Mixtape. (No. 11)

These days, there are large, twisted gourds on the windowsill and a steady replenishment of fresh cider in the fridge. Woolen socks have once again worked their way to the front of my dresser drawer and as the air continues to grow more and more crisp, life around these parts has become wrapped in scarves and sprinkled with pumpkin spice. In more ways than one, Fall has most certainly arrived in the city and boy does it feel good. So, so good.

There's something special about these Fall months-- something so unique about the tastes and smells and traditions that accompany this season. It's a time for transition, a time to take pause, a time to cherish the small moments of change each day. And after such a long, horrendously hot & incredibly busy summer, I can't tell you how welcome these changes have been for me.

With the coming of Fall, I've found a renewed pep in my step-- a refreshingly untapped source of energy-- that has spurred an insatiable urge to soak up every bit of this season. And so with that, here's to you, sweet Fall. Here's to patches of pumpkins and orchards filled with apples, here's to cold bottles of hard cider and mugs of hot tea, here's to the click of boots on the sidewalk and the rustle of fallen leaves, and here's to a playlist that I've found to be the perfect soundtrack & companion to it all.

Happy listening, friends.
xo

No. 11 from joie.de.vivre on 8tracks Radio.

On Top of the World -- Imagine Dragons

The Fear -- Ben Howard

Classy Girls -- The Lumineers

The Boxer -- Mumford & Sons (feat. Jerry Douglas & Paul Simon)

Walk It Off -- Angus & Julia Stone

Feel Again -- OneRepublic

Little Talks -- Of Monsters and Men

Lonely Boy -- The Black Keys

Icswyw -- The Hill and Wood

She Got the Honey -- Mat Kearney

Photo above via Celine Steen.

Back To My Roots.

It started with a casual craving for pancakes on a Sunday morning. The skies were the most glorious shade of blue and the first subtle crisp of Fall was finally in the air. It was a day with no plans in place-- a day that yearned for a bit of adventure-- and as our minds drifted back towards our grumbling stomachs, I realized I knew just the spot to go. We hopped in the car and set our sights towards the Tappan Zee.

It had been almost six years since I had last walked that main drag of my hometown. And as we stood on the sidewalk, patiently awaiting our name to be called at the famed local joint downtown, an unexpected jumble of nostalgia was slowly coursing its way through me. In those six years, a lot had changed-- I had changed. And yet, standing there on that Sunday morning, so much felt just the same as it always had. Just up the street, those beautiful old oak trees still draped over the town square, casting shade and dropping acorns on those passing by. And as the clock struck twelve, the sound of a bell from the nearby church began to toll in a familiar pattern that I didn't realize I remembered until I heard myself humming along.

As we spent the afternoon meandering through old neighborhoods and past old haunts, soaking up every bit of that beautiful Fall day, the memories of a childhood past grew stronger with each step. It was a walk down memory lane in its truest and most honest form. And while the cracks in the sidewalk were a bit longer than I last remembered and the trees a bit older and worn, those same strong reminders of a childhood well nurtured still remained-- the view of the city skyline from my favorite perch above town, the unique weave and twist of the road from one neighborhood to the next, and the taste of those monstrously large "single" scoops from Van Dyk's that will forever carry the blue ribbon in my heart.

I was home. And it had never felt so good.

 

Joie De Vivre-- The Tumblr Edition.

This has been a long time coming, friends, and I could not be more excited to finally share this mini side project of mine with you all. While there is undoubtedly some editing & fiddling still yet to come, let me be the first to warmly introduce you to joie de vivre's Tumblr counterpart.

Over the past 14 months, this little space of mine has been a experiment of labored love. For those of you who have been gracious enough to stick around for a while now, you know firsthand the ways in which things have changed and grown and ultimately evolved to be as they now are. With each post,  joie de vivre has come to be something more than it was last-- something a bit closer towards what I always hoped and envisioned it would be. And now, with the addition of a whole new space chock-full of visual inspiration, I am so excited to see where this journey of creative exploration continues to lead. 

I do hope you'll stick around to join me. 

So with that said, click here to wander on over to joie de vivre (the Tumblr edition).

Poke around. Stay awhile. I hope you like what you see.

Happy exploring.

xo

(P.S. Know that you can always find a link to the joie de vivre Tumblr up top next to the "About Me" section!)

A Retreat.

