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Get in the habit of writing love letters.

This is something that Ryan is really good at. He often leaves me little notes to welcome me home from work or to tell me that he’s thinking of me while he’s away. I think about him often, too, but for some reason it never occurs to me to write it down! That’s why one of the things I want to work on to make Valentine’s Day last all year is this:

I started by penning this message the other day. From here on out, every time I have a little thought about our future, or a sweet memory from our past, I’m going to try to jot it down and leave it somewhere for him to find { think lunchbox, pillow top, pockets }. It’s so nice to know that you’re being thought of, thus, this doesn’t have to only be for a partner. Try this for a family member that you love, or a co-worker that deserves a “thank you”!

One of the best things about Valentine’s Day is that it encourages us to be deliberate in our expression. When life gets in the way, it’s easy to forget to tell your partner that you really love them { and why }, even if you think it and feel it often. But, everyone needs to hear these things sometimes. And when it’s written down you have a great chance to really consider what makes your partner and your relationship so special and choose your words accordingly. Your notes, though, don’t always have to be formal! Even just scribbling something on the back of a receipt, on a chalkboard, or a calendar will get the sentiment across.

Stay tuned for six more ways!

xx.

♥

I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a favourite actress.

But recently I’ve been really charmed by Shirley MacLaine’s older films. Somewhere between her pixie perfect looks, her sweet + subtle sound, and the way she can be both goofy and graceful is just so inspiring! She plays a convincing role whether she’s a nun or a harlot and her spunk is so refreshing. It’s fantastic to see an actress who doesn’t take herself too seriously.

sources: one // two // three // four

She said in one interview that she is “just desperately in love with people”. That she loves knowing “what they’re feeling…what bothers them”, and trying to make things better for them. I love that perspective!

Who is your favourite actor or actress?

xx.

{ click first two images for sources. }

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Clearly, I’m in love with our new breakfast nook.

We set it up this afternoon and kicked a couple of other pieces of furniture out to the curb { or to Goodwill } to make room for it. Our rule is one thing in, one thing out. I love to go thrifting and find amazing pieces like this, but if I didn’t also make sure to part with some of the older stuff we have, then we’d be on an episode of Hoarders by now.

It will be so nice to eat here together when we can take down our awful thermal curtains and let the sun shine in! I love winter a lot, but the lack of sunshine really bums me out sometimes. When insulated curtains are required, it can feel like you’re living in a cave. Thus, I count on exciting little finds like this, moving our furniture around, and ice cream to keep my cheery. Yes, ice cream cures pretty much anything.

It’s so nice to finally have a designated dining spot — makes me feel like a real grown up. We got our last dining table over the summer, but it was tiny and didn’t have any chairs, so it never really felt like an eating place. Now there’s no doubt about it! The appropriate spot for it seemed to be under our picnic table art by Alisha Gould. The colours are very similar, too, so it’s just perfect!

Alas, it is getting late. Our dinner has been finished for some time now, and I’m milking all the time I can out of the day to enjoy this new blogging -ahem- eating spot. But it’s time to get my pjs on and settle in for a movie with my darling and our latest Videoport pick.

Shirley MacLaine, here I come!

xx.

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So I wasn’t going to purchase anything, I swear.

I was just showing our friend Kaylon some of the best thrift shops in town. I was just tagging along innocently! My first purchase was unselfish, too. I saw this kitschy garden gnome and knew it would make Ryan’s day. I made my way to the counter of the first thrift store stop and completed my humble $2 purchase with him in mind and a smile on my face.

But then there it was…standing proudly in all of its glory. It was the first thing I saw in the second thrift store we entered — a formica topped, chrome edged, hair pin legged dinette set! I snapped a photo immediately with my iPhone, text it to Ryan with the accompanying words: “DREAM TABLE.” And awaited his response. Except that I couldn’t actually wait for his response. I called him eagerly and he approved of the purchase! I was over the moon! I can’t wait to share photos with you when we get it all set up tomorrow.

Just couldn’t keep it from you any longer!

xx.

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Craigslist is such a valuable resource!

