Colder Weather

Living Without A Microwave

www.smecc.org

Contrary to what the title of this post suggests, we do have a microwave. 


It's a boat.


And therefore, it lives in the attic. 


Our last apartment seriously lacked counter space and our giant retro microwave just didn't make the cut when it came to counter real estate. Our current apartment has a little more counter space (like an extra couple of feet on the three feet we had in our last kitchen) but using that space for our knife block, go-to spices and drying rack makes more sense considering how we use our kitchen. 


I cook most of our meals from scratch and having space to spread out as I put everything together is a requirement. Having our meals reheated in an instant, as it turns out, is not. 


It just means that we have to wait 15 minutes or so to re-heat leftovers in the oven or on the stovetop and that 15 minutes is usually well spent tidying the rest of the kitchen or talking about our day anyway. We store leftovers in oven safe containers so they can be popped right in the oven and take care to cover foods that may be prone to drying out otherwise. 


I can't think of the last time I missed Mr. Microwave, and I certainly don't miss the radiation debate surrounding his kind. And to think that in the beginning it seemed like going without him would be such a big inconvenience. Funny what we get used too.


What kitchen gadget could you live without? What ones are you ardently committed to?


You can take my dusty beast of a microwave but don't get between me and my Magic Bullet. Seriously, I love that thing.

Brown Boots

Friday Under Fifty - Pretty Modern

Peacock dress, £28
Lace top, $50
Bow shoes, £20
Cross body shoulder bag, $45
ASOS stainless steel jewelry, $45
Metal jewelry, $8
Jon Richard peach ring, £8
Wrap bracelet, $40
Betsey johnson earrings, $25
Tasha black hair accessory, $28

Coffee Time

1. Le Creuset, Halo Tea Kettle 
2. Sophie Conran for Portmeirion, Cream Jug and Sugar Basin 
3. Bodum, Chambord French Press 
4. Baccarat Coffee Scoop Clip 
5. Sophie Conran for Portmeirion, Coffee Mug 
6. Bodum, Bistro Coffee Grinder 
7. Emma Bridgewater, Polka Dot Teaspoon 
8. Pacific Connections, Green and White Laquer Tray

Motherhood, Fatherhood and Childhood

Photo by Torben Petersen

I love babies. Everyone does. They are designed to be loved, it's actually a little manipulative, their super adorability ensures that they get the love and attention they need to grow. And I think at some point or another we've all just wanted to take that cute little baby that smiled at us in a line-up at the grocery store home. But wanting to actually bring a baby home, for real, forever  - at least for me, is about a lot more than just magical baby smiles.


Today I hosted a few friends for a potluck style lunch. The star of the show wasn't the delicious food, the wonderful conversation or the youtube videos of the muppets we watched, it was the sole baby in attendance. Every wiggle, giggle and wink was a delight, worthy of our complete attention. Eight adults in a circle, fascinated by watching the little guy discover his feet.


This particular little guy has parents whom I love and my heart swells as I get to watch them become a mother and a father. And I almost tear up when I think of watching that little nugget of a baby become a boy and a man (in like, a million years.)


Being around beautiful little families like this one is enough to encourage some serious "baby on the brain" activity (Like, isn't that hanging bassinet thing amazing?). But it isn't that that has me pinning nursery decor on Pinterest, it's the idea that being a mother or a father is choosing to selflessly give of your body, time, love, energy, resources, your whole life to another person. It is choosing to live outside of yourself, or as Elizabeth Stone writes "it is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."


I sometimes get lost in my own head, get carried away by my own heart, and as hard as it can be to admit, sometimes even isolate myself with my selfishness. Being married has surely made this obvious. And has just as surely made it a flaw worth fixing. Maybe marriage and the oneness out of the twoness is a primer for parenthood in a way. A child needs their mother, or their father, in a very urgent and basic way and that dependency is something that cannot be shelved, ignored or neglected when mother or father feels self-indulgent. Kind of a big, sacrificial deal. And wonderful. And if you're married and/or a committed Christian, familiar too.


Unconditional love, unwavering commitment; a couple of things that I can really get on board with - and those irresistible baby smiles don't hurt either.


My "baby brain" lives here: http://pinterest.com/lemonydawn/baby-brain/


Dawn


Ps. I'm not hormonal, pregnant or even trying to be so at the moment. Thought that might be useful information after all that baby talk. I know you were wondering.

Fall, Back in Time

Fall, Back in Time by lemonydawn featuring floral scarves

J Crew knit sweater
£80 - net-a-porter.com

Chloé high waisted jeans
$560 - net-a-porter.com

Opening ceremony shoes
£330 - farfetch.com

J W Hulme shoulder handbag
$370 - barneys.com

Jennifer Meyer Jewelry long earrings
$375 - ylang23.com

Tom ford sunglasses
€275 - jades24.com

Floral scarve
$32 - topshop.com

Cuppy-cakes!

I found a great recipe for some gorgeous cupcakes awhile ago and finally put it to use earlier this week. They were everything I ever wanted in a cupcake. Lemony fresh with heaps of berry flavored buttercream frosting.

