mushroomy

I'm so, so tired right now and still not done with all the work for tomorrow's classes, but it's been a shamefully long time since I posted so I'll share with you these photos. These are some cakes I came upon earlier, via Oh Joy!

Rebecca Thuss used to be the style director at Martha Stewart Weddings and editor of Blueprint and she has a gorgeous portfolio of dessert ideas and styling. I fell in love with these two mushroom/woodland cakes as possibilities for a wedding cake design. Now if only I could talk my mom into going along with it...


Adorable! All those little meringue mushrooms...
I might like this one even better... the ferns would carry on my colors.



Anyway, that's it for tonight. This may be a dry couple weeks, what with final exams and final goodbyes and such. Hard, but good. I'm just so ready for a summer of fun in Baltimore!

brilliant color for a grey afternoon

1. a perfect window, 2. The Tangerine Guy, 3. Atai be'na3na3, 4. red bike on yellow wall, 5. door / night, 6. Spice Market, 7. Untitled, 8. jardin Majorelle_Marrakech, 9. Mellon

Can you tell I'm a little obsessed with yellow and the Middle East right now? We're studying Islam in World Religions, too! It all fits together...

(all images via Flickr)

it's harder than it looks...

...to photograph Polaroids.

So please forgive my very first feeble attempts. On the bright side, though, can I get three cheers for my sweet new Polaroid camera?? -- $1 at the Arkadelphia thrift shop and a birthday gift to boot!


My ex-roomie and very good friend Valerie was in town this weekend and spent the night Saturday night. It was lots of fun catching up and hanging out. I miss her... but she's going to be one of my bridesmaids, so we talk lots and will hopefully see each other a few more times this year.


I'm obsessed with mushrooms. I got these little guys at Target in... February? Something like that. They're little ceramic 'shrooms on stakes so you can stand them in the ground or in pots and I just love them. I don't like the shadow in this polaroid, but it was one of my very first, tentative shots with the new camera.


An attempt to capture the beautiful afternoon light filtering through my bottle collection.



And finally, here's a shot of my "green wall" of art with my new print from groundwork! Isn't it great? I can't wait to expand my Etsy print collection. The two smaller frames contain some pretty scrapbook paper (I know, I know... my art collection is in its infancy still!) and the photograph is by Irene Suchocki and wass a gift from my awesome fiance.

God Save the Queen

Happy 82nd birthday, Queen Elizabeth.

(thanks for indulging the huge Anglophile, guys.)

30 Things

Quite a while back, I signed up on this website, 43 Things. The idea is to come up with goals for yourself, things you want to do, see, or accomplish and check them off gradually. While I haven't been on in a long, long time, I stumbled across my account today and thought I'd share the current list of yet-to-be-accomplished goals for my life. (in no particular order...)

1.	stop procrastinating.
	2.	sleep under the stars
	3.	see more live music
	4.	resume journaling
	5.	Own a chocolate lab
	6.	Find out the optimum number of sleep hours in a night for me and sleep them
	7.	play outside
	8.	Be a better friend
	9.	start practicing my mandolin more
	10.	finish college and grad school
	11.	get married
	12.	Learn to tango
	13.	learn Arabic
	14.	be a missionary
	15.	adopt a child
	16.	backpack through Europe with the love of my life, staying only in hostels so we can afford to explore everything.
	17.	pray without ceasing
	18.	go to a Nickel Creek concert
	19.	visit every continent
	20.	buy a macBook
	21.	knit a sweater
	22.	Escape America
	23.	Fill the yard with Calvin and Hobbes inspired snow people, demons, and/or mutants
	24.	pull a prank involving 100 lawn gnomes
	25.	Learn to tie a maraschino cherry stem with my tongue
	26.	go bungee jumping
	27.	Be the world's best mommy
	28.	recite a Shakespeare soliloquy in front of lots of people who aren't expecting it (like in an airport terminal, or in a movie theatre line)
	29.	write more letters
	30.	Find, buy, and wear my own signature fragrance.

for some reason, I really miss Africa tonight

I miss waking up to beautiful sunrises through the leaves and eating our daily porridge out in the fresh air and, yes, even making those darn peanut butter sandwiches for lunch every day and all of the endless washing up.


I miss the banana trees and walking to the irrigation with Goshi. I miss the strong sunlight on my back.

I miss playing Uno with little Raymond.


I miss the strange, beautiful animals.


I miss walking to the river in the evening to say hello to the children fetching water. I miss playing soccer with them and learning Tonga rhymes and dancing and singing.


I miss feeling like I was really helping people and enduring hard surroundings for the sake of these people that I came to love and care for.


I miss Jesse and Erica and all the fun, insane, hard, amazing times we had together.


I miss sitting and watching the sun sink behind our very own baobab, a beautiful, ever-changing blaze of color. I miss watching for elephants to come down the mountain. I miss sharing and singing around the single light each evening.

I'll be back... someday.

God is not a Magic 8-Ball

This article made me really stop and think...

