Gretel Home

Let the lighting fetish continue! (I figure it’s better to just give in, right? Why fight it.) Spotted on Daily Candy, the Gretel online boutique is full of pretty modern elements for your home.

I particularly love the frame pendant lights by Iacoli & McAllister.

And The More the Merrier candlestick by Louise Campbell, which would make a statement on any tabletop.

{see more on paper n stitch}

Book Lust

A brilliant idea.

Remove door from useless closet.

Transform into built-in bookcase.

{via ill seen, ill said}

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

- by Derek Walcott
(thanks to The Time Traveler's Wife)

I love my job...

...because every Monday a coworker brings in 2 giant boxes of Dunkin Donuts.

And the smell wafts over to my cube.

And I spend 5 minutes deciding which kind I want.

And then I sit in donut-rapture at my desk.

However, this place...not so good for the waistline.

Kitchen Envy

Calm.

{via ill seen, ill said}

Truth

"UGH I'm looking at Verizon for phones. I dont want a SMART phone. I want a regular stupid phone. Good god, I dont want a barrage, a convoy or a trance!!! What frightening names. escapade, intensity razzle...........are they kidding!!!! rogue, alias rival, touch, its rated X for goodness sake.

- Wisdom from Mama

Married (Happily) With Issues

In psychiatry, the term “good-enough mother” describes the parent who loves her child well enough for him to grow into an emotionally healthy adult. The goal is mental health, defined as the fortitude and flexibility to live one’s own life — not happiness. This is a crucial distinction. Similarly the “good-enough marriage” is characterized by its capacity to allow spouses to keep growing, to afford them the strength and bravery required to face the world.

In the end, I settled on this vision of marriage, felt the logic of applying myself to it. Maybe the perversity we all feel in the idea of striving at marriage — the reason so few of us do it — stems from a misapprehension of the proper goal. In the early years, we take our marriages to be vehicles for wish fulfillment: we get the mate, maybe even a house, an end to loneliness, some kids. But to keep expecting our marriages to fulfill our desires — to bring us the unending happiness or passion or intimacy or stability we crave — and to measure our unions by their capacity to satisfy those longings, is naïve, even demeaning. Of course we strain against marriage; it’s a bound canvas, a yoke. Over the months Dan and I applied ourselves to our marriage, we struggled, we bridled, we jockeyed for position. Dan grew enraged at me; I pulled away from him. I learned things about myself and my relationship with Dan I had worked hard not to know. But as I watched Dan sleep — his beef-heart recipe earmarked, his power lift planned — I felt more committed than ever. I also felt our project could begin in earnest: we could demand of ourselves, and each other, the courage and patience to grow.

- by Elizabeth Weil in the NY Times

Commercial-Free Mondays

On my way home yesterday - after 8.5 hrs of working, 2.5 hrs of driving, and 2 hrs of exercising/teaching - I turned to 92.3 FM and heard them say "...and commercial-free Monday continues now" and almost shrieked with the realization that it was STILL, in fact, Monday.

Green

My office has decided to install solar panels, which is very green and all, but it sounds like the roof is going to collapse on our heads. It should also be noted that we THOUGHT they installed solar panels this summer - when we also suffered thru 2 weeks of mind-numbing, headache-inducing hammering and crashing about overhead. But it turns out they were FIXING the roof prior to solar panel installation. So now we get to experience the aural joy all over again.

This is not a tap tap tap on the roof. This is a your-head-is-about-to-be-crushed-by-many-tons-of-falling-equipment/workers/roofing sound.

Before I literally screeched in fear at my cubicle. I was momentarily embarrassed. Then I decided not to feel bad because the screams of my colleagues randomly crying out "WOW" or "AHH" has been echoing around the office for the past few hours.

Happy Monday.

DIY Chandelier

On her Web site Lindsey Adelman explains that experimenting with readily available parts is what helped her get started in the lighting business. So now she's provided explicit DIY instructions to help anyone and everyone create their own chandelier masterpiece.

Its a win win win situation: You get an awesome lighting fixture. You have the opportunity to actually MAKE something with your own two hands. You save yourself enough moolah to celebrate your good work with a bottle (or two) of post-project champagne.

{see more on paper n stitch}

Kitchen Envy

White subway tiles.

Black/white cabinets/granite.

Pendant lamps.

