Which one are you?

Morning?

Afternoon?

Or night?

I'm night.  I love that stemware.  I'm a starlit picnic at which I would be wearing this:

All from Anthropologie.

Need a mental vacation

Do you ever feel like you have to escape from yourself and the chaos you've gotten into?  Or like you are being pulled in two different direction, becoming stretched so thin that at any second you could just rip apart, like pantyhose?

In short, I feel like I'm being taken advantage of in a certain aspect of my new post-New York life.  It feels like deja vu-- I seem to be unable to escape it, and I'm left thinking once again that it's me and me against the world.  I just want to run away and hide, or go back to before I made choices that put me in this position to begin with.

I keep looking at these tire swings and thinking that it sounds ideal to just sway with the breeze in a place that has all beauty and no complication.

From CaptPiper's Flickr 

from orbz's Flickr photostream

from buttercup*'s Flickr photostream

I can't help falling in love

Saved! is one of my favorite movies. Even though I once had to deal with a very gropey date while watching it-- you'd think the movie would discourage that sort of behavior, right??
Well, in one of the few movie-to-Broadway decisions that I applaud, Playwright's Horizons is producing SAVED as an off-Broadway production. This was on my list of things to see before I left New York, but it slipped my mind in the chaos of packing and now it closes tomorrow! Good news in that it will be on Broadway, at some point...but I have no idea when. I'm loving this sneak peek at the show by Andrew Keenan-Bolger, whose sister, Celia Keenan-Bolger, stars as Mary (played by Jena Malone in the film). If you are not familiar with Celia's work, you should be. She was remarkable in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and I recently discovered footage of her in a concert version of The Secret Garden that puts any other portrayal of Martha to shame.
I try not to let the musical theatre dork side of me come out too often here, but I can't help myself today, and were I still in New York, I'd hope that Andrew Keenan-Bolger and I could be friends! (not really...but he seems delightful)

Let's go down to the water's edge, we can cast away those doubts

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel...

oh pretty macbook...

This is my very first post on my new pretty macbook computer!  Gone are the days of the whirring Dell-- I brought this up with exbf a few days ago and started the conversation with "Remember when we would be hanging out in my apartment and it would sound like a ship was departing in the corner by the couch?"  No longer.  This mac is freakishly silent.  It is also CLEAN and WHITE.  Exbf worried about it getting dirty, but once I brought up my obsessive wiping of all surfaces with Method grapefruit-scented cleansing wipes, the subject was dropped.

I am still definitely getting used to the flat keys and am making lots of typos as a result.  I also have no idea where anything is located and cannot decide exactly what iphoto should be used for...is there a My Pictures equivalent?  And the whole idea of transferring information from one computer to another seriously worries me.  Will my music transfer seamlessly?  How about my pictures?  Where will they go?  Do documents just switch over, or do I have to save each document as an RTF file before anything works?  This also raises the issue of external hard-drives.  How do I know what type of hard-drive to purchase?  And do I just hook it up to the PC, drag on information, and then hook it up to the mac and "voila"?

I am computer stupid.  

Here is another opinion question...what about desks?  I need an attractive desk that is not a large, hulking piece of wood like all desks seem to be nowadays.  If it's not a corner desk, I can't spare more than 44 inches of length, and the desks I'm seeing all seem to be 60 inches or more.

I will post a picture later of the current ugliness that is my bedroom in DC.  It's a strange shape, and the bed really needs to be facing the door to avoid the "eerie" factor of having a door behind me while I'm sleeping.  I need as much advice as possible on how to add color without the trouble of painting!  And on pretty much a $0 budget.

sprinkles, sprinkled

from *~Uplifting Arts*~'s Flickr photostream

When I was a little girl, I used to make what I called Sprinkle Soup. This was my first attempt at cooking, but it was really an art project and evidence of a sweet tooth. I would fill coffee filters with all types of sprinkles-- paillettes, jimmies-- and the more colors, the better. After adding a couple tablespoons of water, I would eagerly stir and watch the colors blend together into a prism of pink, purple, yellow, green sugar. Eaten straight out of the coffee filter with a sterling silver spoon, it was heavenly. And as I contemplate the importance of being surrounded by pops of color that blend together in a satisfying sweetness, Sprinkle Soup serves as an inspiration.

from My Favorite Color Is Shiny

Beautiful

This chills me to the core, it's so beautiful. I feel that it perfectly embodies a love less ordinary. It makes me want to prance around in tulle. The lifts with the skirt look like floating on a cloud. It's the passion that gets me-- the entirety of feeling when Mark kisses the back-bent Chelsie from collarbone to lip, the look of intense concentration and care when he drops the compacted Chelsie-as-tulle-ball to the floor...To me it captures all of the euphoria, passion, and complexity of love.

