Garlic dip for the knifeless

Newish on the pottery scene are garlic-enabling dip bowls. Have you seen these? You take an amateur potter, like myself, who can only throw a bowl 4 inches high. Then you accidentally score or indent the bottom of the bowl. Whoops! Then you keep going and say - HEY, scrape garlic cloves on the bottom of this bowl and infuse a dip with garlic sans metal instrument!

Low and behold you have a bowl for your garlic-containing dips, which covers a good 90% of dips allowed in any respectable household.

I saw one of these at a craft fair a few years ago and then promptly made my own. So Easy!! Then I saw you can get them through Etsy for highway robbery.

Behold.

This is mine. The puke green with black blobby glaze looks way better with a dip inside, for sure.

What a decent potter, good glaze, and composed photography can get you.

Theory of love

Lately I've been feeling random, nostalgic pangs of long lost feelings. Weird reminiscences of strong emotions I haven't felt in a while. For example, I suddenly remember exactly what it feels like when your crush walks past the doorway of your American History classroom every day at 1:25 pm like clockwork, just to tease you with another glimpse. And I remember the feeling of the days when 1:26, and 1:32, and 1:47 come and go without that special second.

What's with these flashbacks? Maybe I had a small stroke.

The crush memory reminded me of a theory of mine that needs to be shared so that I can have some claim to the future Nobel - and this is my theory of love.

In high school chemistry we learn about the different types of attractive forces that govern bonding. I won't quiz you on these today, but you may recall words like electrostatic forces, covalent bonds, Van der Waals whatever, and whathaveyou. Now, remember how much your energy goes up when you're near your crush? You're electric. And then you touch, and it feel right. The overlap is calming. It only needs to be your shoulders touching in the auditorium, or brushing up against each other in the lunch line. It's the highlight of your day. It's a bond. When you're apart it feels wrong, You're agitated. An anti-bonding state! When you're far apart too long, you forget about each other.

People are just like molecules. Really, really, really big molecules. My theory is that we can't help whom we love, just like how atoms have no say in which atoms they bond to and which they don't mesh with. I forced myself to have a boyfriend one time and I almost threw up the first and only time we kissed. There's something in our bodies, something chemical, dictating our attraction to others (and sometimes withholding it). Maybe it's the magnetism from the iron in our blood. Surely our hormones have something to do with it. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I know, in a way, we're hopeless. We have the ability to make wise decisions - like staying away from those that we're CRAZY drawn to when we know overlapping with them will cause a fire, but the attraction is nonetheless involuntary.

Now, I know a few people in arranged marriages and they say that the love grows. I believe it does, because at some point mind over matter is also real.

But when your matter literally pulls you to your crush's matter... the full explanation isn't in textbooks just yet.

Clickity clicks

Another Friday is here and that means I owe you a blog post but I've had two hours of sleep and not much more than 5 hours per night for a while - so do you know what that means?

This wondrous shade of calendula has my mind a whirl.

Round-up time! I notice a lot of bloggers post lists of links on Fridays. It's a "thing" they do. I used to think it was because they wanted the attention from where they linked to. Websites like this one can tell me where traffic is coming from, and let's say 1,000 readers from Cup of Jo click on a link that she posts, well that company/blog may consider advertising/promoting Cup of Jo in return. 

But now I just think it's because of lack of sleep.

Here's a short list of my recent clickity clicks:

I spent 60 bucks on a throw blanket and I'm not even ashamed. I needed it, you see. That's why it's back in its box, awaiting the right room to live in.

Although the Jimmy Fallon/Roots version of Blurred Lines is pretty cute, this is my song of the summer.

And this song, not my typical flow, has my attention.

When next I'm ready for an adventure in the kitchen, these bagels, using whole wheat flour, are on deck.

Smoothie talk (I want to eat sooo much more like her). I am never looking back from adding nut butters to my smoothies.

If I could find a nude bra that I loved, I'd want to wear this shirt every day.

