On Nesting

I am an artist, a window-shopper, and a daydreamer.

I hoard home decorating magazines.

In stores I touch the beautiful things, lingeringly.

I fantasize about my dreamhouse.

I love to plan parties, to pore over cookbooks, light many candles, place a freshly iced cake on a new cake stand, slice peaches into a pitcher of frosty white wine.

I’m not rich, and I’m also not handy. My house is a fixer-upper, and I don’t love the fixing. I aspire to never hang dry wall again, and I spend much more time drawing than spackling.

I don’t like garage sales. I can’t sew and I pretend my garden is under an enchantment - the kind where an evil faerie put everyone to sleep and tools rust while the jasmine and ivy thrive.

My imperfect canary-yellow cottage won’t appear in any magazines but I’m surrounded by color and things I love. Fresh flowers, marionettes, bowls of tangerines, the occasional great piece of furniture, and all the art I’ve made while not fixing-upping.

I love to nest.

I love to decorate a table and am subject to sudden violent cravings for a new tablecloth.

If you’re ever in doubt of a gift for me, go for a French tablecloth, a vintage cake stand, or a book in which some decadent romance unfolds in beautiful prose.

I decorate with winter squash, bouquets of herbs in little vases, and dishes of cranberries or kumquats. I get peevish when people eat the kumquats and have learned that a bowl of key limes is less likely to become a husband’s snack.

I have a little ceramic pedestal just the right size for a pomegranate.

Dahlias are so perfect they make me dizzy.

Cooking for friends is fun, though I’m no gourmet chef and am afraid of many recipes.

I like pancakes for dinner. I think a lot of people would love to be invited to a pancake dinner party.

There are ways to make things seem more special than they really are, like serving ice cream in crystal dishes or draping sari fabric over a hand-me-down couch.

I have a hereditary addiction to Italian pottery. It’s not my fault, and there is no treatment.

If I was a ghost, I would live in an Anthropologie store and wear a different dress every night. I would invite my ghost friends over and serve them air in lovely teacups and I would sleep like a cat, curled on a stack of lambs wool sweaters.

I think people should make things. It’s easy to buy a giant canvas at the art store and paint a great big golden pear on it, or an orchid spike, or a tea cup.

I buy art from street fairs to put bread in artists’ bellies.

Color is spice and music and love - you can live without it, but why? When I see a house being painted brown or grey, my heart hurts.

Painting old furniture cherry red turns it into new furniture.

I would love to mosaic an entire city block.