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J.Crew has a cruel marketing scheme (don’t they know I am on a budget!) that I am sure is directly targeting my pocket-book. I love these shots of Russian ballerinas in cashmere sweaters and tutus. Apparently J.Crew recruited dancers from several different studios and photographed them all in the Mariinsky Theatre (Kirov Opera and Ballet) in St. Petersburg, Russia. I have the perfect outfit dreamed up involving one of these sweaters which I will post at a later date! No, it does not involve a tutu. . . stop laughing.
Getting ready for hurricane, I can’t help thinking about a picture book my mom used to read to us as children called A Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey. I think this is one of those books that every family should have in their library.
The family in the story prepares for a hurricane during their summer vacation in Main. All the old fishermen say, “It’s a come’n.” And “She’s gonna blow.”
My own house already looks like a hurricane hit it because my landlord thought yesterday would be a good day to trim all the trees and leave the branches strewn all over the yard. And I do mean all over the yard. I am a little annoyed because its going to make one wet mess once it starts raining and blowing, and given his track record, I am going to be the one to clean it up. I come from a long line of if-you-make-a-mess-you-clean-it-up people, and seeing a mess this size without any attempt to tidy it up makes my blood boil. He at least could have attempted some sort of pile. Granted, I won’t have branches flying through my windows. . . so I thank him for that.
So to all you on the East Coast waiting or in the storm, good luck! Be safe and play lots of Pachisi.
I think I need these.
They would go with everything I own! I promise! And I wouldn’t have to buy another pair of boots in my life, ever. Mainly because I wouldn’t be able to afford another pair. But aren’t they amazing?
An American sat on a train and watched the country pass by the windows. It was an old-fashioned train in an old-fashioned country, but the time was modern. Horse drawn plows passed by, and farmers with sythes in hand. Haystacks in neat piles, like Monet paintings. A country left in time. The smells were old too: burning wood, the grime of travel, vinegar from a passenger’s lunch, and now and then, a whiff of humid summer, sweet hay, and the promise of a thunderstorm in the evening.
When the train arrived in the city the contrast to the country she had seen through the window was shocking. Hard concrete, dirty streets, poor shop windows. A metallic smell of steel filled the air, and city grime, the smell of rotting garbage, tar, oil and wet concrete, for the rain she smelled before was still lingering over the city. She was afraid for the faces here were hard, worn with years of oppression, and she did not know where she was or even how to speak the language. Czestochowa. She could only hope that she had said it right or that there wasn’t another town by the same name in the opposite direction of where she was going. She could only trust that the ticket seller had understood her wild gestures and attempts to communicate her destination. Outside the train station all she saw were the cold cruel lines of communism reflected even in the buildings, like a prison cell built to intimidate the soul with the bleakness of life.
It crossed her mind more than once that it would be some time before any would realize she was missing, if she were to go missing. She was staying two full weeks, alone, in Poland, and she still had five days left. Then she wasn’t even going back to America, but on to her job in sunny Italy. It would be at least five days before someone started looking for her if she went missing. A little knot of panic grabbed at her throat. The faces that walked by looked even more sinister. Why hadn’t she stayed in Krakow? Its sunny streets and happy countenance seemed so far away.
But that was one side of the tracks. After a few wrong turns, and some more pseudo sign language, she crossed over to the other side of the tracks and the worry and panic melted away as quickly as a nightmare at dawn. There was monastery fortress of Jasna Gora, its tower and walls rising out of the earth, a thing of beauty. A wide street addressed the structure as a weary traveler hails his host, with expectations of rest and comfort. Now she knew where she was and where she was going. She had never seen this monastery before, but she recognized a structure that matched the beauty she saw in the fields. The ugliness of the city was forgotten behind her. Walking toward the massive fortress monastery, she found like pilgrims traveling to see the Black Madonna, few speaking a common language, but like the punishment of Babble reversed, all understanding the goal.
A dear friend of mine brought this adorable espresso cup back for me from Rome. Its from the Sant’Eustachio! A cafe I would have frequented multiple times during the day if I had lived close enough and had enough spending money while I was living in Rome. They make the worlds best cappuccini, EVER.
Without further delay. . . cuteness.
Look! It has finger dents, so that you don’t have to worry about losing one precious drop because the cup slipped out of your fingers!
It was wrapped in their napkins! I think I always had two or three of these floating in my purse while I was living in Rome.
The bag it came in! I am not going to spare you any details. Plus it has all their contact information on it! If you want to learn more about the actual Church that is next door and the saint, click here and here. Also, yes, the deer’s head with the cross is also on Jagermeister bottles. The deer’s head with the cross harkens back to the ledgend of St. Eustace (Sant’Eustachio).
I would love to show up on the first day of school with these crayons. How amazing are these? Via Honestly WTF.
This article is a good reminder of how insensitive the world can be towards the unborn; the designer Kenneth Cole brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ”treated like a handbag.”
On that note, children are not accessories, their sole existence is not to make the parent/owner/bearer look good. (I run into this a lot working with schools, parents today expect their child to be perfect and do not allow for the harsh reality that not everyone has a gift for quantitative physics at the age of nine. But the shocking truth is, they don’t want the child to be good at quantitative physics because the child loves math and has a talent for it, but because they want a trophy child.)
Actually, it seems that Kenneth Cole makes an unborn child have even less status than a handbag. At least a handbag, when its owner chooses not to use it, gets dusted and put on a shelf, or given away to Goodwill to someone who wants it and would be happy to carry a pleather bag manufactured in Chinese sweatshop (sorry Kenneth, I call them as I see them, in my book you’ve always had a reputation for making cheap products despite your exorbitant prices). Unborn children are just ripped to shreds and tossed in a bio-hazard container. How sick and twisted.
I am so mad at myself, my roommates and I had a party over the weekend, I didn’t take any pictures during the event!
But, you know you’ve thrown an amazing party when the leftovers look picturesque:
