Pink of Perfection

I have long had a blog crush on the The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, and now, happily, I have a book crush. In the The Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking, Kate Payne speaks to that fun, creative desire for pleasure-filled, budget-friendly, mindful self-sufficiency so many of us are after in efforts to make a house a home and a life our own. It’s an inspiring guide for the badass of domestic arts, and one lucky Pink of Perfection reader will win a copy! Enter to win the giveaway by leaving a comment about your favorite homemaking skill or tradition by Friday, April 23. One winner will be chosen at random. Happy nesting!

What inspires you to write, to create, and to live well?

Simplicity and sharing. I’m continually astonished at how basic my needs are to be happy: homemade bread, being outside to feel the way the light falls at dusk, shared suppers, hearing the trains passing in the night, reading books in the hammock, and good coffee, of course. The opportunities to share these simple pleasures (and help others discover what makes them happy) keeps me moving forward every day.

Continue reading “Giveaway: The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking” »

Last week we spoke briefly about women who are generous with their wisdom and knowledge. If there is someone who has given freely to me with her advice, her guidance and her support, it’s Margaret Roach. We met over turkey sandwiches at a long board room table. I was too shy to even say hello, opting instead (bizarrely) to send an email after lunch. And since then, I have been deeply in awe of her: her elegant, soulful writing, her boundless energy, her fearlessness to strike out, to leap, to learn something new. Like the woman herself, Margaret’s new memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There, is inspiring, but it’s the sort of encouragement of a close friend. This is not an bulletin-pointed instructive how-to of living your dream life. It’s the deliciously intimate story of a woman who feels like a pal through the pages, never too serious to miss a joke and never too silly to see the signs. If you can be proud of someone who is a mentor of sorts, then with Margaret’s book I am very much that. Details for the giveaway are at the end of the Q&A.

What most inspires you to create, to write, to live well?

Certainly the primary inspiration for all aspects of my life has been, and is, nature and the natural world:

How the solitary spider, ever busy but reclusive, goes quietly about its creative business of weaving a web.
How the light on the landscape is distinct in color and angle or attitude in each season and time of day. Attention! Attention! How the intricate detail of even a single seed, bud, insect, feather commands you to be still, look, gather yourself to really grasp it (even though it’s too big to ever grasp).

I sometimes think that everything I have learned, I have learned from plants, birds, the weather: powerlessness and some degree of humility, the inevitable cycles of change (why fight?); and where I fit in.

Meaning: Nature provides a spiritual explanation that I can live with and be guided by; it makes sense of things for me.

What’s some of the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

“Busy hands are happy hands” (my Grandma Marion, who also taught me meringue technique and a love of zinnias by age 9).

“Learn something new every day” (from Martha, her motto. It’s corollary to my sister Marion’s exhortation to find a “full-funded curiosity” if you can in life—some way to have your work and your passion converge and reward you on every level.

“Never stop wanting more plants” (from Marco Polo Stufano, my garden mentor and friend, retired founding director of horticulture, Wave Hill, the world-class garden in NYC).

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” (from Leonard Cohen, in “The Anthem,” adapted from Buddhist thinking).

That “code is poetry” (from Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress. I love poetry, so if not for those seductive words about lines of PHP and CSS and MySQL and HTML, which I cannot read, I might have chosen another blogging platform, and made my rural, remote life so much harder).

You took a big, flying leap in your life–how do you steel yourself to go for it in the face of fear (in small everyday ways, and in big life change ways)?

All my life, I have use words on paper to bear witness to what’s up with me and set and refine goals. Not necessarily journals—I have only kept journals for a year here and there—but notes to self.

I kept a list called “Tolerances” on my city kitchen bulletin board for many years—as in “how much of what can you tolerate?” (And when is it enough?)

I likewise kept a list of fears, and when I saw how long it was, it scared me. (Tee hee.) It was time to get a grip!

I also have reached out at various times to my ex-therapist, to listen while I talked through the ideas that were coming to the surface, ideas about possible big change.

Whether in gardening or growing up, never be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help. Again, as with the pin-up notes: the talking with him was another form of bearing witness, getting it out of my head into a somewhat more concrete dimension.

These days I scribble on a set of whiteboards of different sizes, still talk to the shrink periodically, and have the view out the window to calm me and remind me I didn’t take a wrong turn.

You accomplished the big thing you wanted to do–live a life on your own terms. What do you still want to do (big things, little things?)

