elephantine

two for today

(On the UW campus and at my sister-in-law's house.)

wisconsin three-cheese flatbread

I recently did a fun freelance project for Wisconsin Cheese, developing a recipe that showcased their cheese and then filming the recipe. I decided on a three-cheese flatbread because a mix of different cheeses is more complex and tasty than just one, and it's great as a quick, easy appetizer. So, here's my recipe + the video!

(Video credits: raw footage shot by me, all editing done by Wisconsin Cheese.)

Wisconsin Three-Cheese Flatbread (approx. 8 appetizer size portions)

1/2 pound fresh, store-bought pizza dough
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup Wisconsin Mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup Wisconsin Gouda cheese
1/3 cup Wisconsin Parmesan cheese
6 fresh basil leaves
crushed red pepper flakes, to taste

Preheat oven to 450°F. Grate the Wisconsin Mozzarella, Gouda, and Parmesan cheeses, then mix together in a bowl. Stack the basil leaves, roll, and slice into 1/4 inch wide strips. Set the toppings aside. Roll out the fresh pizza dough into a 6 x 12 inch rectangle, approximately 1/8 inch thick. Place the dough on a foiled-covered baking sheet. Brush the dough with olive oil, then sprinkle the shredded cheese on top. Add crushed red pepper flakes, if desired. Bake the flatbread for approximately 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is bubbly and the crust is starting to brown. Remove from oven and top with the fresh basil. Slice into eight pieces and serve.

new in the shop

Mini spatulas are now in the shop... in a fun selection of colors!

(And they're very practical when you need to get that last bit of peanut butter out of the jar.)

this week's flowers

A handful of one of my favorites... grape hyacinth.

a few faves...

...from pinterest: this felt garland, these little notes, this fabric, and this patchwork pillow.

fiction friday: delivery

    When she arrived, they were tearing down the stage, packing up the equipment into hardback cases, sweeping clean the parking lot. She approached one of the sweeping men. Gently cleared her throat. 'Scuse Me, she said. Is Oleander nearby? She had a package for him, she explained, tapping the butcher paper wrapped tube tucked under her arm. The man shook his head. She kept walking. She asked another sweeper and was answered with a shrug. But he is here, right? This was met with another shrug. She almost grabbed him by the shoulder, wanting to demand a real answer. But she knew what would happen. She'd done it before, gotten into a fight, had a permanent note added to her file.
    Ah: there. She spotted his feet dangling off the back of one of the semi trucks. Slowly she walked around a mound of trash – which, she noticed, was made up of a lot of crumpled Magic Fries wrappers and burnt matches and neon business cards – and went around the back of the truck, clearing her throat again, and then saying: Delivery for you, sir. I just need a signature right here... while holding out the tablet and a pen, and trying not to look directly in his eyes. When he handed back the tablet his hand briefly touched hers. His skin was warm. He mumbled something that sounded like a thank you. Or maybe it was: now leave. You never knew with him.
    She turned to go. She walked away from the truck, passed the sweepers, and looked back only once: just long enough to see the bright light glowing in the corner of her eye, and hear the laughing that echoed afterward.

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the rest of the stories here...

spring has sprung

So glad to have some color back in the trees.

best books of march

What I read in the last month: exquisite dystopia, quirky POV, modern poetry, tales that unfolded and unfolded, and lots of beautiful descriptions of buildings. I already want to read some of these again. Here are my favorites from March:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Juniper Tree Burning by Goldberry Long

How about you? Read anything great recently? I'm always looking for more to add to my 'to read' list on Goodreads...

what to wear {stellar necklace}

A few pieces I'd pair with a gold stellar necklace...

1. Jacket / 2. Anchor scarf / 3. Skinny jeans / 4. Cotton tote / 5. Striped tee

this week's flowers...

...a few gorgeous camellias, freshly cut from the backyard.

baked french fries

Making fries from scratch is one of those "kind of time consuming but fun nonetheless" recipes. We ate these last night with hot dogs (okay, a veggie dog for me; I don't like hot dogs) and this amazing broccoli slaw (which is already one of my favorite recipes and I've only made it twice). Anyway, back to those yummy fries. Here's my recipe...

