This is the last weekend before Christmas!? What the what? Time to get cracking.
I have some serious last-minute online shopping to do and I better start thinking about packing for our trip to California–we leave at the end of the week.
However, I’m currently marooned on the couch under a sleeping/nursing baby, so that will mostly all have to wait (as will my list of starred links, which resides on the computer across the room).
See you Monday! Enjoy this last pre-holiday weekend!
A post about an ice cream shop seems ill-timed right now, but the Van Leeuwen shop is really more of a beautiful cafe. It’s a gorgeous space on 7th street in the East Village, the result of a very successful ice cream truck (whose success also had a lot to do with aesthetics, specifically their iconic butter-yellow trucks, as an owner noted in a NYT article on expensive ice cream). The first shop opened in Brooklyn, but this is the first I’ve seen and everything about it is lovely: raw-cut wood tables, custom-made botanical wallpaper (to match their menu), loads of records stacked by a turn-table…
I have yet to order ice cream there (despite how tempting I find the list of rotating flavors), but they have made it onto my own informal list of best places for a latte in the East Village (something, you might recall, I have been studying up on recently). They also sometimes have a very delicious browned-butter, hazelnut cake in their pastry case. I keep meaning to try something else, but it’s just so good!
There’s a lot to celebrate in the month of December. I told Aron he should have proposed in March rather than December so that we could spread things out a bit (he sweetly replied that he couldn’t wait, rather than suggest that I couldn’t).
Today, the 14th, is our dating anniversary. Eleven years ago today, Aron flew back from his year abroad in Australia and showed up on my doorstep. We had actually gone out (and fallen in love) before he left; but we count the day of his return, after months of letter-writing as our anniversary. It’s funny how vivid that day still is. I had a Philosophy final to take that day; I can’t tell you anything about what was on that exam, but I could tell you exactly what each of us were wearing.
After a few false starts that nearly made us give up on the whole thing, Hudson fell asleep and we snuck out to celebrate over dinner at Public (leaving our babysitter to tip-toe around the apartment in our stead). I had always wanted to go for dinner and it was just as beautiful and aglow as I had imagined over years of brunches.