It’s brilliant for people with limited funds, and especially helpful for those interested in acquiring vintage pieces. Whenever Ryan + I decide to purchase something “new” we start scouting for it in thrift stores and on Craigslist, and we always end up finding a piece with great personality! This TV and record player { as well as most of our records } are all Craigslist purchases. Today I’ve compiled a few tips to help you get the most of this website, too!

1 | Check often. Things can get snatched up pretty quickly if they’re free or cheap. Often times people will list things that they’ve found in a basement or attic, and they’re not entirely sure of its worth so they list it for a very low price when it’s actually worth a lot more. I check every day and have had amazing luck finding some really great stuff!

2 | Know what you’re looking for and what keywords will help you find it. Use brand names { if you have them } as well as the decade or style of the item you’d like. But also remember that some people may not quite know what they’re listing, so use words that are physically descriptive of the item. For example, if I’m looking for an Eames lounge chair, I would type in “Eames”, “Mid Century”, “Modern”, but also “Retro”, “Recliner”, “Leather”, “Foot Stool”, and maybe even “Office”. Try to think of what words the average person will use to describe an item as well as the words that an expert would choose.

3 | Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I try not to tell someone in an email that “I’m definitely going to buy this”, because once I see it in person it may not be exactly how I thought it would be. I saw an amazing mid-century coffee table for $40 and told the girl I loved it and I wanted it. When I actually saw it, the piece was just a replica and it had a few scratches and dings on it. It was probably only worth $20, but I had already promised her $40. Make Craigslist an honest place by keeping your word, but also don’t make a definite decision until you can see it in its full glory and can make an educated decision — lesson learned!

4 | Bring small bills. If an item is damaged, smaller than you thought, or otherwise not exactly what you expected, you may want to try to talk the seller down. This is an art and you should be prepared. When I look back on my table situation I wish that I had gone to the meet-up without first promising, and with a $20 bill, a $10, a $5, and five $1 bills. Then, when I saw that the piece was not actually vintage, I could have made a lower offer. It’s still a great table that I’m happy to have, but I think the seller would have been happy with $20 or $25, and I would be much better off as well.

5 | Be willing to pick up. A lot of people will get multiple offers for a listing and they’ll always choose the buyer that makes the sale the easiest. If you can pick up the piece directly from them, or in a place that’s easy for them to get to, they’re much more likely to sell it to you than to give it away to someone that they have to drive to.

6 | Be polite. Some Craigslisters have been taken advantage of in the past and are wary about further transactions. When we bought our dining table, the seller told me that he had first driven it two hours north of where he lived just to have that buyer change his mind. After he finally sold the piece to me, he said he was thinking he might stop using Craigslist. It is such a wonderful resource when used respectfully. I hate to see people taken advantage of, and would really be sad if this forum lost its luster because of people who weren’t respectful and fair.

Happy searching! I hope this helps you find just what you’re looking for. We’ve had so much luck in the past and I wish you the very same. May you get the most for your dollars and may everything you buy be well-loved and special.

Do you have any Craigslist tips?

xx.

♥

Do you have any plans in mind for your darling?

I have tons of plans! I really love Valentine’s Day so I’ve been brainstorming ways to make it last all year. There are seven projects I’ve come up with that I’m going to share with you over the next couple of weeks. Ryan + I get really into seasons and holidays and love celebrating together. I can’t wait to share our ideas with you!

To get you in gear for the upcoming Valentine’s Day features, I pulled together >> this playlist <<. Please enjoy it while you cook a delicious dinner, make a cutesy card to give away to your darling or your best friend, or while you celebrate the holiday in whatever way you so choose. I also wanted to share with you the story of Portland’s Valentine’s Day Bandit! This is one of the things that makes me love this holiday so much:

It was 1976 when the Valentine’s Day Bandit first struck our salty city by the sea. But unlike other bandits, he did not steal, damage, or otherwise harm any public property – instead he covered the city with a flurry of red paper hearts, spreading the love on Valentine’s Day. Since then, we’ve awoken every February the 14^th to find our town once again plastered with hearts.

I can remember my first time experiencing this fond phenomenon (as I am not a native of Maine). I was charmed and delighted on my morning walk to work by the way that this city seemed to love me. Every shop window and lamp post burst forth with love; our city seemed to be splitting at the seams with admiration for its inhabitants.

