Tulips and the Bungalow Dress

My favorite kinds of flowers are yellow flowers because yellow is such a happy, cute color, and I think that my absolute favorite kind of yellow flower is the tulip. Yellow tulips look like little cups of sunshine and adorableness! What could be better?! Of course, when I think of yellow tulips, I think of how I plan on planting them all around the adorable little house that I will someday have, and they will be so pretty and nice to look at when I have people over for tea parties in my garden. Obviously, I'll need something to wear to my tea parties in my tulip-filled garden, and this is what I would wear:


This is the Bungalow Dress from Anthropologie, and when I found it online yesterday, all I could think was how wonderfully it would go with a garden full of yellow tulips and tea and little cucumber sandwiches. Unfortunately, the Bungalow Dress is a two-paycheck dress, and I am in the middle of saving up for a different two-paycheck dress that I am going to wear to the International Ball at the Naval Academy in April. But hopefully the Bungalow Dress will still be around (or maybe even on sale?!) after my next two paychecks, so that I can be that much closer to fullfilling my dreams of yellow tulips and pretty dresses and tea parties.

Love, Jillian

Strawberry Fair and Raspberry Cookies

I've been in love with Strawberry Fair's music for quite awhile now.  Last year she released her Strawberry Fair Sings "I Can't Do Anything" EP and I was excited to have even more music by her. Strawberry Fair is actually the stage name of Swedish (surprise, surprise!) pop darling Jenny Franzén. Her music reminds everyone of 1960s girl groups, and that's really no surprise. But for me, her cuteness lies not just in her almost whiney voice and heartachey lyrics but in those moments when her music is jangly&upbeat and she sounds just shy enough that it can come across as adorably coy. The fact that there is a pretty good amount of clapping in her songs doesn't hurt either. "Football Star" makes me want to giggle and "Why Won't He Answer" makes me want to dance. Anyway, while listening to her EP this week and looking through Marta Stewart articles I came across these:

They're raspberry cream sandwich cookies and I think it was fate that I found them while considering a blogpost about Strawberry Fair. They are pink and cute and most likely delicious. I bet they are just the kind of thing you bring to a picnic besides a blanket and Strawberry Fair songs. Yeah, they're just right. And that's also how I feel about Strawberry Fair's music, it's always just right.

Love, María

Nesting Baby-Bluebird Cupcakes

Martha Stewart is basically our favorite person ever. I've said it before, and I'll probably say it a million more times. Just look at how adorable these cupcakes are!!! I mean, they have the word "baby" in the name, so they must be adorable. María and I think that these are the perfect Easter cupcakes, and we totally want to make them this year and put them in little Easter baskets and just sit and look at how cute they are. And the most awesome thing about this recipe is that you could make a bunch of little baby bird cupcakes in DIFFERENT COLORS like pink and lavender and pretty much whichever color you want!!! Imagine how wonderful life would be if you had a kitchen full of different-colored baby-bird cupcakes instead of a dorm room full of reading and essays and presentations that need to be done! Pretty wonderful.

Love, Jillian

Knithouse!

This is our 24th post and so I figured that since 24 is my favorite number (it's a pretty cute number, right?) I'd make it about one of my favorite things. 2/3 years ago my friend Christopher built a house from wood and yarn. Knithouse was quickly added onto my list of things I love and ever since then I've wanted one for myself. Wouldn't it be nice to have one of these in your backyard? I think so.


Of course knithouse was much more than just a cute house. In fact, I remember reading Christopher's proposal and hearing him talk all about it. If you want to read all about it I'm sure you can google "Would we slip away?" and you'll find something about Christopher and knithouse. But as much as I know about it, I love knithouse mostly because I want a colorful little house that's made from yarn. Maybe Jillian and I can get him to build us a huge one with our bakery/flower shop inside!


The other night I even had a dream about knithouse. That's how much I love it! In the dream I had finally convinced my friend to build me one and it was full of pillows and nice things. Somehow, I even lived in it! This was all great until I realized knithouse had a door and it was locked and I couldn't get my keys back from someone. Luckily, if I ever do live in an adorable house I'll make Jillian&Chris both keep an extra set of keys.


Sadly, knithouse is now gone and it's pieces are locked away somewhere. I ask Chris to build me one all the time, but apparently it took a lot of work. Once we even decided that it could be at my wedding and everyone would sort of have to wear sweaters. Okay, maybe that's too much and he shouldn't be an event planner. But one day I hope I can convince Christopher to build one for my children/ME. Until that day, I'll just stare at these pictures and come up with ways of convincing him to finally build me my own knithouse.

Love, María

Yé-yé Girls

When I was little I wanted to grow up to be something that I associated with being adorable. Actually, I probably still feel that way. I really can't help it. I don't remember when I first heard the song "La chica yé yé" (buscate una chica, una chica yé-yé/que tenga mucho ritmo y que cante en inglés/con el pelo alborotado y las medias de color...) but I do know that instead of making me think that being a yé-yé girl sounded silly/stupid, it made me want to be one more than anything else. I had a list of things I might want to be. Maybe a housewife, a secretary, or even a baker. At the end of the day though a yé-yé girl just sounded so perfect. I mean they basically started off as a bunch of cute french girls who were chosen as "le chouchou de la semaine" on Salut les copains. I like to think that wearing cute 1960s outfits, singing songs, dancing and being coy sounds like a good career choice.