Brocade Home

These pieces make me feel like I'm in a boudoir. But not one of those Park Avenue, "let me display my money through the use of lavish draperies" boudoirs. More like a boudoir with a quirky touch. I would pair this headboard with sweetly feminine bedding, like the Yves Delorme Trefles collection.

OOOH ZOOEY!!!

Ahh, Zooey Deschanel on the cover of July's Lucky Magazine! And a peek into her closet!

The girl is just a little too awesome. It almost makes me want to go see The Happening. Almost...

In other news, I've started to give up on the patterned armchair as an accent for the apartment. I can't seem to find one that is the right size, the right style, and most of all, the right price. I don't want an old lady flowered chair-- I want something sleek but old-fashioned, with a whimsical print. Bohemian Victorian Whimsy. If only Zooey could help me shop. But I've decided instead that a solid armchair, provided it's the right shape, could work if we do colorful pillows on the couch and seat cushions on the wooden chairs. I will use my limited sewing skills to make covers for pillows I already own. The challenge? Definitely limited resources-- being in Ohio right now-- and finances. I want wild Josef Frank printed pillows-- in prints like these:

The problem? Ordering Josef Frank fabric from Just Scandinavian is at a minimum of around $250/yard, with a two yard minimum...which is not even close to the realm of affordable. I can afford about $50/yard, and that's with just using the designer fabric for the face of the pillows and cushions and using plain cotton for the back panel. Any advice, readers? Are you familiar with any fabric similar to Josef Frank's designs, or even (gasp) knock-offs in cotton instead of linen? I can't even find any sites other than Just Scandinavian that carry Frank prints!

Apologies!

Apologies for being completely missing in action! Moving was harder than I thought-- not only was there the packing, lugging, cleaning, boxing, taping, etc, there were also the emotional hurdles. Seeing my beautiful apartment in shambles over the course of the week was hard. Seeing it empty was even harder. I found myself obsessing over stupid details-- such as whether I should throw out my Method cleaning products or whether I should pack them up and take them with me-- so that I wouldn't have to think about the fact that, for better or worse, my life is changing. I didn't even cry when I left, even though I know the potential for tears was there and likely.
Now that I'm back in Ohio, I notice that whenever I tell people I just moved from Manhattan that their first response is "Oh my goodness, was it incredible? Was it so much fun?" And it's hard to answer that question. Because while my 2 years in New York were wonderful, they were far from Sex and the City. New York is a hard city to get used to, and it took me almost my entire two years there to even get close! I think I'll miss the culture most of all-- the incredible museums (new favorite: the Cooper Hewitt), the fact that independent movies come out earlier, the ethnic food on every corner, the Union Square market, the indie crafts scene, bands playing in basement bars...And I made some great friends. I had an amazing bookclub (yes, I know that makes me sound like an old woman). I had a wonderful boyfriend, who then became a wonderful ex-boyfriend (I know that's a strange concept), who made my last couple of days in New York completely lovely. But New York was part of my life for two years, and I know it's time that those two years were over.
Going from New York to Ohio, however...it's like having everything at your fingertips and then having, well, nothing. The next month, the interim month before I move to DC, is going to be interesting.
In other news, I went to Perilla in New York on my final night in the city with the exbf. It's the restaurant from the winner of the first season of Top Chef, Harold, and everything about it is exquisite. The lighting is soft and golden, the wine list is extensive and reasonable, the staff is knowledgeable and polite, the food is both highbrow and down-to-earth. We enjoyed a perfectly-cooked skirt steak and black bass with ramps and cherry tomatoes, accompanied by a fresh crisp Veltliner for me. Very highly recommended! And the perfect place for a goodbye meal. Or just a fantastic conversation, between people who know each better than most.