Rum Balls

You are probably wondering where I am today. Well, I am over at Half-Assed Kitchen with my recipe for Rum Balls!

Enjoy!

The 40licious Bride: Part IV

 

 

By the time you get to 40licious, you like things a certain way. Personally, I have to art direct everything and that includes my wardrobe. ESPECIALLY my bridal wardrobe.

 

Saturday, we went to Steve's parents' and his mom, Ellen, meticulously stitched the edging on my veil. We sat around and chatted about this and that, broke for dinner, then sat around some more and she was done. We were about a foot short of trim, which gives me a reason to go back and adore her some more. I sneaked some really beautiful pictures of her deep into the work but she's camera shy so I won't post them.

But I also have in my mind a dramatic cage veil for the reception. Looking online, I blanched at the prices -- $240 and up for a piece of French netting with a dumb big flower on it. So I ordered my own piece of French netting ($9) and bought my own dumb big flower ($8) and put it together, and tacked on a $1.49 comb from Joann fabric store. Slapped it all together as Ellen diligently did her fine work on my other veil for the ceremony. Voila!

I thought I was being DIY to save money, but I realize that foremost, I'm being DIY to make it OURS. 

Wisdom of Dogs

There are so many, many things to write about. Impending nuptials. Another stellar year of camping on the Kern. Our scouting trip to Oregon, which was fun AND productive. What it's like to be a creative person in a corporate suck-up job. But no, today I will write about dogs and the metaphor.

Cinco is our new addition. A charming Chihuahua who is equal parts love and trouble. The tally so far of things he's destroyed: Two harnesses, two pillows, a leash, a nice leather flip flop, a dog bed, a BlackBerry charger and a rather pricey dog carrier that's supposed to be dog-proof (but it did get him there and back on the plane to Portland).

He was dreamy good on the plane ride, and in Oregon, tumbled about the farm with Holly's mutts, Trouble, a sweet ol' pit bull, and Gemini, who is a yellow lab kind of dog.

At home, he needs constant surveillance. He and Lucy have this odd ritual of switching food bowls in the middle of feeding, which usually means somebody doesn't get a full lunch or breakfast, as Cinco has a tiny bowl and Lucy's is regular.

So tonight, when we returned from a walk, I pulled out a baggie of food to put a little in their bowls. It scattered about the entire kitchen floor, due to a hole that had been chewed in the corner. And the dogs set about cleaning it up, each one moving around like a furry hoover. Dog bowl problem solved. Bring on the next one.

DIY Wedding

As I've said about a million times on this blog, when you're doing something right, the universe greases your wheels. But what about when you hamfist it? The universe basically throws gobs of bleh at you and makes you start over, refresh. Step away. Reevaluate. And you can't have clarity until that clarity wants to wash over you like a blast from a fire hydrant in the summer on West 82nd Street in Manhattan in 1978, when you wore running shorts and tube socks and Stan Smiths and a shirt with maybe a rainbow on it.

We're figuring out how to have the most meaningful wedding we can. What we need, what we don't. One of my best girlfriends is a wedding photographer by trade, so that's a no-brainer. Steve's on it with the music, and has been the perfect partner in helping with joint brainstorming and intuitively leaving alone the decisions I want to own. Which bodes well for our lives together. We are all set with the place and the wine and maybe even the officiant. I've spotlighted about 15 women in my life who will walk me down the aisle, led by my mother. Friends are giving me hints about scoring the deal on the dress, or do I just want to wear theirs? Those seem like the easy parts.

Perusing invitations, however, is a labyrinthine exercise. I'm a writer. Paper and words and ink and how it reads and how one remembers is important. I went through a maze of paper and fonts and wording on the Internet, each selection leading to a slightly different variation ... more casual. More formal. More Christian. More Hippie. And finally, I found The One. And it's letterpress and charming and in our colors (dark teal, dove gray and white) and $800. For some paper with ink on it.

So I very liberally borrow the idea I like -- a dove on a trellis with some fleur de lis thrown in -- and we pour over fonts together, as if we are deciding our last meal, or the name of our child, or a move to the Wyoming mountains. And finally we plunk down $24 for our wedding font and I play and play and play for nights on end to get it just right. And then I have the design in mind all perfect. And the paper I want to use sucks and gets all mangled in my printer. And my trips to Michael's and Staples result in a bag full of stickers and card stock and bits of ribbon and a Martha Stewart Fleur de Lis hole punch, and 100 blank invitation cards.

