting a car, says McKeehan. You can also ride bikes, boats or hoof it.

6. THE REAL DEALMany venues offer other dis-counts for seniors, military per-sonnel, students and children, Gerling says. Sometimes, the break comes through member-ship in an organization such as AAA or the AARP, she says.

“Take advantage of specials on hotels,” says Gerling. “Many times they offer upgrades, free breakfasts, and sometimes free nights. In off-peak times, Disney may offer free dining plans.”

Buy multiple-use passes before you go, suggests McKeehan. They might be good

for anything from transporta-tion to museum admission.

7. SPECIAL AGENT

Work with a local travel profes-sional to plan and book your vacation, advises Sandy Thom-as-Comenole of Celtic Travel in Albany. Travel agents provide valuable services that can save you a lot of money and aggrava-tion, she says.

“Their expertise, knowledge and experience will help you with all aspects of your vaca-tion,” she says.

Travel agents can help bud-get-conscious travelers find the best deals and get free perks, she says. Travel agents are also there for you, for instance, if you miss a flight or if a flight is delayed or cancelled, she says.

Don’t just go online, cautions Gerling. “The Internet is great for researching your options, but not all you read or see is the truth,” she warns. “We are local and real people! We are a phone call away if you encounter any problems once traveling.”

8. JUST IN CASEIt’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. People buy car insur-ance, health insurance and house insurance. Travel insur-ance can be equally important, according to Celtic Tours.

“Purchase travel insurance to protect your trip investment and yourself while traveling,” Thomas-Comenole recom-mends. “This is huge in saving money and frustration if any-thing were to go wrong.”

Bethlehem native Laurie Lynn Fischer is a regular Life@Home contributor who began her investment portfolio and launched her professional journalism career as a teenager.Ph

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50 | Life@Home

By Cari Scribner

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Eco-Resolutions

A look back on the 2013 Living Green columns provides an abun-dance of New Year’s resolution

ideas. From home energy audits to safer sunscreen to ways to recycle hosiery, it’s been an eye-opening 12 months for me. My resolutions are to make a more conscious effort to do more than sort out recyclables from household trash, taking into account

the following revelations:

Startling, inspirational and just plain quirky, the new book Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson offers a plentitude of easy and odd ways to reduce household trash and recyclables. What makes Johnson an expert? Her family of four produces just one quart of garbage a year that needs

to be toted to the curb for trash pick-up. Through composting, streamlining and replacing, Johnson maintains a household that’s healthier for the earth and her fam-ily. In a world often defined by possessions, the family began by actively downsizing, donating 80 percent of their belongings. The book’s lovely photos show a stark, bright home with little or no clutter.

Living Green

Johnson was inspired in part by the Laura Ingalls Wilder collection of Little House books many of us may read as youngsters. With a mantra of “reduce, reuse, recycle, rot,” some of the hundreds of tips in Zero Waste Home include replacing Saran Wrap and plastic food bags with various sizes of canning jars, wrapping her kids’ lunches in clean cloth towels rather than lunch bags,

and using turkey lacers as toothpicks. Some initiatives didn’t make sense for Johnson, such as making the family’s but-ter, and if you dared show up for a dinner party with a boxed pie, you’d be asked to take the packaging home with you and not bring it next time. Johnson’s book is one of extremes, but her mission is to make small changes that, combined, lead to a greener American family lifestyle.

The brand of pantyhose I turn to at drugstores, No Nonsense, collects all brands of used pantyhose, which can be turned into park benches, playground equipment, carpets and even toys. Fulfill another resolution by finally cleaning out your dresser drawers and separating the hosiery, nylon knee highs and tights you no longer wear. Then log onto nononsense.com/pantyhoserecycling.aspx to download and print a mailing label. Bring to your nearest shipping center and send away. Collections are handled by a North Caro-lina No Nonsense plant and then donated to a recycling facility.

This summer I will buy extra pairs of flip-flops to support the Flip Flops For Families organization, which ships the rubber footwear all over the world to less fortunate families who walk barefoot in their daily lives. Flip-flops are collected rather than closed-toe shoes because they’re a breathable, light option that can be worn in the hot and humid climates of Africa, South America and other parts of the world. To participate, log onto flipflops-forfamilies.org and click “Donate Here.” You’ll have to mail your donations to Flori-da, but since the average pair is 13 ounces or less, postage fees are small, especially considering the impact your donation will have on the lives of others less fortunate.

A sobering statistic from the Environ-mental Protection Agency: American households spend an average of $1,036 per year on food that is wasted, for a stagger-ing total of $2.5 billion across the country. More food reaches landfills and incin-

erators than any other single material in municipal solid waste. In 2010 alone, more than 34 million tons of food waste was generated, with only 3 percent channeled from landfills and incinerators for compost-ing. Take heart and support grassroots organizations springing up locally to help alleviate this cycle of waste. Slow Food Saratoga is part of a global grassroots movement with thousands of members supporting smarter food practices, focus-ing on community and the environment. The group’s mission is to strengthen the community’s bond with foods produced locally, including local farms. Slow Food Saratoga partners with many local farms producing everything from fruits and veg-gies to Angus beef, promoting growers who supply healthy foods as an alternative to the fast-food lifestyle. Make a resolution to check out slowfoodsaratoga.com for list-ings of events such as Capital Region Slow Food dinners to support this group that envisions global change in how and what we eat.

