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Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story

Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story
What can I say, things got a little out of hand. I’d had no intention of getting caught up in anything serious that night, but you know how it goes.  Something catches your eye, sparks your interest.  You toy with new possibilities. Flirt a bit, even. Nothing wrong with that. But I lost my head...

Feasting on Passion: Love, Food and M.F.K. Fisher, Woman of Appetites

Feasting on Passion: Love, Food and M.F.K. Fisher, Woman of Appetites
  “Food is what she wrote about, although to leave it at that is reductionist in the extreme. What she really wrote about was the passion, the importance of living boldly instead of cautiously; oh, what scorn she had for timid eaters, timid lovers, people who took timid stands, or none at all, on...

Sam Reluctantly Said Good Night: In Praise of Melodrama and Tormented Characters

Sam Reluctantly Said Good Night: In Praise of Melodrama and Tormented Characters
The great find that inspired this piece was a bit of text in a real bodice-ripper of a vintage novel that is my absolute favorite source of melodramatic verbiage: “At last, after his hostess had swallowed many yawns, Sam reluctantly said good night.” I suddenly feel the need to explain myself to the...

The Beauty of Containment

The Beauty of Containment
When I’m in arty mode, I find there’s something very comforting about having a small space to work with – a box to fill with oddities, or a compartment to embellish.  Ever since I’ve been small, I’ve liked things that are, well, small.  Especially if I can put other even smaller things in...

Flirty Skirty: Remembering a First Encounter with Paris

Flirty Skirty:  Remembering a First Encounter with Paris
Like so many young women with a wide swath of romantic inclinations, I was quite certain that the first city in Europe I would experience would have to be Paris.  And that Paris and I, we would get along very well. And so we did. You know how your memories of a place can color your experience of it? ...

Home is Where the Art Is

Home is Where the Art Is
I am what you call a nester.  Whether I’ve lived in a big house or a tiny apartment – or the just-right place I call home now – I’ve always taken great pleasure in creating an environment that brings together things I love. I see the smooth black rocks arranged around a candle and recall several...

Memory Jugs for the Modern Woman

Memory Jugs for the Modern Woman
Memory jugs. This is an idea whose time has come for the Modern Woman. First, a brief art history lesson:  Memory jugs, or memory jars, or memory vessels, if you want to sound fancy, have been around a long, long time.  Basically they involve embellishing a bottle, jug or crock with an accumulation of...

I Hear Destiny Calling

I Hear Destiny Calling
As soon as I saw the picture of this lovely lass, I knew I’d be using it in one of my Zesty  Shrines.  She’s got herself all glammed up and ready to perform, perhaps – or to strut around the house in her kitten heels just pleased as punch with herself for being so fine with that sparkly train and...

As Luck Would Have It

As Luck Would Have It
When my mother was a little girl, she’d stand by the side of US-23, the highway that ran by the humble family farm in northern Michigan, and wonder about the people in the cars driving by.  Were they headed somewhere exciting?  What kind of lives did they lead?  And where might she go some day…? I...