Well hello there, friends. My gooodness, it's been a while. Apologies, once again, for checking out these past few weeks. As seems to be the case a bit far too often for my liking, life has proven to be a bit tricky to navigate as of late. (sigh). Between the general stress of work and travel coupled with a few of life's unexpected and rather humbling hard knocks, I came tumbling out of July last week in a state of exhaustion that just about knocked me flat out. It was time for a break. Time to find that much-needed release that both my mind and body had been so desperately craving for weeks. And the time to do it, was now.

Well, come Friday night, I found just that. With a dear friend at the wheel, a set of directions pointing due North, and a spontaneous urge pushing us onward, we took to the road and left reality far, far behind. Four hours, a belly full of laughs, and a few wrong (but highly memorable) turns later, we pulled in next to the white country farmhouse we were to call home for the next two days and stepped out under a beautiful Vermont summer sky. The air was crisp, the grasshoppers loud, and for the first time in a long while, my head was clear. It was the perfect start to a weekend spent enjoying every last bit of life's simple pleasures and that wonderful, but often fleeting, gift we call time. 

Vermont, here's to you. 

 

More to come soon, friends.
xo

(Long) Weekend Snapshots.

To say that our miniature army packed in a whole heck of a lot this weekend would be a grave underestimation. I swear, it's truly hard for me to conjure up more than a few brief moments when we weren't on the move, off to yet another destination, exploring another neighborhood, and sweating our tushes off the whole way there. (Thank you OCD tendencies for fueling me with the unnecessary urge to plan out every second of every day with a suggested schedule of activities. Yikes. Major kudos to you nine crazy fools for dealing with me for that.) But it's funny you know, despite all of the wonderful things we were able to do and see-- all of the things I successfully checked off my cerebral "to-do" list-- looking back through these photos, it's really those moments of unplanned and unscheduled occurrence that stick out as the most memorable.

It was that early evening spent soaking up the last of the city's summer sunlight from a perch by Central Park's boat basin, listening to the string duet across the way and just enjoying each other's company while speculatively people watching the city's passerby. And the afternoon spent deciding not to trek to that baseball game out in Queens and instead spent headed back to that local Mexican joint down the street for another pitcher of sangria for a second night in a row. And the decision to get the heck out of the sun despite the incredible food market we were leaving behind in order to stumble into the nearest coffee shop and just spend the next few hours talking over the most delicious cup of cold brew while praying for the rain to come. And that late night spent lounging around my living room, washing down cold beer with wedges of squeezed lime and dying with laughter over yet another successful achievement of scaring the living bejesus out of me with a ginormous rubber spider hidden under my pillow. 


It's funny how that all happens, isn't it? The way the most meaningful moments often can't be planned, or scheduled, or booked in advance; the way sometimes simply being in the presence of good, dear friends is all you need.


So with that, a (not so) quick peek into some of our crew's adventures from this past weekend, with a heck of a lot of good fun left out thanks to my negligence in properly documenting our treks--

Dear Dad.

Daddio,

For the mornings spent hunting for hidden gold boxes and the nights spent being chased around the dining room table in peals of laughter. For the summer nights spent draped across your lap and your weekly ritual of tallying the new additions to my freckled face. For the enthusiastic sideline cheers from the bleachers and heartfelt standing ovations from the audience. For those precious times spent driving through town-- windows down, arms gesturing wildly-- while simultaneously belting the most recent Backstreet Boys track to passerby at the top of our lungs. And for keeping that incredible magic alive these past 23 years... thank you.

You've never stopped making me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Today & every day.
I love you.

Your Lizzie xox

Back At It.

Well. So much for my jumping back on the blogging bandwagon two weeks ago, friends; I surely could not have been more false in that promise. Holy moly.

But really. Can we just step back a brief minute-- where the heck did these past two weeks three months go on and disappear to? I swear, just the other day it was March, wasn't it? And yet as I found myself touching wheels down in New York on Sunday night, the hard realization that somehow life had gone on and skipped ahead to June hit me hard. My goodness. Then again, I suppose that's what eleven straight weeks of travel will do to you.

Eleven weeks. Eleven weeks of 3oz liquids and carry-on luggage. Eleven weeks spent on 17 planes and 4 trains. Eleven weeks filled with five separate stops in Missouri, two quick reprieves at home in Virginia, a pit stop in DC, and a work weekend here and there in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Texas for good measure. Eleven weeks of inconsistency. To say that it has been a long, busy & hectic three months would be an understatement. Yes. But here we are. It's a new week-- a new month, I suppose, for that matter-- and I'm home. Home. Here's to getting back to that daily grind, back to the familiar.

