Letters to Santa

A conversation with a cab driver, during the first snow flurries of the year. 

Cabbie: So, I wrote my letter to Santa.

Me: ...oh yeah?

Cabbie: You know, at the North Pole? I wrote my letter two weeks ago, and I put a stamp on it, and I mailed it to the North Pole and I asked him to make my dream come true.

Me: What's your dream?

Cabbie: To win the PowerBall! You know, a million dollars? I played it the other day.

Me: Did you win?

Cabbie: I missed by two numbers! I only won $5,000. I think Santa needs glasses.

photo via weheartit

Jonathan Safran Foer

Have you read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer? It was the first book of his I read, and it totally blew me away. It's too bad I had a library copy, or I would have been underlining just about every other sentence. It also includes this great story about how Manhattan once had a sixth borough that delights me each time I reread it. One really interesting part of Extremely Loud is the design - it's mostly text on a page, but not entirely, and it's the "not entirely" parts that make it an even better read.

So I am thrilled to see that he's not only coming out with a new book, but that it's (not surprisingly, coming from him) completely unlike any other book I've ever heard of. He started with Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles and "carved" a new story out of it using a die-cuttting technique. Totally brilliant. I can't wait to read it - heck, to touch it!

via Co.Design 

Twas the first day of Christmas

The day after Thanksgiving was a busy one for the girls in apartment #3. After a morning dose of the Deathly Hallows we headed to Corner Bistro for burgers and beer. On the walk home we passed a Christmas tree stand (I keep calling it a "farm") and figured there was no time like the present.

{roommates, tree carrying}

Christmas kind of went to our heads from that point on. The lights and ornaments came out from the depths of our closets and under our beds, bottles of wine leftover from Thanksgiving (um, five of them) were mulled with cinnamon and orange, and texts were sent.

{trimming the tree}

{stockings, hung with care}

Soon the apartment was filled with Christmas music and friends, cheeks rosy with wine and the very first dose of Christmas cheer. By the end of the evening the apartment was decorated, the stockings were hung, and one of us had whipped her hair in a moment of pure charades genius. I love a good impromptu Christmas gathering.

{megan, spontaneous wreath making}

{merry christmas, apt. 3}

Four years ago today

In the whirlwind of accepting a job, hurriedly packing everything I owned and finding a beefy guy on Craigslist to help me load it into a U-Haul (um, that could have ended badly), I hadn't really stopped to think if this was what I wanted. On the two day drive between Chicago and Manhattan, the reality of what I was doing had time to sink in.

Um...did I want to move to Manhattan?

I did, someday, but did I want to do it this day, December 1st, 2006? That thought rattled around in my head like the IKEA dresser in the back of the truck, cushioned by garbage bags full of clothes. Rural Pennsylvania stretched out before me, hundreds of miles of highway the only thing standing between me and the scariest thing I'd ever done.

Soon, there wasn't much time for contemplating. I got terribly lost on the New Jersey turnpike, was pulled over before entering the Queens-Midtown tunnel, cried, ended up in Herald Square instead of Brooklyn, cried, eventually made it to Brooklyn and into the cozy apartment of a friend I hadn't really talked to in five years. After endless weeks of staying on couches, floors, and even in a hostel, I finally found a place to stay. How true that turned out to be. Sometimes this city beats you up before it takes you in.

Happy anniversary, New York. Here's to four more.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving morning began with my apartment filling with smoke and the carbon monoxide detector loudly telling us to get out of the apartment right! now!

{megan's chocolate bourbon pecan pie}

After two thorough cleanings of the oven (tip for next year: clean the oven before Thanksgiving day), a minor freak out (not that everything wouldn't get done, but that it wasn't going to get done in the leisurely way I had planned - I have issues), and some major multi-tasking, the meal was perfect and the evening was lovely.

{coffee table turned dining table}

The first guest did, in fact, receive a freshly poured cocktail from a (finally) calm host. And let's just say that it was not the last of the evening. We're still working through the surplus.

{tv stand turned bar}

My friend Ian and his fiance Ashleigh brought their adorable white golden retriever puppy, Misty Bear, and she was definitely the guest of honor. It just felt so home-y to have a dog around. And she was super well behaved. The photo below is not begging, just hoping.

{the puppy, hoping}

{the best guest, misty bear}

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Thanksgiving prep

This Thanksgiving will be the fourth I've hosted for friends here in New York (I've hosted one other, in London, that went fine except for the part where the turkey was still frozen after four hours in the oven and I cried while asking the rotisserie chicken guy for the largest one he had) and my goal is to have everything nearly ready by the time guests arrive so I can calmly hand them a cocktail instead of thrusting a bottle of wine at them and resuming my freak out in the kitchen. And this year, I'll be giving up two hours of cooking time to head to the Upper West Side to catch a few giant balloons floating by.

So, to keep turkey day as stress-free as possible, here's what I'm doing in advance:

Tonight I'm...
- making & freezing biscuit dough
- making the pie dough
- making a compound butter to be squished under the skin of the turkey
- making the topping for the sweet potato casserole
- washing all the serving dishes & platters

Wednesday I will...
- make the pumpkin cheesecake
- make the chocolate pie
- make cheese straws 
- roast sweet potatoes
- prep the brussel sprouts
- slice fennel & seed a pomegranate for the salad

Which just leaves the turkey and lots of assembling/heating on the big day. And, hopefully, plenty of time to drink apple cider mimosas with my guests.

a helpful reminder, via craftily ever after.

Blanca Gomez

Aren't Blanca Gomez's illustrations the cutest? I bought a few of her greeting cards at Paper Presentation and then went Googling around for prints. Now I just need to decide which one to get...