First Burpday Fruits

So, this is going to be totally inelegant to hijack the spotlight from a precious one year-old's birthday, but let me just go ahead and commit this peccadillo. Many years ago, when I was a freshman in Dating a Korean Man 101, someone helpful told me that my ability to meticulously cut and display fruit would be very important if I were ever to want to be a daughter-in-law of worth. Well I'll have you know the weight of that counsel bore heavy on my heart for years and years. That after the exhortation, I would catch myself in the mirror and ask, "Hey you. How are your chopping and garnishing skills today?" Other times I'd be walking home from the train station and would give myself pep talks. "Gonna get yourself a Ginza! Gonna learn how to use it! Gonna OWN yourself a Ginza!  Gonna make that melon look SICK {Repeat}" I mean, this was serious bidness. While other women thought about what kinds of precious metals they might someday wrap around their ring fingers, I was considering a whole other metal for my hot little hands... And.  I'm only a little bit kidding.

So imagine my delight when I was SWEATIN' IT when my father-in-law said we'd just prepare some fruit arrangement for Little Man's first birthday and by "we" I knew he meant "me." Ufffff.

I first attempted surgery on the watermelon. I had no idea what I was doing. I was chewing up the insides of my mouth with the concentration. Surely my deodorant was not pH balanced for these kinds of shenanigans. Then my mother-in-law passed by the operating table. She told me to do the pineapple, as well. (!!??) So I went all edible arrangements on that fruit and...

wait for it!

voila!  My handiwork!

Little Man? You're TOTALLY welcome! :)

The Dance

You cannot clip n’ save,you must extreme coupon blitz down aisles stockpiling econo-sized paper towels to swab up the mess you make baking muffintops, cane sugar only please deliciously deceive us spoonful of organic spinach plucked from your own box garden. The baby needs string beans, pureed carrots heavens to regretsies, don’t ever buy it, BPA leeching, lurking - oh! while you’re at it make sure you’re mastering the fine art of baby signing, please, no, thank you, and more more more more on whose plate? feels like yours but wait, before you eat it, click snap snap your plate with your SLR in natural light post to your site network, socially text me: playdate? don your lululemon uniform apologize profusely make me sign a waiver promise not to tell anyone your house is messy your children watch TV you made inorganic muffins oh, the humanity....

- Kendra Stanton Lee (2011)

Winnah Winnah!

This might be the most amazing thing to happen to me in 2011. So I'm going to crow about it.

Ahem.

I won something!

And it's something I TOTALLY wanted without even knowing I wanted it.  Because, ya know, it wasn't even in the realm of possibility of owning it.  So I just put that nonsense on the "Mayhaps, Someday" list of impossibility.

A few weeks ago, I peeked into a store at Derby St. shops in Hingham, MA, and I gasped at the mere sight of their wares.  It was as though I had conjured up a dream home full of robust color AND SOMEONE HAD STOLEN THAT DREAM RIGHT OUT MY HEAD and built a whole store around it!

Then, I noticed that my friend Miracle had won a rug of her choice through a contest the shop was sponsoring on their blog. I was so excited for her and so moved by her response that I began to think about what colorful living meant to me.  I know that sounds positively cheesy, but color has always really ruled my life.  My favorite accessory in high school was a cerulean lunchbox with silver glitter accents.  I chose which college I was going to attend based on a pair of purple sweatpants.  I have spent hours rocking my babies and staring at the pumpkin walls of our nursery.  I am utterly entranced by beautiful colors.

So I went back and I wrote a response to that contest.  I had thought the contest was already over, but I wanted to contribute to the dialectic about colorful living.

Then, lo!  Look what I see:

colorful conversations

Twitter

05.13.11

4th & Final Winner! 2011 Colorful Living Campaign

Thank you to everyone who shared during our four-week Colorful Living Campaign! This last week we had so many great entries to review but we could only select one to win the 6′ x 9′ rug of choice. The fourth and final winner of our 2011 Colorful Living Campaign is Kendra Stanton Lee!

Kendra, we all smiled at the way you described Colorful Living (especially the part about the mermaid stickers!): “Colorful living is how we come into the world, outfitted in brights and pastels, how we spend our young years, scrawling with crayons on papers and walls (oops). Somehow we get away from colorful living as we become older; our environment and our affects become muted. We learn to deal in neutrals. But it is not who we are. As a mother of two — I am only now learning to get back to the sweetness of colorful living through my children, smiling through popsicle-drippy mouths or falling asleep with several mermaid stickers still stuck to my hand.”

Congratulations! Please email acolby@companyc.com to claim your 6′ x 9′ rug of choice.

Our 2011 Colorful Living Campaign may be over, but we would love to continue hearing from you. Share your colorful adventures or pictures with us on Facebook or our Colorful Conversations blog.

Here's the one I picked. I'm over the moon!