blue moons
January 31, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary, lists | Leave a Comment
january in thirty one
resolve show cardinals brick beginning neighborly strolling mohawk bread heard bunk pull seed disguise remorse picnicking business nephew build sun needle compete sheen opportune billow curried skin winnings niece dream recapitulation
pearl buttons the size of a dollar
January 30, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
ice storm, snow so small you blink to look again. later the boys slide on the ice and beat chunks of it into smithereens. the pup is offended when i take him out. the air is clear and clean and everything feels new. we don’t go anywhere and tonight we are sorry, nothing to eat in the house, a dinner of weird chili and variety found foods in the cupboards and freezer. it’s more fun to be snowed in when you’ve just gone to the store.
ball games on television, hundreds of them, thousands of men sweating and racing up and down the court. dozens of women grunting and beating balls across a net. hypnotic, so i fall asleep. it’s not that they’re not interesting, you know. i’m sure that i’m just tired. i imagine myself in my bed with a tv at the end of it, lots of pillows behind my head, lola asleep somewhere in the covers, something non-sporting and without cheering or announcing on the screen. a dream, perhaps not a good one, but dreamy all the same.
the pink one
January 29, 2010 | Filed Under familial | 3 Comments
my niece vienna turned three on thursday. lola wore overalls and a tutu to the party, as she should, i suppose. the boys ran wild with nerf guns and cousins and friends in the back. there was also pink galore, for vienna is apparently quite fond of this color. my sister in law janell is very good at throwing simple parties that are unstructured but have just the right amount of magic and mayhem for the littlest among us. i should learn from this, although i don’t think i could ever conjure up so much pink.
and the royal winner is…..
January 28, 2010 | Filed Under royal buffet | Leave a Comment
april dunn, comment 40! who said, “best thing to happen to paper since gutenberg.” thanks april, you’re way too kind.
and thank you so much, everyone for entering this little giveaway and even more for all of your nice words about my paper creations and my shop. i’m pretty much blown away.
cheers to two years!
animalskines
January 27, 2010 | Filed Under royal buffet | 1 Comment
these will be in the shop by the end of the week: little moleskines transformed into animalskines by royal buffet! there are a few animals and two sizes of books. i had hoped to have them really early for early valentine shoppers (a very nice, and quite non-commital valentine, i’d say), but we’re down to the wire. ah, well. i’m terrible about planning ahead.
tomorrow i announce the winner of the giveaway!
lentil
January 26, 2010 | Filed Under for the mouth | 1 Comment
indian food is just about the best food around, as far as i’m concerned. i had never eaten indian food until i met ernie and now food has never been the same. we always go to the india palace when ernie’s parents are in town, sometimes we go to handi, which is an indian buffet, gilded with golden elephants and the like, but usually we make it at home. big daddy was a missionary to bangladesh for many years, but he eats my attempts at indian food like it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. everyone should have someone like that at the table, someone who isn’t picky in general, always has something good to say, and thanks you like they’ve never eaten anything so delicious. i highly recommend it.
i’ve found a few indian websites here and there, and the occasional curry recipe on different recipe sites, but my favorites have come from these two books. the first, indian vegetarian cooking we got at a used book store when we were first married. i tweaked a few recipes and came up with a black bean curry that is not as good as the little red bean curry at indian palace, but is very good all the same. a word to the wise: don’t let the yogurt curdle. this book also has the amazing cream cheese fritters, which are battered globs of cream cheese that you fry in butter. nothing more should be said, unless you don’t like cream cheese, like ernie doesn’t, and who very politely asked me to please, never feed them to him again.
the other book that i really like is classic indian cooking, which i thrifted for $1 and almost didn’t buy because it was a full dollar and sometimes i’m really cheap like that. this book is a great textbook and has lots of adaptations, like how to cook tandoori chicken when you don’t actually have a tandoor oven and building one seems awesome, but possibly impossibly impractical.
far fetched
January 25, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
a windy walk, winter roaring a blustery protest. we pretended it was march, a month for roaring walks, but then we only walked half way.
i remembered today to take that walk. those things are easy to put off, to ignore, forget. jude filled the stroller basket with earthy matter. when we came home we made hot chocolate and waited for the rest of the afternoon to disappear into evening, drifting off seamlessly into dark, a sky clear and starred, the day tucked away until morning.
churchy opportunities
January 25, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
i’ve said it before, but i really do love my iphone. i love the camera a lot, and the best cam app is great, too. it’s very nice to always have a reasonably good little camera for a quick snap of a picture. and maybe that’s how “churchy opportunities” began, a quick snap of a picture at an opportune churchy moment. (does anyone know where the phrase “churchy opportunities” originated? no cheating, don’t answer if i told you already….)
i post these pics directly to facebook. now the collection is getting to be quite large so i decided to post them on flickr, too. anyone who has ever had many churchy opportunities should be able to appreciate these simple pops of church life as seen everywhere and every week.
breaking the window
January 23, 2010 | Filed Under lists | Leave a Comment
shining
wooden floors with lamplight in pools across them
lola’s hair after being blown dry
good lip gloss
jude’s eyes under lashes
hood of the car in the sunlight
silver threads clipped here and there
henry’s teeth
stars in the cold and clear
broken glass on the green tile before vacuuming
two royal years + one royal giveaway
January 23, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary, royal buffet | 80 Comments
i’ve been selling royal buffet paper lovelies on etsy for two years and eleven days now (no comment on missing the actual anniversary) so i thought i should offer a little celebratory giveaway to my friends and fans and the foes few and far between. enter a comment in the comments section and i’ll choose a winner (by random selection, of course) on wednesday, january 27. and what will you be winning, should you be the lucky winner? well, the choice will be up to you, as the prize is any one item that is listed in the shop! mobile, garland, wired bird or creature, whatever you wish will be yours. so enter, don’t delay, and be nice and tell your friends to enter, too.
thanks so much for your support of Royal Buffet, it has been and is much appreciated.