Baked French Fries (serves 2-3)

2 large russet potatoes
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garlic powder
any other seasoning you like
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400°F. Wash and peel the potatoes. Slice into small strips (they can be as thin or thick as you like; just keep their size as consistent as possible and bake longer if your pieces are thicker). To prevent the fries from sticking together when they bake, soak them in a bowl of cold water for at least ten minutes, then drain and pat dry with paper or cloth towels.

Toss the sliced potatoes with the olive oil, paprika, garlic powder, and any other of your favorite seasonings. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about 30 minutes until golden brown and crispy, turning halfway through. Season with salt and pepper and enjoy!

fiction friday: the facts

    Serge was always telling me useless facts about food: did I know that Worcestershire sauce was made from anchovies, bones and all? Had I ever heard that coconut water, in an emergency, could be used as a substitute for blood plasma? They were the sort of arbitrary statements that sounded like bad pick-up lines coming from anyone else's lips, but when Serge said them, in his honey-thick Belgian voice, they were somehow endearing. That, and the fact that his enthusiasm was genuine. There was all this stuff out there that nobody knew. It was like he was discovering it before anyone else.
    "Guess what food dynamite is made of," said Serge one evening. He was on the computer, reading one of a seemingly endless supply of More Amazing Facts About Food! articles online.
    "I haven't a clue," I said. He waited for me to guess. I shrugged.
    "Peanuts," he said, after a beat, his eyes widening.
    "I don't believe that," I said. "I think someone just makes some of this stuff up."
    He motioned for me to read it with my own two eyes, as if that would convince me. I leaned over his shoulder and read, adding a little ah-ha at the end. I kissed the side of his face, just above the jagged line of stubble. I said: I'm going to order in. You want the usual?

    If I'm counting right, I haven't seen him for seven years. But I still remember those facts he rattled off. His voice recites them to me when I grocery shop, or times like now, when I'm standing barefoot in my stuffy kitchen preparing beef brisket. A bottle of Worcestershire sits open on the countertop, sauce clinging to the lip. Anchovies... says Serge in my head. This image I can't get out of my mind: all those fish and their glistening thin bodies and their tiny eyes, an endless number of them swimming against the current.
    Anchovy bones, he whispers.
    "Stop," I insist, trying to forget. I picture Serge on a train, and the train speeding away into the distance, until it's just a speck. A trick my therapist taught me, if you have to know. At first I'd been skeptical. I'd asked: but what if the train comes back? And my therapist had said: well, maybe it will. In fact, it probably will. But at least it's gone for a while.

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the rest of the stories here...

+

A couple abstract photos for you today...

deux oiseaux

A new limited-edition necklace in the shop called deux oiseaux. (I love these Dutch pendants!)

Hope your week is off to a good start.

a few faves...

...from pinterest: this bag, this bouquet, this photo, and this cocktail.

two for today

forty percent

It's been ten weeks since I started writing the first draft of my novel, and I think I'm about 40% of the way through it. I no longer have any doubt that I can finish it. It's just a matter of putting in the hours and staying focused. In time I will tell you about it in more detail. At this point it is still too messy and raw. So I'll just say this much: it's set in the Pacific Northwest. It's multi-generational and partially coming-of-age. It is, at its essence, a sequence of love stories.

I am so enthralled by the habits of writers: Nabokov and his index cards, Capote lying down, Hemingway standing up. This is a great post to read if you, too, find that kind of thing interesting. In the last ten weeks, I've done my writing in one of two ways. The first is in bed, right after I wake up or right before I fall asleep. Beginnings and endings of days are nicely meditative. The second is sitting at a desk or table. Hot tea helps. So do earphones and music that makes me feel nostalgic or sentimental or energetic or whatever type of mood I need to slip into for the scene I'm working on.

The best part of all of this is that I no longer have that terrible procrastinatory thought that goes: "One day, when I'm writing my book..." It's a thought that has passed through my mind hundreds if not thousands of times. But not anymore.

