{Our breakfast nook, aka one of my favorite parts of our home (To the left is a window to our driveway; to the right is a window to our sun-porch)}Now that our house is painted a classic, pretty slate-gray with black shutters and white trim, a vast improvement over the previous neither-here-nor-there shade, it really feels completely like home. We moved in at the end of March 2010. While we've loved our house and gotten lots of time to enjoy it, I felt bad that our sunny, tangerine-orange, cozy little kitchen-nook was getting piled high with jackets, paperwork, and cookware that we didn't feel like properly storing. It was essentially a glorified closet. When we first bought our house, this was my favorite room. The sun streams in when you wake up and it's the perfect place to read quietly, have coffee and cereal, and collect your thoughts. There are storage cabinets to the right, and it also has convenient spaces to store unsightly necessities like dog food, a Swiffer, and our ridiculous accumulation of Whole Foods bags (branding us as yuppies on sight). We started off on the right foot; I found this great print at Bed Bath and Beyond and loved how the colors complemented the paint. Our wonderful friends Nadine and Dylan contributed the table, the top of which is actually the legit lift-cover of a ship's storage compartment - you can see the brass handles. Then we found a really cute, antique side-table for take-out menus (the "sin bin") and photograph display. As work and our wedding followed by non-stop work consumed us, we really let things get sloppy, so this past weekend I decided to bring back the nook, especially since I plan on doing lots of reading and cider-drinking in there late at night.
I'm always amazed by the interior-design and decoration instincts of my friends. Oversized abstract bird prints, adorable DIY beaded photo frames, and a great use of space for unique knick-knacks (say that three times fast!) are some touches I've seen; my bestie Lisa, in one trip, thrifted an antique glass lemon, globe, and ornately worked glass candle-holders which she scattered effortlessly on her mantelpiece, lending an old-fashioned charm. I, on the other hand, have virtually no skills in this department, so I decided to - at the very least - make a functional display at the (unused) far end of the table with some of our favorite reading materials: cookbooks and fashion magazines.
{Currently on display: a fantastic read and even better cookbook, David Chang's Momofuku. One of our favorite restaurateurs, and one of my favorite awesomely cool, creative, balls-to-the-wall successful Asians representin' on the streets. My husband slays it in the kitchen; I'm planning to request the pork-belly buns, pork-and-oyster ssam, and spicy rice-cakes for my birthday. Cookbook display: Glass and steel, William Sonoma. Fruit bowl: Kate Spade china.} 
{A vintage cookie jar that belonged to my husband's father now houses spare change. It's in a convenient location, and is great for grabbing quarters on the way out to dinner. It reminds me of the "Paradise Falls" money-jar from one of the greatest movies ever, Up. If only we had all the colorful balloons! That movie kills me. Once I turned to Steve during the opening scene and asked wistfully, "Do you love me that much?" Happily, his answer was affirmative.} 
{Prized volumes anchor the magazines on one side. Richie Slotkin and his wife Iris are my parents' BFFs, so it was fitting to display one of his incredible books. The Shakespeare is a very dignified, old-school edition, but it's such a behemoth, it was cramping my bookshelf style, and to be honest, I'm not a frequent Shakespeare-reader, English degree be damned. I like spicy new language and poetry books with beautiful covers on the shelf. The Heath anthology is chock-full of goodness.} 
{A piece of our wedding china makes the questionable clementines I bought at Target more appealing.}I hope we can maintain the state of the breakfast nook as it is right now! On that note, I'm going to enjoy a drink at that table toute de suite. But I'll pass on the clementines. xoxo
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