I'm an avid reader of the blog Dinner: A Love Story. Jenny and Andy lead a life that is strikingly similar to my daydreams. Here's a good rant DALS whipped out back in the day.

It's rather amazing what this Jenny can do with spray paint.

If you are in a city that gets a Renegade Craft fair, I recommend it to the fullest! Who wants to go with me to the one in Chicago in early September? I think one of you might...

Be my guest

I've always wanted the extra room to have a guest bedroom. A room clean and ready at all times for hospitality. The door always shut --- no cats allowed! But inside, a room is waiting to hug you. Think of it. Your buds can crash at anytime. Late night parties can become Bloody Mary brunches. Out of town friends are in mini-heaven. And best of all, you've got a room where you can craft a mini-home.

I've been a sleepover guest as far back as I can remember. There's no way to explain that sentence without sounding a little trashy, but my point it this --  I know what a guest (like me anyway) wants to feel in a guest room. Let's see if this does the trick...

This 1950's map of Chicago (found for 5 bucks in downtown Chicago in the 2010's) was the inspiration for the room's color palette, which means it was the inspiration for the room's everything. It's a nice change of vantage to see Chicago from the east.

I love the colors and the fonts on this poster. Shots like these can be artistically blown up for cheap art, yes? I think so. If there's extra wall space, that is.

This being a small room, and thus not needing much paint, why not try one of these expensive but "worth it" high depth colors from Farrow & Ball? These colors are said to... how to describe... have a lot going on. In different lights and in different times of day and with different things around them, they look different. Awesome, huh?! Two gallons is... holy fuck, $185! French gray (*) catches my eye and is shown below looking pretty good next to yellow (which the poster has).

This would be really useful.

If this color green (**) managed to not clash with the blue and green in my Chicago poster, I would try to use it at all costs - especially if my guest room had a unique alcove (re-modified closet?) or an adjacent bathroom.

I mean, just look at that awesome Arsenic.

Although if you have an alcove, you may be tempted to indulge in a Farrow & Ball wallpaper... for over double the price of a gallon of paint. Therefore I'd buy a gallon of the paint (come here, Arsenic!) and then do a stencil of some kind. (Shut up, of course I'd get around to it.)

Ahhh, here is where the furniture comes in. First and foremost, a nicely polished vintage valet stand. Everyone needs a place to throw their worn but not dirty traveler clothing. Other than this, I'd have a large chest filled with clean blankets and a small vanity table with chair and well lit mirror. The bed would have a simple wood frame, stained or painted black to match the poster colors. Both sides of the bed would have a reading lamp, nightstand, and outlet access for charging.

I know what you're thinking. Where's the f-in color? COLOR NEEDED!!!! And achieved through fresh flowers placed throughout the room in a plain(ish) set of matching vases. Stupendous! [Ed. note - Getting bright flower colors in PowerPoint was to some extent impossible. I could really pay to learn how to use better graphic design software, hmmm... What do people use for magazine and blog spreads?]

House red

What's your house red?

Mine is La Finca Malbec from Trader Joe's. It's $3.99 a bottle (major steal!) and I typically throw one in my hand basket at the end of every TJs trip. Well, I guess it's correct to say I have one in my hand when I check out at TJs because my hand basket it full and digging ferociously into my forearm by the time I get to the wine aisle.

I know some of you live in states or countries where you can't get wine at your local grocery store and let me emphatically say THAT FUCKING SUCKS.

Array of empty bottles from my less decisive days. Velvet Moon Cab was my former house red (Cabs and me get along famously), but luckily the La Finca Malbec replaced it with 2 dollars to spare!

When one of my girlfriends gets here in a week we're going to do a blind taste test to help me land a house white. I'll be selecting bottles in the 3-7 dollar range from TJs - primarily Pinot Grigios and Chardonnays. Any recommendations?

[what the Google machine brings up when you search for La Finca Malbec] And on that note, how are people so free about having their physical persona on the internet? I think I'm too old for that mentality, coming of age without the internet and all. Hats off to the free!