Choosing

Some days I let things bother me. The fact that my desk is a mess, I have to work longer than I want to, or someone cuts me in traffic. I remind myself that I have a desk to work at, a job that brings me modest pleasure, and that I have a car. And then life becomes so simple.

The Beautiful Foods

I'm crazy about the photos by this guy, and felt inspired to take a few foody photos of my own. Look what you can find when you go to market looking for beautiful foods.

Julie & Julia

While I'm not smitten with the idea of blogging about cooking my way through an entire Julie Child cook book, I'm smitten with Julia Child. She was a magnifiscent woman, undaunted by the fierce challenge of French cooking. And she reigned supreme. I can't wait for this film to come out. I'm sure Meryl Streep will be at her spot-on best.

Lilacs for Diane

My sister Diane loves lilacs and would surround herself with them daily if she could. Sweet little lavender explosions of scent that last only a couple of weeks. They lend romance and elegance to any room you put them in.

As the poet Amy Lowell says in her poem 'Lilacs';
You persuaded the housewife that her dish pan was of silver.
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses--
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.

Happy Spring, my dear Diane!

Robin's Egg Bleu

This is a special gift for my sister, Carol. You think that I spelled blue wrong? No, that's how you spell it in French. She has a special place in her heart for the color, and I can see why. Happy Spring, my dear sister!

Magnolia

My neighbor Erin has kindly allowed me to photograph her magnolias as I wait for my own to bloom. I have a madness for magnolias. Their soft pink-white blossoms slowly unfolding in a spring breeze on branches that, a month ago, were bare. And so quickly, they're gone ...

Sound

Music, when soft voices die, vibrate in the memory ~ Byron
As if the pictures in Sensual Living weren't enough to strike an emotional chord in your heart, Llyod's descriptions of the sounds we have known all our lives are also vivid and powerful:
the gentle applause of rain
voices of people we love
a cat purring
village church bells
the clang of a toaster popping up

What sounds do you treasure?

Sensual Living

Another of my favorite home décor books that really isn't even a home décor book is Sensual Living by Claire Lloyd. Much like The Sensual Home, she outlines her own subjective and earthly pleasures with stunning photography and literary references.

These pages, from the Smell chapter, are accompanied by some lines from Proust. In A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, he makes the observation; ‘when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are all dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.’
I have such scent-memories from my own childhood, more enduring than my memories of sights and sounds. What are yours?

The Sensual Home

In my attempt to return to a more simple, unvarnished aesthetic, I’ve revisited one of my favorite home décor books, which is really not a home décor book at all. It’s more, as the book’s tagline declares, of a ‘liberating your senses and changing your life’ book.

Some of the tenets that Ilse Crawford advocates are:
· One of the biggest luxuries in modern life is uncommitted time. Defend it fiercely and value it. Free time is not wasted. Your brain needs to filter through the daily assault of information and come up with new ideas.
· Have at least one room you think of as a decompression chamber; plan it as a haven from the stresses of daily life.
· Think tactile; what is the point of surfaces that don’t thrill your fingers? Choose sensuous surfaces such as wood, fur, leather, wool, cashmere, and linen.
· Make room for the things that have meaning for you.
· Art is a way of making sense of the world. Invest in a piece you really like and place it where you can enjoy it every day.
· Know your home in every phase of the day. Learn to appreciate and plan around how the light falls at angles throughout the day.
· Cooking is like love, it should be entered with abandon or not at all.
· Nothing completes a home like good friends.

If you don’t own this book, you really should.