It’s toy time at the Mothering house! Product Review Editor Candace Walsh‘s desk has been a little like the receiving office at the North Pole, snowed under by boxes and boxes of toys, many of which have had to be assembled.
In years past, this task has fallen to Mothering‘s circulation director, John “You Da Man”* McMahon. Since John was out of town last week (traveling with his son Ian, who is starting college at Duke this fall), Bram McMahon has kindly stepped in to help. (Bram is John’s—and Mothering Editor and Publisher Peggy O’Mara‘s—younger son.)
So our staff photographer, Melyssa Holik, is starting to get all a’tingle with anticipation. Despite the fact that she has to shoot what seems like hundreds of toys, I’ve noticed that she seems to enjoy this project. (I’ve also noticed how much “arranging” and “setting up” sure can look like “playing with” . . .)
Regular readers of the magazine will know that all this buzz and hubbub is in preparation for our annual natural toy review (which appears in our November–December issue each year). And it’s a team effort: the UPS guy delivers the toys; Bram assembles them; Candace looks them over, reads up on them, plays with them, and writes about them; then Mel photographs them, gets text from Candace, and lays out the reviews.
It may only just now be September—and still almost 90 degrees out—but it’s beginning to look a bit like . . . well, you know!
*Since he is, actually, da only man in the Mothering offices these days.
Photos, from top: 1) my favorite so far of the toys Bram has put together (dolls artfully arranged by Bram); 2) the UPS guy makes a delivery at Candace’s desk; 3) Candace at her desk, last week, surrounded by boxes; 4) Bram, stopping by several afternoons this week to do assembly, thereby proving that he got his dad’s toy-building genes, for sure.
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. . . of the Mothering production team.
Or, how to make a production “miracle” happen.
Homemade ice cream 
home, using three different kinds of ice cream makers, then gathered at Candace’s house to shoot our concoctions. Naturally, we had to have a tasting bee afterward, for which Candace’s kids, Honoree and Nathaniel, generously joined us. Surprisingly, the overall favorite was the non-dairy lavender (pictured here) which Mel made. (Twice. The first batch not being pretty.) Candace, however, was a fan of the chocolate raspberry ice cream (which she made. Also twice, though her second round was due to freezer temperature difficulties.) (The kiwi sorbet I made was both not pretty and not tasty, but that’s another story.), and Nathaniel really went for the lemon thyme sorbet.
© 2009 Mothering Magazine