Palm Beach looks a lot different these days...

Today, Steve came home from his errands with flowers for me!!! :) A wonderful bouquet with orange roses, purple mums and alstroemeria, tall green grasses, (which my Kince loves to bite) and these green fluffy, tuft-y blooms on long stalks that remind me of the trees Dr. Suess books. It's beautiful and wonderful and I love it. :) He always brings me flowers when I am least expecting it, and they make me soooooo happy.

He also brought me another surprise! A poster of this picture:


Isn't it wonderful? It's Palm Beach in 1905. He saw it on shorpy and just knew I would love it. I do! :) He is so sweet! I am going to frame it and hang it in our bedroom, on an empty wall where I could never quite hang the right picture. I am so excited. :)

a picture of part of my thoughts

So I have been really busy the last few weeks. When I get tired and busy, sharing my thoughts with all of you is kind of hard, because, well, thoughts are the first thing to go. And then I don't have any to share. :( Anyway, but it's Saturday morning and I am having tea and enjoying the lovely breeze on my balcony, and the thoughts are slowly returning...

I could say something about politics, but let's all be spared. I could say something about shopping for a dress for a wedding coming up, but it's been dismal, so again, let's be spared. (I'll just say that I have been to more than 30 stores, and seen nothing but pure hideousness--even if I had hundreds of dollars to spend on a dress, I would not have spent it, they were all so ugly. Either that or mostly just those sorts of fun little dresses that my fronts are way too big for... As I told a friend, a bit too much fun.) Why is it so hard? I really just need to get my sewing machine fixed.

I have also been thinking a lot about decorating/organizing/cleaning things to do around the house. Sometime soon, perhaps I will post pictures of my striped piano room with it's empty golden frames on the walls and it's Alice-in-Wonderland-purple bookshelf, and it's rich and lovely, dripping-orange-wax candelabra. :) Or my beautiful, bubblegum pink closet! (I can do this when I stop finding it so astronomically challenging to take a picture, and get it from my camera to my computer and from my computer to my blog. Right now, I only can manage to get pictures that are already on the web, like from facebook and stuff.)

But really, I am just sort of consumed with wanting to make another cup of tea right now. In just a minute. And since I only post pictures from the internet right now, here's a really good one:



A bathtub that I very much want to take a bath in. My friend in Chicago has a bathtub like this. I took lots of baths in it (and pictures of it!) when I was there last summer. These sorts of bathtubs are some of my favorite things ever, and it's even better when they have feet. My friend's has feet. :) This one doesn't, but I chose the picture because it's still the perfect shape and I love how the faucets are on the side, and I love the stool next to it, and the way the light is coming whitely through the window.

Anyway, I think about bathtubs a lot, so I thought y'all should hear about it at least once.

A Brown Rant

Recently my older sister sent me a link to this sort of, I don't know, living life sort of website/newsletter that Gwyneth Paltrow apparently does. It's called goop, and I really liked some of the things she wrote about. (The name sort of makes me wonder if it's supposed to be GP's initials, and maybe she has two middle names that both begin with 'O' kind of like my daddy has two middle names that both begin with 'G.') Especially, I liked a book she found, called Spent, about how everyone is exhausted all the time these days, and how to not be. I'm in.

Anyway, one of the posts was about a gray tank and black leggings being the basis for a lot of wonderful, classy outfits, and the black and gray got me going on a rant about how brown is so, sort of, just, out nowadays, it seems. I ranted to Kristin in an e-mail, and she insisted that I reprint the said rant here. So, here:

"Right now I have totally cleaned the kitchen and am rewarding myself by looking at goop. :) I really love the 'get' about the black leggings and the gray tank. :) I have a yellow tunic, and I could get gray leggings instead and wear it with gray ballet flats. I think gray is the new black, really. Brown is definitely not as in as it used to be. Remember when brown sort of first came out? It was so chic, and you wore it with pink or blue or green or white or yellow, and later, even black! And now, it's like, eh. Well, I still really really like brown sweaters though, or even winter-y accessories, like gloves and hats, or furry boots (but even there, gray is more now, don't you think?) or just a natural leather color like that bag that I can't believe you got at Target. :) But shiny brown business-y accessories and pants are just, I don't know, out, I feel. They make me sad to think about. Do you know what I mean?