Make something increasingly delicious (to me) out of the ingredients of the “new” life I have started:

Write a few books about things I care about;
Fearlessly renovate my aging garden so that we grow old gracefully together (and don’t just fall apart or topple over from neglect);
Mentor again in some way (the one aspect of my former career I miss is having younger staff to teach, and learn from);
Never eat standing up as if I have something better to do or somewhere more important to be than here, nourishing myself.

Random, but somehow related to the spirit (heh) of your book: Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe in spirits, to be sure, but not in ghosts. In the acknowledgments at the end of “And I Shall Have Some Peace There,”  I thank various animal spirits (the snake, frog, fox, bird, cat, weasel…) who have turned out to be tour guides and inspirations.

I believe that the dead are with us but not as ghosts manifested in a swirl or blur or light. I suppose my belief about this centers more on the impression and imprint they have left behind in us (as us?) than some ongoing visitations.

However, that being said: I do almost daily ask Jack the Demon Cat, the accidental companion on my latest journey here who first showed up the morning of September 11, 2001, when I arrived in a hurry from New York City:

“Who are you, Jack? Who are you?”

He simply must be someone sent from who knows where.

Enter to win a copy of Margaret’s book by leaving a comment by midnight EST, Friday, February 25 about an act of bravery in your life, whether of the quiet, everyday sort, or the leaping-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound variety. One winner will be chosen at random.

Update: And the winner is Jackie of Devour This! Thank you to everyone who entered. I think I speak for all us when I say what a brave, inspiring bunch!

I fell in love with these Valentine’s Day garlands made from old copies of Pride and Prejudice when I saw them on A Rambling Fancy and vowed to craft my own. But then I realized I’d need a cool hole punch and to haul out the sewing machine, and suddenly I just knew this wasn’t going to happen by the 14th. Why not just feature them and the marvelously crafty Christine and then just tell you where––if you’re feeling a little lazy like me––you can buy them?

What inspires you to create, to write, to live well?

Creativity has always been a part of my life and I can’t imagine living any other way. Surrounding myself (both offline and on) with an eclectic group of artists and creative friends is my greatest source of inspiration. They help me think differently and approach ideas in a new way. My brother constantly challenges to me to “just do it”. So often I think we creative types can get hung up on the process or we have so many ideas rolling around in our head it can be hard to focus on one project and follow through with it to the end (well, at least that’s how it is for me). Sometimes we need to “Nike it up”—who cares if it’s been done before or if it won’t come out perfect. Whether it involves taking a piece of fabric and fashioning it into a piece of clothing that suits me just right, recycling old and abused books into wall decor that brightens my day every time I look at it or finding the right words to communicate an idea or story I hope others will connect with, it’s important to just do it.

Continue reading “Pride and Prejudice Valentine Garland” »

People who love Halloween are a very particular breed. There is no limit to the costumes, wigs, decorations, sacks of candy and scare tactics that they will employ for a frighteningly good time. And having been on the receiving end of a few inflatable bloody legs, I know what I’m talking about. DIY-loving Halloweeners will go nuts for my pal Alicia Kachmar‘s book, Witch Craft, filled with twenty-five spooky projects, like graveyard cupcakes and a felted Dracula candy bowl. To enter to win your free copy, leave a comment about your favorite Halloween costume ever by Friday, October 22 at midnight EST. Boo!

Update 10/25: The winner is Mary Liz! Thanks to all for entering––what a delightful reading this comment thread made!

Regulars around here will know how I feel about Sara Rose. She is funny and wise and tells stories that break our hearts sometimes. But the thing that kills me over and over, what keeps me in constant state of how-does-she-do-it?, is watching her careen through life with two kids, unflappable optimism, a hot pink manicure and a parade of baked goods in her wake. When I asked her to write a guest post, I had no idea what it would be. So it is a bit sheepishly that I accept this complimentary write-up, but with complete pride and certainty that I say thank you, Sara Rose. I’m not the only one around here whose life you’ve changed for the better.

Wow, I feel so weird to be here writing as a guest!  I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be brave enough to make friends with utterly cool girl, Sarah, nor be writing about her birthday!  I would say I started “creeping” or “lurking” on her blog until one day I got bold enough to leave a comment.  What we have here is a community so warm and welcoming, I never looked back.  I feel, even though I don’t know y’all, each and every one of you is someone I would WANT to know, given the chance.

