late september, red hook.

A little acknowledgement that New York has been killing it with good weather lately. It's been all sunshine and blue skies and temperatures for pairing sweaters and sandals. Perfect, in other words.

Unless you're in the middle of a park, autumn in New York is a thing you need to go treasure hunting for. Outside of the city, the season puts on a spectacle, but here, you need to spot signs. A touch of golden here, a deeper burgundy there.

Here are photos from yesterday's ramble in Red Hook. My favorite neighborhood to walk to when I'm in the mood for treasure hunting.

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my week in objects (mostly).

five little things that made my week.
1. this apple.

{because we're fully embracing apple season around here}.

2. these socks.

{because pulling on the first pair of the season feels so good}.

3. this white paint.

{because i finally got around to a tiny project i've been wanting to do forever}.

4. this journal.

{for keeping track of green things}.

5. this kale.

{because we're embracing kale season, too}.


other things:
best thing i saw last weekend. maybe ever.
on my fall wishlist.
to get cozy in.
true story: i love to lip-sync.

things by me in other places:
favorite fall salad.
swamplandia.
a fern of a different color.
a suitcase.
a diary.
a silk scarf.

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two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

Up there? The afternoon shadows that the plants on my windowsill cast onto my apartment wall.

The tip? Fill your tiny apartment with houseplants. Mostly small ones.

My very first apartment tip was to use tiny pots. I still hold to this mostly, but I think it's worth saying that tiny pots are hard to sustain. Plants, like humans, eventually need a little leg room and they're not likely to last very long in very tiny pots, adorable though they are. So I make a compromise and choose small over tiny.

For me the trick is to stash green things in places where they're not in the way but where they can still work hard. A bathroom shelf, a windowsill, suspended from the shower rod...

Lately, I've been drawn to plants that come in soft hues potted up in white pots. Too many colors in a small space and I begin to feel claustrophobic. Instead, I prefer to let the plants themselves shine and to choose a neutral pot to ensure that happens. My latest love? The hardy blue fern.

Tiny Apartment Tips 1-79.
Soft plants, white pots, delivered.
Lots more houseplant ideas here.

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neighbor lights.

Two things lately: weekends away and a lackluster apartment search for a place to stretch our legs, just a little bit. Both have made me feel all kinds of fierce about our tiny abode and our tiny block.

New York City is really just a collection of tiny villages. And as we've started to talk about the possibility of wanting just a touch more space, I realize that I'm about as provincial as they come. I don't really like the idea of looking for an apartment on another street, let alone another neighborhood. Don't get me started on James's repeated mention of an entire island swap.

Last night, twinkling string lights and open windows and blankets to keep off the chill. Who would want to leave fairyland?

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my week in objects (mostly).

1. this fall-blooming anemone.

{because it's the prettiest flower on the promenade}.

2. these dilly beans.

{because we devoured two whole jars}.

3. these amber bottles.

{because next week it's remedy-making time}.

4. this coral nymph salvia.

{for finally deciding to bloom again after a summer of green leaves only}.

5. this scarf.

{because it was just what i needed in a pinch and i've worn it ceaselessly since}.

other things:
best DIY of the week.
satomi, my favorite.
this shop, these especially.
brilliant: the american edit.
totally out of character: i need it.

things in other places by me:
dilly beans, the full recipe.
anenomes, explained.
fresh flowers, fed.
shrub.
hooked on houseplants.

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a sneak peek.

Photographs by Matthew Williams

There's a new book coming to bookstores on November 5th and while I can't claim to have been a part of any of its creation, I'm not above bragging that I've gotten to rub shoulders with the women who did bring the masterpiece to light.

The blog-to-book model is not always a successful one, but in the case of Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home, it's pure gold. 400 pages of gorgeous photographs that manage to inspire, without catapulting readers over the edge of lusty despair. And this from a woman who makes her home in a wee 240. Kitchen cutlery in an old filing cabinet? Why yes, I can do that. Keeping things simple and spare while still managing to be warm and personal? Well, that's just the Remodelista way. Head here to see the chapter-by-chapter guide to what you'll find inside.

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon, and if you place your order soon, I have a sneaking suspicion that you'll be rewarded with an early delivery. This just might be the best $22.50 you'll spend all month.

