my favorite advent calendar, next to those chocolate ones that i used to get as a kid. i can't believe it's already december.

forget martha stewart living magazine. i'm in love with martha stewart magazine for kids! there are far more festive ideas and crafts to try in the holiday issue (with beautiful j.otto-illustrated section on penguins). on the to-do list: sock puppies, monkey bread and paper snowflakes. hooray!

i have an enormous, pink-cheeked, heart-swelling crush on monchacha.com. it’s the kind of site that makes me wish i knew a thing or five about making websites.

this morning i woke up and decided it was a Teenage Fanclub kind of morning, so i pulled the cds off the shelf, sat them beside me in the car, slipped Songs from Northern Britain into my cd player, and drove with my windows down. i sang all the way to work.

it was love at first bite. saturday, kiehl and i took a field trip to porto's, the glendale bakery everyone had been telling me about. oh, man. we had to wipe the drool off our chins: fruit tarts, biscotti and cheesecake, oh my!

i am in love with the line– “all of this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me.” –from the re-mix of elvis's a little less conversation

the boy who ate a banana split for dinner is my new hero.

i don't read enough. for someone who fancies herself a writer, who is so in love with words, who would like someday to be a name on the spine on a shelf, i just don't. but that doesn't stop me from starting several books at once, buying more books i intend to someday read and […]

dear paul, can i call you paul? i know you go by PT these days, but i just can’t bring myself to do it. i also like paul thomas, but that sounds too much like a soap opera name. so, paul it is. so, paul, i have to confess that i’ve had a crush on […]

i can't get over how amazing billy collins is. i mean, yes, okay, he's the u.s. poet laureate. of course he's good. everyone knows he's good. but, oh, i feel like i did when i was in junior high and i first heard r.e.m. or read e.e. cummings, like i had discovered my own secret […]