More than anything though, I just have to say thank you. Thank you for sticking around and patiently waiting for me to get my life in order. And for putting up with my all too familiar excuse of life being busy as of late. I must admit a part of me was deathly afraid to log in to joie de vivre last night for fear that I'd find you all had up and left. Well, a sincere thank you for squashing that silly insecurity; shame on me. (Have I mentioned lately how much you readers totally rock my world?)

But seriously, I have truly missed swinging by to say hello every morning. Let's get back to that again, shall we? Enough of this travel nonsense.

I'll be seeing you again soon.
xo

A Gift.

Beside my bed lies a long, white windowsill. A windowsill which for ten months laid bare and empty, just begging to be filled. A windowsill which, for those same ten months, served as a constant reminder of just how far I still had yet to go in truly making this space of mine exactly that-- mine. But these things take time, and I knew that a home was not created simply by one's living in it. But as of last week, I got one step closer. For through a serendipitous turn of events, that long, lonely windowsill became home to an incredibly beautiful collection of books-- a gift bestowed upon me through the thoughtfulness of dear, dear friend. A gift that was given simply because.

And while I could go on for pages pouring over the details of those beautiful covers and bindings laced with gold thread, what I love most about this gift is the significance embedded within-- that special reminder of a dear friend who, despite having roots all the way in St. Louis, has woven a piece of her heart into my life here in Brooklyn and found a way onto that windowsill in a way that a simple picture or card couldn't possibly compare.

And so, with that-- many thanks to you, Miss Cait! Beyond this sweet gift, your kind heart means more than you'll ever know.
xo

The Forest Feast.

A part of my heart has always been in this city-- feeding off of the constant hum of the streets and the electricity in the air. Ever since I was a little girl, I've been drawn to the buzz, to the culture, to the life here. There's just something about the way this city makes both your head and your heart swell with big ideas & lofty dreams that's intoxicating to me. But as much as my heart will always love New York, there's a part of me that also yearns for a life of simplicity. A life away from the lights and the concrete; a life spent more quietly, more connected to the people and the earth that surround me. I know that this chapter of my life is meant to be spent here-- is meant to be shaped by my experience in this city-- but one day, one day, there's a cabin nestled within a large, open landscape that will call my name and I'll know it's time.

With that said, it's no surprise that my heart skipped a beat when I first came across The Forest Feast a few months ago and that connection to author/photographer Erin Gleeson and her story was a natural one. After establishing a life here in New York as a freelance photographer oftentimes working within the world of the culinary arts, Erin found herself on a plane bound for California this past Fall where she and her husband were relocated. Settling into a little cabin in the woods outside of Palo Alto, Erin realized a large lifestyle change was before her and a door leading into a creative world, unlike anything she had in New York, was opening. Drawing upon her experience as a photographer in the food kitchens of New York and the new found inspiration within her new world of CSA boxes, walks in the woods, Adirondack chairs & back porches, The Forest Feast was born.

A food blog filled with beautifully executed "photographic recipe illustrations", The Forest Feast is a fresh breath of simple, organic air that you can't help but love. Thanks to Erin who graciously allowed me to share a few of my favorites below--

 

To read more about Erin and the inspiration behind The Forest Feast, be sure to check out her interview over on Weldon Owen. 


Recipes, Photos and Illustrations by Erin Gleeson from The Forest Feast, www.theforestfeast.com

Southern Comfort.

In this stage of my life-- where work, travel & transition have continued to take center stage-- it's amazing the wonders that the small details of a long weekend spent at home can do for the soul. The way the breeze seems to blow more sweetly when you're sipping wine on the deck of your favorite vineyard with a view of the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains before you; the way that time spent apart simply disappears when you're sitting next to a best friend, bent over a table in the kind of laughter that leaves your stomach in stitches; the way those weekend days seem to linger extra long when afternoons are spent lazing on the back porch drinking mimosas & playing boardgames; and the way those familiar tastes of Easter-- Dad's roasted leg of lamb & Mom's sweet strawberry rhubarb crumble-- instantly bring you back to that feeling of being a 6-year old twirling across the backyard under the warmth of the sun's golden rays, wearing your Easter Sunday best.

It takes time to build a home: time to bring life to new traditions in a new place, and time to find the right people to share those traditions with. And while each day spent in this little neck of the Brooklyn woods brings me a bit closer to having that here, I'm not there quite yet. It is going to take time. And, I believe, it's meant to. And while I journey down that road of discovery, it's a bit of southern comfort knowing that Virginia will always be waiting for me.

xo

(p.s. While I was home, I managed to find some time to sneak on over to Tuckahoe Plantation for a bit. Not surprisingly, those beautiful spring blooms proved too hard to resist. Enjoy!)