On a sunny spring day last year, I flew up to and back from Napa, and in the middle, photographed this amazing session at the French Laundry gardens.

But let’s start from the beginning shall we? Steph and Bruce are both big foodies and really wanted to incorporate this shared passion for food into their engagement session. After some brainstorming, they arranged for us to photograph at the beautiful gardens of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry restaurant {year after year named one of the best restaurants in the world}. The French Laundry grows much of its own produce in a vegetable garden across from their restaurant, and it was a treat wandering through the open gardens photographing this sweet couple. Aside from vibrant flowers and veggies they brought to add color to the session (adore!), they had a handful of pretty macarons — they have special memories of sharing these together in Paris, where they were engaged, as well as baking their own versions (amazing!) at home.

I could go on and on about the loveliness of this session, and how much fun Steph and Bruce are, and how we talked about food all day long, and how we laughed & chatted more over dinner at Bouchon, and how it all makes my heart want to explode into a million pieces of happy confetti, but I’m going to let the images do the talking. Enjoy this afternoon stroll in the garden… :)

{ Thank you to Style Me Pretty for featuring this session on their California blog! You can see the post here… }

Oh, the macaron. To think that I was so clueless about your colorful little existence until just a couple years ago, when I had already lived some 20-something years without you. But since that fateful day at Jin, you have consumed my thoughts, sending me on a search to try delectable varieties throughout LA and even prompting a TOTALLY AWESOME dream of a macaron warehouse, that was stacked floor to ceiling with the pastel morsels of heaven. (Of course I woke up before I got to try ANY, because that’s how those things go.)

I’ve been meaning to create this post since the holidays, when I experienced an influx of macaron-ness in my life. It all started when I was “holiday shopping” at Urban, and as always happens when I’m “holiday shopping” a few too many presents for me made it into my basket. As I browsed the book section, my favorite part of the store, I came across this gem:

A book. ALL ABOUT MACARONS. I squealed, flipped through the matte & minimalist pages and hustled it over to the register, where I proceeded to totally confuse the salesgirl. “What IS this?” she said, staring at the cover. And then I got beet-red and suddenly starting thinking… who buys a book on JUST MACARONS? AM I THE ONLY ONE? IS MY OBSESSION THAT OBVIOUS?

And then she followed with: “are these tiny little hamburgers or something?”

…

And I realized it wasn’t that she was questioning why someone would buy a book on macarons, but that she didn’t even know WHAT THEY WERE. I wiped away a single tear of sorrow in remembrance of my pre-macaron life, and proceeded to explain frantically what amazing things they are. And having been converted, she packed up my book & sent me on my way,which leads us to Holiday Macaron Madness, Part II:

So all the reading and the talking and the thinking about macarons had then led to an unfortunate and acute macaron craving. I HAD to have one IMMEDIATELY, but I was at the Del Amo Mall in Torrance, far far away from LA and it’s slew of little macaron shops. And then I remembered that a little (okay, ginormous) chain of coffee houses had recently started offering macarons. So, hopelessly desperate, I went there, and I got these:

You can read reviews on the Starbucks macarons everywhere, but I’ll just tell you, for being mass produced, and flown across an OCEAN, and refrigerated for possibly days and days and weeks and years, they weren’t totally bad. Some of the flavors were better than others and they were chewier than other legit macarons I’ve had, but I like ’em chewy. Either way, I got my fix.

Now here comes Part III, which is, in my opinion, the most awesome part. Fast forward a few days later to my birthday. Scott and I are at home and I’m opening up my first gift of the day, the one from him. From your deduction properties, you can probably already guess that they were macarons. But did you guess that they were FELT macarons? Because that’s exactly what they were:

Oh. EM. Gee. As Scott intercepted me from trying to stuff them all into my mouth, he explained that he bought them from our friend’s Etsy shop, Little Fluff Stuff. Janelle is insanely talented and produces all sorts of general felt food & desserts goodness, that has you in a neverending dilemma between whether they should be cuddled or ingested. {Side note: those perfect blue cups were also part of the gift.. they’re vintage & I LOVE the bright color!)

And that concludes this round of macaron adventures. There will be more to come, especially since a little group of macaron-lovers has formed and we’ve been trying a few different places around LA. Stay tuned for our trip to Paulette!