You say it's your birthday! It's my birthday too, yeah!

Happy birthday baby Jesus! Here, Linus' beautiful monologue and Charlie Brown's dear, tiny tree. Regardless of where my religious upbringing leaves me now, his echoing little voice makes this epic and always makes my heart quiver.



(Side note: D should be picking our own tiny tree this evening. Last year it was dubbed Jimmy Stewart. This year I'm thinking Clarence would be a most appropriate name.)

And now for something completely different! More importantly, err, happy birthday Mikey! Here, a ridiculous video. Some year soon I swear to you that I will dress up like our Lord and Savior, gather a band, and play you this song. Baby brother is 25! Love!



(I know, I know, this post is sacrilegious for several reasons. I can't believe the animator made John fart on Paul either.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's almost Christmas- hooray! Which means that it's also almost time for two short work weeks! Most excellent. Also excellent is the fact that my shopping is now done and I can spend the next few evenings wrapping things in pretty bows and decorating the tiny evergreen tree we have yet to purchase. I love choosing presents, wrapping presents, and all of the warm fuzzy feelings that come with giving loved ones something you've chosen especially for them. Which brings me to fun news: Guess what the hubby is getting for Christmas? A banjo! Eeeee! I get to pick it up from The Music Emporium on Mass Ave in Lexington on Wednesday. (Beautiful store, beautiful string instruments, and some handsome help, which doesn't hurt either.) Don't tell! On that note, please enjoy some Pete Seeger. He is wholesome and lovely and full of warm fuzzy feelings. Indeed, with the purchase of this banjo we will be one step closer to someday having a family band. Which reminds me, I should pick up my own guitar more often.

Oh, it's no harder than walking, but I've said many a time, it takes us each a couple of years to learn to walk.

We are Etsy! Hear us roar!

Here is a great article from NYT about Etsy. It's the #1 most popular emailed article today- beyond awesome!!!

Magnificent Creatures

Love the Onion. It's helps many a slow day at work pass all the more quickly, and makes the crazy all the more bearable. Here's some tongue-in-cheek feminism for the day: Women Domesticated.

It's only Tuesday, and I'm already dreaming of the weekend...

To reward myself for a massively busy semester, an awful last few months at work, and some busy new freelance happenings, here is what I am going to treat myself to this weekend, after waking at the crack of noon, of course:

• An Education at Kendall Square, meaning lush 1960s production design, pre-Beatles Britain, an actress that is supposed to be splendid, and Peter Sarsgaaaaard. The three extra As are because I am drooling at the thought of his sleepy bedroom eyes. This viewing is very overdue.
• The Closet, for what I hope will be some great retail therapy. At my work Christmas, err, holiday party last week, a girl I work with was wearing the most adorable Erin Fetherston jacket she got from this store for dirt cheap. I think I've heard of the place before, but can't believe I haven't been. According to Yelp, it seems that some of their items can be had for dirt cheap. I obviously must remedy this lapse.
• Buffalo Exchange to drop off a giant bag of cast offs, in my twice yearly closet purging. Unless I see anything amazing I may just keep the store credit for delayed gratification on another rainy day.
• Artifaktori, Magpie, and D2 just because.
• And a fabric store. Which one? Don't know. We've been in Davis a year and a half now, and I have yet to find a local fabric store to call my own. I often shop near Methuen when I'm home because I know where to find what I want. Regardless, I have some projects on the radar for winter break, so I'd like to find a nice local place I can frequent. I have plans to whip up a few dresses, reupholster our chaise lounge, and make some hairpieces for selling on Etsy, the latter because I have tons of silk flowers, grape vine, and other crafty notions left over from wedding projects.

Alright... sadly... back to work...

On this note, I wish I could keep a blog about all of the ridiculous happenings at work lately. The day to day happenings are, no word of a lie, as ridiculous and absurd as The Office. I even share the same story arc as my namesake, that being: Pam begins as receptionist, Pam moves to the sales department, Pam is still asked to perform menial tasks. Except it's not funny and I have no Jim to pass the hours with. Le sigh...

Rose Colored Glasses

I don't know where these lovely images came from (well, most immediately they were found at Barefoot in the Apple, but I wish I knew where they were from originally). Regardless, I'd like to live inside of them. Especially the middle image. They are very flutes & fabric, if you know what I mean. I'll meet you girls beside the fairy ring! Just let me grab my floral hair wreath first...

To Post or Not To Post?

Dilema... should I start posting some of my creative writing on here? Like, the polished stuff? And should I tell people I actually post here? Should I find a new online home for that? Should I simply just work on sending it out to lit mags to try and actually get published? Or should I spend less time worrying about where my writing lives and more time just writing? Hmm... there is much to consider...