Resolve to give a gift of cloth diapers at baby showers. I was disheartened to dis-cover that disposable diapers are the third largest single consumer item in landfills, and represent about 4 percent of solid waste. In a house with a child in diapers, disposables make up 50 percent of house-hold waste. And more than 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable diapers for one baby each year. There are myriad alternatives to dispos-ables, including the Tidy Tots washable diaper system that includes a patented cover made of waterproof fabric that’s so durable, it’s used in the medical field. You can shop for this product and more at Green Conscience Home in Saratoga Springs. The store also offers baby cribs that have non-toxic finishes, manufactured at a Forest Stewardship Certified facility, and all factory wastes are recycled.

Here’s to a happy, healthy New Year to you and your family. Ph

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Americanhouseholdsspendanaverageof$1,036peryearonfoodthatiswasted,forastaggeringtotal

of$2.5billionacrossthecountry.


52 | Life@Home

By Kerry Ann Mendez | Photos courtesy Natureworks

Life in MiniatureI just wrapped up garden maintenance

for the day and it is a blustery 20 de-grees outside. I know. You’re thinking

I’ve been in the eggnog again. Nope. I was just getting my daily garden fix from a fairy garden in the sun room. Now gardeners in the Northeast can truly garden year-round.

Fairy gardening, or miniature gardening as adult fans prefer to call it, has become wildly popular in recent years. It releases the inner child in us all. Fairy gardening is an easy way to introduce children to the

joy and life-time hobby of gardening. These whimsical gardens also warm the souls of elderly plant lovers who are not able to garden as they once were. And for some, it’s a way to realize our landscape dreams, even if we cannot afford the life-size ver-sion. These miniature landscapes, though small in scale, can still pack a wallop of satisfaction, and are unquestionably low-maintenance and wee little money.

For great advice on how to create magical fairy gardens, I went to the

queen of miniatures — Diane St. John at Natureworks garden center (naturework.com) in Northford, Conn. She helps folks of all ages release their gardening fantasies and overcome the hesitation of building their first fairy hamlet. “It’s easy. Just put a plant, rock and some moss together and ta-da, you have a simple fairy garden. If it moves you, add some hardscaping, such as a patio or stone path. Then tuck in a cute little chair, arbor, gazing ball or whatever and the fairies will come.”

Adventures in fairy gardening

Down the Garden Path A miniature garden arbor and walkway make a cute setting for your fairies.


Start with a container that grabs your fancy. As long as it has a drainage hole, it will work. Diane prefers clay pots, as they tend to breathe better. Be sure to use a quality indoor potting medium. As with outdoor gardening, great soil is the key to great plants. Organic Mechanics Blend Pot-ting Soil, which includes worm castings, is a popular pick at Natureworks.

After placing the soil in the container, fashion the landscape. In many ways, the same garden design principles apply. Remember to consider scale; how colors work together; putting taller plants or structures in the back of the garden (from where it is most often viewed); and varying foliage sizes, shapes, colors and textures. Actually, designing miniature gardens is wonderful practice for creating gorgeous shade beds, as most of the color and interest also comes from foliage.

There are oodles of darling plants to fill your garden. For rooms with bright light, Diane recommends Fittonia (lovely leaf patterns in red, pink, silver or white); Hy-poestes (funky pink, red or white spotted foliage); hens and chicks; creeping thymes and tiny succulents. Selaginella (spike-moss); moss harvested from your own backyard (or packaged dehydrated moss that is easily revived); Soleirolia (baby’s tears); Nephthytis (cool, limey-green leaves); Peperomia and miniature ferns such as Autumn fern and Maidenhairs are perfect for dimly lit spaces. If you want flowering plants, they will most likely have to be faux … but some remarkably good-looking choices are available.

Most fairy gardens also include some type of path or patio made

from stones or gravel, as well as whimsi-cal décor. Benches, arbors, bird baths, trellises, bridges and cottages are popular furnishings. You can also tuck in bunnies, squirrels and baby deer without fear of the garden being devoured, or go wild and toss in some pink flamingos! Diane encourages folks to include a small trinket they have tucked away in a drawer that holds special memories for them — perhaps a sea shell or piece of jewelry. A fairy garden is the perfect place to display it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the stars of this fascinating world — fairies. Choose from many different personalities

— mostly female — or the mischievous male elves out there. They tend to be more elusive and are best caught online.

Caring for your little ecosystem is easy. You may need to occasionally prune some plants that grow a tad faster than others, similar to annual Potato Vine that can quickly overtake its container mates if not held in check. Fertilize the garden several times a year with an organic feed such as Neptune’s Harvest Fish and Seaweed. You don’t want to overfertilize or you will stimulate too much growth or — gasp! — kill the plants. Probably the most common mistake fairy garden caretakers make is overwatering. Before sprinkling water

around the plants, stick your finger into the soil and see if it is dry. If it still feels damp or cool to the touch, step away and do something else with your time. Fairy gardens that are composed mostly of suc-culents may only need to be watered once over the entire winter!

The middle of winter is a terrific time to build a fairy garden and whisk away the winter blues. It’s easy and fun. Just pretend you’re playing with dollhouses, creating your own perfect little world. Enchanting, remember?

Kerry Mendez offers more tips and ideas on her website, pyours.com.

Natureworks used a Miniature Garden Birders Cottage with miniature plants and pots in a hanging planter to create this cute mini world

Mini-garden terrariums are a perfect way to satisfy that gardening itch in winter.

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54 | Life@Home

These apps can help you make your resolutions happenBy Brianna Snyder

Resolution Solution

Happy new year! Did you make your resolutions? When you did, did you get that sinking feeling

of inevitable failure? That would be a rational response. Ac-

cording to The New York Times, four out of five people break their resolutions — a third of them before the end of January.

