My dream hair.

Just a little something to keep me focused as the warm months creep up and tempt me to cut my hair.

voilà!

Sunday went exactly the way I hoped it would. I got up around 9:30, which is really unusual for me. We're up before then on weekdays, so when our weekends roll around, we've been known to sleep in past noon. I caught up on some much needed housework like dusting and straightening- all those little things you overlook after a long day and all you can think about is a tub of chocolate ice cream and some re-runs of Sex and the City.

By noon, the housework was done, so Trent and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful sunny day and rode our bikes over to Liberty Park. We whooshed by all the joggers, rollerbladers and dog walkers that litter the park on Sunday afternoons and braved the traffic by riding in the bike lanes along 5th East.

By 1:30, we were home and I got straight to work on the nights dinner. I invited us over to my parents for a corned beef and cabbage dinner with homemade rolls- made my moi. I'd never made either before, but I was confident in my abilities. I cracked my knuckles and got to work.

It was easy enough. The corned beef was pre-cured and came with its own spice packet, so I put it in a crock pot with half a bottle of beer, some water and chopped potatoes. The recipe asked that I bring the water to a boil and then simmer, so I figured I'd heat it up on the stove and finish off the bottle of Hop Rising. I heard a burst and turned to find that the inch thick ceramic crock pot bowl had shattered over the stove. Murky spiced water filled our stove top and dripped beneath the coils.

I stared in shock.

Trent was immediately by my side, doing potential damage control, but I stayed unusually calm. I realized there was nothing I could do. Trent wiped up the sopping mess and I carefully scooped the remnants of our dinner out from the shards and transfered it to my dutch oven. Ten minutes later it was all but forgotten. I think it was the beer.

There's something so terrifying about bread recipes that don't involve a machine that does it for you. No one can tell you exactly why. It may be the time (Two hours for rising), it could be the kneading (Eight minutes on a floured surface), or the crazy mess (Flour everywhere), but I muscled through it, and you know what? It wasn't that bad.

Dinner ended up being absolutely fantastic, and my family was full of compliments about the cloud-like consistency of the white dinner rolls and the melt-in-your-mouth corned beef.

voilà!

Not too shabby.

It sounds crazy, but these pictures of adorable model-y children are more inspiring than a crisp J-Crew catalog right out of our adorable mailbox.

It's so grown-up and whimsical at the same time.

Don't they look so pure? I think that's what's going on. Their amazing pureness just translates into the clothes and they immediately look one hundred times more covetable.

This is exactly what I'm going for. It's Maine meets the South of France.

I'm going to keep these looks in mind as I begin to build up my transitioning-from-winter-into-Spring wardrobe.

Vogue Enfants styled by Géraldine Saglio from here.

Lucy from Radiolab on Vimeo.

Lucy was a chimpanzee raised in captivity, who adopted a surprising number of human traits. But this proved problematic—in quite unexpected ways—when her adoptive human parents decided that Lucy should be released in the wild. This story comes from WNYC's Radiolab, which is distributed by NPR. Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich tell the story.

From This American Life, Episode 401.

This will forever go down in history as the most ridiculously lucky thrift store find of all time.

The Herman Miller/Eames Hangitall, most likely a 1970's make.

It was sitting on an almost-empty wheel cart at the D.I., and I might have overlooked it, but the colors caught my eye. My first thought was that it had to be a knockoff, but that even a knockoff would be fantastic.

Nope. The still intact original tag and hardware read HANGITALL by Charles and Ray Eames.

My heart began to pound and I looked around, paranoid that someone might actually swoop in and take it from me. I immediately called Trent.

Me: "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, Trent! I just found a Herman Miller coat hook!!!"

Trent: "That's good, right?"

After we got home, I texted Ron and sent a picture along with it. His response was- "Is that yours?!"

I told him the story of how I found it and he was incredulous, to say the least.

I had to show him.

Trent and I drove back downtown to his shop with hangitall in hand and I glowed as Ron told us that this was only the second one he had ever heard of appearing in Salt Lake. The first one had been very worse for the wear.

Complete with the tag and original hardware, this will fetch a very pretty penny should I sell it.

Needless to say I'm above and beyond cloud nine.

Blasp

Conestsi

Decoed

Henica

Kahumus

Mingsile

Chant

These are the words I've had to type into blogger to verify that I am indeed a human being who can comprehend words and their abstract groupings. Does blogger have some kind of word mashup that they've employed to some basement office worker who spends eight hours a day under fluorescent lights jumbling words for pre-comment verification?

Trent says it's probably a program.

He's probably right.

Joanna Newsom.

Looks by Juliette Hogan found via All the Mountains. I've got to find a jumper like that one. Maybe I'll get lucky at the thrift store.

