✥ Did I ever mention the
little pouch I got from Betsey Olmsted last year? I don't have a big purse/handbag (it's
this one from Will's Leather Goods) so it's not like there's tons of room for stuff in there, but I do like to keep the stuff that is in there somewhat organized. Well, not organized, exactly, but at least not total chaos. I have a little wallet for credit cards and IDs and whatnot, and a little pouch with some miscellaneous items in it, and that's it! Then again, I probably feel like I don't need to cart around a ton of crap because I don't actually leave the house all that often, ha!
✥
Before I deleted TikTok from my phone I saw a video where someone mentioned some LUSH items that they recommend as a former LUSH employee, and I was influenced one final time. I grabbed some
Super Milk conditioning hair primer and the
Roots scalp treatment, and I haven't been using it long enough to be able to tell if it is doing anything, but the Super Milk has sort of candied vanilla-sandalwood that's addictive in a weirdly cloying way?
✥ This
Strawberry Shortcake X Scentbird collaboration is probably not something that would ever have been on my radar, let alone something I would have purchased for myself. But as "olfactory revenge" because I bought myself something for Christmas that my Best Friend had intended to get me--they sent me this instead.
The costume I imagined was undoubtedly scratchy, sticky polyester performance—a bright explosion of red and pink, with a vinyl jumpsuit that caught light like a light-up toy's colorful, pixelated glow. A blow mold mask perched atop, its plastic curves capturing some uncanny cartoon essence, and a bonnet that framed everything in soft ruffles. The fabric catching dust motes in an afternoon sunbeam with that particular vintage fabric smell that hints at something slightly worn and not necessarily anytime recently. A child transformed into a living cartoon, all synthetic shine and determined imagination where reality fell short.
If that visual—this moment that never actually existed—were a Polaroid half-developed, a scratch-and-sniff sticker, it would be pure wish-fulfillment: not the vivid cartoon, not the plastic toy's sharp edges, but tender, wistful third thing. Soft candied undertones swirled into the frothy berry cereal milk pooling at the bottom of your favorite bowl, the one that fits perfectly in your little hands. Soft pastry cream pooling beneath pale pink strawberry syrup, faded, translucent, and condensed milk warming against skin. And at the very center, a tiny ache—for the costume I never wore, the moment that was only ever a desperately dear, whole-hearted wish.
I was expecting something tooth-achingly sweet, and this is only just shy of that. What I didn't expect was how relentlessly charming it would be.
✥ I have read ten books so far this month but none of them really stand out as something I am dying to recommend. I guess one that I find myself thinking about is Maru Ayase's
The Forest Brims Over, about a woman who transforms herself into a forest after being endlessly mined for material by her novelist husband. It's got that characteristic Japanese literature subtlety where so much meaning lives between the lines. Not sure how I feel about the ending, but I loved the ideas of literally choosing to become nature rather than remain someone's muse.
✥ After the holidays, it was our turn to host Sunday dinner and I wanted to do something easy and relatively light after all of that lamb and other Icelandic Christmas stuff. I decided on tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, but didn't know how I would make that work for a crowd (all my my skillets are so small and I'd end up making one at a time!) Turns out,
sheet pan grilled cheese sammies are the way to go, and honestly it was the best grilled cheese I'd ever had in my life.