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two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

Purge often.

Pack it up, pack it in, etc.

Believe me when I say you don't have room to hang on to socks without toes or sweatshirts with grease stains ten years in the making. This part you know, but what you might need reminding of, as I do, is the need revisit the purge every few months. It's the start of a new season. Now's your chance.

No doubt during the last purge you decided to hold on to that faded red long-sleeved shirt on the off chance that you'd be called up on to rake leaves or paint a mural and you might need something ratty. Chances are, it's been sitting half-folded in your drawer ever since. Purge.

I understand the temptation to hold on to things. I did a drawer purge this very morning and hand-typed notes from my cousin Mildred remain in the bottom of my underwear drawer because I'm just not ready to see them go. I get it. But ratty t-shirts and unread paperbacks have a limited lifespan in a tiny apartment, and you need to be the one to do the hard work of letting them know their time has come.

Fill up a bag, drop it at a donation center, breathe a little easier.

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a weekend in maine.

This weekend: songs and sun and poetry to celebrate two dear friends as they decided to stitch themselves together for the long haul. Here: three little photos to capture the colors of their wedding weekend in Maine. Not shown: two of the very biggest smiles I've ever seen, propped in front of a cerulean sea.

Also: lobster rolls.

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my week in objects (mostly).

five little things that made my week.

1. this bread.

{because it lasted all week. equally delicious each day}.

2. this experiment.

{results to be posted next week. no fear: james made sure i followed the scientific method).

3. these rose hips.

{fall's coming. heatwave be damned}.

4. these jeans.

{because i couldn't wait to save enough for my dream jeans. these'll do in the meantime (the darker the wash the better)}.

5. this cheery mailbox.

{painted all the wrong colors by a rogue neighborhood painter. i live for this stuff}.

other things:
the power of a little paint.
i love these.
we've been listening to this lately.
let's go.
challah.
mmm.

things by me in other places:
keep veggies fresh.
nude gardening etc.
food storage bags.
prettiest waste bin.
IDing houseplants.
growlights 2.0

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two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

Remove the closet doors, hang a curtain instead.

It's been my experience in rental apartments that doors that have been added to closets are typically of the cheap variety. Installed as a nod to privacy and decorum, the hollowed out shells are usually more trouble than they're worth. If they open out into a room they take up precious floor space, and if the landlord was thoughtful enough to install the sliding, hanging variety, they're almost certainly hanging all wonky on the tracks. To say nothing of the fact that sliding doors obscure fully half of the closet at any given time.

Enter the curtain and the tension rod. It took me a full two years to make a curtain that actually fit correctly in the space (a cut-up linen shower curtain served in the interim) but there's no reason you should wait as long.

Here's how I managed sans sewing machine: Last week I had to trek to the fabric store for a different project, so I took the opportunity to buy some extra yardage. I kept the selvage ends of a 54"-wide swath of fabric and lopped off the bottom with a pair of scissors. To make the curtain rod pocket, I folded the top edge as straightly as I could manage, pinned it up, and sewed by hand. The whole thing took me about an hour and I earned Laura Ingalls Wilder points to boot. We have a super simple white tension rod that we picked up a the hardware store down the street (it's like this one); but if you want to get fancy, this one looks nice, too.

I'd ask your landlord for permission on this one (ours is storing the sliding door in the basement for now), but don't delay. A simple linen curtain looks worlds better than the cheap wooden alternative, and makes access to an over-stuffed closet much more manageable.

Tiny Apartment Survival Tips 1-77.

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come on in, the water's fine.

Hints, lately. I realize you've been getting a lot of them. Little pieces of stories rather than the whole thing. But every once in a while, I'm finding the time to share the good stuff. The where and what and why of the stories. If a detailed description of our recent journey into the world of charcoal-filled water interests you, read on. If no, look at the pictures and scroll on along.