Anyways, a year ago, Sarah was planning her wedding and feeling dismal abut all the pressure.  So, I got my nerves up and wrote her an email about how weddings should NOT conform to “everyone else’s expectations” but SHOULD be the start of a marriage and how you and your lovely betrothed want that marriage to look.  We became fast penpals from there, which is the irony of the internet.  One day, you’re this loner hippie mom from South Dakota and the next, you’ve got this way cool friend in New York.

I feel the same way about birthdays as I do about weddings.  I want to celebrate them and I want to help the person celebrate being ALIVE, in every sense of that word.  As we head towards the big 3-0, it’s just so easy to get bogged down by the insecurities and the negatives.  A few months ago, I was feeling that too, so I took on some projects to get some of that “meaning” I wanted my life to have before the third decade hit.

In truth, my life looks nothing like what my 18-year-old brain had pictured a decade ago, but I am glad of that.  I am a firm believer in what comes around, goes around and for some reason, I am more than okay with that except for one tiny little detail.  My life had become an insane zoo and my mind spent hours whirling around like a devilish dervish, flirting with catastrophe, all while wearing big earrings.

Enter PoP Sarah.  When I began reading her, it was this gentle reminder for me to stop. Just STOP. Then go forth a bit more calmy, collectedly, and also a bit more fabulously.  Funny thing is that I started reading her blog on my 25th birthday and now I am heading towards 28 this year!  So in honor of our tentative new friendship last year, I sent her a birthday card with a bacon bra on it.  (That’s just how I roll, yo.)

This year I decided to make her something. So, in honor of her new marriage and our co-bliss in all things domestic, I decided to knit her pot holders in aqua and red.  Little did I know I was going to suffer a HUGE setback this week and accidentally knit half of one potholder in the WRONG pattern.  I was knitting these cool Aries potholders but apparently I had flipped a page too many and suddenly my pattern started looking insane.  In a dead panic I texted her because I was going to send them to her Wednesday.  She said, with her usual graceful aplomb, “Whenever!  I’m just so honored to be getting something!”

So I reknitted the one and have the other half finished and, umm, Happy Belated Birthday, hun!  I am a quirky little she-devil at best bumbling through life, so it should be no surprise that I messed up insanely. I should mention why I started to knit.  When I was coming to 27, I was hugely prego with my son and looking for ways to fill my days with a bit more “me” time and “meaningful silence.” Little did I know that knitting would become more meditative to me, than, well, meditating.  Considering I author several blogs, write freelance for a zillion teeny things, am a stay-at-home-mother, and home school like the hippity dippity that I am, you can probably see where knitting fell into place.

PoP Sarah has become one of my closest penpals and a treasured voice in my heart.  While I cannot get her gift to her on time, I can say with certainty that all the gifts she has given me have been everything I needed and more.  Happy Birthday, my dear penpal.  You are a soul sister.

xoxo-

Sara Rose

Here’s something you might not know about me (or which, actually, might be painfully obvious): I am fascinated by the mundane, everyday details of people’s lives. This is an interest that’s come in handy as my friends have scattered far and wide; it brings me a lot of delight to be able to construct their daily routines from all my questions. There is no detail that is too quotidian for my survey: “What time do you wake up? Do you bring your lunch to work? Do you read on the subway? What do you do in the evenings?” And on and on. I know that Katie, for example, keeps a loaf of great country bread in the freezer, pops a slice in the toaster, slathers it with rich, European butter she keeps wrapped in wax paper and then sits at her kitchen counter sipping tea before work each morning. People love talking about themselves, so I find that, though perhaps not as scintillating as an excavation of their deepest darkest secrets, people are happy to share how they spend their day to day.

It only became clear to me in the past few years that the reason I love these question and answer sessions is because I’m trying to figure out how other people make it work. How they create rituals out of the day in, day out that bring meaning or pleasure or both. How they fill their days in a way that suits them. How they pass the time without letting it waste away.

So it only follows that when I stumbled across Ali Edwards amazing scrapbooking blog awhile back, I fell in love with her “Week in the Life” project. For one week, you document your life. Receipts from dinner. Pictures of your trip to the doctor. Scribbles about the fight you’re in with a friend and the way the morning sun looks in your living room. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Ali sets the creative bar high with pretty templates and enviable organization; I know I can’t do that. But I can take pictures of the ordinary day-to-day of my life. And at the end of the week, I can print them out and put them together in a book for posterity. Or just pile them in a folder on the desktop. And really, whether you make it an arts and crafts project or a simple exercise in awareness, it doesn’t really matter; the gem of the idea is still there.