fiction friday: manuscript

    Every Saturday afternoon our stepmother drove the four of us to the ice arena in Somersville. If you got in trouble that week, you'd still get to come, but you weren't allowed to skate. Take Gemma, who'd stolen a ten dollar bill out of dad's wallet: she'd been properly scolded, had to pay him twenty dollars back, and at the arena she was forced to watch us from the benches shielded by sheets of plexiglass. "This is so stupid," she sulked, when I stepped out of the rink to peel off one of my three sweaters. "Why did I even have to come?"
    But we both knew the answer to that. It wasn't really about us skating. It was about our father having some peace and quiet in the house. He'd been working on his novel for almost a year, and these Saturday afternoons were the only time he truly got any work done. Each time we got back from Somersville, the stack of typed pages on his desk had grown the slightest bit taller. The stack was held down by a paperweight that looked like a crumpled up sheet of legal paper, a Christmas gift from the year before.
    "Can I read it?" I'd asked once, and he'd said, "When it's published," then shooed me out of the room.
    But how could I not? I convinced myself that I had a right to. And if you thought about it for long enough, I had an obligation to read it, really, because what if our house happened to catch fire in the middle of the night, and he wasn't able to save his manuscript, and he'd be forced to reconstruct it from memory? If I read it, too, his task of rewriting wouldn't be so daunting. I could help him out. So there: it was practically a necessity.

    In the end, Gemma wormed her way into my plan, of course. Getting involved in things was her specialty. After two hours of searching we found the key to the study, went in, snatched the first twenty pages, and read them as quickly as we could. Then the next twenty, and the next twenty. We were done with what he had written so far in just enough time to put everything back in its place.
    "The kids in the book..." I said to Gemma, grabbing her by the arm before she ducked back into her room, "That's not – that's not us, is it?"
    She understood what I meant: that the kids sounded a lot like us – ice skater aficionados, four sisters. But these kids in his novel were awful. They were bratty. They whined all the time. One of them had even gotten hit by a car because she didn't check for traffic before running out into the street. Who would write something like that?
    Gemma shrugged. It could be, she said. But probably not. "Don't worry about it," she said. "It's just fiction, after all."

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the rest of the stories here...

two for today

From a walk around the neighborhood.

what to wear {heartbeats necklace}

A sweet outfit to pair with a gold-and-brass heartbeats necklace...

1. Laser star tank / 2. Woven peep shoes / 3. Skinny jeans / 4. Card holder / 5. Knitted cardigan

avoid direct sunlight.

My newest houseplant, called Peperomia. In a Kardemumma pot from Ikea.

best books of february

I didn't read as much as I had hoped to this month, mainly because we've been consumed with house hunting. Right now Seattle real estate is very competitive – houses go from newly listed to sold in a matter of days. We actually found a house we loved last weekend and put in an offer... but in the end, there were six other people who wanted it too and we were outbid. I know we'll find another one soon, but still, I can't help but be a little disappointed. Anyway, here are my favorite reads of February, including a classic I first read back in Junior High and felt it was due for a re-read...

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Sea Change by Jeremy Page

The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert (poems)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

a few faves...

...from pinterest: these balloons, this table, these mini muffins, and this washi tape.

two for today

fiction friday: goose chase

    She was gone by the time he came back. She'd left the map on the countertop, creased and faded green and all in French, but it was the best he was going to get, and it was better than the ones he'd gotten in the past. The girl had spoken all in French, too, come to think of it – no wonder he hadn't understood a word. Le Trésor, she kept saying, pointing to an unmarked point on the map. Ici. Ici.
    Where she had disappeared to, he hadn't a clue. This kept happening, people appearing, people disappearing. Giving him directions. Telling him things in foreign languages, handing him keys that disintegrated after a single use, sending him on and on. The last girl had led him through a parking lot and pointed, expressionlessly, to a little red car, which was now idling out in the driveway in front of the house.
    He left the house, map in hand. He flattened it out on the passenger's seat, backed out of the driveway, started down the endless switchbacks. Finally they spit out onto a long, straight highway lined with cacti. According to the map, there were close to a hundred miles of it. Le Trésor, the girl had kept saying. It seemed like it should be so obvious. And yet.
    It was almost dawn when he reached the end of the highway. It ended, just like that: there was highway, and then there was not. Where there should have been asphalt, there was a door. He killed the engine. Sucked in the hot, dry air of the desert. Walked to the door. He walked around it, too – but it was the same on both sides. At eye level there was a small gold placard engraved with the words Please knock and below that another one that read Dr. Woo, MD. He raised a fist to knock. For a moment – hardly even a full moment, more like half a moment – he wondered if he shouldn't. Then he let his fist fall on the echoing wood, knocking, knocking.