And I make a mess of my invitation. It is no longer beautiful to me. The font we have chosen now looks so amateur. Might as well use comic sans. My print looks gaudy and my paper looks plain. Is the bird tacky? Is the whole thing a bit too "Very Hungry Caterpillar"?

My very sweet neighbors arrived on my doorstep yesterday, 8-year-old Kaya with a basket of mandarins and a piece of baklava, her architect dad trailing along. They are a little listless, I think, as Mom is traveling India for a month gathering food stories. They have sort of adopted us. Or maybe we have adopted them. Sanjiv, who is also a Pisces, picks up on my design plight and offers to help out.

So I will put everything away for two days. And try to see the possibility that my new talented friend sees. And maybe we'll make something beautiful.

The Art of Compromise

I very much loved my solid oak, dovetail-crafted antique dresser, which I'd moved around from cabin to house to apartment since the early 1990s. I had to give it up as my fiance and I negotiated his move into my smallish two-bedroom apartment. I got to keep my couch and loveseat while his went to a quick and savvy Craigslist buyer. In return, practicality reigned and he brought over his much bigger dresser that we'd share. >>> Read more over at Emineo Domus

On the 7th Day She Rocks

I've carved out Sundays for my own. Most people know that I'm not up for plans (unless, perhaps, they've come from out of town or if it's a VERY special occasion). Not even the boyfriend gets time on Sundays, and that's saying a lot.

The routine goes like this, generally: wake up, flip through the paper, hit the farmer's market, ThriftScore, yoga, and then back home to do some kind of creative thing, like freelance or sew or make jewelry or try and make some kind of sense of my desk. Or paint. Or rearrange furnture. You get the picture. Sunday's always a solo day, with the major conversations happening in my head.

Today, though, I realized that I was surrounded by like-minded kindred souls. Two of my favorite girlfriends were at yoga. And I went fabric shopping for hours in the fashion district, pawing through hundreds of bolts of home decorating material, with a friend from work who is the only guy I know besides my Dad who can rock a sewing machine.

All the people I was with were on their own path. But the paths joined and we walked them together for a while. Kind of like being alone, with company, which was nice.

Nesting Frenzy

Here's what the equasion seems to be:

Informed about better-than-expected tax refund + news about great trip to Japan for 10 days + anticipating a child in the home + madly in love with boyfriend = INTENSE NESTING FRENZY

On my way to yoga tonight, I thought I'd buy Steve a sweater for Valentine's Day to introduce the prospect of possibly, maybe, providing a companion garment to the one he wears. All. The. Time.

But of course I had to make a detour into Anthropologie, because I have been invited on a trip to Japan for 10 days to taste sake and miso, and it is cold there, and clearly none of my current wardrobe will do. This is a store that switches my brain into French Bohemian mode and gives me all kinds of lifestyle fantasies, such as serving mint juleps to my guests in pink-washed glasses from Czechoslovakia, or having books on obscure cultural subjects on my coffee table, or hanging embroidered dish towels on fanciful ceramic knobs in the kitchen, or paying $238 for a sweater.

But tonight I found the happiest shower curtain ever on sale. And a couple knobs. And then I went on the hunt for coordinating towels and floor mat. And another curtain for the shower window because for the past five years, anyone who happens to walk by can get a pretty good idea through the frosted glass if it's a man or woman taking a shower. And a pot scrubber that looks like a flower. I don't know why that was so appealing.

And I will paint my bathroom this weekend and make it a cozy and scrumptious nest, which will perhaps give all who use it lifestyle fantasies.

I never made it to yoga. And maybe Steve doesn't even want a new sweater.

Creative Tear

I am on a creative tear since the year began. I can't make enough stuff. Doesn't matter if it's words or jewelry or things to wear, I'm being all crazy creative.

Fabulous boyfriend gave me a sewing machine for Christmas.

At the class to learn how to use it I made a bag.

This is actually two necklaces

This went to Karen, whom I've known since before I was born.

 

and just now, my favorite thing so far, an apron from two old skirts for Mia.

