Virginia 2nd Annual Christkindlmarket

We had wonderful time at the 2nd Annual Christkindlmarket at Travelers Rest Farm in Virginia. The market was set up in an old barn and had a very distinctive European feel. A traditional Christkindlmarket is basically a holiday market set up in a typical European village with its timber houses, decorated Christmas trees and snow. Virginia 2nd Annual Christkindlmarket was very much a traditional festive event. We didn't have snow this time around though.

The list of all the vendors can be located at Christkindlmarket Virginia 2nd Annual.

Sweet Cheeks sensitive skin natural products

I had a chance to interview Vanessa Mccauley of Sweet Cheeks who lives in Richmond, VA and makes unique all-natural skin care products for adults and children.



How did you start? Trial and error really. I found a recipe online to make body butter. It was okay but not great, so I tweaked it. Over time, I learned the balance. How to get the consistency of feel I wanted. I did it at home for years before I started selling it.



Why did you start? It started with my son. He had terrible eczema. I tried all the drug store lotions the doctor told me to try to no avail. Finally the doctor wanted to put him on steroidal cream. That scared me. So I came home and started researching. I found out mineral oil is horrible for eczema. Every single cream the doctor recommended had mineral oil. So I set out to make a lotion for my son that would help.



Where do you make your items? At home. However, our plan is to convert our detached garage into a workshop because Sweet Cheeks has taken over the house.



Where did you learn how to make your skin care products? Partially online partially by making a lot of mistakes. Sadly, often I had to find out lots of what did NOT work to get to what did. My solid lotion bar probably saw 10-15 fails before I ever got it close to what I wanted. Then it was just small tweaks. However, I suspect now, it is even easier to find recipes and instructional videos on the web.



Is it hard to find a good supplier of the ingredients? For the most part I have one supplier I use for most of my raw ingredients that I love. The quality of what I get is amazing, they are easy to work with, and have a good supply. The thing I have the biggest issue with is essential oil. The price can fluctuate greatly sometimes as can the quality. So I stick with a supplier that has a very consistent quality but that limits the oils I have access to. There are other oils I would love to work with but have not found a supplier that can give me a consistency that I need. I would love if there was a local shop that I could smell the oils that also allowed me to purchase in bulk.


Did you have to obtain any certificates? No and no. I vacillate on regulating the beauty industry. On one hand, what goes into products that go on your skin is so important. Companies have been allowed to put toxic things in products for too long. On the other hand I don't know if regulation will do more to protect consumers than what the FDA's organic labeling did. It is a cost prohibitive stamp that is impracticable for small farms and does little to really produce the cleaner farming practices consumers want. So I don't know what the answer is other then, know the company. What are the company values? Are they transparent in their practices. Look at ingredients. Contact them with questions. A good company should always be thrilled to tell you why they did what they do and how.

Where do you sell your products ? I sell on line and at local shops. My products are available at a few Local Richmond shops such as Nest Antiques, Re Funk It and Orange.

Upcycled cashmere by Irina Baranova

Richmond, VA is famous for it's beautiful James river, southern cuisine and historic landmarks. It's now getting more and more attention for its vibrant arts and creative talent community. With the local university (VCU) art's school being ranked among the top art schools in the country and a number of local companies attracting international talent the city is turning into a very cool place to live in.



One of the very talented and unique local textile artists is Irina Baranova who is originally from Russia. Irina works with luxurious textiles like cashmere, silk and linen turning them into wearable pieces of art.



Irina upcycles items donated to her by friends and clients turning them into completely new designs. Mixing different fabrics, colors and fibers Irina creates stylish and beautiful sweaters, coats, skirts, vests that look luxurious and cozy at the same time. Every item turns out to be unique and special. Her style is instantly recognizable and you might have seen women and men wearing her designs in the streets of Richmond.

