la cucina :: culinaria spain

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love cookbooks – I love reading them, looking through their gorgeous photography and/or illustrations, cooking from them, and I love admiring them on my bookshelf. There are so many gorgeous books out there simply dripping with inspiration – an hour or two in the cooking aisles at the bookstore and I come away wanting to pull out the sketchbook as well as my All Clad.

I Know How to Cook :: The Patisseries of Paris (cover design by the uber-talented Jessica Hische)

Complete Thomas Keller (The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon) :: Vefa’s Kitchen :: The Country Cooking of France

all images from barnesandnoble.com

In case you haven’t seen this yet, Junebug Weddings, one of our favorite online wedding resources, is having a guest blogging series by Mindy Weiss.

Check out the first installment of “Ask Mindy” where Mindy answers questions on how to keep your wedding budget under control.

She offers some great advice on ways to keep your wedding budget in control without losing your personal style or the quality that your wedding day deserves. We can’t wait to read Mindy’s next installment!

Now though, I’m starting to look into learning how to sew, mostly because I’d like to be able to offer some sewn pieces in our wedding collection. As I look at sewing machines and sewing books I feel serious twinges of guilt for refusing my mom’s efforts to get me to learn these skills as a young person. Sorry, mom! Love you!

singer pro sewing machine | DIY sewing kit | both available at urbanoutfitters.com

lotta jansdotter’s simple sewing | zakka sewing | amy butler’s midwest modern

Just a quick update to the little challenge to ourselves – and possibly others (if you’re not sure what we are talking about check out this post):

Well, Whitney and I did it. (Personally, I did fall behind with my commenting on Friday, but caught up on Saturday.) Both of us noticed that there were a couple of days that when we went back and thought about it, we ended up commenting more that three times without even realizing it. We’ve also both found new blogs that we suddenly can’t live without – both of our google readers are even more loaded up now than they were before. Up next: week 2!

In the words of our friend Keith – Viva Communication!

all photos from the daily wag

I just discovered Martha’s two frenchies, Sharkey and Francesca, have their own blog: The Daily Wag. How did I not know about this sooner? In any case, the blog is stinking ADORABLE; Sharkey and Francesca share with all of us their love of travel, farm animals, and antiquing, their irritation with Bill O’Reilly and skunk attacks. Each post is accompanied by a gallery of the two bloggers on their adventures- let’s just say it’s a great way to waste time.

What do you think? Should we let Stella be a guest blogger here? She doesn’t have quite as many adventures as Sharkey and Francesca, but I’m sure she has some very important things to say…

I did a bit of browsing on amazon today and started compiling a wish list – there’s no way I can post all of the books out there that I’m coveting as there’s too many. But here are three…

brooklyn modern: architecture, interiors & design | diana lind

live/work: working at home, living at work | deborah k. dietsch

We recently bought a coffee table and while I’m usually arguing to keep it clear (Jonathan likes having stuff out on the table, I’m not a big fan of coffee table clutter) I think it could use a select coffee table book or two. I’ve been wanting this book for some time and think it would find a nice home on the newly-acquired table.

charley harper: an illustrated life | todd oldham