As many of you know, my husband and I relocated a year ago from Washington, DC, to Denver, Colorado, and have been elbow-deep in our fixer upper ever since. Which is why I’m SO excited to say that our son’s room is finally finished! Clinton, age 5, was gracious enough to let me have free reign (both he and the hubs could care less about how our home looks, luckily for me) but did request a little Star Wars in it. My own hopes for the room were to maximize space (it’s teensy), make it cohesive with the rest of our house, and ensure that he wouldn’t grow out of the design in a few years.
I have a friend who often ends dinners by offering us all espressos, and setting down a bar of fine dark chocolate and some cheese. I’m always impressed by the simplicity and sophistication of it, and vow that the next time we have people over for dinner, we’re going to do the same.
This month, my opportunity came when it was time to go to book club. As I ran out the door, saying a quick goodnight to Aron and the kids, I reached for a few dark chocolate bars, a cutting board, and a chilled bottle of wine, before swinging by the store to pick up a wedge of cheese.
As you know, I’ve been partnering with Ghirardelli this month to spread the word about their Savor the Dark Book Club—Ghirardelli is pairing their premium Intense Dark chocolates with author-signed copies of new, seasonal book releases—so I’ve been learning a lot about chocolate lately. And one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had: It never hurts to experiment a bit—the pairing possibilities are endless. (BBQ Potato Chips, anyone?)
One of the most wonderful things to happen since moving to Davis was being invited to join a bookclub by my (then new) friend Melissa. People often ask me about it—how did it begin? how did you all meet?—and the truth is that I think about it often. Melissa and I were both fairly new to town, meeting for occasional playdates (remember Hudson’s ‘girlfriend‘?), when she suggested that she was going to invite some of the women she’d met to start a bookclub, asking them each to bring a friend.
It was a brave thing to do—and I think about it often because it’s inspiring. She opened her house to a group of women—most of us meeting for the very first time—and we got to know each other over a bowl of questions before selecting a first book to read. At first our conversations centered around birth stories—now, the ups and downs of parenting young children figure prominently as something we all share; we’ve become real friends over reading everything from Lean In to Gone Girl, And the Mountains Echoed to Big Little Lies—and mostly not reading a few selections, too.