I lost interest in being fashionable right out of high school, but lately I've been feeling like really expanding my wardrobe and being daring. I've just found you can't go wrong if you keep it simple and classy.

Tas-ka via Catherine.

Take a closer look at this photograph and see if you can find Waldo.

This photograph was taken in 1941 at South Fork Bridge, Gold Bridge, B.C. Canada after a flood.

Found this today and the only explanations I can think of are that a.) He's a time traveler. b.) He had crazy futuristic fashion sense or c.) He's an alien.

Is that a digital camera in his hands? And those glasses! A screen printed tee-shirt?!

I know what you're thinking. It's photoshopped, it's gotta be!

It's like a freaky photobomb.

I was telling Trent it would be like Lady Gaga having her picture taken among the locals of some po-dunk town USA, and 69 years later they'd say "She was way ahead of her time!"

God, I hope I don't live long enough to see that happen.

The original source of the photograph is here.

Listen to this while you think about it.

I've been researching Plasti Dip for a project I want to do within the next little while, and I've been brainstorming all the things that I could dip in the plastic coating. This person dipped folded paper cranes into the Plasti Dip and made ornaments and mobiles and is selling them for a lot. A can of your own dip is $10 at the hardware store, and I'm sure everyone with access to a computer also has access to some sort of how-to for folding paper cranes, so you could totally do this project on your own.

I'm sure I'm going to go crazy with the plastic coating and make all sorts knick knacks. Apartment therapy featured it as well, and this little project was ingenious.

I think it would be adorable to dip things like pine cones or acorns for display.

Pictures from Blight Design.

Major scores today at our local thrift stores. We bought a custom made Tour de France road bike for $65 that fits Trent perfectly.

I walked away with an amazing leather camera case and a creme brulee set for a total of $8. I was actually looking to buy some ramekins for making individual desserts like molten chocolate cake, so I was so psyched when I saw the dishes- and ecstatic when I saw the creme brulee torch. It needs replacement fuel, but that's like $5 at the hardware store. It's funny too, because I remember not too long ago thinking that a creme brulee torch was a kitchen tool I would likely never own because of how little I would use it and how much they cost. Is this the Universe saying I totally deserve it? Yes.

I also got a nice heavy mixing bowl with a pour spout, and a little heart shaped candy dish. At the green ant we almost talked ourselves into buying a Plycraft Eames Lounger knockoff in a caramel color for $350, but the lack of space in our living room was the deal breaker. It sucks too, because we wanted a lounger so, so badly, but it would look ridiculous stuffed in with the rest of our furniture, especially the coffee table. Total bummer.

Ron had this incredible Arabia enamel bowl in his store, but it had already been sold. It made my heart ache because I want it so badly. I've seen it around in house tours and such, and it would be an awesome display in the kitchen. He was selling it for $36, and I found another on Ebay going for $30, but I don't have the funds to justify it right now. In fact, I bought my portion of our thrift store finds today with the change in our change box. There ended up being about $14 in there, and with coinstar's fees, we got $12 back.

The worst part about it is that he got it from the D.I. for next to nothing, I'm sure. It could have been me! If only I were more diligent with my searching. I feel horrible about wanting to spend $30 on a mixing bowl, and I just may do it someday. For now I'll have to just keep an eye out for more Arabia enamel at the thrift stores.

I'm fully prepared to take the flack when I tell you that these boots cost almost a month's rent. Ugh, I know... It's just that they're the only boots that I have found that actually made me say "I have to have these!"

True story: While I was trying them on in Nordstrom, a lady about 10 feet away talking to a sales person pointed to me and said "Which boots are those?".

I took it as a sign that we were meant to be.

They literally melt into the form of my legs and make me look and feel like a secret agent/rock star/hot pirate/horse jockey/New Yorker simultaneously. I plan to slowly stow away change until I amount enough to buy them for half as much on Ebay. Hopefully by next winter.

Plus, I only need four basics to make up an entire wardrobe- fantastic ass-hugging jeans, the perfect pair of boots, an array of feather-soft white cotton tee-shirts, and a warm, well-made jacket. I deserve to spend a jaw-dropping amount of money on the basics, right?

Trent: "Why is there an empty glass bowl in the fridge?"

Me: "I just did the dishes and cleaned out the sink, I didn't want to ruin it."

As I was falling asleep last night, I thought about the concept of tiny baked clay houses and painting them, and I remembered these pictures I had saved a few years ago of something similar. I wish I could recall where I got them. These look like they are porcelain, which is infinitely fancier than baked clay, but I don't have access to a kiln, unfortunately. I wonder if there are places around here where you can rent them for a day. I imagine that somewhere in my city there are places to take pottery classes... It's always been a secret dream of mine to try my hand at it. I've been saving that dream, safely tucked away until I'm an empty nester with nothing to spend my social security check on.