(PS don't feel bad if you have something brown!! I trust your style sense, I just, I don't know, ever since I started having this feeling about brown in general, I have just never complained about it to anyone. So you're the first. What do you think? You know, like, when you see someone dressed up for work, and they have on brown, like a brown suit or shoes, (or both--how horrible--shoes are excusable though, especially if they're boots or if you're wearing something else exciting) or if you go to Kohls or Walmart, and see a bunch of brown purses, you're just like, "oh dear" and you have a yucky feeling in your tummy because you know someone's probably going to buy them.)"

I really don't want to make anyone feel bad about wearing brown, but maybe anyone who wears enough of it to make someone's tummy hurt should be made to feel a little bit bad. It seems to be mostly people I don't know who do that, so I guess there probably will not be any lucky happenstance of their actually reading this. I like it as a color, (it's the color of my eyes!) just not a fashion statement or a yucky, plumpy purse.

I must admit, again, that I was mad about brown clothing when it came out, really, I was. (Here's a blogger friend of mine making a bit of fun of me for that now.) I have some nice brown pants and a particularly beautiful and well-shaped shiny brown purse, and a very fun brown and white polka-dot tunic I got in Germany, from which I am deliberately taking a break. I just feel that it's wise.

just a thought for the day

A Fairy Tale Wife

This morning, being Saturday, found me and Steve enjoying a cool, cloudy breeze flowing all around our living room through the open windows. I sat in my yellow chair, with my tea tray all lovely on the table, and he sat on the couch with his coffee, reading. We were both reading.

We used to have a rule, that we must read one fairy tale out of Grimm's Fairy Tales before we watch any TV together. These include the classic, famous, longer tales, but more often, because there are more of them, we read the obscure, short ones, that usually have a moral. Those fairy tales are written so simply, leaving so much to the imagination. They have sentences like, "So, the man got up, put on his hat, and went into the forest to seek the beast." Or something like that.

I've always thought of myself as the damsel in those tales, the princess, lost, bewitched, betrothed, enchanted or otherwise. (I have been all of those things!) I never think of the wives in those tales. If a wife is mentioned at all, it is usually to give some small, practical word of advice, encouragement, or complaint to her husband, who then predictably puts on his hat and goes into the forest, where the unpredictable can finally happen. And the story always follows him there, instead of staying in the cottage, with his wife.

Today, for the first time, I felt very like a fairy tale wife, without meaning to, (and it felt fine! I was surprised!) when I stood up from my yellow chair and said, "I will get dressed, and look for my gold ring." That is just like something a wife in a fairy tale says, don't you think?

I will get dressed, and look for my gold ring, said his wife.

I misplaced my cross ring last night and complained slightly to Steve about it, but was too tired to dig for it on my junky dresser. This morning, as I sat across from him with my tea, I kept offering the unsolicited information that I might get dressed soon. Finally, after dallying as long as possible, I remembered my ring, and decided to get up from my yellow chair. Of course as soon as I did, I said the Fairy Tale Wife line and had to sit back down and write about it.



(This picture is not Grimm's, but it is one of my favorite illustrators, so I liked it best.)

I am going to go have my day now. Even though there are no forests here, something magical might happen! After all, I am a fairy tale wife.

I want this phone!!

Isn't it great? I don't care that I couldn't walk around and do chores while I'm using it. That's the ONLY time I talk on the phone, but I just want it!

Steve told me the loveliest thing when he finished studying tonight. He saved it in his mind to tell me because he knew I would like it so much.

While he was going to Sam's to get gas on the way home from work, he saw a lady, standing on the sidewalk, as if she were waiting for someone to come along and pick her up. He said she was probably 75 years old, with white, white hair, and "all dolled up" he said. And she was wearing a full-length fur coat. How glamourous. He said that since she was so old, the coat was most likely real fur! And all the way to the ground. She must have had some fabulous shoes and sunglasses on, but he left that to my imagination.

I want to be like that lady when I'm old.

This Picture Makes Me Happy

It's from a website called Holey Donuts. Kinda fun. :) Anyway, have a great day, y'all!