Archives for December 2006

Today as I was perusing the op-ed section of the New York Times the People magazine website, I noticed a blurb that skinny jeans may be on the way out. Apparently photographers have captured Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and some girl I’m supposed to know because she’s on The O.C., only I’ve never watched that particular program, and all three girls have worn their flared boot-cut jeans in the last week or so. People is speculating that the end of the skinny jean trend is near, and for that reason I think we all need to put an extra fiver in the collection plate this Sunday, cheerfully giving an offering above our tithe to THANK THE LORD ABOVE that we’re done with the straightleg jean for another five or ten years.

You can’t even imagine how relieved I am.

If the end-of-skinny-jeans news wasn’t enough, this afternoon I found a pair of sconces that my cousin Paige gave me a few years ago. I’m planning to hang them above the fireplace (with a painting in between), and I think they’re ever-so-much fun. Here’s a picture of one of them:

See? Told you.

Anyway, I was trying to figure out exactly where to place the sconces, and I sat one down one of them down on the hearth so that I could do a little measuring. When I leaned down to pick it up, this is what I saw on the back:

Of course they are.

Now I love them even more.

In completely random news, I would now like to show you a picture of the cutest box of Kleenex I’ve ever seen.

Now y’all. Is that not adorable? I practically squealed with delight in Publix.

It takes so little, really.

I found the finials!

I thought I should tell you since I’m sure you stayed awake all night wondering where in the world they were.

Strangely enough, they were in a box. A box in the garage. Go figure.

I also found the big pewter fish platter that my dear friend Bubba gave us as a wedding present. The fish was quite delighted because he was ready to get out of the box and return to his place of prominence in my kitchen.

Then I discovered a huge green bottle that’s one of my favorite things. It was a gift from Mrs. Cook, a woman in my hometown who owned an antique shop. She also was a member at the church where I grew up, and on Sunday mornings she always walked in the sanctuary at least thirty minutes late, hair sort of artfully akimbo, wearing a look of resigned bewilderment on her face, almost like she was a little ticked off that church had to be on Sunday morning – AGAIN – because really it would be so much more convenient if we could meet on Saturday nights around 9-ish, preferably after cocktails. Her house was CHOCK FULL of decorative goodness, and when I finished grad school, she gave me three funky glass bottles that she found when she was cleaning out closets. Those bottles have had a place of honor in every place I’ve lived since.

Also, last night I discovered that there are lights underneath the kitchen cabinets. Somehow this detail escaped me when we looked at the house, inspected the house, walked through the house, and moved into the house. But last night, as I was trying to figure out if I could put a nail in the backsplash (don’t ask), I looked up, and there were lights! Five of them!

Because I am a freak, I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out the optimum lighting equation for the room. I tried just the recessed lights in the ceiling, then just the under-the-cabinet lights, then I dimmed the recessed lights but only turned on a couple of the newly discovered lights, then turned everything on at the same time. Since I’m a firm believer that too much of a good thing is a good thing, I decided that I like all the lights on at once. 

Then, in an homage to my new lighting options, I left the kitchen cabinet lights on all night long. Just because I could. And this morning, when I walked into the kitchen and saw that my countertops were illuminated, I was happy.

You are totally justified in questioning my sanity.