Art glass by Dale Chihuly

Being a huge fan of glass I went to a Chihuly exhibition at VMFA in Richmond, VA today. What a beautiful collection of amazing glass sculptures! Glass is very rewarding as it offers enormous possibilities as far as colors and shapes are concerned. Dale Chihuly glass sculptures are great illustrations of what an artist can make out of common silica or sand.

Fiori



Persian Ceiling



Fiori



Persian Ceiling

Virginia Dogwood in bloom

I've never seen a dogwood in bloom prior to moving to Virginia. However, in Richmond, VA dogwoods are everywhere. Beautiful in their simplicity dogwood flowers add color to our backyards. They come in all shades of pink, white and even greenish colors.

April is the dogwood month as all the trees start to bloom. One can see spots of red, pink and white in the otherwise bright green palette of spring forests. In the fall dogwood's bright red berries will be an excellent source of nutrients for birds, rodents and other small animals.

Covered with many large and beautiful flowers dogwood trees look rather like brides waiting for something great to happen in their life. Plant a dogwood in your yard and you will have a fairy bride coming to your yard every spring.

Spring flowers in blue red and yellow

It's so beautiful outside with all the trees, bushes and early spring flowers like daffodils and tulips beginning to bloom. Since I now have a new macro it's the perfect time to try it out and preserve all that spring beauty. Inspired by a few amazing photographers on Etsy I went out for my hunt. Ideally I would love to take pictures of flowers in a wide palette of colors with all possible hues, shades and color combinations. I've started with blues, reds and yellows.

Here are beautiful pale blues with hints of yellow on a greenish background.

Bright reds of a Japanese maple look so fresh and juicy. The flowers are bitten by cold a bit but I'm sure they will survive! The shape of the flower head is very peculiar and unique.

Bright yellow of a daffodil caught my eye. The flower looks like a porcelain with its petals being so fragile and light.

GIVEAWAY: Red Berry Earrings

Fall is a lovely season with so much vivid and beautiful colors around us. It will be followed by a rather colorless winter so let's enjoy this feast of color while it lasts! I handmade this juicy Red Berry earrings of bright Czech glass and silver plated wire. They are absolutely unique and each piece is carefully crafted in an eco-friendly and inspiring surroundings.
I'm hosting my first Fall giveaway! One lucky giveaway participant selected by True Random Number Generator will win my handmade Red Berry earrings next Thursday, October 14, 2010.

To enter:

Please visit my Etsy shop TonyaUtkina and leave a comment about your favorite item in my Etsy shop. Don't forget to leave your e-mail address so I can contact you in case you win. Your e-mail info will NEVER be used for any other purposes!!!

Extra entries:

Please leave one separate comment for each entry. (So if it is 2 extra entries for example, leave 2 comments, etc.)

1 entry - follow my blog with Google friend connect

1 entry - follow me on Twitter TonyaUtkina

1 entry - like my Facebook Fan page TonyaUtkina Jewelry

1 entry per day - retweet the following message and post a comment about it (just copy and paste the following into the twitter window). Can be done daily:
RT @tonyautkina GIVEAWAY Red Berry Earrings! Visit my blog http://tonyautkina.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-red-berry-earrings.html

2 entries - grab my button and put it on your blog

3 entries - blog about this giveaway

No purchase is neccessary, but if you happen to buy something you will get extra 5 entries .

Open to US and Canada only. Winner will be chosen by online random generator. Winner will be notified by e-mail on Thursday, October 14, 2010 and will have 3 days to reply or another winner will be chosen.

Good luck!:)

A unique flute teacher in Richmond, Virginia

We were recently introduced to a unique teacher of flute and piano residing in the Fan district of Richmond, Virginia. Svetlana came to the U.S. just a year ago to reunite with her daughter Maria, also a musician. Rich music traditions run deep in this wonderful family.

Svetlana Yefimova graduated from Saratov Conservatory, one of the oldest in Russia. Built in 1912, it's an institution with a long standing history of world-class music instruction. As a teacher of flute and piano with more than 40 years of experience, Svetlana nurtured a number of world famous flute players, winners of international music awards.