Don’t you love the idea that among our pictures of graduation, vacations, births and birthdays, there could also be a chronicle of the everyday? Our blogs, you could say, capture this. But blogs are such an idealized version of life (and that’s one reason we love them). I rearrange the junk on the kitchen counter so it’s out of frame, and Photoshop out the stains on the table. But what about the way we really live? The coffee, the laptop, the trip to the post office, the dinner on the coffee table. Because the way we spend our days is the way we live our lives. And though it seems messy and imperfect now (and will, I have a hunch, continue to feel messy and imperfect for a long, long while), some day I will want to remember the last week I was 27. The way my hair fell across my forehead, and the purple tulips that were losing their petals on the kitchen table.

So here it is: a suggestion to join in and document your own week, in whatever form works best for you — pictures on your cell phone, polaroids, whatever. Some day someone’s going to ask you, “What were you like way back when?” And there it will be: the tiny, little details of the every day life you lived.

There are some blogs that, in just from reading them, you feel like you’re able to take a step toward living your best life. For me, Small Notebook is definitely one of those. Rachel Meeks’ blog is inspiring without being aspirational; her advice never feels pat or oversimplified, but her focus on small, doable bits as well as the messy realities of real life keeps her blog firmly planted on the ground and leaves you feeling that simplifying, organizing, living well — whatever it is you’re after — you can do it.

Tell us about Small Notebook. What are the biggest challenges? The biggest surprise?

I’ve always loved journals that aren’t the “Dear Diary” sort. Small Notebook started as my online journal for my home life. I’m still surprised when I look and see that I have more than thirty readers. Of course it’s hard to manage the time it demands (and oh my, the email! I had no idea), but I’ve been learning how to craft articles in my head while I wash the dishes and ride in the car.

What’s your personal philosophy for achieving simplicity in daily life?

I just don’t want to own a bunch of stuff. I was trying to think of something better to say, but that’s really it. I don’t want my husband and I to spend our lives working for money to buy it. I don’t want to spend all my time taking care of it. I don’t want to limit our opportunities and experiences because we’re bogged down by it. It doesn’t satisfy me at all.

Simplicity isn’t our goal, but it does let me be free to think and dream, and to spend time with others.

My husband and I have a strategy: “less, but better,” and it helps us make better choices. We don’t own a lot of stuff, but we want the things we do have to be well-made. We don’t go out to eat very often, but when we do we’ll choose a nice place with good food. Then we really enjoy it.

It’s just like with food. I’d rather have one bag of ripe cherries in July than a dozen frozen party pizzas.

Continue reading “POP Profile: Rachel Meeks of Small Notebook” »

Relationships — and not just romantic ones, but with our friends, too — open us up to all sorts of delights we might not have known otherwise. Take me, for example: Before Sebastian and I started dating, I thought I didn’t like Chinese food, had never listened to David Bowie, and thought the internet was for buying shoes. And now look at me — it’s a rare fortnight that doesn’t see me ordering fried pork dumplings to my door, I listen to Ziggy Stardust when I’m washing the dishes and folding laundry, and I don’t think we need to go to into how much the internet has shaped the trajectory of my little life.

Also B.S. (Before Sebastian) I had never heard of poutine, but he talked about it like it was the holy grail of foods. (Perhaps it was made more fantastic by its relative unavailability to us.) So, when work took me to Montreal several years ago, my beloved came with me. While I sat at a book conference, he stay locked in our hotel room and built the original Pink of Perfection and dreamed about eating poutine for dinner. Finally, one night, I rescued him from his hard work and we took the metro to another part of town. We found ourselves at a diner and, intimidated by the locals, managed to choke out an order for poutine and two Molsons. The poutine was just as so-wrong-it’s-right delicious as Sebastian had led me believe. And now, if you can believe it, there’s a burger joint a mere 10 blocks away that serves up this Quebecois delicacy.

But to learn the ropes of the real deal, I figured we needed a bona fide Montrealer to give us the scoop. Cat Taylor from Montreal is Chic tells us everything you ever wanted to know:

Back in the late 1950s when poutine is said to have been conceived in Quebec, no one could foresee the foray this unique product would make into some of the most sought-after dining establishments worldwide. The trend has spread past the North American shores to Europe and the myths and legend of the poutine story continue to grow.

But I’m here to give the facts.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Poutine” »