"In my life today what ultimately matters is not whether I get the right job, or pursue the right girl, or buy the right house. Certainly these are all extremely important. But what ultimately

matters is pleasing the God who saved me. My desires and plans and hopes and dreams must be shaped by the God that created and saved me. Charles Spurgeon writes in his commentary on the Psalms:

"Men who delight in God desire or ask for nothing but what will please God; hence it is safe to give them carte blanche. Their will is subdued to God's will, and now they may have what they will."

I realized that during the course of my decision I'd started spending less time reading God's Word, less time praying, less time delighting in God. And the time I did spend in Scripture was about "finding an answer," and not primarily about communing with God."

living color

I like anemones...
parrots are pretty, too.

mushy weekend

The end of last week got sort of crazy... oops. Less than a week and I'm already falling into bad blogging habits. I do have a sort of acceptable excuse in Matthew coming for the weekend. We had a lovely time and -- finally! -- lovely weather, suitable for long walks around the downtown. After I picked him up Friday, he sweetly endured a couple hours of shopping with me and took me to lunch at Star of India in Little Rock. We laid low most of the weekend and Matthew introduced me to LOST. I started Friday and am already up to episode 15...! My grades may be in peril at this rate. So we had a wonderful time and I had to drive him back to the airport this afternoon and now I'm faintly gloomy and missing him alot. Summer in Baltimore can't get here fast enough!

Anyway, more posts, pictures, and fun later this week -- I need to finish my Bioethics homework right now.

aaannnddd...

the rain is back, coming down harder than ever. It sounds like a million horses running over the roof. (So much for a romantic simile.) We get it: spring = nonstop rain... Can we move onto summer now? I'll never be one of those romantic types that loves the rain -- it just makes me kind of moody and stir-crazy.

I'm in the coffee shop tonight, tapping on my laptop in between mixing up white chocolate mochas for the few brave souls who've ventured out in the downpour. Being a barista used to be sort of glamorous and fun, but these days I long to have a job that's more meaningful and engaging than this. I don't think I'll miss the service industry one bit.

Right now, I'd rather be...

...in Santorini, walking down shadowy blue alleyways between whitewashed villas.

...riding a camel in Tunisia. (photo by Christopher Groenhout/Lonely Planet Images)

...skiing in Courchevel. (Christophe Margot for The New York Times)

Anywhere but here, really.

etsy finds of the week

Surfing Etsy is one of my most trusty methods of procrastination, so I'm going to try to put this somewhat expensive habit to good use and each week feature some of the prettiest things I've run across.

This crochet-and-mother-of-pearl necklace from Dainty Crochet by Aly is so unique and fun. She has lots of different patterns and color combinations.


I'm a little obsessed with ceramics at the moment and especially fond of this bowl/sculpture/thing from C-Urchin Ceramics.

I just ordered this Ferns giclee print from Groundwork last week. I can't wait for it to get here!


I'm terrible about writing to friends, but it would be a little easier with notecards this lovely... (Linen Note Flats from Dancing Girl Press)



And finally, I think these dreamcatchers by Nest Pretty Things are so cute and spring-timey. They remind me a little bit of Alicia's cagelets...

And that concludes our Etsy roundup. I need to finish some homework, do my pilates, and get to bed so I'll be somewhat lucid for my art test in the morning. 'night.

corners of my apartment

Some billy buttons I've had around for awhile in their new home on the windowsill. They are the cutest, sunniest little flowers.


Little vases I got at Ikea the last time I was in Baltimore and Matthew sweetly humored me with yet another trip to that glorious place.

The bathroom window. Sorry, bad light.


Closeup of my "window treatment" in the bathroom -- a Kenyan scarf I bought a few years ago.

dogwood flowers along the sidewalk

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dogwood flowers along the sidewalk, originally uploaded by queen_of_irony.

sunny saturday

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sprouting herbs, originally uploaded by queen_of_irony.

Finally, after a week of depressing rain, the sun is back! It's a good day for walking around enjoying the flowering trees, watching more Gilmore Girls, and cleaning the apartment. I need to complete my application for the Baltimore lab position, too.

I was talking to my mom yesterday and she asked me (as always) if I'd made any more progress in wedding planning. It's just too much to think about that and school and finding a job at the same time, all while trying to get enough rest to kick this mono once and for all.

I'm starting to get a sort of idea for the feel and colors I want, though. After thinking about a Moroccan theme (a la Maryam) and rejecting themes in general as sort of unworkable, I'm looking at possible colors. Enter Snippet & Ink... one of the dozens of cute wedding blogs I've discovered, but unique for its amazing color and theme inspiration boards. I'm thinking black and green and ivory at the moment... we'll see.

hi there.

hello blogging world. It's been a substantial while since my xanga petered out. Not having a blog was nice, but I missed it all the same. Partly the writing, but mostly the community and sense of connection. In the past year, I've begun silently flitting around the edge of a new blogging community -- a fun, exciting one full of artists and designers and beautiful, creative people and gorgeous pictures. But I wasn't really a member since I had nowhere to reciprocate with my own inspirations, projects, and Etsy favorites. Not anymore! I'm bellyflopping back into blogging and excited about the start of something new. A new blogging era, if you will. Here we go.