Flavors 518

I checked out the Brimfield Flea Market just like I did last year (in July and September ). We had a fabulous time. What did I get this year, you ask? A cute hair comb, postcards of beloved Michigan places like Frankenmuth, Mackinaw City, and the Father Marquette Museum, some cute jewelry (including a Girl Scout pin from the 1920s). This ring says on it that it is from 1957, and I plan on cleaning it up a bit. I also bought this cool plate to hang on the wall: Oh, and this cute portrait of a little girl on the bottom here, which plays great on the wall next to the above pictured Lilly Martin Spencer's "The Jolly Washerwoman: We enjoyed sitting on some furniture: And my friend Julie bought this awesome arrow: Most of all the exciting score for me was a vintage Westinghouse roaster with stand. I plan on using it as an awesome shelving unit and conversation piece in my dining room. It seemed like a steal at $50. Can't wait to go ...

Last weekend a car full of my coworkers and I went to the Brimfield Antique Show in Brimfield, MA . We were originally going to go back to the Raynham, MA Flea Market , but that one isn't open on Saturdays. I had originally read about the Brimfield one, which is on a few times a year, in the Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I met my corworkers who live in North Adams, MA at the Lee Outlets, and it was about a two hour drive total. It was totally worth the distance though. One of my coworkers naively thought we could or should see the whole thing. This thing is monstrous. We got there pretty early, and still couldn't really see it all. By shopping around we only paid $3 for parking, which was pretty good because there were $5 and $7 lots right next to that lot. I got a crazy amount of stuff: one green polka dot dress, one brightly colored floral dress, a schnauzer brooch (we had one of those dogs when I was a kid), a cookbook from 1930 about hot weather dishes, a plate to h...

 This is mostly for my mom. I thought maybe it would help out other people to type it here. Mrs. Anderson's Baking Ceramic Pie Weights - fabulous for making tarts and quiches and way less messy than trying to make your own with rice and beans and foil. Also, clean up very easily. I would love to take a bread making class at King Arthur's Flour in Vermont, but the classes are kind of expensive. Wine cork kits from Wine Enthusiast - we have the oval trivet one and we love it. It is fun to preserve your memories of drinking wine, and they look cool I think. Also, you can always use another trivet (would love another oval one). When I was 21 I got a Pier one papasan chair for my birthday. Then I moved to NYC, and never got to bring my chair with me. Finally, this labor day I drove home and was able to bring it back. Problem was the pets had lived all over the cushion, and my husband is allergic to dogs, so now I need a new cushion .  I'd like this label saver an...

This weekend I was around the Colonie Northway Mall area and instead of making a separate trip to a grocery store, I decided to see if the Target food section could fulfill my modest shopping list. My list consisted of: brown sugar, molasses, tomato paste, Colavita olive oil (I know I couldn't realistically expect this), and a snack for myself to hold me over until dinner time. As I was hunting down these items I seemed to hear a lot of different people they couldn't find certain items, perhaps indicating that the section is hard to navigate. There are a lot of items where only the Target brand exists, which for me made items harder to immediately notice, but I'm hoping they will taste ok. While there is a small meat and produce section where I've found some good things in the past, I feel that the food section in general is mostly geared towards mixes and already-prepared types of foods. I did find star anise though (I've read some Indian recipes that include it re...

For some reason I am all of a sudden feeling very down on the holidays, and Jezebel informs me that it is ok for me to complain about it. Where to start? Every year I read the InStyle Magazine gift guide , and every year I wonder who it is meant for. Are there women in the world who spend $2,000 on a Louis Vuitton fur scarf for their friends? Is the gift guide meant for me to hand the magazine to my husband? Does he also want to read about Amy Adams's parenting philosophy and how to perfect the cat eye makeup look? If you want to give me a gift guide, InStyle magazine, here is what I am in the market for: something along the lines of tins of cookies, ornaments, or small, cheap fashion accessories for my coworkers, books or cds for our dads, maybe a reasonably priced piece of jewelry or lotion for our mothers, and something for my husband that hopefully will make the house cleaner like a wine rack or bookshelf. In fact, I can't remember in my life a girl friend of mine bu...

