It's Beautiful Here.

Dishes I'd Rather Be Doing

It may not be Downton Abbey themed (I am watching the second season now), but as Hugh and Colin have always been on my "to do" list, I need this costume drama addiction tea towel from Dear Colleen on Etsy in my kitchen/life.

An indoor family picnic

For Mother's Day yesterday, Kelly and I had some of our favorite friends, family and moms over for an indoor family picnic, southern style. We fried some chicken and whipped up two kinds of potato salad, macaroni salad and baked beans. I won't lie to you - the rolls were from the bakery, but the Meyer lemon cupcakes were from scratch.

Okay, fine, the frosting is from the bakery, too - who has time to make frosting?

We're Ohioans, so naturally there were Buckeyes for the Buckeyes...

and Kevin (my big, strong, cop brother) took a break from catching bad guys to come and snuggle our mom.

With so many great people around, hugs were passed out liberally.

Foxy just hung around and did a lot of this all day.

I'm sure you can understand.

Being this adorable is completely exhausting.

Let me introduce you to my favorite person.

This is my mom. Isn't she lovely?

As you can see, she always has been. When my brother and I were kids, she was the coolest mom on the block.

Still is, if you ask me.

She is equally silly, brilliant, brave, funny, gracious, and strong. She wears her tender heart on her sleeve, crying at the drop of a hat, and laughing just as quickly. She loves harder, and gives more, than anyone should really have the capacity for. She has always put my brother and I first, from the day we were born until... well, forever, probably. We're lucky that way.

She is the very best friend.

And a total class act.

My mom is completely precious to so many people, and with very good reason.

She gives the very best hugs. She has the very best heart.

Happy Mother's Day, Mama. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Help, I'm in love with a costume drama.

So, Downton Abbey, right? As usual, I'm slightly (fashionably?) behind the curve, but I started, and finished, watching the first season yesterday. And I have a confession to make: various friends who have been blessed with good taste have been after me to watch it for months, and it was totally on my list, but what finally made me tune in was this exchange on Wednesday's episode of Modern Family:

Mitchell to Cam: Okay it's Toon Town, not Toonton. You've been watching too much PBS.

and

Mitchell to Lily: Yeah? Well I don't like running like a crazy person through Downton Disney... Downtown Disney.

What can I say? Humor leads me. The next morning, I noticed that the first season was streaming on Netflix Instant, and since I was looking for something new to watch while I worked (ah, the fringe benefits of working at home), the stars seemed to align, and I clicked. And my life was never, ever to be the same again.

And at first, I didn't know how I felt about it, because the separation of classes really bothers me, and it unnerved me to see that it took an entire staff of servants to keep one small family happy - and they're not even happy, they're relatively miserable! I believe I tweeted something like, I started watching Downton Abbey, but I can't stand the whole excess/servants "I'm ringing a bell can't you bring me my breakfast" thing (okay, it was exactly that).

But I am not a person who gives up easily, so I forged on, and by the end of the first episode, I was completely hooked, the end. I spent all day yesterday watching these people ruin their own lives amidst abject splendor, completely lost in the romance of the scenery and the language and, I admit, just slightly in love with Mr Bates.

I'm giving myself a breather before starting season two next week, but I've obviously decided to devote myself to it, so in true obsessive form, today I Googled "Downton Abbey style". Let me tell you, gentle reader - there were at least a thousand pages worth of results, because apparently everyone wants to look and dress and decorate just like the Crawley family - there is even a book on the subject. I spent a few minutes (or hours, who can remember?) combing through Downton Abbey on the web, and here are a few of my favorite finds:

Interested in getting to know the characters of Downton Abbey? Here's a helpful graph.

"Abbey" Row (Vanity Fair)

Downton Abbey D&D Alignment Chart (This Nerding Life)

Here's a fantastic desktop background

Steal the Style: Downton Abbey (Apartment Therapy)

The Look: Dress like the ladies of Downton Abbey (Today)

Are you a true Downton Abbey fan?

An Irish Downton Abbey Style Wedding (One Fab Day)

Add a dash of Downton Abbey style (Houzz)

Ralph Lauren channels Downton Abbey (The Washington Post)

Downton Abbey style on Pinterest [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

And there are paper dolls. That you can print, and then use to act out your favorite scenes. Not that you would, just throwing that out there to be helpful. You probably already knew about this, but just in case you did not, you're welcome.

On Breakfast

Confession: I am a breakfast skipper. I wake up in the morning, wash my face, brush my hair, and start work right away - after letting the dog out, of course. By the time I notice that I'm hungry, it's noon or later, so I make lunch. This isn't good for me, I know. I have gone to great lengths to avoid eating breakfast. Once in my early twenties I read a book on Ayurveda and decided that its advice of "no breakfast before 10am" meant that I was justified in skipping breakfast entirely.