I know. Not the motivational news you need today. But we’ve got good news: apps! We’ve found a few that can help you stay on your path and bust those bleak statis-tics. 2014 is your year! Check these out.

THE HABIT FACTOR (ITUNES, $6.99; GOOGLE PLAY, $4.99)

This app is based on a book of the same title, and features many tools to help

you build better habits and meet your goals. With a calendar, notes section and color-coded, prioritized goal-setting, the app breaks habit-development into training bits, or “target days.” It’s a step-by-step process that breaks down your goals into small accomplishable tasks and helps you calibrate your expectations. For example, if

your goal is to run a marathon, it’ll tell you when you should be sleeping and waking up, when you should be training, what you should be eating, etc. (Look for a light, free version if you’re wary of the price but want to check it out.)

CHECK (AKA PAGEONCE) (ITUNES AND GOOGLE PLAY, FREE)

It’s tough to tell if mobile banking has made money-

tracking easier or harder. Pending trans-actions, automatic debits, old-fashioned checks, paperless statements … things get out of hand quickly. If your resolution this year is to get more financially stable, Check is a good go-to app. It monitors your transactions, bill due dates, and various balances, reminding you when various pay-ments are due and when your accounts are running low; then you can pay using the app or schedule payments for later. Check also rounds up all your balances and gives you an overview of all your financial obliga-tions. Very useful.

GOJEE (ITUNES AND GOOGLE PLAY, FREE)

Is your goal to cook more and better food? The Inter-net is a terrifying ocean of

resources for the ambitious chef, but what if you’re a reluctant cook who has a tough time keeping up with shopping and inter-esting recipes? Gojee is for you. Recipes here have been curated by the siterunners, and — here’s the best part — you can filter recipes by what you have already in your pantry. Terrific and plentiful ideas can be found here, so it’ll be tougher to make an excuse for takeout.

DUOLINGO (ITUNES AND GOOGLE PLAY, FREE)

Knowing a second language is an invaluable skill, and a great resolution for this

year. Rosetta Stone is fairly expensive, which is why we’re into Duolingo, a free language tutorial site and app. The pro-gram is fun, with game-like levels and a social component so that you can compete and play with friends.

Tech Tips


Life55 – 74

Family Food Wine

The spices of life. Photo by Paul Barrett. Read more on page 68.

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What a holiday season that was. You’ve got a camera filled with photos destined for

tightly-themed scrapbooks (baking cookies with grandparents, kids sledding, Hallmark-moment Christmas tree selection) and have saved 27 copies of the program from the Christmas pageant just so you’d always remember that Tony-worthy performance your little darling gave as Shepherd No. 2.

And then you find yourself caught be-tween annual planning at work and taking care of flu-ridden children at home. There is no time for keepsake care. But don’t stuff that stuff in the closet. Here are some tips from the pros on how to organize those special memories any time of the year:

SELF-PUBLISHING: Websites such as Snapfish and even retail websites for CVS and Walmart, allow you to design photo books online. The slick books then hold your memories neatly bound, without having to worry about taping down prints. Lisa Higdon, owner of Clear Spaces Organizing in Albany, says when her husband’s family was selling their Maryland farm, they walked the farm taking photos of the scenes. They then made photo books for all the family members to keep.

CONSIDER THE OUTCOME: If you’re already struggling to find time to scrapbook, don’t make it harder by setting yourself up with a bunch of random photos. Consider how each page might be themed before you press the button on your camera. “It’s in taking the photo, trying to get a close-up photo rather than 10 feet away because when you go to put that (wide shot) in a book it’s like, ‘Where are they?,’” says Kathy ONeal, owner of Paper Crafters

Unlimited in East Greenbush. “If you’re taking different people around the Christmas tree, get a close-up picture of the Christmas tree. Think about what you might want to do at the end. … Otherwise, you say, ‘I’ve got all these pictures. I’m going to make my album,’ and then you start going through them and say, ‘What was I thinking?’”

IF YOU’RE JUST NOT CRAFTY: “What I usually recommend is getting some decorative boxes, either photo boxes or memory boxes, and putting everything related into one category,” such as “kids,” “grandparents” or “school party,” says Catherine Dryden, owner of neat chic organizing in Albany. “If you’re going to have them buried in a box in your basement, you might as well not have them at all. So, you want to have them in a box that’s on your bookshelf, that’s easily accessible, that you can pull out and look at and remember.”

THE BOX ALSO SETS LIMITS: “They know where it goes, and it goes into that decorative box . The reason I like boxes is it’s a limited size,” Dryden says. “We culled all their travel memories, and we come up with a decorative box that they’re comfortable with and it’s three-quarters of the way full,” she says. If you’re running out of space and want to keep something, something else has to come out, she says.

SNAP THEIR PICTURE: You’re tempted to store away the decorations from your baby shower cake forever (oh, those little booties!). But sometimes a photograph of the item can work just as well, unless you’re

a tactile person and a picture isn’t worth the 1,000 words holding an object can bring back, Higdon says.”Tim Gunn [the fashion expert] talks in one of his books about how he did that with a person who had a lot of clothes, designer clothes, they didn’t want to let go of. They photographed every single one of them, and then [were] able to let them go,” she says.

BE DISCRIMINATING: “If you go on a trip, people will save every single stub and ticket, so it’s really a matter when you come home, pick out the two or three things that really remind you of the trip,” Dryden says. “You don’t have to keep every single thing that happened on that trip.”

