A beauty at the thrift store--this vintage coppery cake box (three dollars and fifty cents!). When I first got it home I couldn't figure it out; turns out the box was upside down. You don't put cake in it, you put it over the cake!
The top comes off, and underneath there is space for transporting your serving utensils. I love this!
Sure enough, it holds a pound cake very well.
Fortuitously, it exactly matches the white and orange pumpkins we picked from the garden.
Yesterday was a powerful 107 degrees. Clara was just back from camp with two weeks of laundry, I changed all the sheets and had regular laundry day, and I took it in my head to mop all the downstairs floors. Which entailed dusting and vacuuming first. In fact, I worked so hard I didn't see the need to swim "laptops", as Daisy calls them--it was a housework workout.
So imagine how good it felt to run into town in the late afternoon for a quick bang trim at the salon. Giles came along with his camera: there's beauty everywhere.
We love to keep travel notebooks when we're on a trip, with drawings, statistics, clippings, photographs, etc. If you want inspiration to get started, I've put some of the books that inspired me in the shop.
An easy shower gift: a pleasant teapot with a homemade tea cozy. The outside is a fun red and white heart print, the lining is white flannel with black polka dots.
An embroidered label just to make sure the bride knows it isn't a hat . . .
This has truly been a wedding summer for us. After Sunday's shower for a friend, today I hosted a luncheon for my brother's fiance--their wedding is tomorrow evening outdoors and the high is in the 100's, heaven help us all.
But today's luncheon was cool and serene. My mother and two sisters-in-law co-hostessed with me, and we used pale blue and chocolate brown for colors. Because the wedding is in the city, not near my house, we had our party there in a lovely restaurant. Not my usual gig, but it turned out beautiful, mostly due to my mother's exquisite taste.
Chocolate roses and blue hydrangeas for the centerpieces.
Waiting for the last guests to arrive. Including my brother's birthmother, whom he located last year. He and his birthbrother joined our family when they were six and eight years old. They had come into foster care after their father, who had custody, died. Their birthmother, who is Korean and not fluent in English, had been pushed out of their lives through a combination of miscommunication and malfeasance. In the twenty years since we adopted them, she had never stopped praying that someday she would see them again.
I got to meet her today. What a miracle! She is loving and beautiful and looks *exactly* like my youngest brother.
Favors: goat's milk soap.
Sometimes it's nice to have someone else do the cooking!
Felix left before the party started, but Giles took this picture first.
We are deep in the dog days now; the highest heat has settled down on us and the cicadas sing night and day. I try not to get in the car after noon--all emergency rickrack runs must be done in the morning.
It is easy to wish the summer away but I've learned better. Fall will be here soon enough, and I am learning not to wish *anything* away. Instead, I am keeping my eyes open for each day's marvels.
Late summer corn.
Felix's boy hands turning into man hands right before my eyes.
Cold fruit, air conditioning, iced tea.
Swimming by moonlight.
How's this for practical glamour? I love this pattern: those Forties ladies knew how to get it done!
I made this up in a thrifted poly-cotton blend, a beautiful watercolory pink and white floral. Love the revers collar. On a nightgown. The waist is finished with an ivory ribbon belt that ties in back, taking up the fullness.
Shoulder detail: shirring, my first time ever.
Love the gracefulness of the gathered dart below the bust.
Since I prefer to wear this in a all-cotton fabric, I'm going to put this one in the shop.
This weekend we hosted another wedding shower (does it seem like I do that a lot? It does to me!). I cut loose with the pink this time which was lots of fun. Really, though, I hardly did anything; just a few special beautiful things made for a lovely party.
First, I hung these tissue bells which I found at the thrift shop two days before the party. The Composer screwed cup hooks into the twelve-foot ceiling of the living room and I strung them to dangle over the round table full of presents. Vintage loveliness!
A classic candy choice: *the* mints for brides.
The punch bowl was also simple and beautiful: the day before the party I filled my Bundt cake pan halfway with pink lemonade, and tossed in a carton of fresh raspberries, and a handful of mint. I let that freeze, then filled it the rest of the way with more lemonade. For the party, I turned it out into a punch bowl, and filled the rest of the way with more pink lemonade (all made from concentrate). 
I've been picking up odd punch cups at the thrift store for a couple of months now. They're all pretty pressed glass: I love the mixed patterns and never pay more than a quarter a cup.
