safe travels, joy, food and sleep

May all be yours this weekend as we celebrate together! I am headed to Rochester with RJR to enjoy family and food, nothing I love more than cooking together. Be safe, be well and come back to reality refreshed.

favorite things : : tea towels

Skinny LaMinx towel

I collect tea towels. Vintage, new, wonderfully absorbent tea towels. I cannot recall exactly when this phenomenon started, but it has reached a fevered peak. I have talked to many about my inability to buy paper towels. Won't stand for it. Tissues and toilet paper, sure thing. Paper towels and paper napkins, no. Not going to do it. So easy to tear off by the armful, sop up the mess, and discard where it eventually ends up entombed in a plastic bag coffin rustling in the breeze in the bucket of a pay loader piling one more layer of our consumerism at the county landfill. One of these landfills sits behind my parents' house. Ugh.

At my house, we use tea towels to sop up that mess, tea towels as napkins, and older worn out tea towels for the really dirty stuff. Some of my towels have been gleaned from flea markets, others from "antique" shops (stores with old stuff that would not really be considered historic), and a handful of new ones from snappy designers. What better way to spruce up the boring white apartment kitchen than with a colorful swath of fabric? The best towels are made of high quality cotton that gets better and better with each wash.

Etsy has many great choices if you want to start your collection today!



Lovelane towel



i love pink dots towel

favorite things : : local honey

Golden, sticky, warm, wonderful locally produced honey. Last year I decided to scale back my sugar intake to see if that would help me improve the ratio of days with headaches to days without headaches. The headaches turned out to be related to something else, but I've stuck to my honey plan and found that it has almost completely kicked my addiction to sugar. Used to be that I need something sweet after every meal. Now, I'm content with my coffee and have none of the yucky sugar side affects throughout the day--the highs and lows. I figure this also helps me stay away from other sugary syrups and condiments that aren't honey based. Rules. I can play by rules even if I know that I made them up.

I have been purchasing my honey from Lloyd Spear Beekeeper, Inc. who sells his wares at the Troy Farmers Market. The bees are located in Schenectady NY and other surrounding towns. Having just read The Secret Life of Bees as a reading indulgence, I now want to take a bee keeping class. This is to prepare myself for the time in my life when I have honey bees and chickens in my quaint urban homestead. Did you see that more and more urbanites are taking up chickens? And to respond in advance to the post that will surely be placed by my mom, yes, I do remember when you went up against the zoning board to get goats in our suburban town growing up. What can I say, the apple doesn't fall far...

favorite things : : jane carter curly hair care

Having left Whole Foods behind in Philadelphia upon moving to Upstate, I have had to find a new source for the magical curly hair solution I've found so perfect to tame my mane. Jane Carter's condition and sculpt formula has none of the yucky silicone, paraben, or glycerin that dissuades me from other products. It also does not contain alcohol, an all too common haircare ingredient that is counter intuitive. Like many of those who review it online, I too combine it with a bit of pomade or wax (I use MOP or other organic versions of the same) to get the degree of hold I want.

My primary source for this magic now is naturallycurly.com. The website has a myriad of products available and even includes the humidity forecasts for cities across the country, the primary threat to our heads. The site also features curly hair types, from 2-4 with ranges in between. These types are paired with celebrity examples like Sandra Oh, Juliana Marguiles, and Erykah Badu so you can see where you might fit and what you might like to use.

favorite things : : envirosax

I know, I know, everyone in blog land does favorite things. And I'm joining them. Last week was a blurry fog of sleeplessness and spreadsheets. I'm determined to throw that off this week and start today, Monday, with a new approach. I am convinced there has to be a better way to get tasks completed or to set up a more realistic--and healthy--workday. As much as last week nearly killed me, it did help me conquer one of the foremost barriers to a better system, getting up earlier! Not that I want to awake at 4AM every day, but 6AM without going back to sleep and running to the bus stop sans breakfast, work out clothes for the gym and make up--not my idea of a good start to the day.

Here is the new schedule: 6AM, prayer, 6:15 yoga poses, 6:30 get presentable, 7:00 breakfast, 7:15 off to the bus stop, 8AM at the desk. One day down and it worked. Now, this only becomes functional I realize if I have the lunch packed the night before and my gym clothes ready and waiting by the door, but that can be accomplished. Yes, it can. I'm saying this out loud more for me than for the readership.

Favorite thing that can help me do these steps better? Envirosax. Handy dandy lightweight bags that expand to enormous proportions. Lunch, check. Book to read on the bus, check. Workout clothes and towel, check. Vitamins, check. Pile of unopened mail, check. The latter may or may not get read on the way in to work.

falling off the face of the earth

Kind of. Work, work, work. Some sleep and some food. That is about the extent of my life right now. When I have more interesting things to say, I will sign back on. For now, I need every extra minute for getting through the day and seeing people that I love.

on heat and bills

I'm living in fear of the National Grid bill this month. While I am happy to have autumn in town, it means a lot more money to keep this place warm. Most of the time I am fine with a hoody and even a hat in the house, but ask my houseguests these last few weeks, not everyone appreciates the cost savings measures. The clever RJR suggested that I use the layout of the house to my advantage by hanging a thick curtain in the tiny hallway entry that separates the front of the apartment from the back. With a thermostat on either side of the hall, this could work out well.

Over the summer he and I happened upon a junk sale near his office, really a pile of quasi-antiques in a muddy parking lot. I unearthed the orange folding table that holds herbs in the kitchen and also the black plant rack that is in front of a "fireplace" in the parlor. In addition, I found a roll of designer fabric, rough linen with wool embroidery over top, very revolutionary war period--nearly 10 yards for $5. The stuff is incredibly sturdy and seemed just the thing to make the curtain. I still need a heavy duty rod and an equally durable tie back to finish it off, but here is a first look at it.