It's not that I don't like breakfast, because I do, I love it. It's the effort, you see. I'm not the biggest fan of making an effort to do anything first thing in the morning. I probably need to fix that by fixing my admittedly terrible sleep schedule, and I will. I swear that I will get more sleep. But for now, breakfast.

I'm challenging myself to eat breakfast every morning during the month of May, and while this probably doesn't seem like a very big deal, to me it's a thing. It's such a thing that we're six days into the month and I haven't started yet (although, I did have a grande iced chai from Starbucks yesterday at an hour which was technically still considered breakfast, and today I put out a call for breakfast recipes via Twitter, so I'm feeling slightly accomplished). I've been searching through Pinterest and reading beautiful food blogs for inspiration. I'm even tempted to try Greek yogurt.

I don't have a lot of confidence just yet in my ability to do this every day, but I'm hoping that the trip I'm about to take to the grocery store will change that a little. I can do this, just you watch. I'm going to make eating breakfast every morning a thing.

New York I love You

If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, you probably already know that I was in New York last week. It's one of my favorite cities in the world, and I try to go every year to see my friends and eat good food and see great musical theatre. This time, I decided to leave my DSLR at home, both because it's an event just to lug it around, and because I really wanted to live in the moment, which just doesn't happen when I'm constantly looking for the perfect shot, which is always. I decided to use my iPhone and Instagram, and I'm just as happy with how that turned out as I have been with my photos from past trips. Here are some highlights, featuring good food, great people, and cats hitching rides on peoples' heads:

1. Friday night dinner 2. Delicious, abundant pickles 3. Hey, Jen Ray! 4. My new horse BFF
5. My adorable mom at The Cosmic Diner 6. Waffles! 7. Museum Life 8. Danger above
9. It's my BFF Sarah! 10. [Dinosaur Noises] 11. Fried pickles at 5 Napkin Burger 12. Macarons
13. A survivor remembers 14. The Theatre District 15. A cat called Eric 16. Famous Famiglia pizza

Life List: Top of The Rock

Photo via acidpolly

You get on an elevator in New York City, fly swiftly upward, and suddenly you're on the 69th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, gazing down breathlessly at all of New York City's wonders and waving at the Empire State Building whilst having conversations that go like this:

What bridge is that?
The Brooklyn Bridge. I think.

Well, then what bridge is that?
The... Brooklyn Bridge?

What about that one?
They're all the Brooklyn Bridge.

I'm directionally challenged.

Taking my mom to New York City for the weekend gave me the chance to do things that were a bit more touristy than I would normally do (not that I have any problem being a tourist - I embrace my tourist status happily, everywhere I go), and on Sunday night, when we found ourselves wandering around Midtown without any particular direction in mind, we decided to go up, and it was everything I'd hoped it would be.

Life List: Photograph 500 Beautiful People

The thing that I love most about visiting San Francisco is that you never know who you're going to meet.

Embiggen: 1 | 2

And our words would take us half way 'round the world

Some photos I've taken recently at various shows:

My life is about music even when it's not about music.

Radical Face (also on Tumblr here) is all I've wanted to listen to lately. His music makes me feel all the feelings. All of them. If they ever make a movie of my life, I don't want any dialogue - just people looking longingly at things and each other and the sky while his songs play. Also, people walking through tall grass, and slow-motion running. That would be good, too.

Equal Parts Science and Magic

I'm a great fan of TED and TEDx and what they do. TED speakers are generally well known to everyone, but it's pretty rare for me to recognize the TEDx speakers because (and this is a great thing) they give people who may not necessarily be household names a voice and a platform from which to speak about what they know. So when I stumbled across this one sitting innocently in my YouTube subscriptions queue, I was excited. Because I know this person and I knew that it would be special and then I knew I needed to share it with you. This TEDx talk is presented by poet Anis Mojgani and it is particularly breathtaking and eye-opening and similarly life-affirming and I think that everyone should watch it and really listen to what he is saying.

I got to see Anis perform at To Write Love on Her Arms' Heavy & Light benefit in January, and though I was most looking forward to hearing singers I love sing for this enormously worthy cause, his performance became central to me that night, in particular a piece called "Shake the dust".

not just another poem
like just another night that sits heavy above us all
walk into it
breath it in
let it crawl though the halls of your arms
like the millions of years of millions of poets
coursing like blood
pumping and pushing
making you live
shaking the dust
so when the world knocks at your door
clutch the knob tightly
and open on up
running forward into its widespread greeting arms
with your hands before you
fingertips trembling
though they may be

I'm sure you can see why.

While I'm at it, Post Secret's Frank Warren recently gave an awesome TED talk. You should watch it.