Six rooms are receiving bathroom upgrades this month. We have completed stripping the bathrooms of the sinks, toilets, showers and light fixtures. It has been a group effort, Diane & I are the designated shower demolition team, Nick does the heavy lifting, Molly and Cindy prepare the rooms for painting!  We were hoping to find some relics behind the walls–no luck!

The bathrooms will be upgraded with Kohler fixtures including our favorite comfort height toilet! We are excited to see the finished bathrooms , the project will be completed by April 1st. For those of you that are familiar with the inn you may be asking yourself, “Why only the upstairs rooms, what about those lovely downstairs rooms with the big bathrooms?” Well, we got plans for those rooms slated for next off season.  That will be  a project to keep your on eye on! You may even want to advance book the room-it will be special! Rae

Details:

• Submit your entry to the Squam Lake Inn via email to: stay@squamlakeinn.com or mail it to: Squam Lake Inn, PO Box 695, Holderness, NH 03245
• Tell us about your mom in approximately 250 words or less.
• Submit your entry to us by Monday, April 26, 2010, noon.
• Winner will be announced on Saturday, May 1st.

Prize includes:

• Two Nights Accommodations (for two) at the Squam Lake Inn for Mothers Day weekend. Checking in on May 7th and staying through May 9th!
• Flowers & Chocolate, Wow Package, with a bottle of wine, in-room upon arrival!
• Welcome basket of special gifts from the Red Barn Shop at the Squam Lake Inn, featuring Shannon Martin, and more!
• Breakfast on Saturday morning at the SLI.
• 2 trail admission tickets at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center
• Afternoon dessert and tea
• $50 Gift certificate to local Walter’s Basin restaurant for dinner on Saturday.
• Sunday morning brunch with complimentary mimosa!
• All SLI amenities included. Visit our website at www.squamlakeinn.com
• Includes taxes and gratuity.

More details:

• Does not include travel to and from the Squam Lake Inn
• Accommodations are valid for Mother’s Day Weekend only.
• All policies of the Squam Lake Inn apply.

Squam Lake Inn is nestled in the village of Holderness, within walking distance to the lake made famous by the movie On Golden Pond.   There is so much to see and do in the New Hampshire Lake and White Mountain regions that surround us.   Our guests have rated us #1 on tripadvisor.com and your mom will too!

The Squam Lake Inn is honoring Mother’s in May!

VT Ingredients

My affections for donuts began at an early age.  I have many memories of  watching bakery ladies through a large window decorate cakes at Rossmoor Pastries, then entering the bakery for the prized raspberry jelly sugar donut.  I have not eaten a jelly donut to date that can compare with my memory of the that donut!

I have been wanting to incorporate donuts into our guests experience since we bought the inn 8 years ago. Donuts made to date…ZERO.   Each fall comes as goes without a single apple cider donut made in our kitchen. Well, that is about to change. We made the quick trip to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, VT for a class in donut making.The class was a bunch of fun and took the mystery out of donut making. We made three types of donuts: churros, baked cinnamon sugar donuts and a German Berliner. The Berliner was a raspberry filled gem that rivaled my childhood memory of the “best” donut ever.

This season we will be serving Sunday Brunch to our inn guests as well as our local customers. I know that some of you are smiling right now.  In addition to our scratch made pastries, we thought donuts would be a fun addition to a Sunday.  Definitely be on the look out for the Berliner as well as few other delights.  Don’t be surprised if I work our bacon into a scrumptious donut.  Our bacon is already EPIC and donuts are pretty high on the list of irresistible sweets.  So to merry these ingredients up seems, um, natural, right?

Make plans to join us on Sundays this summer.  We will be open for Mother’s Day Brunch, May 9th from 9-2 .  Our official opening day for the cafe is Friday, May 28th.

To learn more about the classes at King Arthur:

www.kingarthurflour.com

There was a writer in our class you can view her article here:

http://7dvt.com/2010doughnuts-king-arthur

I mention these films because they serve as inspiration and reminders that eating local can be a reality–with some effort.  At the Squam Lake Inn, we are committed to serving local food in our cafe. Each year we have included more local ingredients to our menu. This year is no different.  We are very passionate are using local sources, but first you have to find them!  It can be a bit frustrating and very time consuming trying to source our food locally. We are small enough that we can’t consume what a local farm would commit to plant for us yet to too large to purchase consistently from local farm stands.  We are actively forming partnerships with local farms and we can tell you that it is a rewarding feeling to support them!

Please stay posted as we are planning some exciting enhancements  to our menus.

Bennett Cove-Comfortable Main Level Room

We have not updated our blog since July, we vow to get better at communicating more frequently! I will try to bring this blog up to date…The most common question we hear throughout our season is, “so what do you do in the off season?” We are now in the thick of the off season and crunch time will be here before we know it! The biggest project we have been working on is a new website. We are not actually doing the design work, we have enlisted White Stone Marketing to do the design. We have worked with White Stone for about 6 years and they finally convinced us that a new site was imperative! About 18% of web content is actually read, so Jumping Rocks Photography was here in November to shoot the interior of the inn.  I must mention that 1 room was repainted and 4 rooms were redecorated in the 72 hours prior to their arrival!  Mark and Matthew from Jumping rocks were awesome to have here and the shots they took of the place made the the Squam Lake Inn shine! They will be back in June to photograph the barn, the deck, more food and the exterior of the inn. We are looking forward to their return. Here is a link a link to their notes from visiting the Squam Lake Inn: http://jumpingrocks.blogspot.com/2009/11/unique-photo-driven-themes-for-websites.html