fiore

i love fresh flowers. what i actually love most about them, though, is when they've been around for a few days or a week and it gets to the point where some need to be thrown out, or cut, or simply rearranged. my mom and dad gave me this beautiful bouquet for my birthday. now, over a week later, so many of the flowers are still just as beautiful. i love having little arrangements of flowers throughout my apartment. my current favorite vase that's not a vase is that owl tea pot (jonathan found it for me at a garage sale this summer).

the magic of halloween

baking in my kitchen is a headache. kind of literally. the smoke detector will go off at least three times without fail. it just likes to be sensitive.

so i tend to shy away from making anything that involves the oven.

but when i stumbled upon a forgotten box of halloween funfetti cake mix tonight at, oh, 11, i couldn't help myself. nothing sounded better than making funfetti cookies (complete with orange and black sprinkles) to give my brain a break from memorizing the arab israeli conflict for my geography of the middle east exam tomorrow (this way, if i don't do well, i'll have fresh cookies waiting for me at home to nurse my mood back to happy).

but my smoke alarm is not the only thing that's funny about my quirky little apartment. the oven is too short to fit a normal size cookie sheet. so i have to make do with a circular cake pan that holds about seven cookies at one time.

also, in the midst of my excitement for my first time baking in this apartment i forgot that i never officially bought a baking bowl (can you tell i gave up on the prospect of baking a while ago?) so i had to make do with my pasta pot. hey, it's nonstick! less mess to clean up:)

thank you halloween funfetti mix for allowing me to re fall in love with baking, despite the minor adjustments my apartment requires. (oh, it helps when you take the battery out of the smoke detector... :) )

I rent a room & I fill the spaces with wood in places to make it feel like home

(Insert image that I cannot find of a room with the perfect glow of a lamp. Google apparently doesn't know what I mean when I search 'lamp lighting,' 'lamp ambiance' or 'lamp glow').

I'll get straight to the point: I'm a lamp-loving convert. My friend Abby hates overhead lighting and loves lamp. Maybe she's the reason why I too now crave lamps around me. Or maybe it's because I'm growing up.

Hmm, that's a stretch. Or is it?

See, my parents have always been lamp-loving people. Growing up we used lamps and not the brighter overhead lights. I wasn't a fan of this concept. In fact, sometimes I turned on the overhead light just to spite them (shameful, I know).

But in the midst of making my new apartment my own, I have found that a few simple things are sure to make a place feel homier to me.

First and foremost are flowers. I love nothing more than fresh flowers in mismatching vases filling a room with color. This past week I had the joy of having astromelias from Jonathan and sunflowers from the farmer's market spruce up my living room. They're on their last legs so I hope to find some replacements soon. But when the fresh flowers fade, I still have plants. They're simple green living things that add my favorite color to any room.

But onto the reason for this post - lamps. I finally hung my paper lanterns this weekend - two in the living room and two in my bedroom. I still haven't finished hanging art on the walls or finding the perfect throw pillows for futon, but the simplicity of warm, intimate lighting has transformed a not-so-mine place into my cozy corner of Columbia.

Other recent decorating triumphs: reupholstering my first piece of furniture (photograph to come soon) and making simple curtains from a deep coral/red fabric.

There's so much more I could say about decorating that I've recently been thinking about, but I'll save that for another post. It'll make me write on this thing sooner rather than oh-so-much later.

oh, the flavor that you savor

I made fresh pesto for the first time this week. It's kind of turned into an obsession now. My mom's basil plant is on its last leg, and I'm slowly devouring the entire plant. When I made it the first time (lots of fresh basil leaves, garlic powder, fresh parmesan cheese and olive oil all blended in a food processor) I realized how easy it is and how it tastes just as good as store bought.

I love summertime and fresh ingredients. I love fresh fruit just as much. Especially watermelon. I love that it's naturally so sweet and delicious.

I might as well be that little kid with all of the watermelon I've eaten this week.