GIVE IT PRACTICAL LIFE: Why let something such as T-shirts fill up a dresser drawer when they could be displayed? “I’ve made T-shirt quilts for my kids, and I saved T-shirts from elementary school through high school and turned them into quilts when they went to college,” Higdon says.

WHAT MEMORIES ARE MADE OF: Want to keep a birth or engagement announcement from the newspaper? “If you’re going to put newspaper articles in [your scrapbook], there’s an [archival] spray you can actually treat them with so they don’t yellow over time,” ONeal says.

LOOK ONLINE: Pinterest, the website that acts as many people’s online bulletin board, is a great place to find ideas for uniquely preserving everything from bouquets with sentimental value to those precious sports ribbons and trophies, Higdon says.

Jennifer Gish is the Times Union’s features editor.

By Jennifer Gish

Help Me … Preserve Family Memories

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DEB BESTOwner of Deb Best Practices, Deb has morethan 20 years of business, change managementand human resources leadership experiencefor Fortune 500, technology, manufacturing,consumer and supply-chain publicly and privatelyheld companies.

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JEFF LAWRENCEExecutive Vice President, Technology Centerfor Economic Growth. Networking is a significantelement of Jeff’s role overseeing the ChiefExecutives Network for Manufacturing and CEG’sbusiness growth services, which involves activelymatching Capital Region manufacturers and otherbusinesses to technologies, supply chains, andother synergistic partnerships.

SUZANNE O’CONNORAssociate Director of the Siena College CareerCenter. Suzanne counsels student and alumni inthe career development process, with a specialemphasis on job search preparation. She isan expert ‘Speed Presenter,’ as she facilitatestwo events at Siena College annually: SpeedNetworking Night and Speed Interviewing Night.

MAGGIE SULLIVANManager, Human Capital Management, CapitalDistrict Physicians Health Plan. An experiencedHR manager, Maggie has worked with a varietyof companies around the country before joiningCDPHP.

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1 Listen to more music. According to a University of Missouri

study called “Trying to Be Happier Really Can Work: Two Experimental Studies,” a person can successfully try to be happier by listening to upbeat music. Try it out: Switch your iPhone’s alarm clock sound from its typical monotonous beep to a cheery tune. If nothing else, it will at least get your day started on a more positive note. Or create a Spotify list of happy tunes you can turn to when you’re feel a little downbeat.

2 Practice self-discipline.If the words “I have no self-control” have

ever rolled off your tongue, consider this: An experiment published in the Journal of Personality revealed that participants who showed the greatest self-control had more good moods and fewer bad ones than those who didn’t. It also showed that the happier participants avoided situations that might tempt them to falter. In other words, rather than collect all your willpower as you walk by the free cupcakes in your office’s break room, take a different route altogether.

3 Keep on pinning.Think you’ll be even happier once

you once actually own that outfit, that handbag, that new sofa you pinned on Pinterest? Turns out, wanting is better than having. One study showed that we actually experience more positive emotions before

purchasing things — just thinking about owning them — than when we do once we actually obtain what we want. How’s that for a good excuse to hide your wallet?

4 Be a little more extroverted. Research says extroverts are generally

happier, and that introverts can feel hap-pier by acting extroverted. On the more re-served side yourself? See if the studies are right; consider signing up for something — such as making a public speech — that you wouldn’t normally jump on and make note of how you feel afterward.

5 Volunteer more.After analyzing 40 published papers,

researchers concluded that volunteers have lower levels of depression — and in addition to boosting your mood, volunteer-ing can also help you live longer. Sold? Visit volunteermatch.org to find opportunities in your area.

6 Help someone out.This tip comes from Rachel on our

Facebook page: “Here is a trick I’ve been trying: When I’m super grumpy and feeling full of yuck, I’m trying to make myself do something nice for someone. It always, always puts me in a better mood.”

7 Don’t skimp on sleep.You already know the health benefits

of getting enough sleep — and the havoc it can wreak on your body when you’re sleep

deprived — but did you know it’s also linked to happiness? In fact, a bad night’s sleep was considered to be one of the top two reasons for being in a bad mood at work, one study showed, right up there with tight work deadlines. Try hitting the sack an hour earlier tonight.

8 Spend time with your loved ones. “We are happy when we have family,

we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends,” once said Har-vard happiness expert Daniel Gilbert. Take a look at your calendar today and plan a few social outings in the coming weeks.

9 Go outside. A team from the London School of

Economics and Political Science found that being active in an outdoor setting can raise happiness levels. Really want to hit a high? Dr. George MacKerron, one the study’s undertakers, was quoted as saying, “People recorded the highest levels of happiness in marine and coastal locations, followed by mountains and moors, forests and farms.”

10 Smile. We don’t need a study to tell us

this one (although the studies do exist): smiling more often is a simple act you can always do to decrease stress and instantly feel happier.

10 Ways to …

If there’s one resolution you actually see through this year, make it this one: be happier. There’s no better time than right now to vow to make 2014 the year you consciously

(and subconsciously) improve your overall mood. To make it easy for you, we’ve listed 10 ways you can do just that. Best part — aside from sunnier days ahead, of course — is that you barely have to spend a cent to get to cloud nine.

Bookmark this site

Check out happify.com, where you’ll find activities

and games carefully designed to help you build skills for lasting happiness.

Be Happier This Year

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Know what’s going on 24/7 and be part of our community, both on- and offline. Connect with us on all our social platforms, so you never miss a beat!

