7.3.08

Stuff White People Like

Stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com is a funny blog I discovered. (I can't figure out how to link it). Here are two of my favorite quotes:

White people like bicycles: "But there is a special category of bicycles that appeal far more to white women, the European city bike (pictured). White women have a lot of fantasies about idealized lives, and one of them is living in Europe and riding around an old city on one of these bikes. They dream about waking up and riding to a little cafe, then visiting bakeries and cheese shops and finally riding home to prepare a fancy meal for their friends who will all eat under a canopy with white Christmas lights. This information can be used to help gain the trust/admiration of a white woman, especially if you can pull off a lie about how your mother told you about how she used to do all of these things when she was younger."

"White people are under a lot of pressure to like cooking. Everything in their culture tells them that they need to have a nice kitchen and that they need to cook with organic, fresh ingredients to make delicious, complicated food. . . ut, in order for them to truly enter into whitedom, they need to own the holy grail of white kitchens - the kitchen aid stand mixer (right). They will match this mixer to their kitchen’s color scheme and it will make up the focal point. And much like many religious artifacts, it will remain untouched for months and even years, sitting on the counter to be admired as a testament to their lifestyle . . .If you find yourself in a conversation about these things, a good way to say a little but mean a lot is to mention that you “find the consumer models to be poorly built, my friend, a chef, brings me with him to a restaurant supply shop that’s not open to the public. The stuff there is real quality, it’s where I get all of my pans.”
If this is too big of a risk, you should just throw out a combination of these words: “le Creuset, Calphalon, All Clad, Williams Sonoma, and Sur Le Table.” White people go so nuts when they hear these words, you won’t even have to finish your sentence."

Let me know what y'all think! We've been cracking up over this.

2.3.08

Lake House Therapy

Lately, I've been really inspired to re-arrange--mostly because I have space to move furniture around (although I wasn't wholly stopped by that in the old house, it's much easier now). Johnny likes to follow suit--he's always moving his and Aubrey's beds. Lately, House Beautiful, Apartment Therapy and Caroline have been inspiring me. I tackled the "nursery" on Friday and our bedroom on Saturday. It was satisfying and oh, so fun. Re-arranging our bedroom gave me a chance to do some deep cleaning in there of renovation gunk. I posted the photos of the "afters" on Facebook; here's the public link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19876&l=42384&id=508132545

I had a lot of fun writing the captions. If you think it's tacky to share what things cost, be prepared to be offended. I love bargains and think it's so fun to share them with others. On our budget, paying full-price is not an option, although I don't think I'd pay full price for anything if it was. Bargains are fun! Tomorrow, we are going to hang "drapes" in the LR in preparation for a properties committee tour.