For decades this tradition has continued. And as if covering an entire city in paper hearts was not task enough, the bandit has begun to add other towns across the United States to his route, notably: Montpelier, Vermont, and Boulder, Colorado. It seems he is taking a page from Santa’s book! One has to wonder, will our Portland hero make his way into the hearts of the rest of the world one loving city at a time?

And after all of these years, no one has figured out who the Bandit is! It’s one of our city’s great mysteries. Last year the Portland Fire Department showed their support for the Bandit by flying a red heart flag above their Congress Street station! Check out the Wikipedia article, and also my photos from last year, and a flickr set from another Portlander in 2006!

Or, come + visit this Valentine’s Day to see for yourself!

xx.

P.s. Don’t feel guilty buying yourself some little Valentine’s Day treats, either. Who says you can enjoy this holiday on your own? Make it special for yourself!

♥

What does your dinner plate look like?

I made this little image to remind myself of what the ideal meal looks like. Sometimes it can be hard to pull together a full and well-rounded meal when life gets in the way. In the past I have found myself having far too much of one of these categories and completely ignoring the rest. To combat that, maybe this image will help. Feel free to print it out and hang it in your kitchen, or pin it in your recipe folder on Pinterest!

Roughly one third of the well-balanced plate is made up of green stuff like fruits and veggies. Another third are starchy foods like whole grain pasta, rice, potatoes, corn — usually these are things that are white or yellow-ish in colour. Then the final third should be proteins like lean meat, fish, eggs, or beans, and milk or dairy products like yogurt, or cheese. I included a tiny sliver for treats { foods high in sugar, fat, or unpronounceable ingredients }, but that is not part of the ideally nutritional plate. It’s just the part that takes care of our emotional well-being when we’re having one of those days. Add this only if you really need it, and don’t have more than a little!

Ryan + I try to only put foods on our plate that someone’s great-grandmother would recognize; none of this packaged and processed food that is so plentiful these days. Those packaged things are made up of filler ingredients, and offer little or no actual nutritional value. My great-grandmother certainly wouldn’t recognize go-gurt, or hot dogs, and would have no idea why dinner rolls came in a cardboard container. If you think about it, one hundred years ago hardly anyone was overweight! Today, we cut so many corners with pre-made or “easy” dinner ideas, that we’re missing out on the things that make food good for us and keep us healthy! So, make dinner yourself with whole foods and you’ll stay healthy!

Happy eating!

xx.

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Yesterday I shared our closet space with you.

It’s compact and humble, and I like it that way. Ryan + I try not to have too much “stuff”. We like to cycle out the old before we bring in the new, but I do have to swoon at Susan Gregg Koger’s closet tour below. I guess if I were the co-founder of ModCloth, then I too would have come across so many amazing pieces in my life time that I’d simply have to make room for some of them.

I also love her perspective on fashion as a reflection of ourselves. She says:

“One of the most amazing things about style and about fashion is that there are no right answers, there are no rules. Our personalities are multi-faceted, there are many different things about us that define who we are and if we’re thinking about fashion as a reflection of that, then your fashion taste and your fashion sense doesn’t necessarily have to just reflect that one aspect of your personality.”

That perspective is so inspiring to me! It’s no wonder that ModCloth celebrates such success with a lady like her in the lead! If I had a closet as filled with treasures as hers is, I think I would treat every day like a fancy party. As she says during the tour, embracing different styles allows you to dress as a new character every day. I love how liberating that is!

Enjoy Susan’s fantastic closet space…

TGIF!

xx.

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We’re constantly updating and changing our apartment.

The living room tour I posted was months ago, and it’s changed so much since then! Today I’m going to share a little corner with you that serves as our “closet”. We have such a small apartment, so we try very hard to divide our rooms up into smaller sections that serve individual purposes. Our house is very old { 200 + years — it’s a registered landmark! }, so there isn’t much storage space. Thus, we’ve created this little area for our clothes:

My bureau comes from my Grandmother’s house. I can remember being really little and just completely fascinated with the glass knobs. It stayed in a closet off of a bed room which led into the attic of their house. I was convinced, at that age, that the attic was a secret hiding space for slaves in the underground railroad because this closet and its doors were so weird. When we were cleaning out my Grandmother’s house, I had to have this bureau. It reminded me of those wonderful years when my imagination ran wild!

