Ain�t no shame in a photo essay, right kids? In the vein of Mandy, Chiara and Eliza , I thought I would take you on a tour of my apartment, stopping at some of my favorite haunts. And no, this totally isn�t just an excuse for not having the time to write a full entry. It totally, totally isn�t.
I thought we�d start at my desk and go from there. First, directly above my desk is this shelf:
From left to right are a framed picture from my wedding of my shoes (don�t know why, but I just loved it), a Nephertiti-ish head statue thing given to me by a friend who visited Egypt, a clock that was a gift from my brother, a Tibetan Prayer Wheel (gift from my sister-in-law), a carved wooden thingy that is symbolic because it is two pieces carved from one piece of wood or something like that (wedding present from sister-in-law), a wedding contract from some African tribe (engagement present from sister-in-law), and a framed illustration that my sister-in-law got for us in India � I do not remember the significance, but it is old and crinkly, so I framed it. It�s my shelf of random things that I like.
Moving clockwise, we head into my bedroom. Of all the inanimate objects I own, there are only a few that I would try to save in a fire, and this is one of them:
My entire family has the same Christmas stocking � on my mother�s side of the family, going back three generations ago, some great-great-great aunt began knitting a stocking for everyone in the family, and it became a tradition that when someone was either born or married into the family, they got a stocking with their name knitted into it. I have no idea how many stockings were made in total, and now it�s harder to get them made because it seems like all the people who had the pattern and know how to knit have died, but this year my parents are surprising my husband with his stocking. For real, I would cry and cry if anything ever happened to my Christmas stocking. Sadly, I have no idea what to do with it from January through November, so it lives in a Ziploc baggie in my sock drawer. Ooh -- in this picture you can see the new color of my bedroom � I painted last Tuesday!
Also in the bedroom:
Two pair of super cute shoes that I love and adore but can�t wear very often because they make me weep with pain. The Pointy Shoes of Death on the right look especially good on, but wearing them feels like having a jillion razors slicing at my toes.
So instead, I wear these:
Super broken-in, not-at-all-sexy boots. Well, kinda sexy, but in a whole different way.
I love this shirt:
The front says VOTE and I am thinking about adding a �d� on the end so it will read �VOTEd,� because I am still really bummed that Bush won and I am proud of having voted for Kerry and the shirt makes my boobs look big.
This is my newest handbag and it makes me happy:
The ratty faux-pashminas do not. Neither do the bite marks on my San Francisco Giants hat, but c�est la doggie vie.
We�re in the dining room now, which is where our bookshelves are. On top of one sits this photo:
It was taken on Christmas Eve, 1998, which was one of the greatest holidays I can remember. I�m sitting with my brothers M and J, and I have no idea what we were laughing at or who took the picture, but I love the picture to death. I wish my youngest brother N was in it, but for all I know, he took the picture. Regardless, I love the photo and like to be reminded of the fun, fun time we had that Christmas.
Like I said, the bookshelves are in the dining room (really an �area� more than a room), and that�s where I keep my old and battered copy of �The Little Engine That Could�:
It was my very favorite book when I was wee.
Next to the bookcases is the wine rack:
It�s probably not a surprise that I love my wine rack considering how I love my wine (and I do love it so), but I think this is a cool wine rack. The top shelf bottles are all ones I am afraid to open, especially the 1975 Bordeaux that I gave my husband as a wedding present (the year in which we were both born). At the right side of the top shelf are bottles from our wedding which we had guests sign in lieu of a guestbook � there are bottles for our 5th and 10th wedding anniversary (and the empty ones from our honeymoon and 1st anniversary are on the bottom shelf).
This is apparently an old pie safe, but I use it to store my china and linens and random bits of crap that don�t fit anywhere:
Initially I planned on pulling out the punched-tin panels and replacing them with rice paper or glass or something more modern, but now I�m glad I left it the way it was. I am not really a punched-tin kind of girl, but overall, I really like the way it looks and I don�t plan on changing it at all. On top are more random things, including a very cool piece my sister-in-law made for us�it�s on the left, and it�s a photo she took somehow transferred to a block of wood and then painted and white-washed.
Inside the pie safe are my Brooklyn Bridge dessert plates:
I think they are really freaking cool.
Moving into the kitchen now:
It�s my pile of cookware! So shiny, so pretty! Makes me look like I cook all the time! I totally do not! Haven�t cooked in days! Will order Thai later tonight! But look how shiny!
And now back to the living room. My desk is in one corner, and across the room is a big old school-teacher�s desk thing that we use as a TV stand. On the left of the TV is a stack of more things I love:
The books are cool, but my newest Random Item That I Love is the striped vase/bowl thing on top of the books. My friend Angela�s boyfriend made it for me; he works with an industrial designer who makes these incredible bowls and vases and lamps from melted-down gluestick material, and I think it�s awesome. Ben made me a little one with leftover material, and I love it. It�s bendy! And stripey! And mine!
Finally, because you knew it was coming:
That�s it for now, but I hope to have more time for writing later this week. I haven�t been busy with anything in particular, but somehow feel as if I�ve got no time to catch up with things, although I don�t even know what the things are. I just feel behind! We had dinner last night with our friends Em and Brian � Brian has been in D.C. for the past 4 months working on a certain President�s re-elect campaign, so happy as I was to see him, I also sorted wanted to kick him in the shins. Except not, because one thing that I realized last night is that Republicans can still be good people. Sometimes. It�s the Midwesterners you need to avoid. (I�m kidding! Even though in all seriousness, the divide between political parties lately seems much less than the divide between urban-dwellers and suburbanites, or coastal-states and middle states. New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers, even.) Today was another beautiful day, which meant arguing in Crate and Barrel, natch. We made it home intact, though (picking out a new bed is HARD), and are currently relaxing (well, Kent is relaxing and I am freaking out about 863 different things). My mom is coming to visit and I have a job interview on Friday, which means I need to both clean and shop. Or shop and clean. Something like that�
Edited to add that I just re-read Mandy's, Chiara's and Eliza's entries in which they too posted pictures of things in their homes, and THEY ARE SO MUCH FUNNIER THAN ME!!! And worse - it's not just them - their STUFF is better than my stuff, by like, a KAJILLION PERCENT. Mandy has a picture of a fat, naked lady on a bike! And a photo with Ron Jeremy! Eliza has a grown-up house with pretty curtains and a YARD. Chiara KNITS. Did I mention the fat lady on the bike? I posted pictured of SHOES. SHOES! Damn, my house is boring.
