This Friday

I am loving my new J.Crew rhinestone necklace and would like to wear it with everything please and thank you; this Himalayan Trading Post 'Fleur de Lys' Candle - it smells magical and it's beautiful and you can get it in DC at GoodWood;  This gorgeous painting by  Lulie Wallace that wants to hang over my couch; and these Honeyed Sunreaders that are on super sale right now.  I also love strawberries and sleeping in.  I might just eat strawberries and read in bed all weekend.

Queen

This is the best thing I have ever seen.  I luff the Queen.

Happy Monday.

Rabbit

This magical night light bunny only costs £4.95 and I think we should all hurry out now and bring home wee bunnies for bedsides and bookshelves and bathrooms.  To light the night.

Scent



I am a terrible perfume wearer. It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t keep buying it. In high school I was fairly committed to Clinique Happy (weren’t we all) and my freshman year of college I bought and religiously wore Lacoste Pink. By sophomore year I’d mellowed and I bought Burberry Brit Red (remember the Rachel Weisz ads?) for the winter because it smells like sweaters and Chanel Chance to wear in the summer because it smells like fresh air. During study abroad I coveted Agent Provocateur’s perfume so much it was unhealthy. I used to drag Mary into the basement of the department store downtown and make her wait while I sprayed it all over myself. I loved that all my scarves smelled like it and finally, right before we left, I broke down and bought it even though it cost more than I should have possibly spent. Somehow it wasn’t quite so magical in the US. I still wear it occasionally.

My youngest sister got Tocca’s Cleopatra from a friend for Christmas and it’s my current obsession. I am swinging by the cosmetics shop on my lunch break to smell all the Tocca varieties to see which one I want when I finally break down and buy it. I spent a lot of time trying not to be annoyed by life on student loans and secretarial salary but when I think about those trips to spray Agent Provocateur all over my pashminas in York I’m glad to be coveting and waiting and saving up my wee pennies to buy something that smells so lovely and rich. I’m going to practice wearing it regularly. A spritz on the way out the door. By the time I get my Tocca I’ll be ready.

Waltzing Matilda

Ardtornish House in the daylight

The Holospeced congregation, that blond befeathered head in the middle front is me.

So my photos of Tilly and Ben's gorgeous wedding are a bit of a blur fest (low lighting and crap camera be damned). There were holospex that made each point of light a heart and all the guests wore them and sang Love Me Tender, there was a five tier wedding cake made not of cake but of cheese with loads of oak cakes and chutney made by my aunt (okay, the mother of the bride) and the caleigh band got too drunk to come play all except the accordion who did a bang up job all on his own despite his apparent intoxication. We danced and sang and drank and drank and ate loads of cheese and chutney and when the night went on a bit long a few of the bridesmaids changed into our boots and the night ended with us sitting on the couch posing for an Italian photographer named Simone. Glams all round. Gorgeous.

Tilly let me decorate her cake which felt a big reckless, Ben and she cut the cake with a sword of her dad's

The aforementioned dad swirling our cousin's wife around

David and I pretending to be in Brideshead Revisited for the sake of an Italian photog.

I think we were on different pages as to what that means.

David Gets Pants

Mini David that is. The tie is just a stand in until we decide what colour ties the real guys will be wearing. Fruit cake here they come.

Sleepy Bride

Normal people go on diets and star rubbing De La Mere into their skin like no one's business and they take hydration RATHER seriously. No me. I have basically stopped showering, an extra half hour of sleep will always beat a shower. My legs are insanely hairy, I am breaking out and I am subsisting primarily on Pop-Tarts and salt and vinegar chips. Why am I blogging if I am too busy/sleepy to shower? Because I can do it from bed, if I could shower from bed, I might do that.

In the meantime, I made this peg doll Hannah. It's going to be on a mini Scottish fruit cake. I KNOW. I have a half made peg doll David but suits are a mite harder to make than wedding dresses for peg people.