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Winter Warm-up Recipe

Warm Spiced Chicken Mole

Truly authentic mole sauce is made with a long list of ingredients. This quick-to-put-together version is simplified, but still has tons of flavor. Serve it with rice and black beans.

In the bowl of a slow cooker, combine 1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, 1 large chopped onion, 2 dried ancho chiles (stemmed and torn apart), 1 teaspoon chipotle powder, 1 handful each sliced pumpkin seeds and raisins, 1/2 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate, 2 corn tortillas, 2 teaspoon cumin and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.

Stir well to combine and add 3-4 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.

Use tongs to pull the chicken from the slow cooker. Use an immersion blender to puree the sauce. Use the tongs and a fork to pull the chicken pieces apart, then return to the sauce. Serve with rice and beans. Also makes great burrito or taco filling.

Winter Foodie Movie The Trip, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, is a lighthearted romp through the English countryside. This pair is on a foodie journey, stopping to review fine restaurants and eat plenty of good food. The laughter and cozy warm dishes will warm you up on a dark winter night!

Food TipWinter is the best time for citrus fruits, when they are at their peak of juiciness. This is also the time to get the best price on a big sack of grapefruit or oranges. Eat citrus fruits for their high amounts of vitamin C and sweet, sunny flavor.

Have you ever wondered why we eat more in winter? According to a study at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, humans are very sensitive to light. When there is less of it, we seek out food and eat it faster. We average 200 calories more each day in the winter months.

tinyurl.com/LAHJan14-wintereats

Cookbook of the Month An American Family Cooks by Judith Chaote

A book for families who like to cook, but most of all like to eat. Beautiful photographs and recipes everyone can make. You can find An American Family Cooks for $30.95 at amazon.com.

Kitchen Crumbs

By Caroline Barrett

Tasty Tidbits to brighten up your cooking

“Only the pure in heart can make good soup.”— Ludwig van Beethoven

Scrap ThisWondering what to do with all your food scraps? If you have the desire to compost but not the space, Radix Ecological Sustainability Center will do the dirty work for you. The company sets you up with a 2.4 gallon compost container and liner. Compost is collected each week and a new liner is left behind. The cost is $15/week. Visit radixcenter.org for more information.

Mazzone Hospitality’s

AnnualWedding Show

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Sunday, January 19, 201411:00 am - 2:00 pm

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$5.00 admission includes:• Over 65 Vendors!

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• Formal Wear Fashions

• Complimentary Photo Magnets

By Steve Barnes | Photos by Paul Barrett

Ross Thompson

An emulsion of egg yolks, or sometimes whole eggs, and butter, with acidity from lemon juice, Hollandaise is one of the five “mother sauces” of French cuisine from which many other sauces can be created. As tra-ditionally made, Hollandaise requires whisking egg yolks in a double boiler over simmer-ing water, then drizzling in clarified butter until a creamy, thick sauce forms. This can take 20 minutes.

“The French way is very tedious, and there are many ways to screw it up,” says Ross

Thompson, the head chef at The Olde English Pub & Pantry in Albany since last summer. Further, the temperature must be precisely controlled; too hot or too cold and the sauce will break, or separate, which usu-ally means starting again.

Thompson learned a quick Hollandaise method while working as a chef at a resort in Florida after a culinary educa-tion at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He whirs egg yolks in a blender while slowly streaming in melted whole but-ter. It takes about five minutes,

The classic French technique for Hollandaise sauce is one chefs learn in culinary school to show they can do it and then immediately try to find an easier, quicker way.

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and, because the butter is whole, not clari-fied, the resulting sauce is more stable than classic Hollandaise and has a richer, more unctuous taste and mouth feel.

Hollandaise is most often served with asparagus or eggs Benedict; its derivatives, including Bearnaise (vinegar, shallots, tarragon), Bavaroise (horseradish, thyme, crayfish butter) and Dion (mustard), are used to finish a variety of meat, seafood and vegetable dishes.

“It’s a great open palate for almost any-thing you want to put in it,” says Thompson. “It can be as fancy or as simple as you like.”

He makes Hollandaise every Sunday for brunch at The Olde English, where it’s part

of a classic eggs Benedict and the vegetar-ian version here, with spinach and feta instead of ham or Canadian bacon.

Thompson counts himself among those chefs who don’t like Sunday brunch, because it means a morning shift after a late night on Saturday, usually the busiest dinner service of the week.

“It’s tough when you have a slamming Saturday night and have to be back at work at 7:30 Sunday to prep for brunch,” says Thompson, who lives 75 miles southwest of Albany with his girlfriend; she has almost as long of a commute in the other direction. He says, “But it’s really popular with custom-ers. They love their eggs Benedict.”

Spinach & Feta BenedictServes 2

2 eggs2 cups baby spinach½ cup roasted red pepper,

cut into ¾ inch strips¼ cup feta cheese1 English muffin, split in halfHollandaise sauce (see recipe)

For the Hollandaise:3 eggs6 ounces (1½ sticks) butter½ lemon, juiced1 pinch salt and pepper3 dashes Tabasco

Method

For the Hollandaise sauce:

Separate eggs; put yolks in blender and save whites for another purpose, if desired.

Melt butter in saucepan or microwave. Add lemon juice, salt, pepper and Tabasco to yolks. Start blending and add butter in a slow stream, keeping blender running until all butter is fully incorporated. The sauce should be thick and smooth. If

not serving Hollandaise immediately, keep it warm in a bowl set over hot but not simmering water or in a Thermos that has been prewarmed with hot water; Hollandaise that gets too hot or cool will separate.

