Better too much than not enough.

My lovely friend Laurie gave me a wonderful gift to encourage my attempts to eat better as I run galloping into my late (!) 40's. A big basket of wonderful fruit and a little fruit of the vine. Yum! The hardest part was keeping the kids out of my gift. I will confess to lobbing some grapes at them to appease them... I find it fascinating that when someone else buys something as simple as an apple it tastes different. Because it is NOT the same apple that you might buy. My son was MOSt intrigued with the label on the orange that said "berry flavor". Why? How come? I must admit I had NO intellectual curiousity and simply ate them! I whipped up a large batch of fruit salsa as things ripened and know have a simple still life of pearandapple as I type this. Thanks Laur!

Ashleigh was out treasure shopping last week when she called me to tell me that she had her body thrown acoss an oak display cabinet that I just HAD to see. I went, I saw, I bought, I pondered the impossibility of fitting said cabinet into a Toyota Camry. I contemplated my "helper" needs and went from "oh, I can just grab a neighbor to help me" to " I don't know that thing is pretty heavy. And it is glass and hard wood.." "And we DO have to go up two dozen stairs to get it into the store, and". So I rounded up FOUR of my manly men neighbors and caravaned them all to said cabinet store with college basketball on the radio and sun on my face. The little ladies at the shop were tickled to death I was buying it for the shop and they were VERY impressed with all of my manly helpers. Well, said men were not impressed with my estimating ability when 2 of them picked it up and slid it into my truck without breathing hard. And the same two carried it neatly up the stairs. The other two just wondered why they were there! Talk about many hands make light work, more like , uh, none! Thanks guys. Sorry to drag you away from the game.

We've got lots of new goodies at Stifel and Capra. Barbara Kaufman-Levy just brought in half a dozen of her lovely glass and natural object mosaic mirrors. We just unpacked a snappy batch of vintage trench coats that should work really well with the April showers we are expecting. The shop is open tomorrow from 10 to 2. Stop by, I would love to see you-