My goal for this semester (and I feel like I say this before every semester - but eventually that means it will turn into reality I hope) is to eat better. When I'm home, I eat a meal and then I'm satisfied. I don't go back and fill myself up with random food I find in the pantry, or the oh-so-common bowl of ice cream I fall back on at school. So I don't mean I want to eat less necessarily, just better. Like more fresh fruits and veggies. More variety of meals - aka: not every meal is pasta. I want to learn new recipes and not be intimidated by them.

I feel like I've thought and talked about food a lot this summer. It's such a fundamental part of our lives that it is easy to not think about it very much at all. Call me crazy for thinking about it as much as I am, but I think that it's something worth considering from time to time because, like anything else in this world, it can be used well or poorly. And why not use such a beautiful part of God's creation a little better and more gratefully from time to time? In its most basic sense, food nourishes us. But in its most glorious form it does even more - helps us be in community with one another, teaches us about different parts of the world, and wows us and our senses. It can be its own art form.

(Note: I'm going to see Food, Inc. tonight, so I may very well never look at food the same way again.)

What to say, what to say, what to say...

.Well for starters, I'm back home. NYC summer 2009 came to a close. I got really sentimental about New York City the last few days I was there wandering around (I was looking up at buildings rather than being consumed with getting to where I was going and only looking down). I'm going to miss it, I know it.

But it feels great to be home. I swam and was lazy in the pool today, relaxing with my parents and Tipton, eating pasta & mussels for lunch and a whole lot of fresh fruit. I was sun-kissed and tired from the sun and let my hair air dry... it was the parts of summer I have missed.

.Things I fell in love with this summer that I hope to bring with me into the school year:

-Goat cheese. Goat cheese, really? Yes, really. I love cheese of all kinds, but goat cheese and I had never formally gotten acquainted until this summer. Goat cheese, dried cranberries, walnuts, and a vinaigrette = a salad I never get tired of.

-Brunch. Get ready, Columbians, I vow to make brunch part of my school life. First stop will be Bleu.

-Reading magazines. Duh, right? It's my major, after all. But sad as it is, I have never been one to read many magazines during the school year. But they're a wonderful companion for those short moments that you find yourself free of obligations.

That's an odd short list, I know. But I was thinking about those things so I needed to spill them out sooner or later.

.I saw Julie & Julia tonight and it inspired me to do many things. 1) Have a blog that gets published as a book and picked up as a movie. Ok, maybe not so much. But I do want more direction in my blog. 2) I want to take cooking lessons. Or at least vow to try new recipes this year. I want to get a cookbook that forces me to expand my meal knowledge and start exploring. 3) Write at all costs. Whether it's for me, one person, or many. 

How's that for "more direction in my blog"? Possibly the most oddball post I've ever written. Go figure. 

it's such, it's such a perfect day

I don't really know how to start this post, because all I keep wondering is

Have you ever smelled mud? I mean really been surrounded by it, tromped in it, inhaled its smell with every breath? No? Well, it smells bad. I mean bad. Well now let me ask you, have you ever been surrounded by mud, inhaling its foul odor, but had a smile on your face, chills running up your spine and been on the verge of tears? No? That, my friends, is what I experienced at All Points West on Sunday.

It was a beautiful stormy Sunday, complete with thunder and strong gusts of wind. I was in Long Island staying with my brother's girlfriend's family for the weekend. We had gone to the beach on Saturday. Enter blissful day #1. It was my first day all summer where I closed my eyes and felt summer. I mean, felt it. Felt the sun slowly color my skin a darker shade (eh, burn it a tad), felt the chill from water splashing up on me from an agitated shore, felt sand in my toes (and all up in my clothes the rest of the day). I felt the air blowing through a car window and back out the sunroof and watched the sun bid us farewell beyond the horizon. Summer. A perfect day of summer.

Enter Sunday. Wet, stormy Sunday. All Points West is a music and arts festival (the 2nd year of it) at Liberty State Park. I lucked out (understatement of the year) and was invited by my brother's girlfriend because her family had an extra ticket. The skies magically cleared as we drove into the city, loaded up with parkas and towels and ready for the worst. We took the ferry from Battery Park over to the park. Enter mud. Mud mud mud mud mud. The poor grass didn't know what it had coming. Enter my brother being inventive and sporting this look the rest of the day. 