For the eggs:

Bring 6 cups of water with 2 ounces of white vinegar to a low simmer in a deep saucepan. Add a pinch of salt. Reduce to just under a simmer.

Gently slip 2 eggs to simmering water. While poaching, sear sliced English muffin halves in an oiled sauté pan or cook in toaster. Sauté the spinach and roasted red pepper until spinach is wilted. Season with salt and pepper.

To assemble:

Once eggs are done, about 4-5 minutes, remove with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to blot dry, then assemble the Benedict. Using the English muffin halves as a base, put spinach and roasted red pepper, eggs and 1-2 tablespoons of Hollandaise per portion. Sprinkle feta cheese over the top and serve.

moreONLINE

Want to see how this recipe was made? Watch our exclusive video at timesunion.com/lifeathome or scan the QR code at the left to link directly to our Life@Home videos on YouTube.

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This incredible technology isNon-Surgical Spinal Decom-pression and the DRX 9000.Here’s the amazing storyhow it was discovered andwhy it has a chance to helpYOUR back pain...

How ScienceHelps Back Pain

The lower back is a series ofbones separated by shockabsorbers called “discs”.When these discs go badbecause of age or injury youcan have pain. For some thepain is just annoying, but forothers it can be life chang-ing...and not in a good way.It has long been thoughtthat if these discs could behelped in a natural and non-invasive way, lots of peoplewith back and leg pain couldlower the amount of painmedication they take, begiven fewer epidural injec-tions for the pain and haveless surgery.

Recent medicalbreakthroughs have ledto the development ofadvanced technologies

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Have you heard about this new technology that is FDA cleared, and non-surgical treatment for back pain?

Herniated Disc?Non-surgical spinal decompression may be the last back pain treatment you will ever need. And you may be able to forget the pills, getting

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they may be a thing of the past. You’re about to discover a powerful state-of-the-art technology available for: Back pain, Sciatica, Herniated

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Through the work of a spe-cialized team of physiciansand medical engineers,a medical manufacturingcompany, now offers thisspace age technology in itsincredible DRX 9000 SpinalDecompression equipment.

The DRX 9000 isFDA cleared to usewith the pain and

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The main conditions theDRX 9000 has success withare:

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The DRX 9000 has beensuccessful even whenNOTHING else has worked.Even after failed surgery.

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After being fitted with anautomatic shoulder sup-port system, you simply lieface up on the DRX 9000’scomfortable bed and theadvanced computer systemdoes the rest.

Patients describe the treat-ment as a gentle, soothing,intermittent pulling of yourback. Many patients actuallyfall asleep during treatment.

The really good news IS...this is not something youhave to continue to do forthe rest of your life. So it isnot a big commitment.

Since offering the DRX 9000in my Colonie office, I haveseen nothing short of mira-cles for back pain suffererswho had tried everythingelse. . . with little or no result.Many had lost all hope.

Had herniated disk opera-tion 8 years ago another discbecame herniated. Doctorwanted to operate have ar-thritis from 1st one (did notwant togounder knife again)very grateful to DRX9000(thank you Dr. Claude D.Guerra, DC) Very happycamper.Raymond FNiskayuna, NY Age 55This treatment was amiracle for my cervical diskherniations. Only other al-ternative was surgery, whichI no longer have to face.William ISchenectady, NY Age 63

I was told by a doctor Iwouldn’t be able to work. Icannot afford to not work soI tried Dr. Claude D. Guerra,DC, and not only did thepain go away but I nevermissed a day at work.Rick SClifton Park, NY Age 42I would love to shake thehand of the person who in-vented this machine. It wasa life saver for me and a lotbetter than going under theknife. I HIGHLY recommendthis to anyone with chronicback pain.Dawn HColonie, NY Age 49Before the DRX 9000 treat-ment. I had no quality of life.Couldn’t do anything for my-self. Thank God for Dr. andthe DRX machine. I can liveagain.Yvette KSchenectady, NY Age 47I suffered for three years, be-fore I received treatment onthe DRX 9000. Today, I cansleep and get out of bed likea normal human being. Be-fore, I couldn’t even drive mycar because the pain in myhips, legs and feet were sobad from the sciatica nervebeing pinched by my Herni-ated Disc L4 and L5, whichalso prevented me from sit-ting in a chair or even us-ing my computer lap top atany time. Today things havechanged due to advancetechnology therapy on theDRX 9000. They always try

to regulate the treatmentsthat work. What is up withthis taught process???? Theworld is changing and sohave I.Frank ATroy, NY Age 52Before receiving the DRXtreatments, my quality of lifewas very poor. I could hardlydo anything other than go-ing to work and going to bed.After the DRX treatments myquality of life has improved90% which has resulted inme being able to go for longwalks without a cane and goshopping.Anne PBurnt Hills, NY Age 70I am so appreciative of thismethod of therapy becausewhen I came to the office Ihad to use a cane and hadmuscle pain in walking. After2nd treatment sciatica nervepain was gone in my left leg.Judith WAlbany, NY Age 64Prior to this treatment myonly options appeared to beinvasive pain management,or surgery. After receiving24 sessions on the DRX, I ammarkedly improved, relative-ly pain free and am able tofunction as I had in previousyears. Highly recommend toanyone with disc issues.Alan PScotia, NY Age 53I would choose this therapyagain! Painless treatmentthat gets your life back to