Built in bookcase.

Yes.

{via mustard & sage}

Three Auroras

The NYC Ballet behind-the-scenes videos just get better and better.

Here, Tiler Peck, Ashley Bouder and Kathryn Morgan discuss performing in The Sleeping Beauty.

I think I'd rather watch rehearsals over performances any day.

Kitchen Envy

open shelves

calm white and green palette

bright and sunny

a door out onto a balcony/patio somewhere exotic? paris perhaps?

{via roseland green}

This Weekend

Met some of my closest girlfriends for dinner and martinis

all looked post-work cute and stylish

giggled/howled raucously for four and a half hours

befriended/tortured the waiter

felt young and fun

stopped at sister's off-campus college house to drop off an aerobed

in the midst of a Jersey-Shore inspired party

walked in wearing a silk scarf and buttoned up Via Spiga wool dress coat

felt old

very old

felt college slipping further and further away

sweaty and stretchy and content after ballet class

frantic errands

met with officiant

saw words "bride" and "groom" on paper

reality hit

getting married!

sweet perfect dinner date

shrimp and roasted garlic ravioli + orange crush martini

gobbled tartufo and chocolate pudding couchside while watching Chuck

got spammed

sent hundreds of grammatically incorrect emails about electronics

to everyone i have ever emailed in my life

(thru "L")

sent apology

hellos from dozens of people I haven't spoken to in ages

spam is a good way to keep in touch

byebye jets

(xoxo mark sanchez)

goodnight weekend.

hello monday.

Against Hesitation

If you stare at it long enough

the mountain becomes unclimbable.

Tally it up. How much time have you spent

waiting for the soup to cool?

Icicles hang from January gutters

only as long as they can. Fingers pause above piano keys for the chord

that will not form. Slam them down

I say. Make music of what you can.

- Charles Rafferty via Oprah Mag

Rain

I love this pendant chandelier/illuminated chime by Light ie Design.

Can't you see it in a room with towering cathedral ceilings?

See more on Paper n Stitch

14.

What's missing from real life that's sent us all clamoring for the anonymity of the Internet?

We're all so lost in the blur of life and buzz of technology that we're forgoing real face to face contact - real conversations, real martinis sipped on real wooden barstools - in favor of colliding daily with the html personalities of strangers around the world.

We all so badly want to be voyeurs.

To look at others lives.

To compare.

To see how we measure up.

To see how the other half live.

How both halves live.

What we're missing.

But by looking, we're missing it.

I Am Not Yours

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.
You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.
Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

- Sara Teasdale
{via Poets.org}

Pretty Drawings

There's something about the muted palette and a touch of whimsy...

{by Clare Owens via simplesong}

A Touch of Depression for Your Friday

Paid Vacation Around the World

The following table lists nine countries and the average number of paid vacation days per year employees receive in each country.

Italy - 42 days
France - 37 days
Germany - 35 days
Brazil - 34 days
United Kingdom - 28 days
Canada - 26 days
Korea - 25 days
Japan - 25 days
U.S. - 13 days

{from here, via Smitten}

Dear White Honda with the ghetto black hood,

It was a delight to drive in front of you this morning for close to 30 minutes, as you hovered behind me 15 mph under the speed limit. It was comforting to look into my rearview mirror and see your eyes glued to your mobile phone/blackberry for that entire 30 minutes. Never did you put down your handheld device. And why should you? Driving shouldn't require one's full attention. Goodness no. It is a time in which to accomplish other things. Perhaps you were reading a news article. Or catching up with an old friend via text message. Perhaps you were watching an episode of Glee on your iPhone. Who cares that the winding twisting back roads on which we drove often include a surprise herd of deer or 90 degree right turns? By all means, I hope you accomplished what you needed to accomplish on your way to work this morning. I certainly feel safe on the roads of New Jersey.

Sincerely,
Kathryn

On the left

{ via Refinery 29}

High-Waisted

THESE are the kind of high-waisted pants I want.

Slim cut.

High high waisted.

Apparently they don't exist.

Suggestions?

{via Kansas Couture}

Barbara Kingsolver

"Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, the loss of a job... And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another - that is surely the basic instinct... Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is."

- Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson, via A Practical Wedding

Desk Chair

Love this stylish take on a swively desk chair!

{Ikea Skruvsta egg chair via Makeunder my Life}