in deep

This is my birthday week. I had a lovely Tuesday birthday filled with surprises and visits, fancy gifts, and lots of feeling special. I had a week off on holiday just before that, and visited some of my favorite people in three cities and two states.

I love coming home after trips. Getting to miss home is a little bit wonderful. It means that when you come back, all the things that make up your days and weeks seem less mundane.

This is the season of many splendid things. Parties and celebrations, time with family and planning trips and visits and evening meets. It is full and sometimes overwhelming, and it is warm inside by the fire and cold outside in the wind. I'm ready for some snow, watching the Pup as he pounces through snow drifts and bounds back to me with his ears up (that means happy) and his pink tongue out (that means ready for action). We are busy and exhausted and happy.

photo courtesy of Style Me Pretty

photographer: Heather Waraska

something 'blue'

Some people don't like the color blue. We really shouldn't try to force them. As it is, a bride I know who is 77 days from her vows doesn't like the color blue much, either. She loves color in general, but when it comes to blue.... Well, let's just say it doesn't blow her away like Plum.

As I was plotting and planning out her something new/blue it donned on me that it wouldn't be as fun for someone who is a) not the most traditional bride and b) not a fan of blue. What to do?

I decided to make her something 'blue.' I spent somewhere between 11 and 80 hours on a hair flower (terms like hair piece and hair pin seemed underwhelming) just for her. It was inspired by her dress, and matches without being matchy-matchy. I may have giggled a few times as the pieces came together, as the rhinestones and silver seed beads were set in place. How delightful can lace and silk and tulle and sparkling crystals be? Most delightful.

What was the something? I embroidered the word 'Blue' in cursive with silver thread. It is hidden on the back of the hair flower on silk faille the color of eggshell.

It is a little something, and it is a little blue.

annual us

Rain is everywhere. It is falling on cheeks and streaming down windows. The air is only a little chilly, but the wind is having fun splashing water on the underneath of things.

I am sitting in my office thinking about my weekend. It was my annual Girls' Trip with dear friends, and I am always a little exhausted and a lot pleased afterward.

My girlfriends are wonderful. They are fun and sweet, smart and sassy. They are chic and stylish, perfectly sarcastic, and they are compassionate which makes all the sly remarks and silly giggles balance perfectly on the tightrope that friendship can be. Our tightrope is close to the ground (in case we fall) so we get all the good challenges and provoking conversation without the danger or any kind of meanness. Except when one or two of us are really hungry. And that is usually cured by lunch.

We had four nights and five days traipsing all over Seattle and even managed a 24-hour trip to Orcas Island. We loaded up my Volkswagon pop-top camper van (a.k.a. White Lightening), fully stocked with cheeses and specialty breads and spreads from Pike Place Market, and a few bottles of wine. We rode the ferry, hiked in the woods, went out for lunch, and sat on the beach sipping wine and watching otters. We went to dinner. We rode the ferry back the next day and had such a spread of culinary delights that passers-by made comments. We had to wash honey off the table.

The four of us can spend hours chatting, our conversations fluid, running all over the globe and up and down the span of our lives. We like to seek out boutiques and antique shops, locally made jewelry and small-batch perfumeries. We love dancing and even waited for 11:00p to roll around before we went out. This used to be no problem, but we're not the young sprouts we once were, so there is some self-impressing to do. (I could easily have sunk into the sofa for a nap.) As it was, we wore heels and got silly and dropped into bed at 3am.

Even after 24 hours a day together we were slow to say goodbye. They live 1254 miles South of me, which means we must plan our visits well ahead of time and save our pennies for splurging and discoveries. We found Vinho Verde (a Portuguese nearly-colorless white wine with an effervescent flavor). We found hand-hammered necklaces and Coconut-Curry Theo Chocolate. We have a list of funny quotes that will enter our stories the next time we get together.

I hope it won't be too long.

Here are a couple of photos (thanks to Morgan and Rachel with their Hipstamatic).

gettin' crafty

I feel full of all kinds of exciting, inspired thought. It's as if I've been sleeping (or at least that my creative spark has been taking a very long nap) and suddenly it fills me up and my brain is filled with excitement for projects and creation and Doing-ness.

There's nothing like a sister's wedding to fan the flames. It's months and months of delight, when someone else is the bride and all you have to do is play with ideas and share blogs and photography sites to help her stay inspired. I love it when I don't have to feel the stress of something like planning a big event.

On the other hand, I constantly plan big events in my head, and wouldn't it be nice to plan them out loud for real? Like for weddings? For special people celebrating special things?

