Tag: Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

Christmas Custard

Now that the Christmas season is here, it’s time for all the festivities of the holiday season, and that includes delicious desserts! But besides sugar cookies, what festive treats are there to make? Well, a Christmas custard is the perfect option! Taken straight from my grandmother’s kitchen, here’s how to […]

Arts & Culture

How to Solve Mazes: Part Two

Solving mazes is more than following a few useful tips. But tips are helpful anyway, so here are some more: In general, when a maze crafter puts together a maze, he writes in the walls first, leaving open spaces to travel through.  To go through a maze, then, the solver […]

Arts & Culture

The Magic of Christmas Carols

Every year I begin playing Christmas carols on the piano a month or two before December starts, and I am struck once more by the incredible beauty of these hymns.  Christmas carols fill my heart with magic not only because of their association with my favorite time of year, but […]

Arts & Culture

From Failure to Favorite: History of The Nutcracker Ballet

St. Petersburg, Russia. December 1892.  Gentlemen with carefully trimmed beards and ladies dressed in the eccentric puffy-sleeved dresses of the 1890s pack themselves into the Imperial Mariinsky Theater on a blustering Russian night for the very first performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Italian ballerina Antoinetta dell’Era laces up the ribbons […]

Arts & Culture

Drawing What You See

Observational Drawing There’s something about going for a walk in the woods with a sketchbook and pencils or watercolors in hand and finding a place to plop down and paint a flower peeking out from the ground, or sketch a pinecone lying on a pile of pine needles. It is […]