I spied this lovely 1920s French ice box. I love the clean lines, the white chrome! (via ebay).

I’m loving this shot via always inspiring Cup of Jo .

Check out these funky vintage fruit boxes. I want them! These would be such nice boxes to keep spices/baking stuff in.

via ebay

via ebay

I’m in love this space. Don’t you want to move in? The light, the photo wall, the banquet, light in the kitchen. A perfect comfortable solution for small space living too. More here.

A friend sent me these images, thinking I might be inspired by the sheer creativity and vitality of them and she was right. A dress from balloons — how wonderful and how absurd. I love the colors and the just total joy of this model. And her head-dress. More images after the jump.

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I stumbled on this image herzensart’s Flickr. Beautiful, right? It’s the 1890s home of Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury (who has a beautiful name to match her beautiful home). Enjoy!

I had a delicious afternoon — a pedicure with M. (beyond long overdue), followed by tea and cupcakes at a bakery, the Amai Tea and Bake House, M. had found. M. has a way of finding the perfect places and then sharing them. It is a gift, this ability.

As a working woman in NYC, I eat a lot of cupcakes — on birthdays, at wedding and baby showers, on the good days, on the bad days — someone is always walking by my office with cupcakes from a new bakery. I’ve tried them all: babycakes, sage, crumbs, magnolia, buttercup, sugar sweet sunshine, out of the kitchen. I have to say the Amai chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting was the best cupcake I’ve ever had. While cupcakes are a subjective pleasure, I judge mine on three criteria: 1) “cakiness” of the cake, 2) the quality of the frosting, 3) the ratio of said cake to said frosting. If any of these three are out of balance, I won’t rave about it.

This one had perfect frosting — creamy, full of flavor, not too sweet. And, my god, it was peanut butter frosting. Think about that. The cake was chocolaty and moist, — delicious cake in its own right. Finally, the ratio of frosting to cake was perfect. I didn’t run out of either.

The shop, Amai Tea and Bake House, is both cozy and elegant — I loved the pink Cole and Son “woods” wallpaper  in the back nook, and the grey/brown of the walls.

The shop is owned by Kelli, of the blog Lovescool fame. I hadn’t ever read her blog until eating her cupcakes, but, I think you’ll enjoy both. For those of you in NYC, head to 16th and 3rd. For those of you elsewhere, her online shop is here.