Hello Dear Ones! Just a short note, Sweetheart’s dear sister is getting married this weekend at a summer camp upstate- it should be a perfect Indian Summer weekend full of joy and love and music. Typical to their laid back selves, rather than hire a whole complement of staff and rent linen napkins and have everyone check chicken or fish, the bride and groom have decreed that whole shebang is going to be super mellow, campfires and marshmallows, craft beer and soul food, Sweetheart and I singing and playing the first dance song…and yours truly in charge of all decorations. So. I’ll be signing off here today, packing up these dinosaur cake toppers I made the bride and groom as a surprise, and heading up to the land of the pines to cut flowers and string ribbon until it’s time to kick off my shoes and dance the night away under the stars. See you next week!
Tag Archives: summer
Lime-Aid
Despite the white-pants moratorium and the sweet chill in the air that has me playing “Autumn in New York” over and over, SUMMER IS NOT THROUGH. I repeat: DO NOT PACK UP YOUR JEAN SHORTS AND HEADSCARVES JUST YET LADIES! I love fall (it’s secretly my favorite), but I’ve also been wanting to cling to the seemingly endless twilit seaside days of the most adventuresome season. And, like-minded tactile and sense-memory based souls, I’ve discovered the best way to do that is with homemade limeaid. This is actually, technically, just lime simple-syrup, one of those non-recipe recipes that takes three things and through some magical alchemy turns it into a world of taste and feeling. Add rum and ice and you have a classic daiquiri, add tequila and you’ve borne the perfect margarita, vodka makes a sideways Tom Collins (a shaken egg-white and some mint and you’ve got yourself a sideways Southside), or just add a few healthy pours into a pitcher of still or sparkling water and you have the most divine, freshest, bracing-but-tart-sweet concoction that’s ever come straight out of August.
Ingredients:
Lime juice
Sugar
Water
Squeeze limes. Boil equal parts sugar and water and cool. Mix lime juice and simple syrup. Voila!
Dog Day Afternoon
Let me hip you to an astounding bit of information: once a year you can bring your dog, for free, on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. That’s right: dogs on ferris wheels. What could be better than that? Here, Luigi the Dog shows us that pretty much nothing is better than that.
Thanks to dear Meags for a) being our epic compatriot in adventure on this day and b) taking the above picture of Luigi. 
Baseball+Wanderlust
This Just In. The official theme of this summer is WANDERLUST+BASEBALL. But, really, is this anything new? Ever since my guilty twinges at not having seen a ballgame by June reached a frenzy, I’ve thrown myself into the American Pastime (more on the New York Gotham’s later this week). Last night on a wild hair, Sweetheart and I sped on the wings of the new G>7 in-station transfer out to CitiField. The Mets were taking on similar-perennial-underdogs-in-a-pretty-tough-division Orioles, and tickets were $5.70 (it was a No-Han special- in honor of Johan’s- #57- no hitter). It was, in essence, a perfect night. Bewhiskered cartoon-hounddog knuckleballer R.A. Dickey pitched a one hitter complete game (back to back on his other one hitter complete game), Sweet Ike Davis broke his epic dry-spell with his first-ever grand slam- we gave him a much deserved curtain call-, and it was 65 degrees and breezy. Also of note: Dickey’s “come to the plate” music is the Game of Thrones theme song. I don’t think I could love him more. If you build it, we will come.
Images via instagram here and here.
Gardenias
I just heard Mama say “Oh! A-HA!” and run outside. This bloomed just this morning. Oh, sweet Southern perfection in a cut glass vase. May you all have something as delicate and divine ushering in your summer weekend.
The Jamaica Bay Jerks
I’m having a total love affair with summer right now. Probably because I’ve been hopping in and out of New York and have only seen the most lovely and tantalizing parts (roof parties, sunsets, music outside, picnics) and none of the armpit parts (hot.smell.subway.toes.). In the former category: we went out to the ball fields on Bay 16th to see Andrew’s little brother’s Little League team play their championship tournament. The gods of small ball pitted the sweetest band of intrepid, full-hearted, and popsicle-mouthed 8 year olds against this pitcher. See above. A side-slinging lowballer, towering a full three heads over the runts in right field, a little league leviathan who almost had a perfect game (our guys’ third baseman, who had been in tears earlier over a tie-gone-to-the-runner-this-ump-is-a-union-scab-type-call, got on base with a frozen rope to shortstop to ruin Goliath’s no-hitter. Yes.). The boys lost, but bless their little hearts, when the game was over they were quiet and kind to each other and held their heads high with honor beyond their years. After the game at Spumoni Gardens they were back to fighting over corner pieces of the perfect-sweet-sauced sicilian square pie and spitting soda at each other, but for a dusky sunset moment you could see just a shade of the men they’d be. Ahh, Summer, how fine you are.
Lovely.
While we wait eagerly for spring, here’s a reminder of what adventures feel like.
image courtesy of Jennifer Evans and the divine Still Developing project in support of polaroid film.