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the rest of the stories here...

easy rosemary crackers

I made these rosemary crackers yesterday afternoon and then immediately came down with Just One More syndrome – you know, where you keep telling yourself that you'll only have one more cracker and then stop eating them, no, wait, just one more, and so on. Eventually I did stop myself... right before dinner time. Anyway, the key to making these crispy is to roll the dough as thin as you can – even consider using a pasta maker, if you have one. Enjoy!

Easy Rosemary Crackers (serves 4)
recipe from Epicurious

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary plus 2 (6-inch) sprigs
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil plus more for brushing
sea salt to taste

Preheat oven to 450°F. Mix together flour, chopped rosemary, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center, then add water and oil and gradually stir until a dough forms. Briefly knead dough gently on a work surface.

Divide dough into 3 pieces. Keeping the remaining dough covered, roll out the first piece as thin as you can on a sheet of parchment paper. The shape can be rustic. (The thinner you roll it, the crispier it will be!)

Lightly brush the dough with additional oil and scatter the remaining rosemary leaves on top, pressing into the dough slightly. Sprinkle with sea salt. Slide the dough (still on parchment) onto a baking sheet and bake until pale golden, about 8 to 10 minutes. Repeat with remaining two pieces of dough. Let them all cool, then break into cracker-sized pieces with your hands. Store in an airtight container.

what to wear {orion & zelda bracelets}

A comfy outfit to wear with an orion bracelet and a zelda bracelet...

1. Cashmere poncho / 2. Floppy hat / 3. Signature leggings / 4. Leather tote / 5. Zip boots

have a great weekend

What are you up to this weekend? We got our pre-approval letter today and needless to say are excited to start looking at houses in person. Bodhi is requesting a big backyard and Rufus wants a bay window for quintessential napping time. Stefan wants a media room. And me? I'd love a bright office, a little garden, and some kind of reading nook. Yep, that all sounds just about perfect.

happy valentine's day!

Hope you have a love-filled day.

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You how pieces of a book can get stuck in your head, and then stay there for weeks after you've finished reading it? This is what's been in my head lately, from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers...

Why hadn't the explorers known by looking at the sky that the world was round? The sky was curved, like the inside of a huge glass ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars. The night was quiet. There was the smell of warm cedars. She was not trying to think of the music at all when it came back to her. The first part happened in her mind just as it had been played. She listened in a quiet, slow way and thought the notes out like a problem in geometry so she would remember. She could see the shape of the sounds very clear and she would not forget them.

And later, when she's working on her own music...

She had worked on music in this notebook all the winter. She quit studying school lessons at night so she could have more time to spend on music. Mostly she had written just little tunes – songs without any words and without even any bass notes to them. They were very short. But even if the tunes were only half a page long she gave them names and drew her initials underneath them. Nothing in this book was a real piece or a composition. They were just songs in her mind she wanted to remember. She named them how they reminded her – 'Africa' and 'A Big Fight' and 'The Snowstorm.'

a few faves...

...from pinterest: these toasted coconut marshmallows, this typewriter, this illustration, and this bed.

fiction friday: control room

    Day one. "It goes like this," Collax says. "You lift up this flap, and then you punch in your greencode – you do know your greencode, don't you? They gave that to you in orientation, right? I thought so. Punch it in here, then pull on the lever by your left hand. No, your other your left hand – uh huh, there you go, champ. Voilà. You're in." The screen spanning the length of the room flickers and focuses. Colors fade in. From this angle, pedestrians look like beetles. Worse, you think you might recognize the neighborhood. This concerns you. Collax misinterprets the grimace. "Don't worry," he says. "You don't get to run it on your own until you log fifty hours. At minimum."
    Day nine. Eighty hours logged, thanks to that mishap at the saw factory on Wednesday. Collax stops by, slurping from a styrofoam cup. "You'll get coffee privileges around week six," he says. "Sugar privileges a week or two after that. How's the hood?" It's alright, you say. It's under control.
    Day eighteen. Or is it day nineteen? At noon, an announcement feeds through the ceiling speakers: the annual company barbecue is officially set for June the thirty-fourth. As always, the voice adds, please bring your own plates. Collax never comes by anymore, but you bump into him in the breakroom. "Hey champ," he says. "Day twenty one, already, huh? It flies by."
    Day forty. The barbecue has come and gone. While the meat was grilling, you cracked a couple well-timed jokes, flattered the right people. After that they upgraded you to a room in the primary hall, the same rank as Collax. Now, instead of a neighborhood, you've got a whole city. You've got six hundred thousand people, and they look like specks on the screen instead of beetles. They all look exactly the same, except for – well, except for that one right there. A flick of your wrist and the screen zooms in. It's a boy. He's looking up at you, and he's holding a sign. Hello, it reads, in blocky black handwriting. Hello, up there.

