love forever

Bookkeeping

It's been a while since I've talked books but this week was a busy one in Appliqué Your Way-land and I wanted to post some updates:

One, I finally re-linked both of my books on the blog. One day, they just disappeared like "poof" and it seriously took me this long to put them back up. And by me I mean Mr. Loveforever, who is way more tech savvy than I.

Two, my super-talented little brother Jesse is trying to raise money to produce his second record on Pledge Music (like Kickastarter but for musicians) and, if you so desire, you can donate by buying an autographed copy of my book plus a kit to make these woodland creature ornaments above. My mom contributed this project to the book and we made the kits together. It's a real family affair folks!

Three, you can enter to win a copy of my book over at the Clay, Wood and Cotton blog. All you have to tell them is what your favorite summer read was. Easy as pie.

Moving Day

So, like I said in my last post, I was in New Hampshire at Squam Art Workshops last week and I will totally talk about all it's awesome-ness but before I get to that, I have to talk about getting there.

A few days before I helped my mom, aunts and various other family members do the final clean out of my grandparent's house. My grandmother passed away two years ago and the house was getting to be too much for my grandfather to handle. So on September 11th (odd that this day will take on a new significance for our family now), we packed, swept, tossed, and scrubbed away the last traces of my grandparents on the house they have lived in for over 60 years. The house that every single one of their daughters returned to live in with their kids at some point in their life.

As a writer, my family has always graciously provided me with endless tragi-comic stories and this time was no different. One of my aunts, a militant recycler, set up no less than six different trash bags for us to throw out the various bits we found in the backs of drawers and closets. My grandfather went on for at least ten minutes about how he "just couldn't understand why no one at the estate sale a day earlier hadn't wanted to buy a perfectly good artificial Christmas tree." and "what's wrong with people today?"
We all seem to have as many bad memories of the old house as we have good ones. But they are ours, and at the end, the house is just a place. Without my grandmother standing at her post, the clothesline, the family gathered playing cards or my grandfather hogging the crossword puzzles, it's just an empty house. In a few months, a new person will own it. They will probably rip out the carpets and break down walls and who could blame them? I would do that too.

A few days later, at my aunt Bean's log cabin in New Hampshire and my grandfather's current home, he showed me around his new room. All the important things: his photos, his old books, a favorite chair, had been neatly arranged. He was so proud to show me how carefully it had all been decorated. Honeslty, it looked like a much better version of the room he shared with my grandmother. All the memories, none of the mis-matched furniture or time-worn rugs. That big old house is gone but we are all still together. Even when we don't want to be, we are stuck together, we are a family.

 

Our Little Corner of the World

 

This weekend, my mom and Aunt Bean descended upon our new home like two very active fairy godmothers and helped us unpack the kitchen, buy lots of stuff at IKEA and most exciting, set up our new garden! They are both expert gardeners so it was a real treat!

First things first, we pruned the very pretty Rose of Sharon tree that hangs over my neighbors yard into ours. The branches were hanging so low that our tiny yard was basically cut in half. Good thing my mom is a junior tree warden (no, I'm not kidding)! She is an expert pruner and quickly achieved the perfect balance of just enough tree to frame our kitchen window but not so much that we can't use the yard!

Then we did lots and lots of container planting! We now have pots of herbs and lettuce plus lots of flowers, succulents and ferns. The herbs have changed my life- we've been making agua fresca with mint, lemon and cucumbers all week to battle the heat.

The next part is my favorite and something I can't wait to dig into: decorating! My goal is to make the little yard into a little french-y paradise with bistro chairs, striped linens (like this scene, below, at Terrain) and some sort of hanging luminaries or chandelier.

Too bad these chairs cost a fortune! Anyone know of a cheaper alternative?

I'll have more pictures soon as things start to shape up!

11/7 Workshop and Booksigning at JimmyStyle in Philly

If you're in the Philadelphia area next weekend, I am teaching an ornament making workshop (with a little help from my super-crafty mom) followed by a book signing on November 7th at JimmyStyle.

Learn how to make ornaments for the holidays or just stop by and get a book and a kit and meet me!

Hope to see you there!