Dr. Claude D. Guerra, DC demonstrates the DRX 9000 to a patient

normal. Stick with it-it works!Linda GBroadalben, NY Age 53I am so happy I came to Dr.Guerra. I was in a lot of painand after being on the DRX Itell you I do not have pain. Ifeel wonderful and the staffare very nice. Dr. Claude D.Guerra, DC is wonderful. Ifyou are in pain try the DRXit really helps.Edith CSchenectady, NY Age 71I think more people shouldknow about this procedurebefore considering any sur-gery. Medications help thepain but they don’t cure thecause. I am back to my oldself again.Lorraine BScotia, NY Age 78I highly recommend this ma-chine. I had my doubts butit really and truly works. Dr.Claude D. Guerra, DC is awonderful doctor and hisstaff is great too.Linda DClifton Park, NY Age 46I was extremely skeptical atthe beginning of treatments- Progress was slow in com-ing - But... then it worked!What a relief!!!Joan KDelmar, NY Age 71I had no where else to gowith this problem. The DRX9000 was just what I need-ed. Many thanks!Burton SMechanicville, NY Age 50

I would definitely refer peo-ple to your office. Dr. Guerraand his staff have made thisexperience a pleasure.Ed HHoosick Falls, NY Age 70Pain free, numbness in theleft foot is gone. DRX 9000is GREAT and does work.Sal LNiskayuna, NY Age 50I’m able to go on long walksand get all night sleep (I’vehad 3 surgeries since 2006)Without the DRX I would bein for a 4th back surgery. I’mgetting back to doing activi-ties with my 10 year old son.Lisa VCatskill, NY Age 45I wish to thank you verymuch for all the help I re-ceived with the spinal de-compression therapy. Yourentire office was very help-ful and compassionate. Nolonger do I sit at night withmy heating pads, movingthem from sore spot to sorespot. My knees are no longeron fire and I’m able to go upand down the stairs mucheasier than before.Mable DBallston Lake, NY Age 68

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68 | Life@Home

Mmm, spicy stews on winter days

By Caroline Barrett | Photos by Paul Barrett

Just a PalmfulI like to imagine kitchens in faraway

places. Kitchens that are nothing like the big, shiny rooms we know in the

here and now. I’m talking about a cozy warm place, a little dark maybe. Pots sit on the stove, bubbling. Spices line up on open shelves in big jars. The smell is heaven.

I imagine this place as part of a life that isn’t busy. Cooking a stew for hours and hours is the way it’s done. Family sits on chairs around the fire, reading or just look-ing at the warm flames. No one rushes off.

The food that comes from this kitchen is warm and soft and redolent of chiles and cinnamon and pepper. What I like to

dream about is a place where spices are not sprinkled on lightly or measured in quarter-teaspoons. Chiles and garlic are ground and added liberally to everything.

I have a friend from Morocco, who explained what happened when she asked her mother for a sauce recipe. Her mother dutifully told her the ingredients: the cin-namon, the chiles and the spice seeds.

“I mean in measurements, how much of each?,” my friend wanted to know. Her mother told her to hold out her hand and make it into a cup.

“Fill your palm with cumin,” her mother said, “and fill half of your palm with cin-

namon. That is how I measure.”My friend rolled her eyes at this and said

she needed to measure in spoonfuls to get it right. I understood her mother, and perhaps the kitchen her grandmother and great-grandmother cooked in. It’s the one from my dreams. The pots are filled with simmering spiced meats and colorful rice. Red, orange and green vegetables line up, waiting to slide into stews. The scent is one you can wrap yourself around and feel instantly tranquil and at home.

Back in my own kitchen, the one that I like to think is a blend of the old-world place in my reverie and the shiny new

Table@Home


kitchens of our time, I like to recreate those spiced dishes.

This kind of cooking, where nothing is rushed and the rules are loose, is per-fect for children. Zoe wandered in to my kitchen on a recent cold weekend day, just as I was beginning to prepare this beef stew. At 12, she is tall and strong and hun-gry. Always hungry. I love that about her. She came in and asked if she could make macaroni and cheese. I also love that she now asks if she can cook something, not if I will make it for her. Add self-sufficient to the things I love about her.

Wait, I said. I’m making something so much better than macaroni and cheese. She

smirks and shakes her head. Zoe knows that I’m always trying to sell something better than white pasta and cheese. There is a time for macaroni and cheese, but that day wasn’t it. On that day, we would eat spice and meat and vegetables. It would be warm and wonderful in our bellies.

Trust me, I said. I showed her how to hold her hand to make a little cup, and we poured cumin into it, then cinnamon and paprika. She sneezed and then giggled about it. Our kitchen filled with the warm and fantastic smell of cinnamon, cumin and rich beef. Smells that are so much better than maca-roni and cheese.

When finally the stew was cooked and

the beef was tender, people paced as I la-dled it out. We filled bowls and ate in front of the living room fire. It was almost like the warm and cozy scene from my dreams, except the football game was on. We com-promised by turning off the volume.

I like to close my eyes and feel as if I could be in that place, the one where time moves slowly and the glow from the fire is just as warming as the spices in the kettles on the stove. Back in the present, Zoe brought her bowl over, cuddled up close to me and dug in to her stew. She loved every bite and ate two bowls of the stuff. And when she was finished, she smiled sweetly and asked, “Macaroni and cheese tomorrow?”

