Charley Harper-ness

Oh, Charley Harper.

He knows just what I love.

Oh, they're just so lovely.

But the plates! Oh, the plates are the best part!

Dutchies

It's been awhile. I've been distracted by school, work, school, work, and a little bit of school. The procrastinator in me knew starting this blog would be an act of self discipline which I may or may not be able to employ. Anyway. A few weeks ago (more like months, probably), I made Dutch Baby Pancakes out of Molly Wizenberg's book A Homemade Life (an addiction I mentioned previously). I don't mind bragging, they were delicious. Feast your eyes . . .

Can't Get Enough, Must Have More

I am reading this book

by Molly Wizenberg. I am three quarters of the way through and am deliberately slowing down so as to prolong it. That's how I know I'm really enjoying it. The book is full of recipes described so vividly, so uniquely that my mouth actually waters. I become hungry at the thought of spreading goat cheese on a baguette -- and I don't think I've ever even eaten goat cheese.

Molly is singlehandedly making me want to invest in a kitchen scale and a cast iron skillet. And I can't get enough of it.

You can get a sample of this little imp (because that's what I think she looks like in her author picture on the back flap of the book) at her own blog Orangette (http://www.orangette.blogspot.com/), which I believe was the catalyst for her book. You can thank me later.

This is my very first attempt at a quilt (I'm tackling both a quilt and a blog at the same time -- daring). I bought a quilt kit from Rachel over at Red Velvet Art (https://www.redvelvetart.com/) because I super admire her work and her house and her creativity and, well, her everything. I laid the squares out on the floor and spent a loooong time agonizing over how to arrange everything . . . . wondering if there is a particular method quilting pros use to determine the greatest esthetic please-ability (did I just make up a word?) of fabric arranging . . . I finally decided on an arrangement and took a photo. I left it on the floor while we went out for dinner. And came home to this: Just look at her. Like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Guilty as sin, caught red handed, etc.

Good thing I took that first photo.

Anyway, we'll see how this whole quilting project of mine goes. I hope I don't let it interfere with school in the fall, but I also hope it's not one of those things I let fall by the wayside (ie. the ukulele I got for Christmas two years ago) and completely forget except when I accidently catch a glimpse of the sewing machine/seam ripper/fabric scissors out of the corner of my eye and experience a tsunami (slight exaggeration) of guilt.

Lusciousness

To the few people who have stopped by and noticed that I haven't posted in over two weeks (and I'm sure those people arrived here purely by accident and skedaddled away with barely a glance over their shoulder), I've been on vacation. I don't have much to say other than that, but I'll be back soon!

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this:

At the beginning of August, we spent some time camping in Minnesota. Our travels took us along the Wildflower Route which was littered with these signs that had pictures of luscious ladyslippers on them.

I've always thought the ladyslipper bears a stricking resemblence to a certain male body part.

You be the judge.

The UNWIELDY Shoe Habit

A few weeks ago I stopped in at a local Payless because I had a somewhat fancy wedding to attend and I needed a new pair of kicks to wear with my new yellow and white and black silk dress (another unwieldy habit of mine : dresses) which, by the by, cost me exactly double what I was intending to spend on my wedding attire. Payless did NOT have the appropriate shoes for the wedding, however they DID have a pair of brown flats that I have been admiring and visiting on and off for approximately five months now, AND they were ON SALE. My reasons for simply admiring the shoes and merely visiting them when five months ago I could've bought them and provided a nice home for them in my shoe hanger thingie in our very full (clothing spews forth from it) closet is this: I am rather attached to the few pairs of flats I already own, one of which I bought in Brisbane, Australia and whose cardboard insides are starting to show . . . . ANYhow. I went ahead and purchased the brown flats, even though they were not in the budget and I still needed a pair of heels with which I planned to showcase my legs a little, but not too much because The Boy's parents are going to be at the wedding I don't want them to think their son is living with a common whore. I schlepped to the 24 hour Walmart which was surprisingly full of Filipino ladies and some other girls who needed to put down their slurpees and get outside for a jog, because Mother of Mary, they had big bellies . . . gah. The 24 hour WalMart had a simply amazing selection of footwear and I did in fact find the perfect pair of heels to go with my overpriced silk dress.

Here is a photo of how we cleaned up at that wedding:

Apparently I fell asleep mid-wedding. Just a word on why I was shopping for footwear at such discount stores as Payless and WalMart: My feet are freakishly small, where freakish means that I could fit my feet in every last one of my six and seven year old campers' shoes when I worked at the Pennsylvania summer camp filled with the beautiful, beautiful male coworkers whom I constantly hit on and sometimes threw myself at . . . Literally, throwing myself onto a male coworker: ANYway, back to the cheap shoes. I can't seem to find shoes that fit anywhere other than places such as Payless, WalMart, and even Zellers. So even though I only needed ONE pair of shoes for this wedding, I somehow managed to come away with TWO pairs and don't even get me started on how difficult it is to defend my Shoe Habit to the rather judgey boyfriend who claims he can get through life on a measly THREE pairs of footwear. Gah. I managed to rouse myself awake at some point:

Second First Impression

Did you know that if you write a post and then click the little preview button and find that you aren't happy with the way your post looks, so you click the little back button at the top of your browser, your entire post will be lost forever? It's true. Which is why I'm re-writing my very first post on this stupid blog and I think we can all agree, when you have to completely re-write something, it never seems as good as the original. It's like that Sabrina movie with Harrison Ford. Good, but not as good as the original with Bogart.

Luscious.

Anyhow. Sometimes I write emails to my friends and they're pretty funny. And sometimes I think to myself, "Man, I would love to share this email with others. Many others. People who agree that what I've written is funny. Then we'll laugh and laugh and laugh and maybe writhe on the floor with laughter . . . And I'll have made some new friends."

And lately I've realized that there is a huge blogging community out there, particularly a blogging community of women. These women inspire me. They write about their everyday lives. Sometimes their posts are short, sometimes long, and often they contain photos that plant a wee seed of jealousy deep inside of me because why can't I take photos of mundane things like spoons and herbs and pencils and make them look so marvelously marvelous?

I've been peeping in on this blogging community for a few weeks now and I'm starting to think I want in. I'm not going to tell any of my friends about this blog. Partly because I'm going to weed out things I've written in emails to them and transplant them into this new little garden (is that cheating?) and I don't think they'll want to do any rereading. And partly because I want to make some new friends -- some new connections -- with all these people I find so inspiring.

Here's a list of some of the people I particularly enjoy and who I try to visit a couple times a week (AKA I wile away my work hours, poring through their archives in wonderment at their creativity and originality). I hope these bloggers don't mind me putting them in here, forever implicating them in whatever my babyblog is going to morph into.

http://www.iambossy.com/

http://racheldenbow.blogspot.com/

http://therinrins.typepad.com/our_little_life/

http://thepioneerwoman.com/

http://aarynbelfer.com/

http://beanpaste.blogspot.com/