From the Top

When you move to a new place, you have to start somewhere. Since we had about 15 book-filled boxes cluttering up our living room (and my extremely helpful mom was in town this week!), bookshelves seemed like a good place to start. We have an industrial thing going on in our new place so super-cheap shelves for Home Depot were a perfect match. I know everyone is doing colored out books right now but I have been doing it for a while and honestly, I'm not sure if I can go back to anything else!

As always, Potato was there to "help", in this case to guard Mr. Loveforever's computer books. 

So: bookshelves=check! Now onto the rest of the place.

Fashion Resolutions

still from An American in Paris

I've never been one for big serious resolutions-it just makes me feel like an epic failure as I inevitably don't follow through. Fashion resolutions on the other hand, those I can get behind.

A couple of years ago I was going to start wearing more hats and doing more elaborate things with my hair. I am proud to report that this was quite the success!

This year I would like to bring back glamor. It's hard being glamorous when you work at home in your pjs and I have gotten so so lazy lately. On New Year's Eve, my family and I watched a marathon of That's Entertainment on TCM (I know, wild times!), the documentaries on MGM musicals and I was just blown away by how spectacular all the women looked (oh, and the guys didn't look too shabby either. Of course, half of them were on drugs and most of them were stuffed into corsets but still! The hair, the dresses, the choreographed dance moves! Who cares if it's not reality, that's the point right?

I remember when I was a kid, my dad would take me to see a Broadway shoe every year. I dressed up to the nines even though you really didn't need to and I was entranced by what I saw to be the glamor life of the stage. I'm sick of my daily routine; I want my whole life to be choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

What about you?

Wrapping it up

Well, the presents are wrapped and my mom and I are about to start making some cookies.

Wishing you and yours a very relaxing and cozy holiday and I'll see you in a few days!

An ode to gingerbread

One of the drawbacks to trying to write a book over the holidays is the lack of time to do, well, anything else. Anyone who knows me knows what a sucker I am for holiday spirit: cookie baking, ornament making, I am into it all.
Making gingerbread is what usually gets me into the holidays the most. I mix up a huge batch of dough, turn on the radio and have fun rolling, baking and decorating. My mom and I have made several houses, life size stockings, girls, boys and an animal or two. I even recall someone in my family (ok, my stepfather) making a Christmas trout from rolling up leftover gingerbread dough into
a fish shape.

Here's a picture of my brother and I posing in front of one of my mom's gingerbread masterpieces. Don't tell her but we used to sneak little pieces of icing off from the back so she wouldn't notice.

This year I had no time to make my usual gingerbread cookies but I am having fun looking at all the others baking and house building around blogland.

My absolute favorite is this modern house available on Red Envelope (found via Black Eiffel). I love this idea so much that I am putting it in "Things to try next Christmas" file. If you're wondering, of course I actually have a file like that. So does my mom and my aunt Bean.
Some other gingerbread foodstuffs I am loving:

*Totally delicious ginger caramels from Apartment Therapy's The Kitchen
*A very sweet gingerbread house from The Black Apple (and family).
*Whimsical gingerbread stars made by Alicia on Posie gets Cozy
*Some great photos of gingerbread houses made by Diane and her mom.
*These little houses made from gingerbread cake are pretty adorable.
Here's a collection of photos of extreme gingerbread houses. Pretty amazing.

Happy Mother's Day!

My Wacky Mom

Well, since this is a time of giving thanks I thought I should say a little something about my mom, the woman who so selflessly birthed me.
Looking back at old photos of my childhood, it seems we were almost always in costume, putting on a play in the living room or jumping into piles of leaves in the back yard. My mom worked as a full-time musician and so, even though it meant very little sleep for her, I got to see her a lot during the day.
One of my favorite memories is of a circus-themed diorama-making class (man I hope they still have classes like this!) she signed my brother and I up for at the local library. My brother and I decided that we should dress up as clowns and so, with the help of mom, we showed up for our class in full on costume and make-up. She never told us that it was weird or that the other kids would be in jeans and tee shirts. She just did our make-up and proudly walked us to the library.
And so, in the spirit of dressing up and having fun, I present my mom, aka June Cleaver. Get it? Cleaver?