Tonight, as Trent and I were in line at Whole Foods buying sushi, I glanced at the C.D. selection in front of me and saw a compilation of Radiohead's greatest hits. I picked it up and said "Let's see which songs they say are Radiohead's best..."

Our hipsterish cashier glanced up at us and said "They really aren't, I checked".

How great of you to warn me, good sir.

I felt like watching a movie last night, and Roman Holiday was the first thing that came to mind. Watching Audrey Hepburn is like taking a shot of joy and chasing it with a slice of loveliness.

I'm not here to brag or anything, but I've been told by dozens of strangers that my resemblance to Audrey Hepburn is uncanny. They can't contain the gasp when I tell them that my name is Audrey too. In fact, those words are the very first that my boyfriend Trent ever said to me at the place where we work.

Him: "You look like Audrey Hepburn."

Me: "Thank you."

Months pass without either of us saying another word to one another.

Jump ahead a year and a half later and we have a rented house, a car payment, and a black kitty named Spook.

I owe it all to Audrey.

Some gorgeous photographs from Lena Corwin's book Printing by Hand. I really need to own it, the options would be endless. I'm dying to stencil in our bedroom, but I feel it may be a lot of work for the two of us, and I'm not sure how long we're going to stay in our place. It would totally be worth it though, and seeing that photograph of the stenciled walls is making me want to do it all the more.

I used to make this joke that if Trent baked, he'd be the perfect boyfriend. It isn't enough that he does the dishes (almost) every night, puts my tea kettle on, rubs my feet, and cleans the cat box. Yes, my boyfriend is- dammit, what's the word.... Whipped.

Well, it's official. He's perfect. Because tonight, my perfect boyfriend whipped up some perfect gingerbread cookies. He even had to run to the store to get more butter. Seriously though, isn't that every girls dreamboat? Someone who bakes delicious things while they lie on the couch napping in a blissful tired stupor?

Ever since Christmas, I haven't been able to get the memory of gingerbread cookies from my mind, so while I was at work, I searched for a simple recipe that would ease this craving for nine months. I jokingly told Trent that he should make them for me, and he actually agreed, to my surprise. I think it has something to do with the fact that he successfully made sweet ginger glazed pork chops over the weekend, which he was very proud of. You should have seen him running around the kitchen, adding this and that, checking the recipe, stirring and slicing. It was adorable, and it made me love him even more.

I'm usually the cook in our household, so it's been a pretty fantastic change.

He's usually the one who calms me down when I completely screw up a recipe and throw a fit because well, "he...just...doesn't...understand!" He cheers me on while I stew in disappointment and anger and insists I try again.

Well, tonight our roles have reversed, I got to be the one to pat him on the back and tell him that it's okay to fail the first time. Who knew it mattered so much which ingredients go into the bowl first? I helped him scoop the failed dough into the trash can, and together we launched into the new and improved mixture.

I like this whole role-reversal thing. He got to see how difficult baking can be, and I got to sympathize with someone who throws a fit over something insignificant.

What a delicious lesson learned.

Painting by Egon Schiele. It's both erotic and playful at the same time. I'd love to hang this above my bed.

My next project for the house is to find a way to fill the space between our bedroom door and our kitchen cabinets. Previously I had this fairly large painting, but I felt is was too out of place, so we moved it to the living room, where it still hasn't been hung, and now the space is empty.

I'd really like to do a sort of organized chaos by hanging our pots and pans like the above kitchen, but I'm torn because I feel like our pans are a bit shoddy. I don't want the house to start to look cluttered, but I also want it to look lived in. It's good to have details that the eye can dwell on.

Photo via Door Sixteen photo from this person's house tour.

Also, I've decided to change the name of the blog. I've run into a few (much more popular) blogs with the same name, and I was beginning to feel a bit like an underdog. Park Street is the name of the street directly behind our home, and where Trent grew up as a child. I think it'll be a great ambassador for my little blog.

I have night-stand envy. Our bedroom is so damn tiny that I don't know if we could possibly find a nightstand small enough to be beside our bed. I was thinking a long shelf above the headboard would be useful to hold a small reading lamp and a place to rest my tea on the evenings I like to bring it to bed.

This is a collection of bloggers' nightstands and what's on them. I love looking through them.

If I had a nightstand, it would hold a functional reading lamp, the bracelet I wore the night last night, Carmex lip balm, hand lotion, an alarm clock, a million bobby pins, a mug of tea on a coaster, and Julia Child's 'My Life in France'.

