Home is wherever I'm with you...

It's been awhile since I found a song that expresses exactly what I'm feeling.  I discovered this one today, when I was missing Pete acutely and dreading the coming two weeks without him.

I'd explain how it makes me feel to only be with my brand-new husband on weekends, but I simply can't sort it out.  At least Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros can do it for me.

I am trying to remember that the strings of days full of bitter homesickness and the endless bus rides and train rides and car rides are drawing to a close.  And though I love him for making a leaky blow-up mattress feel like home, I'm so relieved he won't have to do it for much longer.

Home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh, home, yes, I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

Alabama Studio Style

When I received a Barnes and Noble gift card as a wedding gift, I knew I wanted to choose books that would improve my somewhat pathetic attempts at cobbling together a home. 
This book is positively intoxicating.  It's a veritable lifestyle guide, filled with sewing techniques, printmaking how-to's, recipes, methods for refurbishing ramshackle chairs, and, well, sheer gorgeousness.  I have poured over it for weeks now.  Though I intend to give all of the homemaking a try, the garment patterns are most exciting to me.  My current project is a dark blue tank dress for Juliana to take with her to Africa.  I'll post pictures as soon as I finish it.

The cotton jersey that is utilized in all the sewing patterns is pretty elusive in my neck of the woods, unfortunately.  Juliana and I took a pilgrimage to a fabric store and bought some before I realized that the author, Natalie Chanin, sells her organic cotton jersey, which is grown, spun, and knit in the USA, on her DIY website.  Everything you need to become a homespun Alabama fashionista can be found there. 

Or, if you'd prefer, you can buy her handsewn couture garments readymade here.  I prefer to oggle the designs and utter a fervent prayer that I can one day make a facsimile of some of these garments.

Room

I tore through this book in less than 24 hours, snatching a few pages whenever I could.  It is the story of 5-year old Jack, who has spent his entire life in an 11x11 foot room with his mother.  "Room" is the whole world to him.  We quickly become aware of what he does not yet comprehend--that his mother was kidnapped a few years before he was born and has been emprisoned in Room ever since.  The horror of their hopeless situation is lost on Jack because his mother shelters him.   I was fascinated by the ingenious ways Ma engages Jack endlessly with her limited resources.  Though it is still a harrowing story, when told through the innocent voice of a child, it also becomes unexpectedly beautiful.