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the rest of the stories here...

a few new things...

...in my kitchen shop: heart measuring spoons and oven mitts & pot holders (also available in yellow!)

two for tuesday

Two moments from last week: waiting for Matt's in the Market to open, and watching daylight fade.

best books of january

I read a lot of fantastic books in January. About half of these I read the good ol' traditional way, and the other half I listened to via audiobook. I've learned to really love audiobooks; they're perfect when you're doing things like laundry or working out or stamping jewelry boxes. Anyway, here are my favorites, which all have something really special about them, whether it's the characters or style or humor or profundity or all of the above...

Dear Life by Alice Munro

This Cake is For the Party by Sarah Selecky

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

this week's flowers...

...a bouquet of pink, white, and green pretties. Happy Friday! Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

the flourish collection

I'm excited to share a few photos of The Flourish Collection with you today. You might recognize the space from this post – Assemble recently transitioned to being online-only, and though I was sad to see them go, I'm thrilled that another wonderful shop moved in. The Flourish Collection has lots of pretty paper goods and sweet gifts...

...as well as a few pieces of my jewelry. I'm thrilled to be included. Also, on Friday, February 8th from 6-9pm, a larger selection of my jewelry will be available for purchase and I'll be there at the shop, too. Please stop by if you're in the neighborhood!

on cookies, brer rabbit, and the novel

The last few nights I've been eating snickerdoodles for dessert. Stefan made them from a Gale Gand recipe (yes, I do have a husband who spontaneously bakes cookies, which is pretty awesome). We didn't have corn syrup so I suggested that he use molasses instead, which added a lovely deep flavor. The brand of molasses we use is called Brer Rabbit, which I buy partly because I like the old-fashioned label and partly because I have an unexplained fascination with folklore (if you're unfamiliar with the tales, Brer Rabbit is a "trickster who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn," as Wikipedia puts it). I've even been so into folklore lately that I'm attempting to weave it into my novel in some form.

And while I'm on the subject of the novel, I'm happy to report that it's still going well. Not perfectly, but well. If you read it right now, you'd probably say, "I'm sorry, Rachel, but a lot of this doesn't make any sense. There's a million plot holes here." But it will work itself out in time. Last time I blogged about it, I had just completed my first yellow legal pad. A few days ago I finished my second one, and now I'm making progress on the third. This physical accumulation is what I like most about writing by hand. I can literally hold my work in my hands, and every once in a while a word will smear off onto my palm as I'm writing. There is, I'm convinced, nothing quite like it.

a few faves...

...from pinterest: this floral print, these candied kumquats, this ring and this pillow cover.

fiction friday: suddenly

    At first it sounded like tissue paper being crumpled, big sheets of it, and Zola wondered, Mama's wrapping presents? before remembering that her mother had gone out to the hairdresser and wouldn't be back until four that afternoon. Though she was alone in the house, she crept noiselessly down the stairs toward the living room. Once or twice she stopped and just listened. If she tried hard enough she could pick out the individual parts of the sound. Like... yes, there. One sharp pop. Then another and another, in quick succession, so that when they were all strung together it sounded like a single unbroken sound.
    No more stairs left. She crossed the living room and the sound grew louder, the way music often did during a long, sad song. What was the word for that? She had learned it in school. Mr. Olstead had scrunched up his forehead when he said it, his eyebrows wriggling like caterpillars. Ah, crescendo. That was it.
    At the window, she saw what it was. The trees. The trees, all of them. The trees out in front of the house – and as far as she could see, when she pressed her left cheek against the cool water-stained window – all of them were blossoming audibly. Already there were creamy white-and-pink flowers painted all over the magnolia tree in the front yard. Spring would not wake lethargically this year. It was coming all at once, arriving before she could hardly comprehend it.

