Libraries

"Sometimes, if I have a couple of hours before a date, I pull my sewing chair out onto my tiny terrace, put my feet up, and let the fresh air put pink in my cheeks instead of Max Factor. The view is one of my favorite things about my room. When I look across the way at the backyards of our neighbors, separated by fences and the occasional low tree, I see every style of the garden, from an ornate rococo sculpture garden of marble angels to a rustic country bench under a low oak tree. Life on Commerce Street is as layered as one of Rosemary's Napoleon pastries."

-Adriana Trigiani, Lucia, Lucia

French Roast

No.5

When I was a little girl I would always peer over the top over my mother's vanity dresser mesmerized by a collection of perfume bottles and elegant looking gold cased estee lauder lipsticks. My mom especially adores Christian Dior Dolce Vita. She also has that in a small vial with half holes like meteors leave on the moon's surface that I always love to fit my tiny finger tips in. And I would always open her wardrobe and run my hands through the silk, lace and see through slips dreaming I was grown up sitting in a boudoir in a robe like Greta Garbo.

Well, in a few days I turn twenty two... And... I no longer dream about sitting in front of a dresser table, but I just go and sit in my own dresser table dressed in vintage lingerie and robe with hair, nails and face all done. But I love Chanel No.5 :)

5 Reasons I love this picture...

1. A gentleman in suit opened the car for her

2. A shiny vintage car

3. Audrey Hepburn hair-do

4. Brocade shift dress

5. Fine weather

"What do you want to eat?"
"Mineral water."
"Some nice mineral water."
"Cold."
"Cold, of course. Was yesterday's cold enough?"
"Veal cutlet with sage."
"A nice veal cutlet with sage."
"And a chicory salad."
"A nice chicory salad."
"Large."
"A nice large chicory salad. You have chosen well, sir. Oh, What you are looking at is the memorial park... From the other war."
"I know. Every plant has a label with the name of someone who died."
"At the beginning yes, but now the labels aren't there anymore."
"Memory doesn't last forever."
"That's it."
"Avoid ending up on a label."
"That's it."
"Avoid eating salad from the root end."
"That's it."
"And bring me the salad so I can dress it while waiting. Otherwise, if you bring it with the cutlet, the cutlet will get cold while I dress the salad."
"Exactly. Right away sir, a nice salad."
"And a boiled egg, with the yolk soft, which you were incapable of doing yesterday."
"You'll see, sir, today, it will be the way you like: a nice soft boiled egg, with a nice soft yolk, a nice drop of yolk inside."
"And bring it to me unpeeled. I'll peel it myself. I don't want to see fingerprints on the white. Yecch! The boiled egg is an immaculate food. There's no reason to get it dirty."
"Yes, indeed, sir, I'll bring it with its nice shell intact, on a nice little plate."
"Hurry up, then."

-Aldo Buzzi, A Weakness for Almost Everything

Soft Skies of France by Samuel Chamberlain

I bought this really exquisite book with exquisite black and white pictures of France in the 1950s.. "There is something about the skies of France...."

Superb short movie...