Moroccan Beef StewThis is a great way to use the lean, grass-fed stew beef available from local farmers. You can find onions, garlic and winter squash at the farmers market this time of year. Also, sweet potatoes are a fine substitute for winter squash in this recipe.

ingredients

olive oil1 large onion, chopped5-6 cloves garlic, peeled

and chopped1 palmful cumin*1 palmful smoked paprika*1/2 palmful cinnamon*2 lbs. stew beef1 small winter squash (peeled,

seeded and chopped)(1) 15-ounce can garbanzo

beans, drained and rinsed1/2 cup raisins (apricots,

chopped, work well too)(2) 28-ounce cans

crushed tomatoes

1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated

sea salt and plenty of pepper to taste

1 large handful fresh cilantro, chopped

method

In a large pot, heat the olive oil over a medium flame and cook the onion until soft. Add the garlic and stir, cooking until just softened. Add the spices and cook for a minute, until very fragrant. Stir in the beef and cook until it starts to brown, using a spoon to scrape up the bottom bits. Add the squash, beans, raisins, tomatoes and ginger. Stir well and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook until the beef is very tender, about 45 minutes. Taste the stew and add salt and cracked black pepper.

* If you like proper measurements, use 2 1/2 tablespoons each cumin and smoked paprika and 1 tablespoon cinnamon.

70 | Life@Home

They know what they’re talking about

Story and photo by Alistair Highet

Staff Picks!

A few years ago, I would have hiked a long way around a rack of “staff picks” in my local wine store.

For one thing, I don’t want to get into a chat when I’m browsing. And isn’t it kind of cheating to pick a wine that is the right by the cash register with a bunch of signs and arrows pointing at it? Hmm, if the staff likes it, it must be awesome. Who thinks like that? No, so much better to squat in the low aisles among the dust and drag out something that’s wedged between the shelving and the carpet.

These days — particularly with the ex-plosion of wine distributors and wine super warehouses — there are too many wines to keep up with if you want to also have a job and a family and a driver’s license, and it is so easy to get lost. Here is where the staff has you beat. They regularly get to try wine. They sometimes get discounts. And they also have good relationships with dis-tributors — meaning that they often know what is hype and what is value. It is also true that the staff in most wine establish-ments aren’t terribly well paid, so they are very likely to know the hidden gems on their racks that won’t break the bank.

So over the last month I’ve walked right to the staff pick rack, grabbed a couple of bottles without much reflection, and walked out. The wines have all been good and very reasonable — and in-clude an entirely new discovery.

Ruche [accent on the e up and to the right]! Italy is amazing in the way that is has kept ancient and unloved varietals alive and kicking — still gamely throw-ing off fruit against the wall of stone outhouses and so on, or poking up amongst the tomatoes. Italy is home to scores of varietals that we rarely see

here, and this was my first sighting.What an exciting change of pace this

wine is. The producer is Cantine Valpane, a well-known house in Piedmont, and this grape is particular to the Monferrato zone. The “Rosso Ruske” — the name of the grape is slightly adapted in honor of the owner — is aged in cement tanks so there’s nothing oaky or woody about it, all the more strange that it has such a strong, leathery, bitter, peat, charred bone and dry pepper quality. There is rosemary as well, and then the fruit is black cherry. That peat note is really out there. It all comes together, however, in a very quaffable way — you savor it, but you don’t hang on to it. This is as rustic as it sounds.

Evidently the origin of the grape is a mys-tery — either it is native, or it comes from Burgundy. That’s as far as people have got-ten. I think it is a grape to be excited about and I look forward to trying it some more. It cost $17.

Here are some other wines I grabbed off the rack, all highly recommended.

Alistair Highet is a former editor, restaurant manager, and vinedresser, and has written about wine for over 20 years.

The Vineyard

Beau Rivage, Bordeaux Superieur, 2010, $11

Seriously, 11 bucks? This is a Bordeaux blend from an estate owned by Borie-Manoux, a big negociant in the region. The grapes come from all over the slopes on the Garonne and Dordogne. Plum and autumn apple cider, red currant, vanilla, soft tannins.

Costa Al Sole, Marche, Sangiovese, 2011, $12

From the eastern central part of Italy, this is an organic wine, with the vibrant, juicy fruit you expect from organic wine. Young, bright cherry, with peppery tannins — a delightfully fun wine for any occasion.

Mastro Sabando, Barbera D’Asti, 2011, $15

Great quality again. Light and ebullient, with blackberry fruit, cinnamon and spice, lemon zest, espresso, a soft satiny mouthfeel, so very balanced, nuanced, and colorful.

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Story and photo by Suzanne Kawola

My Space

We all have favorite spots, places where we feel

most comfortable or at home. Sometimes it’s a favorite chair or nook in a room; other times it’s outside the house. Wherever it is, it is where we are most at home.

Who: Melanie Pores, assistant in research and educational services for New York State United Teachers (NYSUT)

FAVORITE SPACE: Her office.

WHY: A former public classroom teacher of three decades, Melanie Pores takes great pride in her responsibility as staff liaison for English language learners. “I saw [this office] as a place where all my different souls could come together and be in one space together,” Pores says. She says her role is “a role of advocacy. It’s a role of trying to promote change in a just way.”

Early in her career, as an early childhood teacher, Pores started a dual language program in Albany County Head Start. Although not of Hispanic or Latino descent herself, she was exposed to the Spanish language from her childhood best friend who was from the Dominican Republic. “All of her family members became my family members,” she says. She calls her immer-sion in the language with her second family a gift, and her motivation to support bilin-gual education comes from this experience.

“I feel a sense of wholeness [in this office], because being in this room most of the im-portant parts of my life merge together.”

Blue lagoon bathroom. Photo by Vincent Giordano. Read more on page 24.

74 | Life@Home

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