Anybody need anything made?

Oh, also, there's  a my new blog, too, called ThriftScore. Check it out! 

Written in the Stars

My May horoscope is so right on. It aligned with a phone call that I won a $20 gift certificate from my fave beauty supply shop, and an email I received this morning. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that I combined two of my favorite things and invented something, picked up a couple creative partners and WE'RE IN BUSINESS.

"Lately there has been a lot of emphasis on the media in your chart, with broadcasting and publishing ventures figuring prominently. If you are involved with these industries, you should see surprising, very special results at this time .... This could turn out to be quite a memorable, happy time for you, dear Pisces. ... It's a great time to be upgrading your image with your adoring public"

I know we're in a recession. And I know it's a terrible time to expect miracles. But I also have great conviction that if you just keep going and have a smidgen of talent, whatever you want to happen will.

Anyway, read your horoscope. There's something good for you, too, I just know it.

John Updike puts everything so beautifully here, in this poem, which sums up why you need to make absolutely sure that the people in your life know you love them, so that when it all goes "poof," they will know, without question, that you left this earth with a piece of them in your heart. Because really, the petty jealousies, the misguided outrages, the inferred insults -- they just don't really matter.

Perfection wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market -
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it; no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

Follow the Recipe

One of the most profound lessons I learned this year -- and believe you me, there were a LOT -- was over Christmas. For Christmas Eve dinner, I made bouillabaisse from the New York Times Cookbook, as I have on dozens of occasions before. But this time, instead of using the recipe as a suggestion, I followed the directions to the letter. The result? SPECTACULAR. It was easy, took less than an hour, and the stew was a subtle yet jubilant celebration of seafood in all the right ways. But the true test was the next night, when I made it again for my lifelong French foodie friends, the Gayot family. (Running around LA looking for clam juice on Christmas, however, wasn't easy.) Never shy or retiring (Sophie told me flat out, "Do not bring wine or flowers. But bouillabaisse sounds fun"), they murmured praise in French and English. They loved it. Sophie has finally found a decent bouillabaisse in LA. And so on.

The lesson here? That Craig Claiborne probably knows, oh, a teensy bit more about food and how to make it than I do. It's his job, he's done it for 60 years, and look! He's written down what he knows in a book! Just there waiting for me!

I'm done reinventing the wheel, I think, and will take a good long listen to a professional, no matter what the arena -- food, financial, design, hair, whatever. But when it comes to INVENTING something else, something new, something that is busting to come forth from my deepest psyche, well, then, I'm all over it.

A Bear Crapped on My Table

I've been told by a very inspiring and influential person to get my papers in order (well, outline and proposal) and start working on my memoir after she read my article about living off the grid in Grist. I feel like I landed on the soft pillow after riding bareback in the woods for years. There is a crack in a windowless and doorless room where the light has begun to stream in. I could do this. I could write my book. My book.

December is always a little tough for me because it was the month my father died in 2003. I will always remember the day that I handed him my business card after deciding on a career as a freelance writer. It read:

Vanessa McGrady
Journalist

He handed it back. "One day it will say 'journalist and author.' "

But I never thought that I had enough to say.

Of course, my father was always right. It still takes me a long time to realize this.

Creative Fall

The Celts have a word for this time of year: Samhain. It's a time when you go indoors, work on crafty things, ponder existence, and listen to Led Zepelin and Etta James. My inner Celt is apparently raging, as I have made no less than five scarves in the last month. Mostly because I don't know how to make hats or socks or anything else. However, I Speak Film turned me on to a great idea to knit kitchen towels out of cotton. (She is a GREAT photographer, but also a kick-ass knitter. She taught me!) Also, today, I made a handbag from a cute skirt that just didn't look good on -- and doesn't look that good as a handbag, either, but it's at least useful. Clearly, I am no Knitting Architect, and I will never be.

Little Mary wanted a scarf the same color as her towel.

She has a very bright future as a scarf model, don't you think?

Brother Ian picked out his yarn for his scarf last April.
But it wouldn't be as good if he didn't have to wait.
This scarf has inspired envy in at least one person, and his order is in!

Now I need to get back to working on the things that really matter. The things that I want the most, what they call "blue chips." Which involve me actually working.