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the read of the stories here...

what to wear {kate earrings}

A fun outfit to wear with a pair of kate earrings...

1. Martha top / 2. Belle flats / 3. Jeans / 4. Khaki jacket / 5. Polka dot wristlet

late flowers on his porch

I finally read Fahrenheit 451 and loved it all the way through. There are a lot of quotes you could pull out from those pages, but there were two parts that particularly stuck with me. The first:

Once he saw her shaking a walnut tree, once he saw her sitting on the lawn knitting a blue sweater, three or four times he found a bouquet of late flowers on his porch, or a handful of chestnuts in a little sack, or some autumn leaves neatly pinned to a sheet of white paper and thumbtacked to his door. Every day Clarisse walked him to the corner. One day it was raining, the next it was clear, the day after that the wind blew strong, and the day after that it was mild and calm, and the day after that calm day was a day like the furnace of summer and Clarisse with her face all sunburnt by late afternoon.
    "Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"
    "Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you."

And then this part:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
    It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

a mid-winter sale

It's been a while since I've had a sale in my jewelry shop, so I thought I'd have one now! Take 20% off all jewelry orders thru Jan 23rd. Just use the coupon code "WINTER" during checkout (click "apply shop coupon code" first).

p.s. if you're a new reader to the blog (welcome!) here's my Etsy interview from 2011 about how I started my shop & some of my thoughts on running a small business.

fiction friday: runaway

    They had promised her a planet: one warm, white planet that she could build however she pleased. The air was clean and the land was fertile. She could cultivate it, if she wanted to. They'd been watching her for some time and took note of how often she paused on one of her walks to look with envy at a neighbor's well-manicured garden. She could trade all this – here they motioned with their long graceless arms to mean her current situation – she could trade it all for a new life. She could have six seasons, extinct animals reconstructed, her favorite music infused into the air. Anything.
    That had been a week ago; now she stood on the slick surface in disbelief. She was unsure where to start. She knew they were watching, and she had to resist the urge to cry.
    "You're just adjusting," one of their voices said, slipping through the air. "But there's no rush. Try something small."
    She nodded. She murmured, "Maybe a lawn, then." It sprouted from the white surface, richly green. "And a small house. A one-bedroom house." When it appeared, it unfolded from the ground, creaking and stretching as if it had been there for ages just waiting to be called on. She went inside. It smelled of lemon, but both the short metal refrigerator and the cabinets lining the nearest wall were bare. In the middle of the house was a bed made up in gray linens. She'd take a nap, she decided, and then start figuring things out. This life, like the last one, would take some time to get used to.

-

Fiction Friday is an outlet for experimentation while I slowly work on becoming a novelist. Read the read of the stories here...

a few faves...

...from pinterest: this oil dispenser, these cupcakes, this kitchen, and this watercolor painting.

this week's flowers

White tulips from the grocery store. Simple and perfect.

from here to there

I've lost track of how many times I've tried to write a novel, and yet despite all the false starts I keep trying. I keep starting again, failing again, filing these unfinished drafts away in a black hole (also known as the "working" folder on my computer), then waiting for the next spark to come along. There is always a new spark. That part never fails me.

It makes me cringe to say that it feels different this time, because I'm pretty sure I say that every time, and therefore the declaration has become meaningless. So I'll just say this: the last two weeks have been good. I have written every single day — a small miracle — and the result of that is one yellow legal pad, every page filled from top to bottom.

So now what? On to the next yellow legal pad. In fact, it is sitting here on my desk as I write this. My only hope is that two weeks from now these new pages will be filled up, and that the spark will still be just as bright. I know the odds are not in my favor, but I also know one of these times it will last. It just has to.

what to wear {frida bracelet}

A green-inspired outfit to wear with a frida bracelet...

1. cashmere cardigan / 2. converter gloves / 3. pale mint jeans / 4. wallet pouch / 5. rain boots

the latest places

I haven't been exploring the city as much this winter, but two places I recently visited and then promptly added to my Seattle guide are The Whale Wins and the Volunteer Park Conservatory.

new in the shop

New pink earrings named Fräulein, and a little bead necklace named Love Story.

p.s. You might have noticed that I also redesigned the blog. It was one of those things that I just started playing around with on a whim and then ended up spending the entire night working on. Thank you, as always, for reading.