Enter laughter, lots and lots of laughter.

We lucked out and weaseled our way into the VIP bleacher seats by the main stage since the parents had VIP tickets, the other six of us did not. Prime seats for admiring people embracing the mud. We caught the end of Silversun Pickups, followed by Elbow (if you don't know of them, you should. They were quite lovely, in the easy to love British kind of way. Check out One Day Like This but don't judge the song from the blah video).

Then we patiently sat for the 45 minutes that it took an impressive number of stagehands to transform the stage for Coldplay. And then I noticed this guy

Who I then noticed was sitting next to this girl

Who I really wanted to talk to, but she decided to go watch MGMT.

Cue Life in Technicolor. Cue chills and me being on the verge of tears. I don't think that's ever happened to me at a concert before. But Coldplay, you have the power. And I want to meet the genius who designs their shows. I always am awestruck by the lights at concerts. Really great music can become that much more powerful with effective special effects and lights. I just love it. Go you, Coldplay stage designer extraordinaire. 

It doesn't do it justice, but here's Yellow and several yellow balloons full of confetti being tossed around in the crowd.

Just Mr. Martin, doing his thing.

"When your feet got wet at a Coldplay show"--improv Fix You lyrics

What a view.

I didn't really understand the random structures, but they made me think of the carnival scene in Across the Universe. Bizarre and lovable.

that's the way this wheel keeps working now

Since I have 10 days left of my New York City summer, it has come time to reminisce. While I was on the subway on my home from work today I was thinking about some things that have made me laugh time and again this summer. Which got me thinking about all things...

Things that have made me laugh: (too many to count, but here are highlights)

*"Welcome to Ikea! Look at all these beautiful faces" The woman who welcomed us off of the Ikea ferry (+ Ashley's exceptional imitation of her)

*Conversations with my roommates over dinner (+ Persas) at Vento

*"Your ass is on my arm" A lady I accidentally brushed my bottom against one second too long on the subway

*Inappropriate PDA on the subway, in an "I don't want to look but can't tear my eyes away" kind of way (Sarah and Abby can attest to this)

Things that I've questioned:

*Do I want to be a magazine writer?

*Or do I want to own an art gallery?

*Or do I want to get a masters degree in something useless but totally art-related?

*Where do I want to live post-graduation?

*How the heck do you go about getting a real-world job?

*Why can't I let go and not worry about it?

Things that I missed:

*Having a summer tan

*Swimming in a pool

*Family, friends and loved ones :)

*Singing along with my music

*Bible study

Things that I didn't cherish nearly enough:

*Living in the same city as my brother for possibly the last time

*Having so much art at my fingertips

Things I can't get enough of:

*the High Line

*Brooklyn

*New York brunch

*unexpectedly seeing celebrities (current list: Gayle, Barefoot Contessa, girl from Confessions of the American Teenager, Josh Hartnett, Diane Keaton, Tony Bennett, Molly Shannon)

*being able to get anywhere via public transportation

Things I could have done without:

*All. The. Rain.

Things I loved:

*Busy days at work

*The Brooklyn Art Museum

*The Renegade Arts and Crafts Fair

*Visiting Jonathan in Colorado

*Having visitors here! Abby, Sarah and Jonathan made the city feel more like home

*Reading magazines during my commute

*The cooler weather compared to the blistering heat most of the country was getting

*Trying out living in a city for a few months...I want to do it in a lot of other cities now: Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, Denver

--I'll keep adding to this as the days dwindle down. But I want to make this point: I usually worry before I start something new that I won't get out of it everything that I wanted. And maybe I did or maybe I didn't, but I feel like my time here is coming to its rightful end and the thought of being home is lovely and perfect. I'm not feeling anxiety about not checking everything off of my list, I'm feeling blessed with all that 11 short weeks have held.