Love Notes

Jun 09, 2021 • #blue #cocktail #ocean house #peony

5/21/21 - The Door To Summer is Opening

Memorial Day weekend is four sleeps away. The excitement is palpable - like an evening's symphony of cicadas building to a cresendo. Summer is coming!!! This time it will include cocktail parties, weddings, dances, houseguests, and even hugging. If I were to inventory everything I love about summer, the internet would crash before your spam detector could even block this email. So I'll pick just one highlight - The Ocean House Resort in Watch Hill Rhode Island.

Jun 09, 2021 • #blue #charlottesville #dahlia #peony #pink #strawberry #trout

5/17/21 - Blue Ridge and Pink Love and Happiness

I had a stellar week - I travelled down to Charlottesville to set up for a trunk show at the very chic Quirk hotel (more on that below), undaunted by the prospects of a gasoline crisis in Virginia. Nothing was going to stand in the way of my great peony adventure at Pharsalia Farm, and a visit with an old friend and her husband. The beautiful interiors at Quirk, along with the Blue Ridge mountains and a profusion of peonies, inspired this week's color pairing.

Jun 09, 2021 • #dinner party #lemon #peony #pink #shrimp

5/10/21 - Pink Peony Dinner Party - with shrimp & grits and lemon tart

After I was first married and before I had children, I liked nothing better than a rainy Sunday spent pouring over a paper copy of the New York Times, then a stack of Gourmet magazines and a pile of cookbooks, dreaming up menus for dinner parties - some of which I had, some of which I only dreamed about having. My brain was younger then, but I could probably still do pretty well in a trivia contest based on "Gourmet Entertains" menus. (Other trivia categories today ... errr probably not so good). One image that is indelibly stamped in my brain is "Pink Peony Dinner Party" from Martha Stewart's "Menus for Entertaining".

May 03, 2021 • #Green #Lilac #Mother's Day

5/03/21 - A Perfect Mother's Day, with top notes of lilac and green

When my sweet mother passed away a few years ago, a dear friend gave me a miniature lilac bush. It blooms just around mother's day every year, and my heart fills with thankfulness for my mother, and for my friend Cheryl, and for all the friends and mothers I have been inspired by, and for my own two boys, now 23 and 26.

Apr 26, 2021 • #Baskets #May Day #Mother's Day #Yellow

4/26/21 - May Day baskets, daffodils, pink and yellow love

And they ask is yellow the new pink? Why not both, I am thinking.

This week, my thoughts turn to May Day baskets, Mother's Day, more daffodils (and the Nantucket Daffodil Festival which I first went to in 1980 - ouch I'm old), and lots of pink and yellow love.