By Heidi Bouchard ~ Head of Style and Design

Finding myself on a bit of a roll in the “rustic department” I’m going to go with it and develop our next collection. At Pepper’s Fine Catering we are lucky to have wetlands and woods all around us not to mention extensive gardens to draw inspiration from.  I also just moved to a farm house that sits on over 600 protected acres and I have been taking long walks in the woods every weekend for inspiration.   

The name of our second collection is Winter Woodland, not to be confused with Winter Wonderland.  And although I am not exactly sure how the elements will be used or come together, the collecting will be most of the work and fun.  I’m not envisioning using these natural elements in a contrived or overly embellished way, but more in groupings that you would experience in their natural setting.

The first step started in my front yard.  I collected and dried black walnuts from a tree that must be at least 100 years old. To get the casings off I gathered them on big trays to be dried in the sunlight.  About a week later they were laid out onto our cobble stone driveway where I ran over them with a golf cart, the popping sound was fun.  I put on gloves and peeled away the casings.  They were still covered with a pulpy flesh.  I soaked them in hot water, rinsed several times but they were far from clean.  I remembered how my Mom once said that my Dad used to wash dirty golf balls in her washing machine….it was worth a shot……they came out perfectly.  

Wish I could say the same thing for my washing machine, 1 wash and 2 rinse cycles later - its fine.

Next I collected literally, thousands of pine cones, in all shapes and sizes. But this project is not over yet,   still tons more to forage for, stay tuned…