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. Gustave Flaubert

For Daddy, For Me

101 more reasons to love The Minimalist

Le sigh... After having spent the last weekish trying to organize my life, I feel good to go just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday! Whee! Food and family and love and gratitude and eating and more food and drinks and then even more food and more eating! Could anything be better?

With this in mind, I give thanks for Mark Bittman's food writing. I love, love, love him and feel that his cooking sensibilities very much speak to my own. (And he just did a short series on PBS about Spain and Spanish cuisine- me encanta! And the girls made fun of me when I said I would eat my way through the country and make a photo journal of all my meals... but that's another story.) I am all for following recipes, but cooking is most fun for me when experimenting and winging it; working at making a delicious dish through trial and error. This is probably why I cook far more often than I bake. The fact that the majority of his recipes, especially those in his Minimalist column, consist rather simply of good ingredients and general instructions for preparation- no measuring, no fussing, no restrictions- is so refreshing. I love his 101 series (I shall have to dig up some of his oldies but goodies sometime soon), and as such, here are 101 Thanksgiving dishes from The Minimalist.

Off to wrap up my workday (oops), get home to cook and bake and generally run up my November gas bill, and then its full speed ahead to a food coma!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

What's A Girl To Do?

Dear diary, I am sorry to have been away so long. I promise to write here more often.

So began many a diary when I was little. Rather than always write in one journal, turn the page, and then continue on, I was always much more prone to write on scraps of paper, in countless separate notebooks, and compile tiny handmade booklets. I still do much the same. And that's alright, my paper and ink will surely continue to exist as controlled chaos. Oh well. For whatever this space is worth, I say again, this time at a keyboard, I promise to write here more often.

On that note, What's a girl to do when she's got a major case of the Mondays, and on top of that, fearing that she doesn't yet know what form this meager site will take despite the manifesto/disclaimer below, doesn't want to write a thing? Start the day/week/blog off with some good tunes, that's what.

This song is part sixties girl group, part haunted house, which just so happens to be right up my alley. And the video is wicked (wicked!) fun. Also worth making note of is that fact that this gal can wear a killer headdress like nobody's business. I give you Bat for Lashes. I am also loving Lala lately. (Natasha Khan channel is a go!) It's providing my days with some beautiful soundtracks and fab new finds. While you know, I spend the day pushing paper.

My bat lightning heart wants to fly away...

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow...?"

Oh gosh, so because today is the last day of April, and also of National Poetry Month, I give you the gift of T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land. April is the cruelest month. Hyacinth girl. This card, which is blank. Why have you not already skipped ahead to the link? Really, do yourself a favor and read this. Or reread this. (Am I blogging to myself? Will I be my own audience? Probably.) Seriously though, at least Part I! I promise that Eliot will break your heart in beautiful ways. And you will be all the better for it.

And speaking of beauty, I am going to see John Ashbery tonight with my advanced poetry writing workshop! (Har, har.) I am not one for writer's block, but gosh, I've produced nothing of substance lately. As such, I should probably be attempting to spin equisite threads of verse right now instead of click-clacking away at this dribble. Alas... though maybe both gentlemen, along with this lovely weather, will inspire me to write some good stuff. Okay, bye!

Hello there!

As a means of introducing myself to the big wide world of the interweb... Good day ladies and gents! Now in beginning such a, well, beginning, I of course must ruminate on the following issues: 1. Why am I blogging? 2. Is this too self-indulgent? 3. What will I post about? Indeed, there are many pressing questions. To answer the first, well, gosh, I have no idea. I'm probably starting this because so often I find myself stumbling down amazing, lovely, inspiring rabbit holes on the internet, and I would very much like a happy home to house all of these finds. The answer to the second question is, well, yes, probably, unfortunately. But if all this ever becomes is a sort of ongoing virtual scrapbook for all things good then it will have been successful. Which leads me to the third answer: We shall see. Most of what I find and love and want to bookmark is art, design, writing, craft, food, fashion, or film related. I will probably also gush occassionally about lighter fare, and will assuredly post serious lady news that speaks to me. Maybe when this tiny corner of the internet starts to take a more concrete form, assuming that I don't abandon it completely (goodness knows I have been known to abandon many a journal in my time), I'll have a more concrete manifeta to share. I'm sure if I do indeed keep up with this my sensibilities will become evident. But really, I am starting this for me. If you, dear reader, are out there, interested, and want to come along for the ride then all the better. The more the merrier. That's what this whole internet thingy, this newfangled series of tubes, is for, right? So with that out of the way I say to you... Hello there!