Let's be honest. Sometimes there is nothing harder in life than being happy for somebody else. Like lottery winners. Or extremely successful people who are 27. And then there's that hell on earth that only your closest friends can inflict on you -- the baby shower. ~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex in the City



I love the scene in the Sex In The City episode where faced with her own inadequacy, Samantha did something only Samantha could do -- she threw an I-don't-have-a-baby shower, to let everyone know she was fabulous. I do sometimes fear I am losing common ground with some of my close friends, having no knowledge about things like diaper genies and double strollers. I can pick out one hell of a baby shower gift though. This weekend I went to gymboree to buy two baby gifts. I love how everything is so coordinated there. You can buy the little embroidered strawberry dress, with the matching embroidered strawberry tights, shoes, sunglasses, hat, sweater, and onesie. Babies enjoy it now, because later in life it's all about creative coordination. Especially when it comes to socks. I wonder sometimes if I am the only person, who loses 7 single socks per week. Sadly resigned to never finding their mate again. It's a sock black hole. I recently started a basket full of socks with no mates...and it's already full. I just keep buying more and more, and keep losing them. It's very irritating. When I was a kid, I always used to blame this phenomenon on my mother's laundry skills. But what I've come to realize is it's really just an inherited trait.

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I was thinking about buying these Chinese Kites for my nephews & nieces for Easter. They are handmade, and look like spring!

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On the home-front, I've recently found such a fun collection of links...for quirky home accessories. One of my favorites is the Brooklyn-based company Elseware , an Industrial design collective that blurs the line between art and product. They have put on theme-based gallery exhibitions to show their work. Some of their innovative products like the "water door", "aquariass" (functioning aquarium toilet tank), "travelland" flowing stream table, just blew me away. You've got to go check out their site ...it's a lot of fun.

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
-- Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelar.


Susan's garden path, Olympus D-550

Last night we went out for a late night viewing of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. It was such a beautiful, touching story. I've read that the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (who also wrote John Malcovich, and Adaptation) is obsessed with the human thought process, the unconscious subtext of what makes us who we are, an undying theme throughout his scripts.

Truly, what made this movie memorable was it's clever premise. The ability to erase memories...and the utter chaos of the mind, when the main protagonist (Joel) hits the realization that not only the bad memories are erased of his ex-girlfriend Clementine...but so are the good. He tries to save the remaining recollections of her by hiding them in his repressed memories.

The characters were real, and the movie has a few unpredictable twists & fun quirks that added to it's charm. I left the theatre with a spring in my step. I highly recommend it.

This weekend we also went to our favorite nursery. It's located on a busy thoroughfare, so it's like an oasis once you drive through their big iron gates. Tables and tables of colors, semi-enclosed garden rooms with old dresser drawers filled with pansies, flagstone paths with baby's breath growing in every crevice, fairy sculptures, and fountains, large mushrooms covered with ground-cover, large hand-forged iron gazebos, tiny fairy gardens, and mosaics and murals scattered all about. For me, it's like an idea factory.

After the nursery trip, we spent the rest of this Sunday working in our garden, under a canopy of orange blossoms mixed with the looming scent of our neighbors wisteria. The scent is so intoxicating, it's like getting drunk on the arrival of Spring.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend.
To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond - Hypatia


Susan's garden fountain, Olympus D-550

A good idea, can be such a fleeting thing. It's almost as if you don't document it somehow, you are soon to forget it. My house is in constant turmoil from renovation, so most of the time my good ideas are undermined by what ultimately really needs to be done: important things like putting drywall in the bathroom, fixing our leaky roof, or patching the foundation. Believe me when I say, the list is endless! It may be ages before any of my decorating ideas come to fruition, so I like to keep a sketchbook filled with magazine clippings and little notes to myself of things I like and may consider for this house in the future.

I've recently come to realize that some of the lovelier homes I've come across, are the ones that have been lived in the longest. Someone who has been living in the same home for 10 or 20 years, has come to figure out the best way a space can work for them...that's what I'm hoping for our little house.

I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom. - Andy Warhol



interior shot of Catherine's house, Olympus D-550

I keep thinking of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous ...where Edina keeps saying she wants "everything minimalist"..."i want to see spaces, with spaces". That's exactly how I feel as of late. Clear spaces...umm...minimalism.

I've only caught two episodes of the BBC show "house doctor"...and feel slightly addicted. I love seeing the interiors of other peoples homes, especially one's that need a lot of work. One participant on the show had a putting green in her living room, ok, it wasn't a putting green but it was a bright fluorescent green carpet. She also had a rather tacky obsession with the color pink & wall to wall carpeting. Even the side of her bathtub had carpeting (guess it was all the rage in the 70's!).

In the end the result (via house make-over) is always lovely, and just shows there's a lot that can be done with the things you already have and a few cans of carefully selected paint!

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us, or we find it not. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson



I will be adding new Ebay Auctions today & tomorrow, click here to take a look!