China cabinet before and after

I really love branch coral and branch coral decorated household items. I feel guilty buying the real stuff, so environmentally correct fake-o branch coral stuff is great. I saw these branch coral drawer pulls on a bookcase on a design blog this spring, and then I was delighted and surprised to see them in Anthropologie the next week. I couldn't resist buying a set for my china cabinet, which was sadly in need of a makeover.

Sad, boring china cabinet with missing & shattered old glass drawer pulls (they're in the top drawer so that I can replace them if move, ha ha):



Here's the after:



And here's a close-up, because it's difficult to see much from the photo above:

I really don't love these photos - they're not very visually informative and they don't do my makeover justice. However, the drawer pulls I love. They're coated metal, so they're very sturdy and I don't feel like they're going to break when I yank open my drawers which probably need a good sanding or at least a soap rubdown.

I'm back!!!

I did something really crazy this winter . . . I made a 14 layer cake. Or at least I planned to make a 14 layer cake, but as things worked out it was only an 11 layer cake. That's still a heck of a lot of cake, even if they were only about as thick as hefty pancakes. I don't think anyone missed the "missing" 3 layers. Because I'm not totally insane and because I wasn't about to buy 9 more cake pans, I used foil pans. Here are the pans with the batter:



Here are the layers glued together with an annoyingly drippy chocolate glaze:



Here's the cake before it's trip to the party:



And here it is cut open!

Snow Day YES!!!

No school for me!! So I have time to upload some of the hundreds of photos I've taken over the last couple months. I'll go chronologically.



"HOME" Cambridge. (Not MY home, there's a (tiny in the photo) neon "HOME" sign in the bottom right hand corner.)


"BEAUTY" Somerville





Shelburne Falls

Halloween eyeball cupcakes

Haloween Vampire fang bite cupcakes

Housewarming lemon cookies

A friend's excitingly colorful pantry

Fame!!!!!!. . . !!!!!!!!!. . . !!!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite tv shows when I was young, along with Little House on the Prairie and Mork & Mindy, was Fame. Fame documents a group of talented teenagers at the New York School of the Arts. The actors seemed very grown-up and glamorous when I was 10, and I was totally hooked, though undoubtedly much of it went totally over my head. Plus the music is catchy. A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie (1980) that the series was based on, and was impressed, though I did need to fast forward through some of the musical numbers. So now, through the beauty of NetFlix, I'm watching the series again. It holds up as high quality drama, and the costumes are fabulous but it's not quite as exciting as I remember.

Western Mass

My Mom and I took a little trip out to Western Mass to visit my aunt, uncle & cousin. We packed a lot into two days! The first afternoon we drove to Northampton and went to a few especially good stores. I found some fun, colorful fabric to make pillow covers for my white couch - photos coming soon. We also went to a giant yarn store where I went crazy in an effort to possess color. I don't knit yet but now I want to even more.











When we returned I wandered through my aunt & uncle's garden (though it was too mosquito-y to sit at the table and read).



And saw the garden bunny!



And then I saw another bunny watching me from the porch:



The next morning my mom and I walked across the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls. This is the time of year to go! It's exactly what it sounds like - a bridge across the river planted with flowers on both sides.



The night before I read an article about Dahlias in a Martha Stewart magazine, so it was fun to see some beautiful examples.



Rose?


Next, we made an obligatory visit to the glacial potholes. They were created when glaciers crept across the landscape. Rocks got stuck beneath and the water made them swirl around and thus the potholes were born. When I was little we could go all the way down and clamber around the rocks and climb in the potholes. It was a fun things to do on a hot day because some of them are quite large and deep, like personal sized swimming pools. Here's a photo from 1988 or 1989 - this pothole must have been dry.

In the afternoon we took a drive out to North Adams where we stopped at the Natural Bridge State Park. This site was a functioning quarry from 1810 to 1947. Driving up to the park there's an amphitheater formed by the quarry:



Once inside the park, there's America's only white marble dam



And me and my mom & aunt in the water:



And finally, the NATURAL BRIDGE!!! (Well, looking under the bridge.)


It was a fun trip. Thanks for being such great hosts!

Movies at the Boston Harbor Hotel

Every Friday in the summer the Boston Harbor Hotel hosts free movies. They're busy other nights of the week too, with swing dancing and their Blues Barge; maybe I'll check out one of those next year. Anyhow, guests have three options for seating. They can sit at one of the cafe tables and order dinner, they can sit on the hard granite steps, or they can sit on cushy folding chairs on the Blues Barge, which is what we did. The barge provides the best (free) seats in the house, as long as you don't mind that an outgoing tide may produce a stiff neck since the movie screen gradually gets higher and higher.

We saw "The Apartment", which I'd never seen in full before. It's definitely a product of its time, full of things that immediately strike the un-pc chord; like how many times does the doctor slap Shirley MacLaine in the face? And man, what a tool Jack Lemmon's character is! Nevertheless, it's a classic for good reason. Next week, the last week in the season, is "The Hustler".

Freaky Flowers

Siamese zinnia:


This one isn't freaky exactly, but it's a good example of how the morning glories strangle everything. I have to snip them off the cosmos, otherwise they pull them to the ground with their freaky tendrils and cover them almost completely with saucer-sized morning glory foliage. I can't save everything - there are dill-like little wisps of cosmos peeking out all over the front lawn.

Lunchtime Walk

A new mural in my neighborhood.



Tree chair, Lee St.

Me 1, Squirrels 2

Damn critters. I have an ongoing battle with the squirrels. They made a nest in my attic and made a pee stain on my living room ceiling. They were humanely evicted. But now they're back, chewing through my formerly pretty porch lights. JERKS!!!

Later, I found a dead bird nestled in the purple pansies in my front porch window box. I don't think the squirrels had anything to do with it, but it was sad. There was a nest directly above the window box, and it looks like the bird just fell out, which would be weird. I gave poor little bird a proper burial out in the swampy back yard so that the neighborhood cats wouldn't dig him up. I hope I don't have West Nile disease.