make-believe: summer bbq

just daydreaming about a few things for my favorite kinds of summertime bbqs. we're galavanting about in mid-coast maine right now, probably doing lots of things much less stylishly, but nonetheless,  here's to a summer filled with roasted marshmallows and lawn chairs.

1. lawn chair 2. striped dress  3. summer scarf 4. marshmallows 5. sandals 6. skewers 7. this is not bugspray 8. bbq

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< two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

unpack your bag. 

like most of these tips, i'm of the opinion that this is something you should do even if the place you call home is a 90,000 square-foot atrocity villa. trips out of town are wonderful things.* they give us a chance to stretch our legs, shift our perspective, and remind ourselves that there's a whole wide world out there, but the return home can be brutal. if you ask me, failure to unpack our bags makes the misery all the more acute.

in our tiny apartment, an unpacked bag causes stubbed toes and violent bouts of cursing. more importantly, it makes it near to impossible to find my last clean pair of underwear and it means that the collection of driftwood i insisted on collecting is just moldering away in there. even if we get home in the wee hours of the morning, the first thing i do is to unpack my bag. there's nothing more delicious than waking up in my own trusty bed knowing that everything's just where it should be.

*our favorite game when visiting friends is to determine what tiny corner of their home is approximately the same size as our apartment. bathrooms sometimes win.

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peas.

a few musings on peas and patience over on the equals record today. last week, it was peas, bur last night it was favas. double-peel beans means double the patience. i'm convincing myself they also mean double the reward.

we're hopping out of town for a v. quick getaway with friends to maine. i see stars and blueberries and hooded sweatshirts in my future. i have posts lined up for the next few days, but as always, you can follow the adventure on instagram: readtealeaves. xo.

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sailing right along.

yesterday, james surprised me with a celebratory morning sail around the new york city harbor. there was sunshine and a breeze and mimosas and we got to wave hello to our favorite green giant. i'm starting my 28th year with a sunburned nose and chapped lips. wouldn't want it any other way.

and don't you worry: there was also a tiramisu cake twice the size of my head. thank you sisters and friends.

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my week in objects (mostly).

five little things that made my week.

1. these pajama pants.
{because sometimes starting the morning's work in pajamas feels pretty okay. 'specially clean and pretty ones}.

2. this summer fruit.

{because it was on my sister's kitchen table. ready for the taking}.

3. these sweet pillowcases.

{because they're from my mom. sometimes moms get it really right}.

4. these roses.

{because they were also part of my sister's genius pretty-making. hero of the week}.

5. this soap.

{because it's been keeping my underwear drawer smelling nice for going on five years now, and this week, we needed it to get sudsy}.

what little something made your week?

other things:

carrie's teaching a pasta-making class. gonna be so good. sign up.
mere hours left to fund this incredibly courageous project.
i wrote about veggies.
i also wrote about roadside farm stands. walker evans shot on polaroid. yes.
speaking of roadside stands. there's nothing prettier than a southern one.
i loved this post, re: iphones.

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make-believe: birthday.

on sunday i turn 28. it feels big. all i really want to do for my birthday is catch a few fireflies and eat cake. birthdays are for cake. there's no two ways about it. a birthday without cake is like a night without stars. can't have one without the other. well, you can, but that's awfully sad to think about. a little bit of rosé champagne and a festive ensemble aren't bad birthday accompaniments either.  so, here it is, a make-believe birthday. but the real one is coming up, i promise.

1. festive blouse 2. firefly catching jar 3. birthday candles 4. sparkling rosé 5. jewels 6. birthday cake 7. birthday clogs

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< two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

buy in bulk.

i'm not talking about 45 rolls of toilet paper in one go. if there's one thing that living in a tiny apartment has done for us, it's been to help us think about the stuff that we accumulate. it's not just the hard goods we have to worry about. before they're used up, pesky comestibles can take up an awful lot of room. unless we want  to share our couch with an over-sized bag of basmati rice (fragrant and heavy pillow?), we have to think carefully about what we bring home from the grocery store.

in our place, we have just a few small cabinets to store food. a certain over-zealous "raisin bran flakes" buyer has quickly realized that, try as he might, there's just no stuffing that second box of cereal into the cabinet. you can bet your bottom dollar that thing's not gonna have a shot at countertop real-estate.

for the most part, we solve our space issues by buying from the bulk section at our local nutty-crunchy grocery store. this technique has the triple advantage of allowing you to buy just as much as you need, leaving lots of unnessescary packing out of the equation (we use sarah's cloth bags), and making you feel a special kinship with laura ingalls and pa.

if you do a little searching, you can probably find a grocery near you that purchases in bulk. basically, they buy lot of stuff at one go so that you don't have to. you can buy the amount of quinoa or rice or raisins that fit into whatever jar you have at home, and never worry about finding space for awkwardly shaped boxes and bags.

i like to use ball jars for bulk storage. at around ten dollars for a pack of 12, these glass jars are definitely the best bang for our buck. they come in tons of sizes (of varying price) so there are options for things we might like to have more of, like sugar or flour.  if we move back to a place that has shelves instead of cabinets, they're pretty enough to leave out in the open.

so there you have it: buy in bulk and use ball jars. two tips for the price of one (but if you live in a tiny apartment, you might have to reconsider that kind of deal).

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