Even now, I'd probably rather be a yé yé girl than be at college. I'm sure tons of people are going to think that's silly, well too bad. Mostly, I think I wanted/want to be Sylvie Vartan or Chantal Goya. Françoise Hardy is way too pretty, and France Gall's hair sometimes upset me. Except that France Gall sings one of my favorite songs "Sacré Charlemagne" and Françoise Hardy obviously has the hair I've always wanted. And Clothilde sang "Saperlipopette" and Rosalia sang "La chica yé-yé" It's too hard to choose just one! I think I just liked that Chantal Goya seemed sassy and Sylvie Vartan made me wish I could be a blonde. I don't know exactly how much Jillian loves yé-yé girls but I'm going to say it's probably tons. This is because I know how cute she thinks french sounds and because we have basically the same taste in almost everything.

But since neither of us is ever going to get to be one, all we can do is adore them. I can listen to them in the car with Jillian and pretend that "Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles" isn't kind of depressing and listen to "Baby Pop" until my head almost hurts.

Love, María

Baked Alaskas

María and I really like the song "Indian Summer" by Beat Happening, and there's a part that goes French toast with molasses/ croquet and baked Alaskas.  Every time we hear it, we talk about baked Alaskas and how intriguing they are.  Basically, a baked Alaska is ice cream surrounded by layers of cake, completely covered in meringue.  The idea is that the meringue acts as an insulator, so when you put it in the oven, the ice cream doesn't melt all over and make a mess.  The thing is, you have to put it in the oven for the exactly right amount of time so that the meringue gets hard, but the ice cream doesn't melt.

We still haven't decided if baked Alaskas are adorable or not, but we are incredibly curious.  Obviously, cake, ice cream, and meringue are all things that are delicious and adorable on their own, but I'm afraid that they might not work together.  Or, they will combine adorable-forces and create the most insanely perfect dessert of all time.  Mostly, I'm just afraid that it sounds like something that will make me sick if I eat more than two bites.  The only way to find out, of course, is for us to make one, so we're going to see if we can successfully make a baked Alaska sometime soon.

Also, in my search for information about and pictures of baked Alaskas, I found out that Ben & Jerry's has a flavor called Baked Alaska that, amongst other things, has WHITE CHOCOLATE POLAR BEARS in it!!!!  I love polar bears, and when they're tiny and made of white chocolate, they're probably even better!

Love, Jillian

Siestas y fiestas con Nosoträsh

Originally I thought I'd make a post about Spanish indie pop. After talking to my friend Christopher though, I realized that although I don't ALWAYS like Spanish indie pop, I do ALWAYS like Nosoträsh. 

Christopher constantly points out that there is perhaps nothing more saccharine than Spanish indie pop. This is probably true. Sometimes it makes me feel like I am swallowing cups full of maple syrup and listening to baby animals singing. BUT other times I really can't help how much I love it.

I first discovered Nosoträsh when I'd been listening to La Buena Vida for days and wanted to listen to something that was cuter but that didn't make my head hurt. And so I found Nosoträsh. Their lyrics are just right. They are sound adorable and are actually sort of heartbreaking like with most indie pop. In "Arte" they sing about naps and parties and dreaming about someone being in love with you. How sad! How cute! The title "Tres tristes tigres" reminds me of a tongue twister I learned when I was little. Adorable!

Also, Jillian and I love naps and Nosoträsh is the perfect music for naps in the middle of the day. Plus, I imagine that if I were to sing in Spanish, I'd sound like Nosoträsh and not like Cola Jet Set. Well, I hope so anyway.

Love, María

Crocodile! Hippopotame!

María and I absolutely love babies.  It's possible that we love babies more than anything else in the world.  And the best kind of babies are the babies that speak languages other than English.  For example:

I know everyone ever has seen that video, but OH MY GOODNESS!!!  It just makes me think of all the adorable little babies I've seen speaking languages other than English in little baby voices, and it's almost too adorable for me to handle!  All of the babies in Italy sound incredibly sassy, and there is a baby that sometimes comes to our campus center that speaks Japanese in an adorable little baby voice and climbs up on the coffee tables.  And, once, I was waiting for my chili verde burrito at Raul's and there was a BILINGUAL baby in line with his parents and he really wanted a quarter for the bubble gum machine and kept switching between Spanish and English depending on which parent he was arguing with and I almost died from the cuteness.

Also, I've decided that since I already know some Spanish and a lot of Italian and I can kind of read French, it should totally not be a problem for me to learn French by watching this video over and over and over.  I'll only know how to talk about crocodiles and hippos and magic powers, but really why would you want to talk about anything else?!!?

Love, Jillian