If it seems like most of the clothes are mine, you’re right. Of course, it isn’t unusual that the lady of the house has twice as many articles of clothing than the man, and this is certainly the case with us as well. I have about three-quarters of this dowel to myself, plus my Grandmother’s bureau…and a few drawers in his bureau, as well, for PJs and linens. Poor guy.

On top of the “closet”, I’ve made a little display from my old inspiration board, the yarn letters that I made for Ryan for Christmas, and a birdcage that his parents gave to me last year as a gift. I love the whimsical look of it all, and it’s so wonderful that we’ve finally found a way to work with the vertical space that is so plentiful in this apartment. Would you believe that our ceilings are about fifteen feet tall? It’s so difficult to live so low to the ground and lose so much of our space to just air!

Inside the birdcage I’ve hung all of my necklaces! I don’t wear jewelry very often, so I don’t need it to be within reach. I do, however, fall in love with pieces from time to time, and I can’t help but add them to my very humble collection. I like the dreamy feel that my golden lockets and vintage beads lend to the dusty old bird cage, so it’s the perfect solution for me.

Ha! I even monopolized most of the shoe rack for myself. That’s okay, Ryan only has a few pairs of shoes, I don’t think he minds too much. And that’s it! Our humble little closet space. It’s nice to curate our closet as we would anything else in our house. Keeps our house cleaner and ensures that we only own clothes that we love to wear. The bottom suitcase as well as the weekender bag are both filled up with clothing that we’re saving for a clothing swap! I’ll be hosting one soon — can’t wait!

Thanks for touring our closet space!

xx.

♥

Remember when I told you that I’m an incredibly slow reader?

Well, if you didn’t believe me then, you will now; I started reading Frankenstein before Halloween and I finished it today. Part of that is the fact that I’m busy all of the time and feel a little guilty when I sit down to read because I think about what I should be doing instead { cleaning, working, etc. }. But another part of it really is that I’m a slow reader. Either way, I will make it through the reading list I came up with, and polishing off this piece has gotten me one step closer to the end!

Here’s what I thought of it:

When I first lifted the cover of this story, I was full of expectations. Throughout my life I’ve continuously seen images of “FRANKENSTEIN” the green tinged zombie with a flat head and a bolt in his neck. I knew that Frankenstein was actually the name of the monster’s creator rather than the creature himself, but that was about all I knew of the book. Anything else I thought I knew was a complete fabrication. Wasn’t Dr. Frankenstein supposed to have a sidekick named Igor? Wasn’t the creature supposed to be a big dumb oaf? Didn’t it all take place in a huge stone castle at the top of a mountain where the weather was constantly stormy? I thought all of this to be the case, so when I was a chapter or two in and following some guy named Walton who was sailing a ship toward the North Pole, you can imagine my confusion. Turns out the book was completely different than I had expected!

But I was pleasantly surprised. I swooned over the fondness of nature that Shelley described through the eyes of her main character. His affection for Switzerland was tender and sweet, and made me sick for my own home. When I wrote my novel this fall, I struggled to describe the autumn foliage that burns with colour, but provides no warmth. Every day that I wrote, I searched within myself for the appropriate words to capture this phenomenon, but came up empty handed or with a little something compromised. Shelley, I have now found, had already written the very words I was in search of. She described exactly what I hoped to, with infinitely more eloquence than I could ever hope to muster. She wrote: “…the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground, and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth…”. And that wasn’t the only occasion. Several times her words struck a chord with something I had felt a million times while walking through my native woods, but never known how to put in English. Bravo for that, Mary!

And she describes terrible things, too, with the same accurate descriptions. For in this story, there are many terrible things. That, I will leave for you to discover.

What a comment on humanity, necessity, and religion this piece was! What exactly is the relationship of creator and created? What do we as humans really need to survive — just shelter and nourishment, or also affection and companionship? All of these grand questions could be gleaned from her story even if it takes you months to finish. So, really, you should give it a try. I highly recommend it.

See you tomorrow, friends!

xx.