Here, the latest addition to our plastic-free household: a giant stick of charcoal. For years, James and I have been using a Brita water filter to clean our tap water. I didn't grow up filtering my tap water, and to be totally honest, when James proposed the idea it struck me as bordering on the excessive end of the health conscious spectrum (sort of like meal planning). But when you live in New York, the water is nice and clean, but the pipes are not. I've known two people who have had the experience of beginning to use a water filter (the kind that attaches to the faucet) only to realize that it became so quickly gooped up that they had to change it after only a few weeks. Sigh. In keeping with my perpetual need to find things to worry about, lately I've been equally concerned about the waste that the Brita filter itself creates, just another hulk of plastic to recycle or add to the landfill. Not to mention that we've been using the same plastic pitcher for four years. Goodness knows what that's leached into our systems.

All of that to say, that I've been pondering charcoal for awhile and when my internet-friend Briar Winters mentioned she'd been using it, I decided to bite the bullet. I'll be honest, I'm not sure of the exact brand of science/magic that makes the things work, but the charcoal makes the water taste delicious and I'm choosing to believe that's it's purifying it, too.

We ordered sticks of Morihata Kishu Binchotan Charcoal here, though I'm considering changing to these smaller sticks next time (they're shorter and will fit more reliably in our wide-mouthed bottles). We've developed a two-bottle system where we keep one filled with charcoal and one without. Whenever we empty the bottle without charcoal, we fill it with whatever's been detoxed and then replenish the source. The charcoal should last us awhile, with biweekly boils to re-juice the sticks.* Best of all, when they're not doing their good work anymore, we'll just toss them in the garden. Full circle.

*Full instructions for boiling and magic-making come with the charcoal.

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my week in objects (mostly).

five little things that made my week.

1. this experiment in living with jungle plants.
{so far so good, mostly}.

2. this pretty selvage.

{because it means i didn't have to sew}.

3. this eggplant for roasting.

{more on our new approach to meal time here}.

4. this jekyll island bracelet.

{because it was the perfect belated first anniversary gift for two love birds that met there}.

5. these sungolds.
{because i've been eating them by the handful. and roasting them, too}.

other things.
i love these things.
pretty underthings.
have you voted?
keep burning my hands: eyeing these.

things by me in other places:
save seeds.
store them here.
roots on display.
a maine getaway.
world's healthiest spaghetti.

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two fifty: life in a tiny apartment.

Plan your meals; empty your fridge.

This is life advice more than tiny apartment advice, but we're loosey-goosey about the rules around these tea leaves.

This tip has a back story about my recent trip to San Francisco and my lovely cousin Gillian and her wonderful family and my first real encounter with meal planning. But we'll save those details for another time and I'll do my best to stick to the facts and offer simple advice: Plan your meals; empty your fridge.

Before witnessing my cousin's system for meal planning, I'd never really considered planning a week's worth of meals. At worst, meal planning seemed like encouraging another kind of neurosis I wasn't sure I wanted to cultivate, and at best, it seemed simply unnecessary. For me one of the chief pleasures of living in a big city is the number of food-hawking establishments within walkable distance from my apartment. Who needs to plan ahead when the grocery store is just a block away? If I'm hankering for fresh vegetables, there's a farmers' market just three blocks away, three times a week. If I'm too tired to cook, I can choose from one of 20 restaurants in a five block square. But after witnessing my cousin's dinnertime ritual, I realized that my laissez faire approach was actually making my life more complicated, not less.

Finishing a day's work in the early evening and being faced then with a decision about what to make for dinner left me grumpy. I was constantly racking my brain (or my pinterest account) for recipes at the precise moment that I was hungriest and my quick decisions left me feeling as though I was missing out on the good stuff. I'm the last person to knock pizza, but eating it out of sheer desperation does take away some of the joy.

Spending an hour on the weekend choosing recipes and planning meals saves what feels like five times that amount of time during the week. Using up the ingredients that I've thoughtfully procured at the beginning of the week? Well that's become just the kind of minimalist challenge I can really get into.

If I may, I think a lot of this comes back around to choice. Too many choices ultimately making one less happy than too few. This guy says it better. Bottom line: as with most things in a tiny apartment, less is more.

More on food in a tiny apartment here and here.

Tiny Apartment Survival Tips #1-76.

{More about the delicious spaghetti above coming up later this week}.

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the blues.

The blues around here have been awfully pretty lately. I toted my camera around yesterday, only to discover that I'd accidentally drained the battery. Here instead, photos from my phone of a bluesy Brooklyn weekend that drew us continually to the shore. Happy September, friends.

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