You can find the recipe here. I only made one tweak, after the cupcakes had cooled I hollowed out a little bit in the top of each one and added a dollop of the blackberry sauce I had leftover after making the frosting - it made for a sweet surprise on the inside. The recipe and the pretty photo collage is by Natalie of Patisserie Natalie, which has lots of eye candy and recipe goodness.

Two disclaimers regarding these cupcakes:

1. If your husband does not like buttercream frosting you are liable to eat most of these by yourself - a health risk to be certain.

2. They do not travel well. That is, they do not like to be left alone in 30 degree Celsius weather in the backseat of you car. And to show you how much they don't like that, they will melt into a lovely, pink mass.

Consider yourself warned.

There Be Pirates

My apartment overlooks the Saint John River. It's lovely. I love looking at the glittery water and being able to gauge the traffic while I drink my morning tea. But I never considered the inherent danger in living so close to the water - no, not the notorious springtime flooding, something much more sinister...

Here's the story. I was sitting on our little patio yesterday, looking at our fairly average residential view.

Just a lot of overhead wires and a squeaky clothesline that I love. And peeling on paint on the neighbors house. Normal stuff. But wait a minute...

That flag, that flag that wasn't there the day before, it looks a little like the Jolly Roger...

Yep, there be pirates...

Polyvor-acious

Who uses Polyvore?

What?

You've never heard of Polyvore?!

Clear your schedule and prepare to start spending way too much time in front of your computer screen. 

This site lets you "shop" the entire internet at once!! And make little magazine style sets of your findings!!

This does not seem to be translating properly, even with the double exclamation points. Let's try a scenario.

You're looking for summer outfit ideas online. You go to "Polyvore.com". You click "Create a Set." Oh! Look! Clothing categories! Hmm, let's go with dresses, it's summer after all. You click "Dresses." Now you can narrow things down with a couple drop-down menus, "Price Ranges" and "Color Families." I can not emphasize enough how much I love the color categories. Like, seriously. But on with the scenario...

You're young and unemployed (I might be projecting a little here) so you click the "Under $50" category. And you chose the darkest blue color because you know, you're a little obsessed with navy blue right now. And ta-da, a lovely selection of navy dress available online for under $50. And you can type in something like "Stripes" or "Strapless" and narrow things even more. And if you can't find that perfect thing in the Polyvore database of stuff, you can use their little clipper tool and grab something from the world wide web itself for you and other people to use. But a lot of people have already done a lot of clipping so I don't often clip myself, but whatever you're into. Clip. Clip. Clip.

And now things get really crazy. You drag the image of the dress to the blank page and drop it and go looking for the perfect shoes, hand-bag, jewelry, jacket, etc. etc. And you can pile it all on your formerly blank page until you get something like this. 

And then you can do it over and over and over again. Making dream outfits and inspiration boards until your eyes bleed. Well maybe stop before that happens. Actually, please stop before that happens. I do not want to be in any part responsible for serious eye maladies. 

Polyvore. It's fun. Try it. Tell me your username and we'll follow each other and stuff. 

A Neighborly Kitty

This is Vida. This is my coffee table. This is not my cat.

My husband and I moved to our current apartment this spring. We did not know that the apartment kind of came with a new pet and while it may have been a deterrent at the time we kind of love her now. Vida actually lives with our neighbor M. Where she is loved and coddled beyond measure. But when she gets a case of wanderlust she finds herself on our patio, crying for attention, throwing herself against our dining room window or trying to scratch her way through the front door (the poor screen). 

And we never  let her in or, heaven forbid, feed her anything. 

That is to say, we don't invite her in, but we don't kick her out when she whizzes past our legs while we're carrying groceries either. Or when we accidently leave the door open or when we just turn a blind eye as we walk through the door. 

And that is to say, we don't feed her, but we don't let her starve when M. is away and she meows at the fridge. Or when she tries to eat our food or when she can be found drinking out of puddles of water on the patio. 

So yeah. We kind of altered our original dealing with Vida rules into no rules at all. She practically has a key to the front door and yes, we bought a bag of cat food. The fancy kind. No big deal.

I still tell unfriendly service people who let her in while they're working on the apartment that she is not mine and act all flustered and annoyed. But other then that, she's totally mine. 

Don't tell M.

It's time...

Clouds 1 by Kyu Hwang

Hi. 

I started this blog, like a million years ago, and I haven't posted anything. Although, I think about it all the time, thoughts like, "These cupcakes would make a great blog post!" or "This show is great, I should blog about it!" But, it never happens, even when my thoughts end in exclamation points they just don't get photographed or recorded here because, well, I'm probably being lazy. And distracted by all the shiny things on the internet. So many shiny things. 

But today, as it thunderstorms while I'm supposed to be at the Farmer's Market, things are going to change. I am deciding that even though there are shinier blogs out there I will still write this one. Because it's mine and I could use a place to record all the buttery, sugary creations coming out of my kitchen and all the wanderings I do online. And because what better thing to do on a rainy Saturday morning.

So, that's that. Done. 

Except, we all know how that worked out last time, like a million years ago...