A couple of my favorite sources of inspiration:

Style Me Pretty

ee photography

this is glamorous

elizabeth anne designs

cup vs bowl

There is a reason one doesn't eat soup out of a cup or a narrow-mouth jar. It's not a soup bowl.

And it gets soup all over one's chin.

It is easy to reheat this way, though, and I do enjoy the sound of a proper spoon against the glass. It masks the sound of my slurping (when the soup is really delicious or extra hot).

take your soup to work in a jar. and get soup on your chin.

con-ta-gion

My ears are filled with a random music mix which is pretty great. Not amazing. Not "Oh-my-god-I-love-this-song" great, but pretty okay. I'm listening to it because I've been missing music lately and hunting through old CD's (yes, I still have lots and lots and I refuse to give them up regardless of how fancy my personal luxury item is). I also watched the movie 'Contagion' last night and I really, really liked the score.

Lately I've been hearing so very many remakes. I'm sure it's fun to take someone else's ideas and re-create them. Should you get an award for re-mixing someone else's composition?

I had begun to wonder if we've passed the point of no return. Have we a population that can no longer create new sounds? Is music on a downward spiral along with the changing climate?

I hope not. I am one of those people who is brought to tears by the beauty of groups of people singing together. I don't even have to understand the words. Live music, up close, is my favorite and oddly enough I've hardly taken time to enjoy it for a couple of years, now.

Why? Perhaps I needed this long stretch of time to realize just how much I miss it.

My faith in the musical ingenuity of humanity was restored thanks to Cliff Martinez' beautiful, haunting, creepy, lovely, thrilling score in 'Contagion'. It's like nothing I've heard before. It's new and creative and it gets you where the script doesn't (or can't). I am not wholeheartedly endorsing this movie for the plot line; I recommend it for the sound.

So, thanks, musical wonders of the world. There is hope for us, yet.

biohazard zombie contagion sticker credit

black + berry = delicious

I love blackberries. I love them a lot. I'd characterize it as more of a passionate, sparkling affair.

Vine-ripened, they are just about the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. They are summer, freedom, fun, giggling, adventure, end-of-a-hot-day sighs. Perfection.

Every summer (assuming I'm in the Northwest), I head out with my pails (typically a random assortment of plastic tubs). I dress in hardy clothing (if I don't, there will be blood). I wear tough shoes (again, with the blood). And then I pick. I pick a lot. Enough for pies and crisp, ice cream and breakfast (which is often crisp). I freeze it for later, and savor every bite. There is something about this amazing, weed-like vine (it grows like crazy out here!) offering nature's bounty that delights me to no end. If I don't make at least one blackberry crisp, I feel it as a loss.

Blackberry picking is the perfect combination of danger, tantalizing moments, sweetness, and effort. Danger because the thorny vines grab and poke and tear your skin (ask a friend who tried to wear shorts and sandals out picking with us last year). Tantalizing moments because the best, biggest, ripest berries are always just out of arms' reach. Sweetness, because, well, they're ripe berries. And effort for the hours of reaching, and narrowly escaping sharp thorns, for the hot sun, the little spiders, and the standing on tip toes or reaching from ladders. All of this is totally worth it.

This Labor Day weekend we (I had help) picked nearly 4 gallons of blackberries. We picked at a place I've been going since childhood, where the berries get so big that just two of them can fill your hand. I have to remind myself to eat them as I'm picking, because since the age of about 9 it occurred to me that if I didn't eat so many as I was picking, I'd have loads more to cook with and munch on later...

We made a cobbler. Then we made a crisp. We made vanilla ice cream to go with the crisp. We ate the crisp after dinner, and again for breakfast. It's delicious with yogurt. It's probably delicious with bacon and sandwiches.

My crisp recipe is one of the best. It has come from years of practice, having to make it up when I didn't have the recipe with me, adding more of this because we were out of that. It's best just out of the oven, when the crisp is still crispy and the berries still hot. It is a delectable combination of brown sugar, butter, old fashion oats, flour, and cinnamon. Sometimes I add nutmeg. With apple crisp I add a little bit of powdered ginger. With blackberries, I add almost no sugar to the berries themselves because the sweet topping and the sweet-tart flavor of the berries is the perfect combination.

After our picking extravaganza, I lugged a giant plastic bag of berries home with me and it is sitting in our fridge, taunting me with its potential. I put blackberries in my breakfast this morning. Tonight I might make jam.

photo credits:

Blackberry Crisp

Tiny crisp

Fresh Blackberries