I’ve never worn an apron in my life so I’m well on my way.
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Lord Dudley Mountcatten has lived with us for 2 years but never slept on the spare bed… until now. Having made friends with the stuffed platypus it is currently his favorite spot for naps.
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Holy crap on a cracker! This makes me very glad I don’t live in Brazil.
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I love quick and easy crock pot recipes… and while this sounded like the perfect winter comfort food, I have been unable to find the frozen noodles it requires. Does such a thing even exist? Have you ever seen them…
A sister restaurant of our go to favorite place opened recently in Falmouth and I’ve been dying to check it out.
So on a sunny late afternoon last week, we did just that.
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Welcome to the Sicilian Table.
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Like our favorite restaurant, no expense was spared when it came to interior design.
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It was bright and cheerful with lots of wood, stone, rattan and soothing neutral colors.
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It was a good sized two floor space, but offered many intimate seating choices.
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Did I mention there were giant artsy fartsy fish flying overhead?
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These bold beauties were hung here and there and were dramatic to say the least.
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I’m guessing this lighting is meant to pay homage to Maine’s coastal lifestyle by imitating jellyfish…
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This oddly placed ceramic tile wonder … yes, if you zoom in you can see they’re all individual pieces… led to the rest rooms.
And while it was a lovely restaurant inside, the location they chose struck me as odd. While it’s sister sits on the water, this place is the bottom two floors of a law office building smack on Route 1… the busiest coastal route in the state. Falmouth is a wealthy town with multi million dollar estates on the shore. This pricey restaurant will do well, but it would have been nice to have a better view from its windows than the parking of the strip mall it sits in front of.
ORIGINALLY A CHEEKY, IF TITANIC, piece of art, the one-room Hotel Casanus is a giant intestinal model that allows guests to spend a cozy night inside a massive colon. Resting in the Verbeke Foundation Art Park near Antwerp, Belgium, the cozy anatomical model was the work of Dutch designer Joep van Lieshout. The slim, curved interior of the furnished anus features a double bed, windows, heating, and of course, working plumbing. The exterior of the room is sculpted with bulging veins and a giant puckered sphincter (non- functional) on one end, and painted the visceral red of exposed organs. The colossal muscle tube almost seems out of place in the idyllic art park, near a placid pond, yet it is composed of soft, natural angles, no matter how gross. Despite the stomach-churning imagery, visitors still flock to the site to spend the night in the big colon which is also surrounded by such wondrous sites as black swans and an unobstructed view of the night sky. Hotel Casanus is somewhere between theme bed and breakfast and gross-out stunt tourism, but whatever the draw, guests can’t help butt visit.
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Not exactly what one would call luxury accommodations, but then again Le Negresco doesn’t have this….
Because I was waiting for my husband (to please stop talking and get back in the damn car!) the other day… I scrolled through my cell phone’s photo album all the way back to the beginning to find the very first pic I took.
(As of today, I have 16,999 photos there. I love technology!)
April of 2013.
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Meet Little Cheeper, a baby robin we found on our lawn after a storm. No nest or mother in sight so we adopted and raised him until he was old enough to release.
Did that little bugger poop? You betcha!
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We kept him in a cat carrier overnight, but let him fly around during the say to strengthen his wings.
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I didn’t want to hand train him as the goal was to set him free…
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But he was a sweetie who followed me all around the house.
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And helped me blog.
He was an adorable little guy, even if he did occasionally resemble a Starship Storm Trooper.
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We fed him canned dog food per the vet’s instructions, supplemented with live worms and fruit.
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Blueberries were his favorite.
All too soon (for me) it was time to let him go, and though I cried… it was the right thing to do.
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He was hesitant at first, but when he felt the gentle June breeze? He took off for the apple trees and never looked back. I kept my eye on him for a few hours as he explored our property.. but he took to the air like a pro and was gone to do what robins do soon after.
We didn’t have any specific plans for St.Patricks Day so after running a few morning errands we decided to stop at our local pub for lunch on the way home .
Appropriate beverages were consumed.
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Noticing the owner, and our favorite Scottish bartender, was slightly out of sorts… we inquired as to the reason.
Turns out he’d wanted the day off… because while most people enjoy that holiday? He hates it.
Naturally I asked why.
“Because I’m tired of everyone asking me what part of Ireland I’m from.”
Which probably explained the sentiment on his shirt.
My parents were not vacation people and we never once loaded up the ‘62 Ford Falcon station wagon to hit the open road when I was a child.
Oh, there were wonderful day trips to the Jersey shore to swim and stroll the boardwalks… and overnighters in NYC so I could get my fill of dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History or stuff my face full of cotton candy at Madison Square Garden when Ringling Brothers was in town…. but a true road or airline trip vacation?
Nope. Never.
I can’t honestly say I felt deprived, when you grow up in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area there’s always plenty to see and do. And while we might have spent a few days in Connecticut or upstate NY with my parent’s friends on occasion, I wouldn’t really call that a ‘vacation’.
So as weird as it sounds, my first “real” vacation happened right after I got married at the ripe old age of 20. The husband and I were living in North Carolina where he was stationed when we jumped in his shiny black 280ZX with T Top removable roof panels … the ultimate in cool in 1984… and headed for Washington DC. I’d never been so we did all the typical tourist stuff – the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, The National Zoo, the Jefferson Memorial and of course there was the prerequisite sexy photo in front of the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument.
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Complete with stone washed denim and chunky silver link dangling belt. Oh to be that thin again. Sigh…
Done with the nations capitol, we headed to Newport Rhode Island where the husband had been stationed at the Naval War College years before.
Here’s a pic of his handsome self receiving a commendation for saving a young man’s life.
❤️
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I honestly don’t remember much about what we did in Newport other than visit the Breakers… that oh so cute and cozy cottage where the Vanderbilts used to summer.
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Those were the pre cell phone and selfie days where you had to rely on your husband to take a good picture and then wait a week to see if it turned out.
My husband’s brother posted a few photos on Facebook after our last big snow storm.. and though he lives in a old farmhouse north of us and has a lot more property than we do? I was surprised at just how run down he looked after finishing his snow blowing.
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Yup.
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There’s one in every family.
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