Russia is well known for its strong music traditions and unique teaching techniques. A number of world famous musicians were reared in the Russian musical system. Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Spivakov, Dmitri Hvorostovsky all graduated from famous music institutions of Russia (ex-USSR).

Thanks to Svetlana we discovered a wonderful world of flute. It's a beautiful instrument that can help develop not only a taste for music but excellent breathing techniques extremely useful in our everyday life.

Lotus Nelumbo Nucifera in Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

On my recent visit to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden I was absolutely stunned by these strikingly beautiful and exotic flowers! I had no idea they grow in Virginia. Nelumbo Nucifera commonly known as Lotus is a rather large plant with leaves sometimes measuring as much as 24 inch. in diameter.

Lotuses are apparently edible and very few people actually know about it. For centuries natives of Australia, Japan, and southeast Asia have been using different parts of this plant in their cuisines. According to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden official page lotus leaf stalks are added to salads and their seeds taste like almonds. The flowers' roots are pickled and their stamens are dried and turned into tea.

I personally like the beauty of Nelumbo Nucifera flowers. Large and unusually shaped they are of tender pink and vanilla hues. A dried seed cup looks like an alien spaceship and with no doubt could be turned into a great house decoration.

A green dragonfly in the Fan

I accidentally noticed this beautiful emerald green dragonfly in our front yard in the Fan, Richmond, Virginia. It was very calm and tranquil so that I could rush back home to grab my camera and be back in time to take a good shot. I actually like this combination of emerald green with green background and a few black spots on dragonfly's tail (I'm not sure it's called "tail" though). I wish someone could tell me how this beautiful creature is called!

Green Grapes Earrings Antique Glass

We have a small back yard and grow some herbs and grapes there. It's a perfect place to spend a weekend afternoon with friends and family and to take pictures of my jewelry. I handmade these earrings of beautiful Czech antique glass in shades of green, emerald, milk and silver plated wire. An elongated kidney ear wires add elegance and style to these unique and vivid earrings.
Grapes in my backyard serve as an excellent background and match my grapes earrings in form and color! It's a perfect summer match!:)

A book about Michael Haneke by Oliver Speck

I first learned about Michael Haneke, an Austrian filmmaker and writer after watching his movie The Piano Teacher a few years ago. It's a very powerful and emotional movie with an excellent performance by a leading European cast.
It turns out one of my German friends who is an assistant professor of German and film studies at VCU has recently wrote a book about Michael Haneke that is now available at Amazon.
It's amazing how everything is interconnected in our modern world and in our lives.

Fresh rose and purple flowers in Richmond, Virginia

As you probably know "Virginia is for lovers". The state is amazingly beautiful in the spring and early summer with all these wonderful fresh rose, purple, pink and white flowers and bushes in bloom all over Richmond, Williamsburg, Charlottesville and all other small and big cities and towns of Virginia. On a rainy day I took my camera for a quick walk around our Fan neighborhood in Richmond.

I found a few amazing rose flowers covered with tiny rain drops, a few purple and white irises in full bloom and many other nice and fresh flowers I had difficulty identifying.

Red roses and irises of all shades of yellow, purple and white are the main flowers in the Fan gardens. I believe people like them for their intensive bloom, exquisite scent and exquisite beauty.

With all these inspiring and fresh flowers blooming around us it's easy to understand why "Virginia is for lovers".

Russian Art at Lazare Gallery

We just found out about this wonderful gallery located between Williamsburg and Richmond in small and beautiful Charles city, Virginia. The gallery has a unique collection of Russian realist paintings and has close and deep personal and professional connections with a lot of outstanding Russian artists.



Lazare Gallery's three major collections include New Works by contemporary Russian artists, Soviet Era (1917-1991) art and Russian Era (1992-present) masterpieces!



Being originally from Moscow, Russia, we were much impressed by the variety and quality of Russian artists represented by the gallery. It's great to have an opportunity to show our children high quality Russian art!