food & places

My time in London has come and gone way too fast. 5 weeks, 2 suitcases, and 4 pounds later, I am headed home. Yes, despite walking all over London & Paris, the camembert, scones, & chocolate teacakes took their toll. Last night I packed for my return with Julie & Julia playing on my laptop, a glass (make that bottle) of French red, a bowl of olives and, of course, a couple of chocolate teacakes. Watch the movie if you haven’t already (it's sweet & has beautiful takes of Pari & YUMMY food in it ...basically, the chickest flick ever) and, besides the food and the French architecture, pay attention to what’s hanging above the bed in Julie’s apartment. They are framed antique handkerchiefs of different states & I am longing for them to be framed in my apartment …the North Carolina & New York ones, that is. One question: why is it that the Iowa hanky is only $30 and North Carolina has to be $80?

cheers to London!

& see you tonight, America!

xo, em

Funny how...

there are simple things that seem so mundane one day and can completely rock your world the next. Windows, I have found, are one of them. The view from my New York window is a bustling scene that captures part sky / part skyline. An explosion of art, there are two studios across the happy tree-lined street. Look down and you can see pottery students spinning & glazing away, look right and you see clear into the window of the Dance Studio Workshop for a free recital any time of day.

The view from my kitchen window in North Carolina speaks for itself:

. . . h e a v e n o n e a r t h . . .

The red umbrella (because it would be a sin for a Wolfpack fan to have any other color umbrella), the tiny vase of flowers straight from the garden (fresh from that morning's bridal shower brunch), the 50-year-old window frame with a hidden rainbow of at least a dozen coats of paint and a little knob that still turns to let in the yummy air, the homemade (by a 9-year-old me) potholder hanging in Mom's kitchen because there are "just some things that she can't throw away".

Funny how I've been looking out of that kitchen window for almost 15 years and haven't realized until now that it's like looking at an illustrated autobiography of this house & our family. I now have two cities that I call mine (don't tell Mom&Dad), but one thing is for sure, as long as that potholder is hanging in that window, I know I have a place to come home to.

i go back

Exhausted from the runway that was my Tuesday, I hit another type of runway Thursday & flew home to Raleigh for the exxxtra long weekend. Found these fun books yesterday dated from 1931 through 1937 & reminiscent of Nana's college days at Winthrop University in SC (an all-girls school when she was there) ... apparently Mom's been shuffling through the storage unit again... I thought them fun to share:

the covers read 'autographs'

both books have this little ditty on the first page

notice Nana's stamp at the top:)

The remaining pages were filled with her friends 'autographs',

similar to what we would've written in high school

yearbooks, but with words like swell & dapper.

And apparently much more cleaver...

'I love you once

I love you twice

I love you better

than cats love mice'

-Anna on October 21, 1937

we would've been friends, I'm sure

'You know first impressions are the lasting ones.

From the very moment I saw you, I knew you were a sweet girl...'

-Margaret of Anderson, SC

I can only pray that if I had an autograph book, friends would sign mine this way:)

...& I would really like to know what was discussed during those

'bathroom chats' Margaret mentioned!

and I leave you with, admittedly, my favorite:

in 1933 Agnes writes:

'If at first you don't succeed (suck-seed) maybe it's a seedless orange.'

i love her.

me? a blogger?

As I sit in my apartment on a snowy February day (with a head cold I might add ...not usually here in the middle of a Thursday) I find myself fishing around on the internet... Gmail, Twitter, numerous fashion blogs, googling 'cold remedies' and, of course, the inevitable Gilt Groupe (truely my 'gilty' pleasure). After a bit of technology overload and a bottle of Vick's cold medicine to blame, I somehow fall subject to clicking on 'create your own blog'.

New York winters are as unpredictable as the antics on Keeping Up With the Kardashians (current channel on: E!) ...rainy, snowy, 60 degrees, 20 degrees, rainy again, snowy again. As depressing as this day sounds, I wouldn't have it any other way. After all, if I have to be sick somewhere, New York City is a pretty great place to be.

So here it is, Acorns to Apples, the chronicles of my life as a North Carolina born 20-something living in New York City (cue Nick Gilder's "Hot Child in the City" circa 1978) as I go from the City of Oaks to the Big Apple.

Oh, & ps: all those Carrie Bradshaw "Another thing I love about New York is..." quotes, yeah, I'm finding they're all true ;)