The cake was also beautiful and simple. My cake genius friend Carol made a square cake iced in pale, pale pink fondant with a swag around the sides. Right before the party we covered the top with stargazer lilies in little flower picks. So easy.
This was my prettiest shower ever, and so easy and inexpensive: a pleasure to host!
When I have a little one who is just not interested in food at midday, I fix a Surprise Lunch. Similar to Japanese bento in concept (the concept being that a child will eat food that is cute), but easier to prepare, Surprise Lunches always work. Start by sending the child out of the room to cover their eyes, and don't let them peek until the plate is in front of them.
Use tiny dishes if you have them--I've recently been picking up little restaurant butter dishes at the thrift store; they're perfect. For food, I rarely use anything special or different from the child's usual food. Here Daisy's lunch is a peanut butter sandwich cut up, a few pretzels, a few cherries, and oh joy, four chocolate chips right on the plate. A tiny bowl of yogurt in the center of the plate, for dipping fruit, is nice too. 
But look at the symmetry and the design: what toddler wouldn't want to eat that! 
(Food styling credit to Giles today, as well as the usual photography.)
I just can't believe this skirt! My step-mother brought it over this weekend; she had found it in her mother's discard pile. It was her own skirt in the 1950's.
You do see that it is covered with cellos, right? And it's exactly Clara's size. And it's a circle--wide enough around to wear while actually *playing* the cello.
We popped it in the mail this morning to get it to Clara while she's still at cello camp. I know she's going to like it.
Inspired by the new energy of the sitting room, I shuffled the living room furniture this morning. It's amazing that the same old stuff looks so different when it's been rearranged. Here you can see the east half of the room. The dining table is on the elevated stage (that's a *real* stage from when this was a school), and steps come down on both sides of the room.
The red dollhouse in the corner was mine when I was a little girl. It was built by the same carpenter who overhauled our house, and is painted to match. The bedroom even had the same striped wallpaper I had in my own room--I thought that was magic. Now my daughters play with it!
The music side of the room--the Composer at the piano, under an (unfinished) portrait of Clara with her cello. We miss her this week as she is gone to camp *again*! I did not do the portrait!!
But I did do this watercolor collage of pink tulips. I love this section of wall, just the simplicity of the cream, pink, and green. Makes the fern look good.
I can't get enough of Bend-the-Rules Sewing. I am loving every project I try. How about this little green handbag? Soft flocked green and white on the outside, inside crisp white with green leaves. A wired-ribbon rosette sewn on for fun, with "leaves" made out of my tiny treasured stash of pale green velvet ribbon (came from my mother's prom dress in 1962).
A *great* pattern--inventive, easy to work with, and CUTE. I'll put it in the shop tomorrow, because I love to buy the fabric, I love to create with it, then I love to pass it on.
If you, as I do, occasionally buy flowers at the grocery store, you should make friends with the florist there. This is one of the few situations where it actually helps you to shop with a toddler--usually a toddler is not a help at the store--because toddlers make friends everywhere they go. Disclaimer: my experience is based on having a very nice lady florist. But then I've found that most people who work with flowers are very nice.
• The florist can tell you what the store's delivery days are. Mine are Saturday and Tuesday, so I never buy flowers on Fridays.
• The florist can point you to the flowers that are going to still look good the day of your party. Just ask!
• The florist will help you pick out the freshest and sturdiest specimens.
• My florist, and probably yours too, will give me huge discounts on the older flowers, if I come in right after the new ones arrive. She's not going to be able to sell the old ones anyway. And sometimes this is exactly what I need--lilies that are already open, for instance. The new ones might still be furled in buds.
• Let the florist know how much you love her flowers, and that you have a limited budget. She might be able to help you afford something.
• It's nice to know the people you do business with. It's like the old days, and it's good.
Black and white inspiration today, beginning with my choice of shoes: zebra-stripe flats passsed along by my mother.
Then a great find at the thrift store for $3, a hand-painted ironstone Staffordshire platter. In black and white. When I got it home I knew it belonged in the sitting room, with its black and white floor.
But the sitting room was so dusty I had to pull all the furniture out and clean behind. Then rearrange everything.
Some things stayed the same.
But I brought in a couple of plants, an orchid and a fern. And moved the couch.
And added licorice, with black stripes.
