...from pinterest: this chambray shirt dress, this photograph, these healthy muffins, and this vintage stamp.
...from pinterest: this chambray shirt dress, this photograph, these healthy muffins, and this vintage stamp.
I've been wanting to grow vegetables for the longest time. The longest time. Eventually, I'd love to have a full garden. But I'm starting off slowly. I bought one small tomato plant, a container, and some potting soil. I gave it a smidgen of plant food, and I've been checking it almost every day, watering it when the soil feels dry, watching it get bigger. The fact that it's actually getting bigger somehow seems miraculous to me.
At first, its leaves didn't even touch the first ring on the cage. They've shot up past it now, and I'm sure I'll have to add a stake pretty soon. I know tomato plants can be finicky, but I'm hoping for the best. Fingers crossed.
How was your weekend? I spent most of it unpacking boxes and the rest of it redesigning the blog. It just felt like time for an update. I switched to a two-column layout, redid the handwritten logo, and added more functionality back in, like the search bar and the categories and the clearer shop links. I hope you like the new look. As always, thank you so much for taking the time to stop by.
Just added a new bracelet called vena cava. As soon as I get my studio area organized, I'll add more new designs!
I have news about the house hunt – we found one! For a while it felt like the right one would never come along, but then this house was listed. As with any house it's not perfect, but it checks off so much on our wishlist, the main appealing factor being that it was built in the 1940's and updated in the last few years. I also love that it has a good sized backyard (by city standards) and that I'll finally have an office instead of having to work in the corner of our bedroom.
After renting for the last ten years, it's sort of surreal to finally own a house. We've talked about it for years and have worked really hard to save for a down payment. Now comes the (hopefully) fun part of painting and decorating and making the space our own. Stay tuned for more updates.
I was too distracted to read very much this month, and most of my library books went back into the return slot with hardly a chapter read. But one I did finish was Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Most of it I enjoyed, and parts of it I really enjoyed. Like this, from "On Going Home", written about her daughter's first birthday:
In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother's teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.
If you're a Joan Didion fan, do you have a favorite essay of hers? Or book? (The only other one of hers I've read is The Year of Magical Thinking, which was depressing but good.)