Our bathroom is a dark, depressing cave. Both of them are, actually. When I decided to renovate them (and yes, I decided to renovate both of them at the same time, OBVIOUSLY, because why have one non-functioning toilet when you can have two?! WHEEEEEE), one of my major goals was to make them feel...well, like places I wanted to spend time in. As opposed to dark, depressing caves.
Which is to say: there is, at present, a large hole in our bathroom wall.
My hallway before I made it awesome.
I painted my hallway green before we moved into our house (or even saw it in person). I did this to a lot of things in my house, actually - painted them, tore them out, replaced them, et cetera - before we first stepped foot in it, because we bought it over FaceTime and I wanted to get as many of the bigger projects as possible done before we drove across the country and had to actually live in the place.
Sometimes this remodeling-via-WiFi turned out pretty well for me - with our light-grey floors, for example, which I continue to love - but the green hallway I regretted almost instantly. The color, which I'd envisioned as a cool mint, was a touch pea-soup-y in the non-existent light, and worked much better in my daughter's room - the spot I'd initially chosen it for.
Noritake Blue Hammock Dinnerware | HomeGoods Macrame Placemats (similar from World Market)
You guys sent SO MANY RECIPES! My stomach thanks you, as does my wallet - because something I really appreciated was that so many of the ideas you sent - and please keep them coming - use normal-ish ingredients that I already have in my cupboard, as opposed to, say, saffron threads (WHY must saffron be so expensive?).
The first recipe I decided to try was one for Garlicky Chicken with Lemon-Anchovy Sauce. It was sent over by Mimi, who called it "one of the best things I've ever eaten." Sounds good to me.
OK, so perhaps this isn't "breaking," per se, as a Google search just informed me that H&M has been selling home decor stuff for...ahhh...a really long time. But whatever, I had no idea until yesterday, when my mom and I went into the H&M in midtown Manhattan and I just about collapsed from the gloriousness of all the pillows and candles and trays and mirrors, so we're calling it breaking news anyway.
IT'S SO GOOD, you guys. How did I not know about this before?!?! (The answer is that the H&Ms in my area don't have a home section, and H&M is one of those places that I tend to want to buy from in person rather than on the internet, so I can feel the quality for myself, so I'd never noticed the home decor section on their site, either.)
The pieces are chic and unbelievably well-priced - and there are a bazillion options for every room in the house, including a kids' department that totally schools Ikea's. And you know how H&M clothing is sometimes kind of "eh" in terms of its construction, and then other times you pick up a piece from them and end up wearing it over and over for years? The home decor items, from what I've seen, fall into that latter category: they're trendy, sure, but there are also lots of more classic-feeling pieces, and virtually everything I picked up looked and felt substantial and well-made. I'm serious when I say that I could happily decorate my entire home from the line. (...And since you can get all 20 of my favorite pieces online, I just might have to.)
April showers, et cetera et cetera
The school I attended up through the sixth grade was technically Protestant - the hint being its name, Trinity - and students were required to attend Chapel each week, but, oddly enough, the student body was predominantly Jewish. So was the student body at Dalton, where I spent the remainder of my grade school years. And so was I, sort of - my dad is Jewish. Except my mom is a lapsed Protestant. And both of them are atheists. So I guess you could say that when it came to holidays, religion didn't exactly play a big role - we essentially cherrypicked the ones that seemed to make sense to us to celebrate, and celebrated those in a way that made sense to us, too.
Easter was never really a big deal in our house; it always came upon me out of nowhere, like an afterthought to Valentine's Day (the Easter Bunny usually delivered my basket of creme eggs in the morning, shortly after my parents had ushered me back into bed; it appears that I wasn't the only one who Easter took by surprise). Once, when I was in fifth grade, a friend of mine took me to an Easter service with her family. I remember being excited to dress up in my favorite plaid skirt, and I remember the kids got to go up on stage to pet a rabbit, but that's about it.