This is what love is

Today was my third day at my new job and my first day in a six week training course which will teach me to be the girl who calls you when you use your credit card in Spain and says "excuse me, are you in Spain? No? Alright, your card's been nicked." So not a good day. And then there was taxes. Which were not as nice as we might have liked them to be. And then there was a meeting with a caterer who talked to be about table skirts and risers stupid stupid drapings and flowings and faffings with fabric and I just wanted to DIE. And I'm surfing the crimson wave (thank you Alicia). David just called me from the liquor store and told me he's picking me up a milkshake and fries and do I want chicken nuggets too? Because love is beer and drive-thru McDonalds for your whiny girlfriend. Yep. It is. I know you wondered.

Inspiration Board: Our Barn Wedding

This is the inspiration for our barn wedding. Yum.

Rings

So these rock the socks off my feet.

I Die

These kill me. I want them for my little Scottish fruit cake. Screw grooms cake, we're having an US cake and then a wee Bride's Cake. When I was little my Mummie made me whole sets of clothespin dolls, all the characters from Peter Pan (Peter, Wendy, Michael, John, Smee, Captain Hook, various lost boys, Mermaids) and all the characters from The Little Mermaid (ALL OF THEM) it was fantastic. I kind of want my Mummie to make me a tiny David and a tiny Hannah for the top of my Scottish cake. Maybe she has time? How do they make those fantastic big heads? That's what I wants to know.

These ones are not made by Mum, these are gorgeously and expensively made by The Small Object

Guestbook, Photobook

This photobook-guestbook idea was a really good one. I found a copy of my great-great-great grandmother's wedding portrait from 1866. Damn. Reading my great-grandmother's wedding announcement from the New York Times in 1911 and my parents from 1979 has been a very cool experience. Now to go through David's family photos...

Happy Friday

This has been a rough week. A week with new jobs and scary people at those new jobs who lear and make us feel not safe. And there has been running around and stressing out and registering (which was bad, like really really bad but more on that later) and there has been another job interview and and a family dinner and a lot of very very serious conversations about The Future and Where We Are Going (figuratively and literally) and lots of job hunting and a fair amount of crying. But today the sun was shining a lot and I drove around with the sunroof open and some Cyndi on super loud and I came home to a lovely lovely big white box with a lovely lovely big white dress in which fits pretty well and just needs a minor minor alteration. And tomorrow I'm going for a walk in the park with David and maybe my blue windbreaker instead of a real coat. I think that maybe this necklace would be the best thing to wear with my wedding dress. Kate Szabone made my engagement ring and I think that the necklace would be lovely.

Hey guys,

My wedding dress came. Eeeeep.

Having a Coke With You

I think Joanna Goddard had it read at her wedding (maybe someone else?) and I think it's super lovely. I kinda wish we didn't have to have bible readings at mass so we could have this.

Having a Coke with you

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

-Frank O'Hara

Grandma

Isn't she gorge? I wonder if it's possible to get a tiny bit of that veil made into a banging birdcage?

Dress Solved

The first dress I tried on was luminous. I had to think about it and adjust my expectations (I thought I was going to wear something simple, and boring, and not particularly fun. Ultimately I'm not that fun) but I love it. And my mummie and daddy are getting it for me. Which sounds annoying and awful. But it is a super duper great and kind thing of them to do, because it looks stellar, and it feels stellar and I probably won't even have to wear spanx in it. So clearly perfect dress. If I wasn't pretty much madly in love with MY DRESS I would go back to Georgetown to try on this lovely J Crew shenanigan, which is also sweet and summery and light but ultimately not as fun or cool as MINE.

Chalkboard: I Like

Gorgeous.

Diamondy Shiny Pretty Things

Kate Szabone has shipped my engagement ring. It looks like this. Dearest Darling David had the good sense to let me pick it out so we and Madame Szabone together talked about what we wanted and this luminousity is what we got. I'm excited. I want it to arrive and live on my finger and make it pretty.