I had to go to Boston's Logan airport to pick up my husband today, and my coworker was going to visit her son in RI so we both stopped in to check out The Raynham Flea Market together. It was a very smooth and easy drive out there. It looked pretty intense from the pictures on the website. I got an enormous amount of brooches for a bridal brooch bouquet I'm making for a friend of mine ( like these ). In fact, if I hadn't gone here I'd probably be chasing them down one by one and that would have taken forever. Instead, I found enough for the whole thing, at the budgeted price, all in one shot. I also found vintage Pan-Am cocktail stirrers. Yes, I'll be making drinks to use them later tonight . I also found a book from 1959 with tips on how to dress a wife with "a note to the husbands" at the beginning of each chapter. It actually had some good tips, like not to buy things you don't really need and how to pare down your closet. Here's more info a...

So I am out in North Adams, MA dogsitting, and for the first time I didn't just lay around watching Bridezillas for twelve hours. For one thing, our wedding is in the past now, and secondly, I usually happen to be out here during a blizzard of some kind (that is when my coworker usually goes on vacation to Florida or something). I kinda like it out here. It is on the top of a mountain next to the Appalachian Trail so sometimes they get stray hikers. They have a hot tub. There's random wild animals. It is not boring, and it is different enough from where I live to feel like a bit of an adventure or a vacation. My coworker always apologizes about the clutter. By this she means bridal shower invitations, the hope chest her son is refinishing for his girlfriend for her birthday, the issue of Cosmo her other son's girlfriend was reading, a snapshot of my coworker and her husband of 30 years kissing in front of the Grand Canyon this past summer (then another shot of them giggl...

My coworker was really excited a few months ago when she heard The Meat House was coming to Stuyvesant Plaza. They had one up in Clifton Park, and her husband loved all the different marinades. Her excitement rubbed off on me, and when this one opened up I was pretty psyched for it. I'll start by saying the workers don't seem to want to let you browse. The fact that they market it "For the Foodie", well they think they have to tell you what a "foodie" would eat. The first worker at least let us kind of describe what we wanted, but then was really pushy about their house marinated steak tips. We cooked them up in a cast iron skillet and put them in a salad with a roasted shallot vinaigrette. It was pretty good, but Scott sort of felt like the mustard flavor was really strong, which would be ok if it was top quality mustard (which it wasn't). It was alright though. She should have backed off and let us decide on our own. The second time I went in there ...

"I love grocery shopping when I'm home. That's what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests. "   -Yo-Yo Ma (C-town, Astoria) We just read the book  A Pigeon and a Boy: A Novel for my book club. The narrator mentions that he thinks he can divide his life into time spent using 4 different grocery stores, and that this division stands out in his head more than times spent in different places or with different people. I think this is an interesting way to look at things. An important theme in the book was loving one's home, since without that feeling homing pigeons cannot complete their missions. I think having a grocery store one loves is an important factor in feeling at home in an area. Here's what it would look like if I divided my life in grocery stores (roughly). When I was in college I frequented a Kroger ...

I'll admit that I love clothes. I love the process of picking out things that go together in an interesting way. I believe that fashion does affect one's psychological state. You look professional, you feel more professional. You have a fun outfit on, it lifts your mood a little bit. I do have some problems with the high fashion world, but I love the process of coming up with outfits that work in an interesting way in the real world . However, I also have a boatload of student loans, just finished planning a wedding and furnishing a house, and I work in an art museum. A girl has also got to eat. Put that all together and the first thing to go in the budget was my appreciation of J. Crew and Ann Taylor Loft (enter Target and Marshall's!). I won't even mention the cost of a dress I once bought at Harrod's in London or my totally awesome straw hat from the horse track in Lexington, KY in more carefree times. But I have always loved thrift stores. In MI where I am fr...