Goddess of war?

Will she do my Christmas dishes?

A Christmas walk with light, snow, shadows and cornstalks

A star of berries, two of my favorite people in the world, Flint's field with snowy cornstalk shadows and licheny-rocks - perfection!

succulent wreath

Insanely interesting hats

A lovely, vibrant green silk dress from Atonement

Lahana and Mandolin

The Adatepe lady...

An old Ottoman engagement ring

Our lady of perpetual garlic

Ege Denizlİ ve Behramkale

The possibility that doors will open!

Wai-ching dresses

Wai-ching - where have you been all my life? Affordable, gorgeous and offbeat fancy dresses!

Human nests

As we move forward on finding our nest (hopefully have one, but our P&S is this week)...I have a new muse of the moment - human nests by Patrick Dougherty...

Warmth of clean sunshine on wool

Rosemary for remembrance

"There's rosemary; that's for remembrance. Pray, love, remember." ~Shakespeare, Hamlet

Equisite cupcakes

Now - I don't aspire to create those fondant-perfect cupcakes - although I realize that the Buddha cupcake is of that ilk - but the ideal cupcake should be lovely but also edible!

Soft and sugary and not box-taste-y...warm vanilla-laced cake...

OK, ok, I admit it - thank you Martha Stewart for sponsoring the "cutest cupcake" contest from whence these photos came.

Finally, I do have to ask, what's with all the cupcake mania these days?

The approach of raspberry season

My first thought this morning was of my granny's raspberry patch out in back of her house. Drenched in sun (as well as thorns, bees), this garden produced tremendous amounts of fruit each June/July...and was bordered by illegal gooseberry bushes, but that is a story for another day...The effect of the warming sun on those most red-pink of berries is phenomenal - we were lucky to get the berries before all of the various creatures living in the garden, but we still managed to get enough for copious amounts of jam....as usual, Amelie captures the joy of childhood in this photo...

Assemblage by Murat Recevik

Not previously inspired by Joseph Cornell...just recherche du temps perdu by M with lost parts now found...inspired assemblage, if you ask me...from a sweet man with a golden heart who thinks a lot about nostalgie and remembers important parts of the past both small and large

Odd fruit labels related to my life

Is this why they are eye-catching? To "get" a potential customer by presenting an image that resonates somehow? For me, grapefruit - usually peeled within an nth of peeled-ness by M (a Turk) presented jewel-style in a bowl - is a longstanding favorite emanating from happy warm by the fire mornings in the New England winter when my mother would present me with half a grapefruit, sprinkled with sugar, and topped with an impossibly red marischino cherry. M jokes about the fez all the time, usually during his long and interesting stories about the Ottoman Empire...

See John Baule's Fruit Label Book

From fruitcratelabels.com:

"What are Fruit Crate Labels?"

Since all fruits and vegetables were originally shipped in wooden crates, labels were needed for the ends of each crate to identify its contents, place of origin and to catch the eye of buyers with interesting graphic images. Beginning on the Pacific Coast of America in the mid-1880s, crate labels became America's largest innate art-form, advertising countless millions of boxes of fruit to consumers across the nation and around the globe for the past 130 years! The largest producer and user, by far, was California. But Washington, Oregon British Columbia, Florida, Australia and New Zealand, and other countries also contributed to the phenomenon. However, in the mid 1950s, due to War shortages and changes in packaging technologies, labels were no longer necessary for most of the produce industry, as pre-printed cardboard boxes replaced the older wooden crates. Some labels are still used today (2006) but only a small fraction of the numbers used before the 1960s."

Frida

...who passed away today...a gentle dog who brought people together and in the words of her mom "she was special, loving and smart. She was unique."...We will miss her...

Peaceful rooms with painted white floors and lovely arrangements

Clean white spaces -with uncluttered but interesting arrangements of interesting treasures - what a vision - of course, you'd have to sweep all the time, but think of the calming effect...

Aleppo, Syria

Our hot, dusty and new near-Turkey destination of the summer...just a hop skip and a jump over the boarder to Aleppo - a cultural crossroads, a city specializing in textiles...a place to assess the subtle differences between southeastern Turkey (which we will be exploring) and northern Syria. A place M and I have always been interested in visiting...

Edgy portraits with striped shirts

Let's focus on the art, not the gossip! Work from Sandro Kopp

Good olive oil and crusty bread

Bread, as my grandfather used to say, is the stuff of life. Add olive oil, and it's a very wonderful thing. My ultimate comfort food. Friends of ours have an olive oil museum on the Western coast of Turkey which is on our agenda for a visit next summer (there are a number of olive-focused museums here)....and Turkey is known for amazing bread, or ekmek (see photo for exemplars of Turkish ekmek)...

Pink ribbon mania

At least we can talk about breast cancer these days - even if the pink ribbon mania is a bit over the top - I'll take it, anyday!