I have no idea what Trent would keep on it. The remote, maybe? Most of his stuff migrates to the bench at the foot of our bed. It's the landing strip for dirt laundry, clean laundry, shoes, and bags. It's the cause of my perpetual frustration about our un-kept bedroom. That and the dust bunnies I have given up on trying to keep at bay.

Picture from here.

Some Spring inspiration. Granted, I'd wear them with my pair of woolly grey sweater tights.

It's snowing outside my window as I speak.

From here.

Danica from Oh, hello there tagged me. I've never been tagged before, but I'm happy to participate. Apparently I have to tell everyone 7 things about myself.

1. I bought sets of dishes before I even had my own apartment. I would buy them and stack them in the back of my closet where they sat for years until I moved to a third floor apartment downtown.

2. I drink an insane amount of tea. I have one reserved for my mornings: Yerba Mate green tea & peppermint from Whole Foods, and Yogi Purely Peppermint for nighttime.

3. Trent and I are learning sign language at our nearby Community College. Currently I have the vocabulary of a small child, but we're in the first semester, so it's to be expected.

4. I'm reading Julia Child's memoir 'My Life in France', and I'm so inspired. I constantly quote Julia and ramble on about her amazing life in completely inappropriate situations.

5. Trent and I plan to travel the world once we finish the sign language program in 3 years.

6. I changed my name when I was 15.

7. My cat Spook and my boyfriend Trent bring me more joy in my life than I ever thought possible.

There you have it. Seven mundane facts about myself. If you've gotten to the end of this, I applaud and thank you.

'

I'm not really the thank you card type of girl, but I always wanted to be. It's not that I don't have a lot to be grateful for, it's just that I usually say it the old-fashioned way; actually saying thank you. I liked these in particular because just recently I introduced Trent to the dutch word for thank you, and he got a kick out of it the first time I used it. We're silly like that.

Is it wrong to want to spend $12 on a set of 8 note cards? Not to mention the decision process for deciding who I would give them to! I'd have to carefully consider just how grateful I really was.

In the past few weeks, I had been making a highly conscious effort to cover the arms of our couch whenever we weren't home or when we were sleeping, as this was the time Spook took the opportunity to sharpen his evil claws. He never did it when we were watching either, oh no. He's clever. He took to hiding it from us. Leaving behind traces of shredded fabric, I was becoming so frantic I actually considered having him de-clawed.

Now, before you go off on me about the inhumanness of this procedure, let me explain. Originally, we bought him Soft Paws, which sound good in theory, but fell off quickly and had to be maintained. They were cute though, I'll give them that. They were little plastic caps that came in fun colors, so anyone who saw him thought we had painted his nails. Spook hated them. He always sensed it was coming too. I would trick him into thinking I was simply rubbing his belly, and eventually I got close enough to rest my legs on either side of his little black body. Quick as lightening I would grab his paws and get them on there as fast as I possibly could. Spook would always run off after the ordeal and lick his paws incessantly to get the super-glue off where it leaked from beneath the caps. He always forgave us, but the routine was exhausting. I didn't buy a second pack.

It finally occurred to us that before we did anything drastic, we were obliged to buy him something he was allowed to shred to pieces like, oh, I don't know, a scratching post? We headed over to Pets-Mart right up the street and got him a cute little cream colored post with a yellow trim. I insisted that whatever it was we were bringing into our home, it was going to look good.

Before we left, we did a tour of all the little creatures housed in the store, and along the way I saw a shelf pull of terrarium plants! They were a pretty sad looking bunch. Three-fourths of them were completely out of their pots and shriveled, and the rest looked deprived and miserable. It was like seeing a sad, hungry puppy. I picked out the two least pathetic looking of the lot and insisted to Trent that they had followed me home, could I keep them? My darling boyfriend even insisted on paying half. That's just the kind of guy he is. So now here they are. Tiny and adorable, I hope I give them a better home than the pound they came from.

I can't believe the difference that our new rug made in our living room. I love the bright sunny yellow, it brings so much color and life to the small room. We weren't even sure if everything was going to tie together, especially with bringing a new coffee table into the picture, but everything worked out beautifully. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the stain that Trent applied to the table gave it a nice all-over glow and blended the maple in with the oak nicely. We used Danish oil, in medium, for the table, which my brother recommended. He said it would be nice because it would keep the wood conditioned, but would be forgivable if we want to sand later. I realized that we didn't do such a stellar job with the 220 sandpaper. The stain brought out a lot of the imperfections of our work, so close up you can see where we worked the wood. I'm fine with this though, because scratches are inevitable.

Our living room is almost complete! Now it's just the details and the art.